I will tell all of you this information because it is tragically funny and because my family has no idea how to create a Facebook account so they will never know what I have said online. It needs to be stated for the virtual record book of my life.
My mom is wheels off. I've always felt like I was that normal girl "Marilyn" in the 1960's TV show, "The Munsters." The older I get the more I know that is a real breathing metaphor that points, like a compass, to the truth of why confusion plagued me growing up. Dr. Freud himself would be scratching his head over the layers of skeletons in the closet with my family.
I moved in with my grandparents in the fall of 1991 and shortly after that I lived on my own/alone. It was the best decision I ever made. I say that to say this... it's been a long time since I had to be around my immediate family as much as I have had to be recently. I always lived in another state, country, or at the very least in another city. My family now lives in Dallas and I am fully aware of it each second that I breathe.
Let me just get to the juice now....
I wish I had a dollar for every time that I thought, "why is there chilli under my mom's bed?"
I'm sure you are familiar with the show "Hoarders." My friend Kristen and I have a concept for a show like that but our version would be, "We Burned It." My mom had a sordid past. She had a great life but decided to mess it up around the time she turned 45 years old. At this point she made a decision to party real real hard. When you party too hard at that age you lose valuable family antiques and you flake on storage unit payments. Rinse & Repeat.
When you stop partyin' you realize you have nothing that reminds you of the "before time." It's gone and your kids are in their thirties now. Whoops.
Back to the chilli....
My mother has sort of "set up shop" in the house that my brother and I had to ourselves at one point not too too long ago. She cleans, does dishes, talks a lot... all that is great. She also finds what you are fond of and it ends up under her bed. The latest thing that is quite the brick to the face is the cans of delicious Wolf Brand Spicy Hot chilli that my brother and I frequently purchase because it is fast, easy and filling... and it's a staple food to keep in the pantry if you are from Texas. Texans like chilli. Bottomline.
The other day we purchased 10 cans of chilli as an experiment to see how long they would be visible to us in the pantry. Within 2 hours or so we opened the pantry and all 10 cans of chilli had vaporized into thin air. We said nothing. My mom has recently taken a mental note that I have begun to use half & half in the coffee instead of just drinking it black. The half & half routinely disappears in the morning... when one drinks coffee.
My 33rd birthday this past June- I wanted a cheesecake for my birthday. I had one sliver of cheesecake and then the rest of MY birthday cake disappeared overnight. Why can't I have more of my birthday cake? Was it my birthday? Why can't I have my cake AND EAT IT TOO!!!! The restroom is another thing altogether... you see folks, you can't actually EVER go into the bathroom because someone is ALWAYS in there. It doesn't matter if it is 4:00am or in the reasonable afternoon... someone, for some reason, is ALWAYS in there. FOR A LONG TIME. I did the math on this and realized that it could only be my mom. If I'm talking to my brother he's not in there. I'm not in there. SHE is definitely guilty of being in that bathroom. Recently we figured out that she "decoys" the bathroom. She leaves the light on with the door closed as sort of a 'reservation' of the bathroom for future use. It's the damnest thing. You try and get your brain wrapped around the idea that someone is actually doing that and listen- you can't. You can't really fathom it at all on a fundamental psychological level.
Like arsenic, the passive aggressive hoarding of "these are a few of my favorite things...(everyone sing)..." is a slow burn of anger that results in what happened to me this morning. I have a long fuse, patience of Job, and I've mastered (for the most part) "letting go of attachments." The 4% of my brain that is still a monkey wanted to destroy the furniture this morning out of full boar rage. I had to use the restroom and both of the restrooms had lights on and doors closed. THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE. Instead of knocking and saying "is anyone in there?" I kicked the crap out of the couch and overturned a lazy boy recliner. I have rage sometimes and it felt awesome. She bolts out of the bathroom and says, "what's goin' on girl? what is a' goin' on." I launched into a long winded rant about the decoyed bathrooms and during this rant I glanced at her bed and saw the endless supply of "these are a few of my favorite things.." UNDER HER &*(&*(&ing BED! WHAT THE... WHY...
This is how jacked this whole deal is - IF you say something like, "I'm really in the mood for some chilli fries. That really sounds great to me right now." Like a superhero in the night while you are in chilli peril, she will resurface with the very thing "you are in the mood for," and offer it to you as though she delivered you from near death. You might say to her, "Oh, where did you find that?" She might say something of this nature... "oh well, I had a can stashed away in there but you can have it if you want it..." I BOUGHT IT, OF COURSE I WANT IT.
My brother chimed in finally. I guess hoarding the chilli was the can that broke the bed's back... He woke up and said, "where is the godda**ed chilli?" (we heard mumbling coming from her room but it confirmed that she had some in there... under the bed) My brother says, "chilli belongs in the pantry and not under your f**ing bed." That may sound harsh for my brother to say that to my mom but it is kinda just the way he talks? Anyway... She brings him a can of chilli and he asks her why it's not in the pantry... Her response was this: "Cause if I don't hide things then I don't get any."
(crickets...)
How many cans of chilli do you think we eat in a day? Sometimes none. That doesn't explain the half & half, decoyed bathroom, or the other items that I've found under her bed. I've found everything from my Ringling scrapbook, jeans, soda, power tools, scotch tape, razors, shampoo, face cream.... Walgreens is under her bed.
This blog may come across like it's not a big deal and it's funny... and you are right... but it is a big deal and not funny. It's funny but it's NOT funny. It is an added element to the already complicated life I have right now that I just don't particularly want to handle.
We've figured out techniques to get her out of the bathroom. If you open the game room sliding doors she will bolt out of the bathroom to see what you are doing. Here's why... She hides things in the game room too. She has transformed a particular corner of the game room into her hoarding nest of old magazines, perfume bottles, lip gloss, and a vast array of expensive zippos and key chains. Things that ferrets would be interested in... or gnomes. Shiny things, noise makers, paper media that can be shredded for a "cozy nest," etc...
My brother and I found out the hard way that if you try and clean up the game room nest, you will see her transform into a wraith. DO NOT throw away those magazines and expect to not be visually scarred by the demonic beastmaster growl you'll get from what ordinarily is a very "sweet" soft spoken older woman.
In October this will be a thing of the past. She will be drawing her social security and she will no longer nest in the dwelling place I call home. I will gladly transport the lip gloss, key chains, magazines, half & half, and cans of chilli to the new residence and we can place her bed a'top of all those items for safe keeping.
The real problem with her is that she mentally lives on a cloud in outerspace and when shit got real in her life she had nothing left to hold on to. Deep. I guess she thinks she's more valuable if she is the gatekeeper of the things you need? Just figured it allllll out... thanks for reading my real time analysis. I feel better already. Kind of. It's still real weird.
more added to this blog in response to the comment below... (this is for everyone but specifically Christie)
Okay... Your response made me laugh real real hard. I didn't keep it real enough in my blog apparently... The situation is so bad. The once glorious "game room" that we use to party in... poker table(mine), bar, awesome leather couch, etc... okay... I come back from Ringling and of course my Mom has nested HARD in that room but listen to me... listen to me... She has boxes(at least 50) of Pyrex dishes that are much better than the dishes in the kitchen. Chancho (my brother) and I got crunk on some of those "other" boxes in that room and I found one particular box that was so large it couldn't fit in the bed of my brother's truck. You wanna know what was in it? 3 towels. THREE. There are piles of magazines dating back to 1989. (Texas Monthly, Cosmo, Glamour, Good Housekeeping*the worst offender*, Seventeen, etc...) The excuse she gives is this, "I'm sortin' thru 'em and gonna' take 'em to the liberry." THE LIBRARY DOESN'T WANT THEM MOM. The couch in there isn't for sitting anymore. It is soley for boxes of magazines or my grandmother's (who is dead) "keep sakes." My brother built a massive ass shed in the backyard. HUGE shed. The kind of shed you have to get approval for from the city kind of shed... do you know what is in that shed? Boxes of old ratty ass sheets, comforters from 1992, make up cases with various mixmatched earrings, more towels, key chains... I could go on forever. The point is... the shed isn't utilized fully. Everything from the game room could easily fit in the shed but it isn't in the shed because she has to be surrounded by the shit. The funniest thing recently is an old Minnie Mouse comforter that I needed to use as a prop for something that Kristen and I were filming for this TV pilot thing... It actually had vomit on it and was full of dust and filth... it was perfect for what we needed it for in the scene. We shot a series of scenes that this item was a prop in and it took a total of about 2-3 weeks to film these scenes. EVERY DAY my mother asks me about the damn comforter. She'd say something like this..."Miss Mel'dee, you still got that comferter?" I'd say that I did and that it was in the trunk of my car but that we weren't done with it. She would then say, "well it don't really matter but it does a little cause it is your sister's keep sake so just make sure an' giv' on back when you git dun." I would reassure her that it would be given back, etc... Well, well, well.. the other night I had to work a gig with my brother and we decided to take his truck instead of my car to the gig. The next morning I was getting some cleaning stuff out of the trunk and I realized that the f**ckin' comforter was gone. When I got back inside the house she said, "what wuz y'doing out there in all that heat?" I said I was cleaning out my car. She said, "yeah I got that comferrrrterrr out that ol' hot car cause I needed to wersh it n' stuff so I got it m'kay, and I put it on up mkay..." SHE IS CRAZY. THAT that that that THAT is insane. It had baby puke from 1988 on it. It is TRASH. I would love to send her to a resort somewhere and just prowl around in the endless hiding places to see exactly what she's managed to collect. It's ridiculous. The latest thing she's started ordering is Mary Kay makeup kits. There are about 10 brand new eyeshadow collections in the game room sitting on top of a old tin can of popcorn next to a box of tupperware and butterfly figurines. FML... it's all trash. It all needs to just burn. The most hilarious part to me is the justification of it and then the cold steely glare into full wheels off demon face defense you'll get if you try and "clean up" anything in that game room. It's psychotic. We cleaned it a couple of months ago and didn't throw anything away... just moved shit off of the useful furniture so that it freakin' made sense in there and I swear to you right now that we had to put our hands in front of our bodies and say "we didn't throw anything out Mom...nothing was thrown away okay... calm down... everything is there... it's just not on the couch or on the poker table... it is in the corner with other things of similar nature....calm down... no reason to be upset..." I had to actually go and stay in a hotel for about 3 days after that because she was a lunatic. Okay okay... last one... the backyard is beautiful and has a gorgeous built in fountain on the deck that was filled with empty plant holders, spiders and leaves. It had no function other than being a big fancy trashcan. My brother, myself and a friend decided to clean it and make it a fully functional fountain because it's friggin' nice like that. It was actually my friend's idea but I knew that it might create the demon growl sithlord mom so I said we'd make it a group effort. We cleaned it out and she watched us from the kitchen window with her lower jaw jetted out like a growl face and she didn't stop watching us until it was finished. Then she came out there and said "well, it sure is nice but I'mma tell you like it is, it ain' gonna stay like that fer long." Ominous.
