This week's horoscope at AstroBarry is particularly appropriate for how this weekend went:

"Everything seems like it should be flowing along seamlessly. Well, in a certain sense, it is� as long as you're open to openly swearing off conformity or allegiance-by-peer-pressure. While we're still under the wacky eclipse energy, last week's ideas still hold a power position�mainly because other people's reactions to what you're doing and who you're being are liable to be startling, uncomfortable, impulsive, infuriating, and/or spontaneously indicative of some chasm between you and them. So, in response, are you supposed to feverishly hunt for ways to bridge this gap and restore your outward allegiance, before anyone has too long to speculate on your potential 'outcast' nature? Or is it possible that you've done nothing inappropriate� that the real problem lies in who you're associating with, and the unfair judgments they're placing on you? Who's in charge of what you choose to do and be, anyway�you or them?"

I am feeling weirded out when home lately. Between Ian not being around any more AND me not having a laptop... it's rather eerie.

I rarely ever feel lonely, but I was feeling that on Saturday night after I finally got home. And stupidly, I figured that I might as well call my mother and get the inevitable over with.

Now, to be fair, she did apologize for going off on me about cleaning, to some degree. But then she did go on at length about how if you don't clean you get "infections" (what?!), and then she said that you're a better person if you are neat and tidy...

Well, I guess it was about time for her to outright admit it, rather than just hedge. Cleanliness is next to perfection, isn't it?

And after that, she started to look for OTHER things to pick on me about.

One of the things she whines about is, "You only like spending time with me when I spend money on you." My usual response/argument to this is that I like that we're out of the house, because if we're not in her house or my house, she's not bitching at me. I said as much this time. She was all, "But why can't we do something that doesn't involve spending money?" "Uh, because that's how the world works and nothing is free in suburbia?"

She then started whining about how she loves to take walks and I don't. Well, I don't like taking walks just to walk around doing nothing and going nowhere, no. I like walking when I have somewhere to go at the end of it, not just wandering the streets. So she bitched me out for not liking that.

Then she was all, "I like to hike!" I pointed out that last weekend, she and most of the relatives went along with me when I went hiking around the fountains at Joaquin Miller Park (you may be able to tell by these photos that it's a long way down in order to do this), and she was very unhappy. "I'm out of shape!" ("Well, um, you're refusing to do anything about that of late," I thought.)

Then she was all, "I like to take bike rides. And you won't ride a bike." (Note: I do not recall my mother ever riding a bike in my presence. Certainly hasn't happened in probably the last fifteen years or so.) "You just don't care about me. All you ever want to do is read. You don't want to spend time with me."

At this point it just seemed to me that she was deliberately looking for reasons to pick on me and make me feel like shit. I mean, come ON, it's not like any of this was news to her. I never liked those things, she knew this. She hadn't done most of that stuff in years even before Dad got sick. And now it's all my fault?

And then the phone disconnected. I called her back. I had one more thing to say:
"You know what, Mom? I call you up when I'm feeling kinda bad, and what do you do? You come up with whatever you can to make me feel MORE bad. Thank you so much for that." And then I hung up on her.

(Perhaps I should get a separate phone, one that she doesn't know about, so that I can have the phone on to get other calls instead of having to leave it off all the time so that she can't call me whenever she pleases. Well, except then I'd have TWO phones to juggle and lose and forget when I have them on and off.)

And she wonders why I was all depressed when I was calling her daily? And she wonders why I'm not eager and happy to call her every day? And I wonder why I feel like shit afterwards? Every day she's picking on me for what I'm wrong about now.

Does this make her feel all warm and snuggly inside, to put me down? Is it like Auntie Dolores- "Well, at least I'm BETTER than HER, because at least I try to clean!"? I guess so.

I will never, ever be able to please her. If I don't clean, I'm a failure, and if I do clean, I don't clean well enough. I can't win. So why try? Why play by her rules?

Ironically, I ended up spending all of Sunday cleaning the apartment. Yes, that was pretty much because I had no laptop and nothing else much more interesting to do on yet another boring-ass, everything-good-is-closed Sunday. Okay, so I was planning on doing the once-a-year cleaning spree anyway once Ian had moved out, NOT because it would supposedly make Mom slightly happier. But it still slightly annoyed me that I was doing what she wants me to do.

I did laundry, sorted books and magazines to give away, cleaned off various pieces of furniture, cleaned the bathroom, and even vacuumed and mopped the floors. The good news is, all of the dang scattered cat food and bird feathers and whatall else is mostly gone. The bad news is...MOSTLY gone, because somehow the vacuum never picks up things well and every time I moved the vacuum, it seemed like more crap would blow up behind it.

Of course, the place still looks like a damn mess because Ian still needs to finish picking up debris and crap in the other bedroom and I am not going to bother to clean up the craft stuff because I'm moving it in there. So really, I spent 14 hours cleaning for very little effect showing. No wonder I am never happy when I clean...

Next weekend will probably really suck, without the CC to go to, AND my gym is closing for the weekend due to the end of summer quarter. It's like, where am I going to go and what am I going to do that's cheap or free? (Not to mention it's the one place I can go online.) Okay, if Ian ever finishes cleaning out the bedroom, I guess I can set up the craft room...but that's still a pretty dull weekend right there.

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