I’m honestly not sure how this is going to go. My parents have only been here since 6:30 last night and I’m already feeling antsy and upset. The typical stupidity has taken on new contours as they’ve gotten older. I called my mom to specifically tell her not to dawdle because they were predicting tornadoes yesterday morning for yesterday evening and I didn’t want them to get caught out on the road in them.
And then my mom sent me texts about how they’d stopped to get their oil changed and stopped to get my dad a new driver’s license and stopped to do something else and stopped for lunch and I was like Jesus Christ if this is what they do when they’re not dawdling, I would hate to see procrastination. Luckily the weather forecast changed so I was like “Fine, I get it. I’m not the boss of you. I can’t order you to get here in a hurry.” And I was a little pissed, but what the fuck ever.
People, I wish it were passive aggressive “you’re not the boss of me” bullshit. My mom apparently hung up the phone with me saying repeatedly “don’t dawdle. Get here as fast as you can.” and turned and told my dad–and seems to believe that I said–“There are storms. Dawdle.” Like I wanted them to hang back and give the storms a chance to pass. At least at dinner it seemed to freak her out enough that she’s going to get her hearing tested when they get back.
But then they told my brother that they’d take my nephew back to North Carolina on Friday, since he has to work Friday night. So, rather than my brother just skipping Thanksgiving and driving to and from North Carolina today and tomorrow, he’s coming here today and Mom and dad are taking my nephew to North Carolina on Friday and then driving back here on Saturday and then going home on Monday.
They want me to go with them, which I don’t want to do for many reasons. I hate my sister-in-law. I don’t want to be trapped in a car with my parents for sixteen hours because I can’t be sure if I’m going to get sweet people or “No one will ever love you because you’re so fat and your house is so filthy and you’re stupid.” (Our house is, apparently, “so filthy” already–I heard that on the way to dinner, which is at the level of insanity of my dad yelling at my brother this summer because the tub wouldn’t drain and then me going and running the shower for a half an hour unable to replicate this not draining tub.) Plus the Butcher is working crazy hours and the dog can’t not go to the bathroom for sixteen or seventeen hours at a time. Plus, they didn’t ask me to go with them. They just announced I was going with them, of course, because they need three drivers.
And so I would happily–though with much anxiety–tell them to drive their own fool selves across the mountains doing my brother’s job for him.
But my god, people, every time I see them they are visibly older. And now my mom’s just making crap up that people say to her rather than admit that she’s not catching bits of conversation?
They drive me insane. They make me so mad. But that, put in the scales of “how will I live with myself?” does not even come close to outweighing how terrified I am to send two little old people on this stupid-ass trip by themselves.
I am a hostage to their frailty and bull-headedness and possibly insanity.
God, I love the holidays.
Tiny Cat Pants 