She's Gone!

PHEW! My mother took off on her broom this morning. Thank GOD. Well, technically, I dropped her off at the airport after the usual hour and a half trip, but I never see the plane she takes, and I SWEAR it can't be a regular plane.

In case you haven't been reading from the beginning (and why NOT, I ask?!?!), you can catch up on my mother here. This visit was actually better than some, but only because I was distracted by my awful, awful neck, which is now about 85% better. Still, though, I just can't stand having her around. I think about this a lot while she's here, because she doesn't usually act bitchy while she's here, so there's no real-time reason for me to be so on-edge, or at least, not as much as I am. There are smaller reasons, like how she has waist-length hair that she just combs out anywhere and then pulls the hairs out of the brush and THROWS THEM ON THE FLOOR, or how she has a constant tic of sniffing after almost every sentence. The biggest thing, though, is that she smells. I don't mean B.O., per se, because it's not a traditional pit-stink... but I think it has something to do with that. I think she uses powder rather than deodorant, which makes her smell like a tube of lipstick that has somehow spoiled. It's a pretty strong smell that gets stronger the longer she is here, since she doesn't shower often, and by the time she leaves, the whole house is pretty much permeated with it, especially the living room, which is where she parks herself for the entirety of her visit. Also, she was afraid of dentists for most of her life, and a lot of her teeth are pretty far gone as a result, making her breath permanently sour. The car ride back to the airport is pretty awful, because I'm trapped in there so closely to her. I have a very, very strong sense of smell, so this is like my worst nightmare.

Mostly, though, my problem with her is this; no matter how she may behave while she's here, I can't let go of the eighteen years I spent trapped with her. I try really hard to 'get over it', but here's the problem with that - when I start letting it go, it feels awfully much like letting her get away with it, which translates for me into basically telling myself that it was OK for her to choke, hit, publicly humiliate, and emotionally torment me all that time. That it was fine that she moved her boyfriend in with us in high school and proceeded to let him completely act like I didn't exist, down to not speaking to me at all if she wasn't around, and to slam me repeatedly against a door when I was 16 while she watched. She refuses to discuss these things, and will only say that she's 'a different person now', which maybe I could buy if I didn't see glimmers of the person I lived with by the end of her visits in how she acts towards my children. When she's ready to go, she starts harrassing the kids to hurry up, and talking in a way that I recognize as the precurser to when the 'Fun' used to start. She always took out her stress on me, and I know if my kids lived with her, she would do the same to them, just by seeing those few minutes of her repressed temper. It makes me immediately furious when she gets that tone, even though she isn't saying anything inappropriate to them, usually.

I allow her to visit because I want my kids to have as complete a family as possible, something I'm acutely aware of since I only had her and my equally hateful grandmother in the entire world when I was a chlid. I think also, deep down, I'm scared of her still, and don't trust her to not get a lawyer and try to force me to allow her to see the children, which would be worse because I might not be with them if she won that battle.

At least this time, she managed not to swear in front of them continually. The last time she was here, after she left, Patrick said all sorts of words that he ought not to. Phew. Anyway, she's gone, and probably won't be back until early next year, or maybe not even until spring. Now all I have to do is fumigate the house, and all will be as it should be. Hooray!!!

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In other news, after crawling around on the floor for an entire day, scouring the back yard, and eventually despairing of finding my brand-new anniverdary band, guess where I found it?! I went to make spaghetti for dinner, and this is what I saw when I reached for the pot:

Wedged perfectly between the handle and the pot, there was my band!!!! I keep that particular pot on the stove in the winter almost all the time, with the heat on low, as a humidifier, and I must have moved my hand just right the last time I plunked it down on the burner! I could have cried from joy. Hooray!!!!!

I'll save the school updates for tomorrow, since this is getting pretty long. Patrick is going to the doctor first thing in the morning, just to be safe, since he has a deeper-sounding cough than I would like. I'm hoping they'll say he's fine to go to school, since he's perky to the point of being a little annoying, and also because he's missing theme week at school. :( The important thing, though, is to make sure he's better in time for the parties on Friday (which is also my birthday - I'm going to be the big three-five!).