Just Grandma House Things

by marina /

This was my day today:

-Woke up with Ben at 6:30 with every intention of taking his advice and using the general lack of connectivity as an excuse to take my physical and emotional health into consideration and relax a little. I was going to avail myself of my uncle’s National Parks pass, go up the street and hike the sweet canyon that runs behind grandma’s house.

-But then I noticed that the previous night’s software update didn’t fix the WiFi on my phone, which had been failing for almost a month.

-Wanting to get it replaced or repaired as soon as possible, I decided to call T-Mobile before anything else. The T-Mobile guy tried to help me, but over the course of two calls, we only ended up wiping everything. Without WiFi, the reception here is so bad that I can’t restore my backups. Although there’s really no point because T-Mobile guy did come through with a replacement phone set to arrive at some point on Friday (a.k.a. today). The only problem is that grandma has a giant gate, and I’m not sure how to deal with this short of sitting next to it in a lawn chair. Which I may just do.

-By the time the phone issue was resolved, it was 9:30 and too hot to hike. So I got ready and went to find the post office. I parked too far away and had to walk about 3 suburb blocks in some already crazy ass heat, and about half way there a homeless lady looked at me, or at least in my direction and yelled “You don’t belong here. Hispanics have no business running this place.” But then she thought better of her Paula Dean moment and yelled “neither do the whites or the Asians!”

-Without any social media to save me, I started to text increasingly obnoxious observations at a number I thought was my boyfriend’s, but that was actually my friend’s and I have no idea if her day was made worse or better by the addition of my incredibly smart mouth. She hasn’t texted me back.

-I went back home to get grandma for her doctor’s appointment, and learned that Twitter still supports SMS. So I was able to at least get some tweets to my phone, and I could tweet out. I ended up having a nice time out with Grandma.

It’s hard to keep up with everything that needs to be done, and I’m upset about not working at the level I expected, especially while I’m up here surrounded by the general drama of my family and personal history, but grandma is a damn funny lady when you get right down to it. And I don’t think a lot of people know that about her. Which makes it even better.

-After the doctor and errands, grandma was worn out, so she went back to bed, and I tried to get some work done with very shitty results. At some point, I heard a cat crying somewhere outside. If you haven’t heard a cat cry, it’s usually reserved for really dire moments when something terrible has happened and they decide, tragically, to lower themselves to the position of having to beg for human intervention. So I ran out into the yard only to find Jo, one of grandma’s cats crouching over a dead lizard, apparently the cause of his cries. As soon as he saw me, he picked the kill up and fled, concerned enough to cry about it, but not concerned enough to share.

-While we waited for Ben to get home and cook delicious fish, I turned on my grandma’s Wii and played the only game she owns: Wii Sports Resort. There’s a game on there where you run around a field and hit Miis with swords. Grandma asked why they all have names and I said it was so I could better imagine their family being utterly disappointed in their failure as I mercilessly *thonk* them to the ground with my plastic Nintendo sword. Their dedication to non-violence being such that the Miis all wear protective gear, and the sword I hit them with sounds and looks completely and utterly plastic.

-Then at 9:30, well after dinner was over, my mom called and asked if I could please take grandma to the doctor tomorrow. The only reason I took her to the doctor today was because mom asked me to do that too, and when I found out why, I was kind of annoyed. She asked me so she could take someone else to the doctor. That just seems stupid to me, but I’m the one that made the mistake of agreeing to something my mom asks me to do.

I really don’t want to create the perception that I’m as free and available as the rest of my family is, because I’m not. I’m trying to start a damn business, that takes time and effort and concentration. It certainly isn’t the kind of thing you can just back out of, unless you want to back out of getting paid. Because the amount of work you do is directly correlated with the amount of money you make, in freelance more than in any other industry. Also, as little groundwork as I was able to lay on new projects, I do still have clients, and they tend to ask for things on Fridays. Without email on my phone, I need to stay by the computer.

Anyway, her excuse was that she has to take her dogs to some non-emergency appointment at the vet. I said no. I’m not really keen on changing my plans at 9:30 the night before. It smacks of assumption. I know she didn’t make those non-emergency vet appointments at 9:30, but she waited until 9:30 to call me and ask if I can do a job she said she would do? Uncool.

I’m doing this for free, in fact I lost a whole week of work coming up here, all so my mom and uncle can save a few bucks on hiring a caretaker for grandma. Years ago, I asked that I be kept out of the will for exactly this reason. I didn’t want to be caught in the middle of any weird drama. I’d wrongly assumed that drama would take place after her death, but I now see that they are already invested. And that’s cool if they want to break their own backs in an attempt to preserve some inheritance for themselves. Whatever positive elements they can squeeze out of this house, I say go for it. But at the end of the day, they’re getting something out of the time investment they’re putting in instead of hiring a caretaker, and aside from the warm and fuzzy feeling of absolute neurosis over here, I get fuck all.

It was nice to say I’d help out, but I know now that I can’t do this again. We’re still here until Sunday, and like I said I love my grandma and enjoy her company, but this is too much for me. I’m probably going to have sit on all the weird emotions staying here brought up for me over the next couple weeks, because the only clear understanding I have now is that I don’t like it here.

-Finally, it’s 1 am. I’m set to get up with Ben again at 6:30 and I’m having a very hard time writing anymore.

Oh, and we cancelled grandma’s doctors appointments for tomorrow because my mom said she can’t cancel the vet. I could go on forever about how this is typical of her, and indicative of how I’ve spent my life picking up the balls that my family tends to drop and how if I’m not careful I can just ruin myself trying to make things even slightly more comfortable for them and I can’t tell if I’m more pissed at their expectation that I’ll just do it, or at the fact that they think that because I used to do it all the time, and will still do it without thinking if I’m not careful.

Update: Mom actually did take grandma to the doctor today. After all that drama and angst about last night, she showed up this morning and said that of course she would take grandma to the doctor, because it’s her job. This. House. Is. Killing. Me.