Alone at last!

I’m not sure I can write about this all right now.  My mother has been here and since left.  And now I desperately need a vacation.  A real vacation, not a vacation with family and fighting and bickering and sly comments and snarky responses and not a moment’s peace to oneself.  A real vacation of sitting alone with a great book, yummy food and good movies.  I might just take Sunday and not check in with the world for the entire day….

For history’s (and my sanity’s) sake, here is the shortened itinerary.

I drove down to Indiana early Friday morning to meet up with my aunt, two cousins and my mother.  Bob Evans, IHOP and my mother’s propensity for being late.  That’s about what I got to say about breakfast!  I’m wicked excited for my cousin Emily to come up here for college.  Last time I was down visiting her family, she and I spent most of the time together.  Such an amazing young woman.  I love her to death, she loves me to death and I’ll finally have REAL family in town.  Very, very excited.  Mom and I stopped at a farm stand and got lots and lots of nommies.  Some of which is already gone, but still!  NOMMY!  Friday evening was VBS craziness, along with more antics by Kevin (have I mentioned him yet) and then back to the apartment.  We did more things, but went to bed relatively early.

Saturday was job hunt day.  We drove all over picking up job applications and writing down lawyer offices.  Did I mention I had a devastating migraine?  Yah.  That was a fun day.  Lots of work, and very exhausting.  But had a nice walk around RFD.  Really love that cute little village.  Ended the night by freezing peaches.  So yummy!

Sunday was…  long.  Church, church work, more job hunt stuff, arguing, crying discussions (way too much crying) and finally left sometime around… 7pm?  8pm?  We stopped for food before technically leaving town.  Got to my aunt and uncle’s after they were in bed.  Good talk in the car about both sides of the family and all the issues. Well, some of the issues.  Learned some very interesting developments.

Monday was… annoying.  Mom’s lateness and AS’s stupidity made the day DRAG on.  Had dinner with Sharon and Ken, which pissed me off to high hell.  The entire meal, Ken and my mother talked to each other and looked at basically no one else.  Aren’t they there to see their mother?  I was the only one the entire meal who spoke to her.  What jerks.  Got lectured on how I stay too late with Gma, but proved to my mother how hard it is to leave in the evening without being an asshole.  How am I supposed to respond when I’m about to walk out the door and Gma asks me to do just one more thing?  No one else has spent that much time with her.

Tuesday was….  still annoying, but I got some alone time and managed to feel like I actually accomplished something productive.  I honestly don’t know where the rest of Tuesday went.  Oh wait – my aunt came over and wasted more time.  Of course.  That evening we had dinner AT Ken and Sharon’s because evidently we hadn’t seen them enough.  Whatever.  My cousins came over too, and my mother kinda saw how much Nick doesn’t like me.  Whatever.  Least I know I’m not imagining things.  Got to see my cousins’ new house.  For all their "look at how great our DIY abilities are" I still think my father does work that is above and beyond it.  I wasn’t as impressed with the house, considering all the work they put into it.  Maybe its just a perspective, but…. I dunno.  They always have one excuse or another why they aren’t a certain way.  A few years ago, when my cousin got pulled over for not having the right registration and insurance on his company trailer, my uncle hit the roof.  Not at my cousin, but at the system/government for not telling them what they needed.  Unfortunately, thats not how the system works.  You are responsible for knowing the laws.  The laws are not responsible for telling you how to do things.  Both my father and I did a mental facepalm while listening to Ken rant on and on about how the boys were getting screwed.  Anyways – I believe Tim works incredibly hard.  You can see it in his room and face and in the work he’s done.  Nick’s work?  Well, its completed.  (Ok, this rant has gone on long enough…)

Wednesday… is today!  Sharon told my mother that I have incredible patience with Gma and she loves doing things with me.  She said she thought I’d be good working in a retirement village like that.  Maybe thats true, but I also genuinely LIKE my grandmother.  I don’t mind doing things with her.  But watching Sharon and my mother race around, ordering Gma around, interrupting her constantly, talking to her like she’s an idiot…  I want to smack them both.  She is old, not stupid.  She is forgetful, not demented.  She is weak, but not incapable.  She is still a whole person with opinions and thoughts and ideas.  They both do so much for her without letting her do things on her own.  The reason she asks me for help is because I let her do things on her own.  I’m not constantly trying to force my help on her.  She knows I’m always willing to help.  She also knows that I will offer help, but not force her to take it if she says she can do it.  Or just says she wants to try.  Its a balance of independence and assistance.  I want her to do as much as she can on her own, even if I’m there and can do it faster.  I want HER to know she can do it.  I want HER to make decisions.  I want HER to know when she needs help, and then I want HER to ask for it.  I refuse to do things for her that she wants to try on her own.  Occassionally there are things I do first so that I can more easily answer her questions when she tries it.  Because we’re both learning how to do something.  I don’t want her to learn it wrong, so I need to try it first on my own.  But I feel like 75% of the things my mother does for her, my Gma can do herself and wants to do herself.  Argh.  Anyways…  I dropped my mother at the airport around 1pm and then wandered back up to the highway.  Sharon is a complete jerk when it comes to directions, either acting like I know where everything is, or acting like I’ve never driven a car before.  I rarely ask her for directions, because they are usually convoluted.  My mother says that my mind works like my father’s in this regard.  We can study a map for a bit and then we’re good, driving back and forth, to and fro.  Its true.  My mind isn’t as quick as my dad’s in regard to capturing maps, and I often scribble down notes or pictures or bring a map along just in case.  But once I’ve got it, I’ve got it.  I wandered all over my grandmother’s town today.  Found the post office, Home Depot, on and off the highway, dodging construction.  I enjoyed it!  Helps to have a car where I’m not paying gas and a car that isn’t on the verge of imploding!
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My mother realized that we both need alone time on these trips though.  I got some on Tuesday morning when I spent an hour at Timmy Ho’s working on cover letters for resumes.  She finally got some this morning when she went for a walk.  The difference is that I KNEW I needed alone time, and tried to find ways to get it.  My mother acts like my Gma cannot be left alone for more than a minute and stresses herself out with all the "together" time.  Our family (Mom, Dad, me) have always valued our space and alone time.  It helps all of us cope and process and relax.  When we don’t get it, its not good.  My mother claims I’ve been like this since I was an infant.  Sometimes I just really wanted to be left the fuck alone!  So why would she think that anything has changed?

Anyways – Good things happened, and I have a strong lead on a really decent job.  I also got a lot of my debts sorted out.  Its not solved overnight, but I feel like my mother (therefore my father) and I are closer together onto the same page.   I’m attempting to keep the momentum going with the job hunt and hopefully will have more income soon.  I really want this one particular job.  I would be so good at it!  And the concept of steady, livable income?  It would be absolutely amazing.

One scary thing that started yesterday and kinda continued today were dizzy spells.  What is scary about them is their familiarity.  I’ve done this dance with them before, and with my migraines becoming more frequent and more severe – its just all too familiar.  I told my mother that I would not have been able to push through everything on Saturday if she had not been there with me.  I would have just stayed in bed all day.  And thankfully, she used to get them like this too.  She still does occassionally, but they seemed to peak in her 20s and 30s so they aren’t as bad for her anymore.  The same went for my grandfather, so the doctors are pretty sure its just genetic.  She also has banged her head against a wall in an attempt to alleviate the pain of a migraine.  I’m not crazy for doing it.  Well, maybe I am, but I’m not alone in doing it.  She’s never dealt with these auras though.  The doctors told me that the dizzy spells were probably auras of my migraines.  Basically, just a little piece of the migraine.  Sometimes I’ll get the aura but not the migraine.  Except these auras haven’t happened in…. years.  Not this bad.  I was a sophomore and couldn’t walk from one class to another without assistance.  Oh yah.  It was fun.  🙁  I just don’t know what I’ll do if I get this job, or any job, but the migraines continue to be this bad and this frequent.  I can muscle through a day or two or three.  But an aura and migraine that never goes away?  I remember the first time I was pain-free in high school.  I had a migraine basically since junior high, but didn’t know it.  My head was always in pain.  Some days it was worse and some days it was nearly intolerable, but I had never really got rid of the underlying pain.  It was always pain.  My world was ringed in pain, but I didn’t even know until the pain was finally gone.  But I do not want to go back on 4 Ibruprofen twice a day if I can help it.  So we’ll see what happens.

I’m still kinda of reeling from the emotional craziness of this week, and I haven’t really unpacked yet.  I’ll probably write more later on all this.  Nothing else really happens in my life!