Chaos Attraction

My Inheritance

2011-06-01, 10:28 a.m.

Mom came back from her trip... not nearly as schmoopy as I thought she'd be. Looks like reality reared its ugly head (which once again reminded me of why I don't want to do Internet dating). Not that they are breaking up, mind you-- she still wrote their initials in a heart when we were in one of those restaurants that lets you draw on the tablecloth and sent it to him-- but it sounds like he was too organized for her late-flakyness, and she was too hard-charging and packratty for him, and it wasn't as romantic as she thought, and... who the hell knows. Anyway, I went to the Bay Area to visit her and got there around 10:15 and somehow it took her until 6 p.m. that day to say she'd had a good time, rather than all of the stuff she thought was going to be and then wasn't. Gah. I don't know on their compatibility or not, might be too soon to tell there. But she seemed out of sorts enough that... yeah, shouldn't get my hopes up there. Of course. Though who knows, she's certainly settled before despite knowing better. If this is that sort of case, I don't know.

On Sunday (and Monday, and Tuesday over texting...) Mauricio and his wife were getting on me to Think Positively about job hunting and how I should do fiction writing. It was kind of making me crazy. I appreciate the effort, mind you, but telling me to think happy thoughts does not help when all I can see is the brutal reality of the situation. Happy thoughts do not rescue me. Yes, I do have skills, but they are not financially valued ones. And I really really just don't want to start my own business. So... I am out of ideas, folks.

On Monday my mother forced me to go over to my grandfather's storage unit and "move the metal off of the top." (What this translated into was that my grandfather saved a bunch of random giant metal chunks of god knows what, which he shoved in the back of the storage unit, and it bugged her that he had them where she couldn't reach it.) Thank the gods Mauricio agreed to come because not only could I not have manhandled the metal, I would have probably killed her on the spot when I saw this thing for the first time. I am pretty sure he had this thing since the 80's, and since I doubt he's been able to move anything in there for a long time before he died, we've probably had this thing.... 20+ years would be my guess, with Mom keeping it up. At $250 a month right now (though one assumes this has gone up with inflation)... let's just say THIS IS THE BIGGEST MONEY WASTE OF ALL TIME TO SAVE THIS SHIT THAT THEY HAD IN THERE and my grandfather was an idiot. I took some horrendous pictures, but I should probably not put them online. Let me just say that some of the items in there were:

(a) Two stolen shopping carts. You stay classy there, Granddaddy.
(b) What must be a 40-year-old sink. Mom claimed she could donate it to Habitat for Humanity. I cannot imagine what charity organization would take this thing.
(c) Three chairs that literally cannot be sat in. One had no seat. One had no legs. One had a broken leg. Mauricio and I told her she should throw it out and Mom was all, "No! It's a Nice Chair! It can be saved!" I know people that do woodwork and I strongly suspect they'd say no to this. Also, it wasn't a particularly nice chair in the first place, but it especially wasn't after 25 years in storage.
(d) Random pieces of wood and metal (see above), which Mom thinks is going to get donated or sold or something. I'd like to see when she gets around to that.

Seriously, Mauricio and I said that this thing could just be lit on FIRE because there was nothing worth saving in there. Certainly not for $250 a month. For a woman who claims she's sooooo broke, DEAR GOD THIS SHIT WAS NOT WORTH IT. And while she claims she's going to throw things out "when I can borrow a truck, and I can get that metal sold...", I know damn well that when she dies, I'll be stuck cleaning out this storage cabinet filled with shit. And since we're all a bunch of hoarders, give me a decade or two and I'll be doing it too, throwing a shit fit about not wanting to get rid of the most useless of stuff. Hell, I found a pile of rotted fruit in her house (left over from the trip) that she had still not tossed. What the HELL? You can't even throw out rotted fruit now?!

This is my inheritance, this is my future. The only thing good about it is that my oldest cousin in the state is going to be the one stuck cleaning out my grandparents's shit, plus my mother's shit, plus my own shit, rather than any unfortunate kids I could birth. Hah hah, she doesn't even know she'll get stuck with that yet.

On Tuesday I stayed home sick from work and felt like crap.

On June 1, it is raining buckets. Happy fucking summer.


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