Friday: got hypnotized for the first time. My shrink found out that I was due to have to see Dad this weekend and decided that this time's focus should be on getting me to tolerate dealing with the family situation better. It was about creating some kind of calm, happy place that I can mentally "go back" to every time the family goes berserk.

So far it works. Wowee.

She also gave me a tip for dealing with nasty hospital/nursing home smell: put some kind of strong-smelling oil right under my nose before going in, so that's all I would be able to smell. Alas, trying to dig up orange (my favorite smell) essential oil that wasn't horrendously expensive was apparently a no-go. I ended up resorting to good ol' Bath and Body Works lotion for that.

Saturday: Mom is apparently going to COMPLETELY REMODEL half the house. The kitchen and living room (i.e. the inhabitable parts of the house) will be ripped to shreds and utterly rebuilt. This is apparently because the lawyer (or whoever) that's telling Mom how to be broke by the time the insurance money runs out said she'd better use up all of the family savings on stuff like home remodeling ASAP. So during the goddamned holiday season, the house will be nigh-uninhabitable. Lovely! I guess the good news to this is that at least Mom won't be able to have Thanksgiving at her house this year...?

She also bought me a bunch of furniture- another bookcase, another dresser, an ottoman that doubles as a coffee table (this thing is awesome- you can flip the cushions over for a hard surface, and store stuff underneath), and even a sewing machine once it was determined that both of our 30+ year old machines weren't something the sewing machine folks were interested in fixing. I guess all of that counts as "home improvement" somehow?

The people who are redoing the windows came over that morning. They are Religious, by which I say that they seem to be normal, but then started going on about some faith healing preacher. Just pray and you can FEEL the cancer going away!Um, yeah. Gee, it's not at all suspicious that these things happen "in public", without a doctor about to verify if there's a tumor or not. And given my mom's usual level of "la la la, denial," this is not something I want her to be listening to and believing.

And yet, Mom didn't go buying into this crap, which surprised me. She even told me that she had prayed for Dad to die. Wow. And she let me "off the hook" for having to go visit Dad, leaving me in the "recreation room" while she went in So, whew. Maybe she's mellowing.

She did drive me batshit nuts Saturday night, though. On the way up, we'd had this very reasonable discussion about how she doesn't mean to make me feel all inadequate. Then she goes into my house and at 9:30 p.m. (and keep in mind, she planned on driving back for church the next day that night, so LEAVING THE SOONER THE BETTER was the original plan), starts insisting on cleaning the floors until they are sparkling. Because that's really the priority Ms. "I Nearly Passed Out On The Road Again" should be doing here.

* She bitched at great length about how she didn't like my cleaning supplies. Guess who bought 90% of them because she didn't like what I had had before?
* My vacuum (which she bought because she didn't like my old vacuum... you see a pattern here) has a "blowback" problem where half of what you try to suck up gets blown out behind the vacuum. Naturally, she doesn't believe me at all when I say this to her, until she wrestles the machine for a half hour.
* She didn't like how I had mopped the previous weekend, then proceeded to make the entire dang floor VERY VERY STICKY by mopping it herself. Both of us nearly had accidents in there.
* At one point she bitched me out for HAVING TOO MANY TOWELS HANGING UP. Apparently two towels per rack is VERY VERY VERY BAD.

I am amazed she doesn't even see how screaming at me that I never do anything right around the house doesn't, you know, give me a complex that I suck or anything.

She cleaned for so long that she had to spend the night, and then got up at 5:30 to drive to church. Oy.

Oh, and she promised my apartment complex manager some booze for helping us move furniture, then welshed on it because they didn't have the cheap version of said booze. Oh LORD.

Sunday: After Mom left (yay), I worked on stuff for the craft fair, then hit Halloween Headquarters. Sweet fucking Jesus, there are very few non-skanky female costumes out there to get at all any more. I hit the drama department sale the week before and all they had to offer were $65 see-through fairy costumes, and Halloween HQ was less see-through, but still very hooker-wear. I'm all for people being comfortable with their sexuality, but (a) I can't wear a miniskirt to work, (b) or wings in the cube, and (c) IT'S FUCKING COLD OUTSIDE AT NIGHT, PEOPLE! I saw all of these little drunk skanky costumed chicks wandering the streets on Saturday freezing their little titties off and being pretty well unable to walk in their heels. If you're driving over and back and staying indoors the whole time, fine, but geez, get a coat if you're going to wander around on the street!

I ended up getting a cheap dress (which is more for wearing to something like Rocky Horror or LARPing than something I'm likely to wear at Halloween- too cold to wear a dress with a slit) and a not-very-cheap peacock shawl that while it was more than I wanted to pay (I am broke until payday now...uh, yay for savings to raid), it was very elaborate and pretty and something that really should have cost $200 and have been found elsewhere.

And yet, I still don't know what to be tomorrow. I'm vacillating between being Helen Narbon (except that nobody IRL will know who that is, so it's kind of a waste) or wearing my "bad prom" dress and claiming to be Belle from Beauty and the Beast. The latter costume would be better, it's just a pain to get in and out of.

Anyway, I got together with Sarah and Anna and carved some pumpkins and went through a maze. Which was much fun.

And finally, the weekend got finished off by... well, guess what. Dad's gone back to the hospital (a new one, not the old one) again, for the first time since he got moved into this joint. Gee, it took what, a whole month before he relapsed again? Something about how they couldn't get him to stop coughing or something. Mom didn't think it was a big deal/the thing that'll kill him this time.

I don't know what to think. Lately I have been thinking that despite what the doctor said about how "time's up" should literally be right....about... NOW NOW NOW, that Dad's not going to die and he'll be A MIRACLE and survive forever and ever, amen, just like this. Him going a whole month without some kind of infection drama, well... that's just never happened since the hospitalization thing went down. It's been like, "aw fuck, it never IS going to end." Now I'm just wondering if I should still be planning things for tomorrow, or if I should just wait for The Phone Call because things might go that way after all.

As usual, it'll probably be Just Another False Alarm Again anyway.

Update, 11:23 a.m.: Mom says he's in with pneumonia (again), but they are going to put him back in the home again today or tomorrow.

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