(no subject)

I'm home, thank the heavens above. That was one horrible trip. Mom and I spent the car trip home from the airport in gales of laughter. Laughter is really the only way to cope with a situation like that, exposure to people who make themselves miserable. It's tragic, really. Grandma lost one of her hearing aids, but Grandpa refuses to pay for a replacement, so everyone, Grandpa included, who wants to communicate with her has to yell. Grandma has demetia already, so it only reinforces how checked-out she already is.

Grandpa spent the whole trip bossing my mother around: she was on the move, running errands for him and making food for him the entire time. Grandpa has always been a control freak; in his old age, he is a petty control freak. He is a backseat driver that issues commands every minute or so. He is also *very* exacting about the errands he wants done. I spent five minutes in the produce section rifling through a bin of zucchinis trying to find the straightest, most unblemished small zucchini in the store. Zucchinis are naturally curved! And Grandpa made it very clear that I shouldn't have gone to San Diego by not thanking me for the work I had done in helping my mother out and by not paying for my airfare.

At one point, mom and Jo-an, the woman we were staying with, arranged for my Grandma and her mother to have a ladies day out. When mom came by to pick Grandma up, Grandpa kicked up a fuss that Mom won't check his dressing then and there because she wanted to get Grandma to the restaurant in time for the reservation, even though she said she would came back after dropping Grandma and Muriel at the restaurant, which would be a mere twenty minute wait for Grandpa on a matter that wasn't urgent. Because of this, and her infraction in bringing me, she is now in the dog house with him.

It was also a weird vacation because we were staying with these real-estate broker friends of the family. They had just moved into a house that they had remodeled from three condos. It felt like living in an issue of Architect's Digest: gorgeous, but not very user friendly. And they had a family reunion of sorts for Thanksgiving, which was its own little world of weird family dynamics.

It will probably be the last time I see my maternal Grandparents alive unless there is a family reunion for any reason while they are still alive. I won't even see either of them alive if the other dies, because Grandpa has made it clear in both of their wills that there is not to be a funeral because it would be a waste of money.

Other things I've noticed about my mother

Up until this trip, I'd only seen my mother eight days this year, and I went out of my way to avoid her during my brief stint at home last December, so it makes sense that there would be things that I once just knew instinctively that came as a shock. Like that she will flirt with any male in a service position- she flirted with the Black Muslim Bakery man at the Oakland airport!- or that she cuts corners when she drives while she's angry or that she is utterly paranoid about my safety. But I'd also forgotten the hellhole familial situation that she came from and how strong she is to have come out of it sane, or at least within two standard deviations of sane.

Meanwhile, I'm luxuriating in my solitude. I feel relaxed and well-rested for the first time since I really started working on my seminar paper, which must have been third week.