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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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10:53 a.m. - 2012-05-10
In my continuing effort to keep a balanced perspective I'm focusing on how almost everything has a good side and a bad side. Take this morning for instance, I'm waiting for the a/c guy who may or may not show up to do the seasonal tune-up on the central air system. I loathe waiting for service people, especially for an iffy appointment such as this one which seems to be whim and weather dependent. (Mostly whim, if you ask me.) Yet to be fair, I am reminding myself that I have the freedom to be here to wait around and am not endangering my job to take the morning off. Also there's the no small matter of actually having this work done by a professional. No begging the ex to please, please do something about the a/c before November. And that the house has central air conditioning to begin with. A little dopey and forced, I know, but this technique does help. I have to admit I'm scrambling more than a little to come up with something positive to say about Mother's Day. It's become my least favorite of the Hallmark holidays and my dread of it grows deeper every year. One of my kids will ignore the day completely, unless there's another of his scathing "You suck, lady" emails waiting for me in my inbox on Sunday morning. He sent one for my birthday last year, so that was special. The other kid who's yet to acknowledge the day since they stopped making Mother's Day planters in milk cartons back in grade school, reached an all-time low last year when I gave him money to buy me a gift and he returned from the mall with a video game for himself. True enough we don't have to go to the Mother's Day brunch at SIL's country club this year and I am saved all of Mick's bitching about it, but the brunch is a no-go because his sister is going to be in Aruba. The woman got laid off 6 months ago from a job that paid twice what Mick's does and they can still afford to go to Aruba? Must be nice. Also with SIL out of the country guess who's stepping up to provide MIL with an honorific meal? Yeah, I'm a schmuck, but since the day is going to blow anyway I might as well do it up right and cook a goddamn company dinner and serve it to my MIL who's shown me just how worthless I am to her. A trifecta of yuck, a grand slam of shit. Nope, sorry, there's no good side to Mother's Day. It's even haunting my dreams. This morning Mick came in to wake me up. In the fugue state between asleep and awake I held out my arms and asked for the baby. He was bringing me the baby to nurse, you see. It took a couple tries before I remembered there is no baby. Then I began to cry. My boobs were aching, my heart was aching, she was so real to me! Of course when I got all the way awake it came back with a thud that I am 49, that despite the continuation of my dratted menses it's physically impossible for me to have another baby, and most of all I do not want another baby. I am so over the whole caretaking thing I won't even plant tomatoes or buy a goldfish. A baby? I'd have to be out of my fricken gourd. But the dream baby was realer than real. I could smell the Desitin inside her crackly plastic diaper. I felt the scant weight of her in my arms and the soft fuzz on my lips as I kissed her sweet little baby head. I even remember laughing a little at Mick who'd swaddled her up so much as though she might freeze on the brief trip from the crib to our bed. Beyond stupid and so pathetically Freudian even old Sigmund would snort derisively. What can I say? My sleeping mind has never been subtle. Btw? Her name is Scarlett. Yeah, I'd have done that terrible thing to my kid. Probably to guarantee that even if she didn't end up resenting and/or loathing me for my shitty mothering like the other two do she'd have plenty of reason to hate me just for having to go through life as Scarlett O'Hara. Hoo boy, shake it off, LA. So. The a/c guy is here. And so far the system checks out just fine. Good deal. I'll have to go over to Plumb King and pick up a new filter before the season gets too far in, but this is no biggie. Maybe I'll even put it on the ex's tab. Not that we need the a/c today anyhow. It's gorgeous. All the windows are open and the breeze is bringing me the last of the lilacs, damp grass, honeysuckle and the first of the lily-of-the-valley. How can anyone be grouchy with a combo of nose candy like that? Plus tonight's dinner is all set. Yesterday I made a huge bowl of pasta salad for last night's side dish with enough left over for today. While I was boiling and chopping I made some egg salad for tonight, that with the chicken also leftover from last night will make some dandy sandwiches. I'll toss up a big crunchy green salad and steam some broccoli and we're in for a delish dinner. Having dinner decided and mostly made ahead of time makes me happy. I took over the family dinner prep at the tender age of 8 and since then have had to plan, shop for and prepare over 10,000 dinners. It's become another of those things I dread. Not the cooking or even the shopping, I still like those, it's the deciding. Man oh man do I hate having to think up what's for dinner! In years past I always put myself dead last in that process, I went with what I knew everybody else liked and would eat and would get me the least amount of complaining. Nowadays I'm less of an anxious-to-please short order chef and go mostly with what I feel like having/making but it's still kind of a pain. I challenge myself to come up with dinners which are budget-friendly, nutritionally sound, and are up to my foodie snob standards for taste and variety. And on some level I'm aware that the guys, Mick especially, do the clean-up and try to keep the mess to a minimum. I'm a fairly tidy cook as far as that goes, cleaning up behind me and using only the necessary equipment, but I never want to zap Mick with a mountain of pots and pans and persnickety cooking tools that need careful washing by hand. Good gravy, the man works all day and shouldn't be standing at the sink until midnight like some underpaid overworked dishwasher at a diner. Late night adventures should be of the more pleasing kind like last night's grown-up time. Middle-aged, somewhat staid and definitely not in the market for a new baby, but this doesn't mean we can't enjoy the (non) procreative process!
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