Started today abruptly - alarm on my phone waking me at 6:30am. Funny, the last 2 years I was getting up at 5am to take care of dying kitties or walk doggies before getting to my job at 7am. And now a 6:30 wake-up is painful. Honestly, I think the latter is healthier. 5am wake-ups for a low-paying, dead-end job was insane.
So the temp plummeted last night which made me lazy which resulted in Kennedy simply getting the quick, lame "ok honey, just do your thing in the back yard".
Off to Argonne Labs with mom. I can't recall what today's presentation covers. I think it's a standard-maintenance type thing tho. Usually the crisis counseling comes with a colourful, sad story. And I'm drawing a blank here.
I wasn't planning to go, but last night she assured me this was a quickie so we'd be done by noon. This morning the story changed and now I have no idea how long I'm stuck in this coffee shop drumming up ways to take advantage of my lock-up. I've scoured all my usual job boards, applied for the 3 jobs posted for which I'm qualified. Checked email. Checked and played about Facebook. Even read PerezHilton - a bad bad habit I thankfully broke in my unemployment. When your life is fulfilling, you don't need the pain of others to entertain you...
Eventually, I'll get to leave. Take her to her office downtown, then join my college friend, Mike, at Corcoran's on Wells. They're doing this month-long Guinness promotion on Wednesdays. $5 Guinness and you keep the pint glass. I need new glassware for my non-existent kitchen. $6 pub burgers. 35cent wings. The bartender told us last week we'd get an email offering 50% off the wings, but I haven't gotten yet- I hope Mike did!
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Picked up mom at Argonne - she's smiling...a rare sight. It's both sunny and relatively warm....a rare coupling in Chicago. She needs to take care of some banking business for her mother, then we eat. I ask if she'd prefer to eat out in the burbs, or still wants to grab a burger at the Irish pub on Wells. "I'm starved! let's eat here!" Somehow in our discussion, I realize she's not planning to go to her office today. I balk at change, I inform her I had plans to meet a friend in the city while she was at work. She claims I should have known we weren't going into the city. Same old crazy-making miscommunication from her. The story changes second-by-second and when you call her on it, she still answers non-sensically but in a tone normally attached to certainty. This crazy, changing plans without notifying the other parties, is not rare for her. I ask myself why I continue to believe her when she assures me of her plans. At least I stopped making commitments with anyone 2 months ago. Too many last-minute cancellations from me accompanied by humiliated apologies and the dread that "great, I'll never get a job here thanks to proving I'm unreliable". But I continue to believe her and make wish-washy plans accordingly despite her fairly consistent game-changing. When do I develop some sort of insurance to protect myself against this?
So we go the pub anyway. Broken meter. Sunny day. Warm day. Beautiful day to enjoy some mother/daughter time. She chooses the silent treatment. The martyr treatment. We sit in the pub where she sits silently scowling. Our 1-hour there feels like 10. I think about the week before when 2 1/2 hours flew by laughing with Michael and the bartender.
I think about how much personal sunshine I'm missing by being enslaved to my mother's whims right now. About my life in Santa Monica and my beautiful neighbours. About my life in Chicago if I could afford rent. THIS IS THE TIME TO REALLY ENJOY LIFE. And I'm locked in a depressed, cluttered house of sadness and anger.
I NEED TO FIND A WAY OUT
We get home about 3:30pm. I go to my little room and lay on my "bed". It's a beautiful day to take Kennedy for a nice long walk. But I curl up miserable in the back room and fall asleep until 6pm. I wait impatiently for mom to go to church. Thank G*D for church. The 2 hours she's gone, I breathe again and laugh and play with Kennedy and the babies. Mom still isn't home. She's apparently staying away from home avoiding me. ugh. So I go back to my little room and back under the covers and get to sleep before she comes home.
Good thing she goes to church twice a week. Seems to really help her be a good Christian....
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