Queen of Rambles

I just had the worst nightmare in the history of the world. Mike was in France, I was in labor, and my crazy granny was the only person available to act as my labor coach. I may never sleep again.

I had a long phone conversation with Granny yesterday, and I suppose that was the trigger. She’s trying to get all her talking and advice in before she dies or has a stroke. They took her off blood thinners because she had an unidentified leak somewhere, and she was thrilled about it. She was bragging to everyone that she was off the rat poison (supposedly her medication was the same chemical they put in De-Con) and could eat lettuce again. Last week she finally realized that the blood thinners were actually a doing something for her. I guess she thought her doctors just liked to poison her.

Usually I can handle long phone calls with Granny because she is very self-centered and doesn’t require that anyone actually listen to her. I can have a two hour conversation and say no more than “uh-huh, yeah, really?” and she’s happy. That was not the case last night. Last night, it was Let’s Judge Carrie Night, which occurs on occasion.

This spate of judgement was brought on by our move, and I endured intense scrutiny poorly disguised as chipper curiosity. “Have you unpacked ANYTHING? Do you have ANY dishes to eat off of? Do you have ANY of your clothes hung up? Do you help Mike AT ALL?” I think she keeps a big ol’ pot of judgement simmering on her stove. She stirs it up, distills it down, then drinks the sticky, stinky swill. She may as well just ladle it up and pour it over my head. I don’t take it too seriously since she has no clue about how we live. She’s never, ever been in any of my adult homes. It just gets a little old after a while.

In addition to the judgement, I was served up a healthy slice of Mike-is-the-Greatest-Guy-Ever Pie. I like pie in moderation, but this is just too sweet to eat. Did you know he’s the only person in the WORLD to ever think of cooking food on the weekend, then putting it in the freezer so he can have lunch during the week? How very clever of him! Did you know he’s a wonderful cook? Neither did I. He cooks a few things and cooks them well, but I’m the cook in the family. I just have to laugh at it all because she has no source or reference points for her information. He also is the best worker at his new job and if it wasn’t for him they would probably go under immediately. He’s just swooped in and sorted them out. I had no idea his boss was calling Granny and giving her status reports.

It’s all just irksome, but I try to keep a sense of humor about it. I feel kind of bad for her because she just can not handle stress or understand people. My cousin and his wife are visiting her over labor day weekend. They are bringing their three kids. It is going to be a zoo. She always stresses herself out when there is company and believes she has to cook huge, elaborate meals even though she simply doesn’t have the capabiltities to do so these days. I told her she should just give them some money to go shopping and have them cook for her or take them out for meals, but she was scandalized by such an idea. She’s bought lots of pudding, jello and cookies for the kids. She thinks the pudding will be good for the four month old baby. I have a feeling they are going to have a looooooonnnnnnggggggg weekend. There’s a reason I enjoy living across the continent.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 29th, 2005 at 3:16 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.