Quote of the day:
"An empty 2 liter soda bottle makes a good thing to hit your head with. Its softer and less expensive if it breaks than a computer monitor. It also makes a pleasing sound."
--My cousin Matt, upon my telling him that I wanted to hit my head into the monitor.

So Mom and I have been saying for years (long before Dad died) that we should make a grand tour of the East Coast relatives who actually like us. She has decided that this will be the year, and said this to the aforementioned Matt, which kind of made it a done deal, decision-wise. So far on the list to my knowledge are are my (great) aunt Babs, Mom's first cousins Bill (and his wife) and Pam, Bill's son Matt and his wife, and some cousin I haven't met named Marianne I know very little about but Mom is hyped to see her. Not sure who else is getting grand toured at this point.

Naturally, this being a grand tour of driving or flying or whatever around the East Coast states, this requires me to take two weeks off. Since I have a ton of vacation time anyway, this is probably a good idea--even if getting back in the swing of things after 2 weeks is really effing hard. But oh well.

However, Mom has taken her sweet damn time about getting her shit together to plan it. I can't do it for her, since I don't even know whoall else is going to be on the grand tour, where they live, how we're getting here (hint, she's driving), etc. And I've told her, and Matt, repeatedly over the last few months, when I'm free to do it. Long story short, I have to be back by a certain day because there's one week in the month where nobody can do vacation.

Mom spontaneously decided to go out and buy plane tickets on Tuesday, without checking with me first. She claims to have talked to various other relatives about this, but I'm not sure that she actually did or if she did, she got the details right. Because...dum dum dum...she planned the trip to be during the week I have to be at work. (She also booked them to fly into the wrong airport--the relatives on the first week of the trip have a closer airport than the one she booked.) When I told her this, screaming ensued.

"But you saaaaaaid it could be then!" she said. "No, I bloody well didn't, I know I didn't, I've said all along I can't go that week. I've been here for umpteen years and I can't ever do vacation on that week. I would not have said that!" She was pissed at me--"it's going to cost me $300 apiece to change the tickets!" I was pissed at her because she is either having the dementia kick in or she doesn't listen. Drama Ensued. Fun times, yo. And then she yelled at me for not answering my phone on Tuesday. On the one hand--yeah, I forgot to turn on the phone that night. On the other hand, when I turned it on, she hadn't tried to call me in the meantime. So...yeah.

So she has to go fix the tickets. Though to be fair, this little incident seems to have forced her to finally figure out the travel logistics, call Marianne, figure out rental cars, etc. So there's that.

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