Day 332
Apparently, red wine makes me sweat, that or, the strain my body is facing trying to hold back from maiming my parents is starting to take effect. But, let's start at the beginning.
This morning I was woken up to knocking at the front door and my parents yelling, "Come in!" eight times. Then, from my bed, I heard a lady who is a distant relative of mine who has a harelip and a gambling addiction but a good heart go on and on about how afraid of my grandmother she was in the night. She works at the assisted living house my granny lives in. Turns out my grandmother had a flip out and went a little nutty, nearly maiming this woman's foot with her walker. I came out after the 20 minute or so mark and the woman hugged me and started to tell the story over again. Somehow my parents got her to change the subject and made her admit that she was going to the next state over not only to buy cheap cigars for her giant husband but also to go to a shitty casino on the way and somehow this led to a conversation about her car breaking down. Around then my coffee kicked in and I started to stare at the paralyzed side of this woman's face and realized that she can use her eye and then I imagined how she threw a frying pan at her last husband.
This is how things have been going around home. Well, that and the fact that my parents are at each other all of the time. My dad being grumbly and my mother playing the victim. But today there were two other elements to add to that mix.
1. I came across (translation: my mother found it in a pile of her crap and chucked it at me) a notebook that I had used as a journal in 2nd grade. I opened it up to find little details about my life in the exact same handwriting I have today. I was also reminded how I cannot draw and the worst part is that I didn't even draw in an obnoxiously elementary way, I just drew like an average boring idiot child--all boxed houses and stick-figure-esque people in huge dresses with yellow-crayoned hair. But, the spelling and details were excellent. It is fun to know that on my birthday my parent's got me a babysitter and my class went to a supermarket on a field trip. The whole thing was quite enjoyable until I realized that every progressive entry had more grammatical errors than the last. If I was truly getting dumber where does that leave me 20 years from then? Thirty? What is even more troubling is that I have continued this daily journal this long. At least, I stopped pretending like I know how to draw and I can't tell if my handwriting is getting any worse.
2. As an escape from my father whom I actually got into a shouting match with (sometimes I revert to a 16 year old version of myself around him) my mother and I went to the next town over for groceries. On the way over my mother mentioned that an old man I used to know now lived over there in some sort of old folks home seeing as his wife had passed away. She convinced me to stop and see him. I was worried that he wouldn't remember me. I haven't seen him in about 4 years and he is 91 years old. When I walked in I introduced myself and feared the worst but before long he was hugging me and we were both crying. Somehow, he had remembered that when I was in high school I became the infamous girl that he would describe to people as, "That girl could spill a cup of coffee on you and make you like it."
We sat and talked for a long time and he told us about how his wife died and how they had met and how he had made her feel comfortable enough to be herself and how he had never thought he was going to get married ever again and then she came along. This was the same couple that when one of them had went to the bathroom at the restaurant I used to work at the other would go on and on about how wonderful the other was. Never did either of them know that these wonderful words were being spoken. We sat and listened to him recount all of the times and circumstances in which they professed their love for each other and I stared out the window at what used to be her car. A car that he kept even though he couldn't drive. A car that he was right outside the window, where he could see it. There was also the full-page printed pictures of her that were all over the walls of his assisted-living home. I remembered at some point during all of this that I believed in love and he and her were the reason why. If I ever get married and pass on I would want my husband to look out at the car he bought just for me on a whim and tell people that he would be buried in the sweater I thought made him look wonderful.
But not everything was so serious, with the best people in my life it never is. He showed us emails that his friends in California had sent to him. He scrolled down as we read the Baptist and Catholic jokes. There was even one whose punchline was a picture of a scantily-clad woman. He showed me the bill for his housing and laughed at how much it cost. He said that he had won twice at the meat raffle at the VFW. He laughed with traces of tears on his face. But what shocked me the most and turns out to be the funniest thing to me now was how he spoke of many different people in his life. He stated exactly how old they are and when there birthdays were. On the way out to the car I confessed to my mother that I didn't even know how old she was. But, I will be damned if I forget to send a Happy 92nd Birthday card out this August 29th.
After that my mother and I went grocery shopping. The only exciting things at the grocery store were the huge ladies that made both of us feel not so fat. At home we ate pizza that we bought at a convenience store for eight dollars and now I am hiding out drinking wine and my parents are sitting in lawn chairs with the mosquitos and I am contemplating locking the doors. I think next I will go on facebook and start learning birthdays. Until tomorrow...
Tip of the Day: Be the kind of person who makes people cry in a good way when they see you.
-Canadian Castaway
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