A sh**ty tale to tell

Wow, it has been a while since I had time to say anything, let alone time to WRITE anything down. In hindsight, it has been quite the ride for me personally, but I haven't had the energy to organize it into a coherent tale.  I can sum it up with three little words, OH MY GOD, but that doesn't really say anything....so to begin....

End of November - Key West with my mama...she is a tricky dame, and it was tense a few times, but over all it worked out. I was surprised at how nice a time it was, and she only made me cry once or twice, so I count that as a WIN.

December - Work deadlines loom, as well as all that Christmas present buying crap, and traveling to see family and the fake smiles and impossible moods one is forced to have or be called a SOUR PUSS (fuck you too). I spent 3 blissful, Internet and TV free days out at dad's before the onslaught began...and truth be told, that was the last bliss I felt for the next three months!

I was home on the 2nd and left on the 6th for a conference in Michigan. Never one to pass up an opportunity to inflict MORE family on myself, I flew to my sister's, spent a day with her family, then she drove me to the conference which was in a nearby city, but was sadly poorly attended. Back at sissy's, it began to snow the night before I was supposed to leave...when I got to the airport the next day, my flight was merely delayed, then REALLY delayed and finally canceled, so I went back to sissy's for another night.  Highlight on the flight to Denver the next day, I actually sat next to a nice, and cute and single guy. We had lunch at the airport in Denver, then we went our separate ways...and by lunch, I DO mean lunch. (I never had the chance to find out what was WRONG with him, cuz there is always a reason guys my age who are cute and nice are single).

Finally home on the 13th, I had a few days days to pack up everything for my annual national trek for work. I spent the rest of January and most of February fighting weather issues (photo is Central Park), scheduling problems, personality conflicts, and couch surfing. I was in New York, then Chicago, then San Francisco, then back to New York.  I managed to squeeze in some friend visits, and clam chowder on fisherman's wharf AND the San Francisco Aquarium, (love them jellyfsh!) and of course had family working for me in both NYC and Chicago. 

(In the photo at left, that is me, my aunt, my sister, my niece, and a work colleague cutting loose after the day's events - and this is before ANY alcohol or chocolate!)  While in CA, I rented a car and drove up the coast for another conference. As I am enjoying the best falafel I'd ever had (at a strip mall, in Arcata, CA of all places), my mom calls. Grandma is not doing well, so mom was on her way to  Louisiana to see her - and she was in incredible pain in the car. As soon as she arrived, her sister took her to ER, where she was diagnosed with shingles!! Stress anyone?

Back in NYC for a few days, I saw a show and some friends, and my wallet was either lost or stolen somewhere between Times Square and 207th Street.....Stupid cops at precinct #34 were of NO help, no consolation to a sobbing, hysterical lady with NO money!  Gone are my ID, building pass, credit cards, the key to my car, my National Parks Pass, my health insurance card with my social security number on it, my Medic Alert Card, my STUDENT ID, which was the golden ticket to getting discount tickets everywhere, and last but not least, $450 cash I had been given at Christmas, and which I was going to use THAT weekend to buy an Ipad or a Nook or something like that.  The nicest person I met all day was the subway guy, who let me in without charging my metro card, after I counted out the pennies and nickels I had in the bottom of my purse to scrape together the fare to get to my office (where I had some cash)! 

So, I spend a last weekend hating New York, and then sob my way through the TSA, without an ID (and NO grope this time!!!!) and get home towards the end of February. I spent the next week replacing credit cards, putting a fraud watch on my social security number, and trying to figure out how to get a new ID without having to actually become a resident on AZ.  I said last rites to ALL of my plants that died while I was gone - (and when I say ALL, I mean every fucking one is a brown stump of organic matter.  They are all still out there...I water them once a week.  I can't believe they are all dead - maybe a little water and sun will help???) And MAN is the weather nice...such a change from the pissing rain in Northern California, and the SNOW in New York!

March 1, I am about to head to Atlanta for a conference, followed by a relaxing (?) bus ride up through North Carolina to see friends and family, culminating in DC for another conference.  Mama calls; she had just gotten home 2 days earlier and THEN grandma dies. She was 93 but still I am heart broken - she was one of the rare few who "got" me.  I stay up all night, rearranging all of my plans. including a frequent flyer award ticket to get me to Louisiana from Atlanta and then back to Washington, so I can meet my work obligations...my Greyhound tickets are, of course, non refundable.  

Atlanta was a bit of a blur - I saw some cousins, and a friend I hadn't seen in 20 years (I love Facebook), but I lost my jump drive, and yes, as a matter of fact, it DOES have a scan of my passport AND all of my unused Groupons on it.  I left Atlanta and flew directly to the small town where my grandma lived (I figured if I was gonna spend a buttload of points, I might as well get all the way there, even if it meant a propeller plane, rather than renting a car in Houston).

It was horrible, simply ghastly being in that house with my sister and brother and their families.  My grandma had lived in the same  house since well before I was born, and there is a certain smell, you know what I mean...and certain places in the house, and special items...and I cried for about 24 straight hours - Mama wasn't there yet, obviously.  The tears stopped when she arrived, (she has that incredible ability to make me angry enough to stop feeling bad...but not for long).  Then my aunt destroys EVERYTHING!

My  mom has two younger sisters. Aunt T, who is the youngest and Ain't D, who is the middle.  Ain't D TELLS mama and Aunt T that her OWN lawyer has been looking at the will and there are some CHANGES to go over, and things are going to be DIFFERENT...and all this happens right before the viewing. My mom and Aunt T are distraught - the will has been around for decades and always said the same thing! Mom is still suffering with the shingles anyway, so this is NOT a pleasant situation.  Ain't D, my fricking GOD MOTHER, (who I have made significant efforts at maintaining our relationship over the years, though she has all but alienated herself from everyone else in the family),  separates herself (and her live-in "room mate" - yes, we all KNOW she is gay, but she will never come out and admit it);  she doesn't come to the huge family gathering AFTER the funeral. She commands that NO ONE remove anything from the house (all the cousins ignored that at our mothers' insistence - we all went over and selected a couple of things we wanted as mementos. I got the Archie and Veronica jelly jar glass from when we were little kids, as well as a couple of other meaningless things).

So Ain't D has found a loop hole in the Louisiana code that entitles her to a portion of the property Aunt T and mama inherited (it is called Succession if you want to look it up). Basically property doesn't go to a surviving spouse, it goes to the children, so when grandpa died 40 years ago, technically, his HALF of the property actually belonged to his three daughters, and even though Grandma "left" the house to my mom and the flower shop to Aunt T, she only left HER half.  So Ain't D is claiming her 1/3 of the grandpa's half - and is telling my mom and Aunt T that if they DON"T buy her out (to the tune of about $30K EACH), she will SUE them. Neither has 30K to just hand her, so both will be forced to SELL their inheritance to pay her off!  

In addition, NONE of the contents of the house can be divided up cuz the estate is now in probate!  Even though Grandma specifically said certain things went to certain people. For example, the grand piano was going to a cousin; the Dining room set that was my GREAT Grandmothers, that my grandma got expressly for my mother back in 1978; a chair my great grandmother left ME but it stayed at grandmas for thee last 30 years.  The CAR was supposed to go to ME to, I have been told (and saw it in Grandma's notes), cuz Grandma hated my old car!  And in fact, all 6 grand kids have CDs, in our own name that are now frozen with the other assets. Ain't D wants to sell EVERYTHING and get her third.  She doesn't give a dead rat's ass that everyone else in the family wants to keep these things in the family! The china my Great Grandmother brought from Italy...the silver set.  (I absconded with a spoon from the set, so Ain't D won't be able to sell it as a complete set - HA!).  And where the hell is ALL of grandma's jewelry???

AND for a little bit of lemon in this paper cut of inequity, Ain't D inherited two income generating properties Grandma owned free and clear of Grandpa, which means mom and Aunt T have ZERO claim on THEM...So basically Ain't D makes out like a bandit to the tune of almost 1/2 a million, while Mama and Aunt T, AFTER they sell their inheritance and pay off Ain't D will come out with about 100K!!!

So, in the middle of all this falderol, Mama has another attack of Shingles.  I never thought I'd have to see my mama's naked butt, but my sister and brother were already gone, and I couldn't exactly leave her there writhing in pain, (could I??).  So I  kindly and gently tended to her...and she barked and screamed and tried to make me cry but I persevered and catered to her and made her eat and drink and take her medicine. I even called 911 for her one morning when she was sure she was having a heart attack.  The ER doctor said it was just anxiety (DUH - I had been asking someone to give her a Valium since she arrived, or at least give ME one). So she gets a prescription for something mood calming, and Aunt T took over, and I escaped headed to Washington for my other conference.

Oh but wait, first, I got sick in the middle of the night the day before I left. Now, I had not been sleeping anyway, between shuffling from couch, to houses, to sleeping on the ends of beds cuz baby nieces spread out quite a bit. since it is the single, childless person who makes adjustments in these situations (right?), but I wake up at 3am and I am definitely SICK....I am sitting there on the potty trying to puke quietly in the trash can, while trying to silently shit liquid out of the other end, and sobbing that I can't call out for my mommy, who is in the next room covered in pain patches and zonked out on vicidin.

So, I live through the last day without eating a thing and gingerly get on a propeller plane (adter being GROPED at the smallest airport in America -  literally 3 gates...and I am "randomly" selected?  Was it the vomit bag in my hand that gave away my treasonous thoughts).  My friend, a former lover, picks me up. I was staying with him on  his boat, which kinda worried me, cuz I am not INTO  him like that anymore, but he assured me he had two berths and it was no problem...Well, first off, he decides we are going sailing with some of his friends....I had not eaten anything in going on 48 hours, and he stops at McDonald's, so I have some nice greasy fries to quell the insurgencies in my belly and we get on the boat...I pop one of mom's Elavils (OK, so I snuck a couple - I deserved them) and pray for calm water. Yeah, it was so calm we had to motor half way from Mt. Vernon back to DC...it took 7 frickin' hours to go less than 10 miles!  Once we finally got off, and got back to HIS boat, i was definitely not feeling good...AND he only technically had ONE berth.  The other one was really a shelf he was going to put some clothes on to sleep....I said he could sleep in the berth...and spent all night praying i neither snored or puked or farted.

The next day, he had a brunch and I begged off, so he dropped me on the Mall and I shuffled through the Natural History Museum and around the Washington Monument. I SO wished I felt better!!  When he picked me up, we went to the American History Museum so I could see the Red Shoes from Wizard of Oz, then we drove to Annapolis for dinner.  I ordered soup and salad and picked at it.....back at the boat, there was definitely intestinal distress going on, so i went to bed, and he stayed up playing on his computer...about 1am, I woke up, sick. I begged him to let me go alone to the dock where the toilets were, but he was gentleman enough to not let me wander  off in the dock.....god damn it, I just wanted to let my intestines DO their thing and i didn't need some GUY there listening to me....So I puked several times instead...not that I really had any control over that. 

So, restless sleep ensued, don't care what noises I made and the next day he drove me into town where my hotel was....I checked in and have never felt so happy to be in private hotel room in my entire life!

The next 2 days were spent "on the hill" in meetings, which is kinda cool and I was definitely feeling physically better, and even managed to meet up with my FBI guy cousin for a cider at an Irish pub; but the gravity of the drama with Ain't D was finally hitting...she really robbed me and my family of our time to grieve for grandma. I know some day it will really hit me...and I get little snatches of it every now and then, but there is so much to do here that I really don't allow myself the luxury of wallowing, like I think I need to do...

Instead, I have thrown myself into serious body modification.....22 pounds in 13 weeks....I have a high school reunion coming up in June. So, I have been working my ass off for the last week, and not one single ounce on the scale! I mean, I did 4 miles on the treadmill on Saturday AND 4 miles on the actual road on Sunday and yet, NADA.....I got a trainer Groupon and he better help me see some results, or i will just have to explode.....

and now you are where I am...Where the hell did the first quarter of the year go? How did I get here? This is not my beautiful house? You are not my beautiful wife? My beautiful car needs work, or I need a new one...I need a new phone. I need new plants.  I want to hide away from it all....

So....anyone?  i would love to hear your comments...Don't you think this would make a GREAT movie?  I can't see how it ends yet, but it better be good.....

Post script:  Sunday night, I get a call from my dad, he leaves a message to please call him as soon as possible. When I reach him, he is in an ambulance on the way to the hospital....He feels the way he did when he had his heart attack in 2000....and he has been throwing up....Turns out he has vertigo, which apparently runs in our family - we are all a bunch of Busy Ditches.....but COME ON....enough is enough...I didn't think I was gonna sleep that night but thank god for chemistry....He is still drugged up today, trying to get some head scans, MRIs and he is such a hard headed cuss, he might just blow it all off....AGHHHHHHHHHH