Queen of Rambles

It seems like I’m a bad communicator these days. On Friday my grandma called up and wanted to take “the whole family” out to pizza that night. The whole family is not much of a family at all–just me, Mike, mommy and grandma. Mom had a migraine so a noisy pizza parlor full of screaming kids and loud video machines was not on her agenda. She suggested Sunday afternoon. I told Grandma Sunday afternoon. She said ok. We said ok. It wasn’t much of a plan, but I figured it would get worked out Sunday morning.

With the way my family eats, afternoon could have been lunch or dinner. I figured dinner, since we usually eat lunch at 11 am. I thought it sounded weird, but my family is weird so I just figured my mom would call or pick us up when it was time to go. She often works on Sunday mornings since she’s in middle of her busy season so I didn’t know if she’d be working or what.

So Mike and I sat around at my dad’s house just waiting for food. We were hungry and I was grouchy and neither my grandma or my mom would answer their damn phones.

I was starting to get worried. I left messages, but no one called me back. My grandma is old and not in good health. Should I call the hospital? Did she have a heart attack? Did my mom finally go insane and kill everyone at her work? Was my grandma bailing her out of jail? Where the hey-tang were they?

At one point my sister called and the call waiting beeped, but when I answered there was just dead air like you get from a telemarketer. Still no mommy or grandmommy.

Then, finally, thankfully the phone rang at 1:30–way, way, way past my lunch time. It was granny dearest, calling to bitch me out for being a horrible granddaughter and blowing off our lunch date! I got rather snippy and wanted to know why someone didn’t call us or let us know the plan. How were we supposed to know to go there when we didn’t even have a time set up???? I was none to pleased and my grandma just kept saying how horribly disappointed she was. We never eat together as a family and this was going to be special, yadda yadda yadda. What? Who gives a flying flip? We’re going to be here for a while so we can eat out together at any time. Or we can if someone calls us and tells us when and where to meet.

At least we didn’t have to eat with her and listen to all her complaints. That woman never has a positive thing to say about anything. I don’t understand why she doesn’t curl up and die from sheer negativity. She hasn’t done anything to make herself happy since my grandad died 22 years ago. And it’s not like they even had a loving relationship. He lived in a completely different town and only stopped by her house when he wanted a good meal. Strange, strange, strange.

Other than that, life has been pretty boring today. The sun was shining and it was nice and warm out, so we took the two beasts out for their daily walk. Then I went and hung out in Wal-mart for an hour while leaving Mike at home. I don’t know what it is about Wal-mart, but it relaxes me. Maybe it’s just knowing that I can go there and buy whatever I have in mind. They have underwear that fits me. They have electronics at decent prices. They have country CDs. They have picture frames. They have medicine. They have stuff. I missed stuff in Sweden. Not that Sweden doesn’t have stuff, but Kiruna sure didn’t have stuff. Tonight I bought a pair of very, very comfy burgundy velour pajama pants to lounge around in. I didn’t even have to buy the biggest size. They’re warm and soft and I love them and want to marry them. Best of all? They only cost $9. Usually I don’t buy clothes from Wal-mart, but lounging pants aren’t something I would wear in public. A few years back I bought a shirt from Wal-Mart and it literally started falling apart the first time I wore it. It wasn’t even the seam! A big patch of material right over the boob just disintegrated. But my velour pants won’t do that. They will love me forever.

I’ve also made two crucial decisions that make me very happy. Tomorrow morning I’m going down to the Y and buying a membership. It’s back to water aerobics five days a week for me! I’m also going to put $10 in the 12-week challenge pot and get my body fat measured and have a meeting with a fitness specialist. I’ve been wanting my body fat measured for a very long time, so this is a good chance to get it done.

My other decision is something I can’t talk about right now, but it about tore me apart. Now that I’ve made it I’m incredibly happy and wonder why I let myself get all guilted up about it. I don’t need extraneous guilt in my life. I get enough of that from granny dearest.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2004 at 6:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.