The cat's leg is looking 100% better. It's still gross, slightly pus-y, but it's much much much better. It's basically scabbed over now. Last night he escaped outside for about an hour. Kristie and I went outside and tried to catch him, but 'running around the yard to avoid capture' quickly became a game to him, so we left him. I went outside and called him an hour later and he came right up. I get that this started with what looked like a scratch, so until he's mostly healed, he's not going outside as much as I can stop him.
Mom's on her way down right now. She and her fiance (I guess he also took the day off work. I hate that. I hate that they both took time off of work to help me when I don't have a job.) are going to Frankfort to finish this titling business on my car. Okay, so when we were leaving Mom's house, Writer Guy was all "I just don't see how your mother could be as annoying or mean as you make her out to be. I don't see it."... let me tell you... here's an actual portion of conversation.
Mom: He came with me. I didn't want him to come. Of course he's slowing me down.
mary: Where are you?
Mom: Burger King still in Boone County.
mary: Crazy people who want to eat.
Mom: No, he already ate. He's in the bathroom. And I'm standing here waiting for him.
mary: Crazy people who think that they can have bladders when travelling with my mom.
Mom: Well, he could have gone before I got to his house.
See? This is what I find so mean and annoying about my mother. Right there. I'm an amazingly easygoing person as far as The Plan goes. I don't need a plan really. I just need a general idea what's going on. My mother, however, develops her plan and then presumes it is The Only Plan and All Will Follow It Under Penalty of Passive Aggressive Nonsense. Also, The Plan is Top Secret and any person may only be given the next bit of it at any given time. You might get some vague spoilers about what's to come, but you never get to know when you'll be done. And heaven forbid that you should have any personal agenda during The Plan. Seriously, the woman called me to complain that her fiance, the man she's been dating and going on car trips with since 1985, had to use the restroom. The Plan included him being all ready to go ahead of time. Including using the restroom before she got to his house. And I imagine she didn't tell him that. But I imagine she will tell him all day long about how they would have been in Frankfort 5 minutes ago if he hadn't had to use the restroom.
Okay, so, the agenda for today... Mom and fiance go to Frankfort and do titling stuff. Then they come here and we go to the courthouse and do getting license plate stuff. Then we eat lunch. Or maybe we eat first. I don't know, but I have been assured that no part of The Plan will impede my ability to be in class taking a test at six pm. To review, somehow the courthouse and lunch will morph into something that might take from noon until five thirty. Obviously, I don't get The Entire Plan. And if I complain, I will get The Extended Discourse On How She Took the Day Off Work and Is Only Trying To Help Me and The Least I Can Do I Is Co-operate.
Eating is always the most important thing on The Plan. Beginning with which kind of candy she must have if she is to endure this journey. I've been to five different stores with my mother looking for Necco Wafers because Necco Wafers have somehow become absolutely imperative to our journey. But don't you have to go to the bathroom on her. It slows things down.
And I used to be Like That too. I remember one morning, picking Waste up from some party. He calls. He's like "pick me up". I try to tell him to be waiting outside. Then I can't tell him what time I am coming, because, see, The Plan is only the vaguest notion of what might happen. Time means nothing to us in this family. He refuses to wait outside indefinitely. I'm like "I'll come there, but you had better have your shoes and coat on when I arrive." He doesn't think that he should have to sit around at his friends' house with his coat on for some unspecified amount of time. I arrive, he doesn't have his coat on, and I yell at him in the doorway of their apartment and they think I'm a banshee. Why? Because I bought into my mother's notions about The Plan and how it means the whole world revolves around me.
Maybe that doesn't sound like something that would drive a person up one wall and down the other. Okay, so, um, deal with it for nearly twenty-three years and see how you feel. Learn that when you question The Plan ("Mom, if you are only taking me back to Lexington, how is that going to take six hours?"), you slow things down and inhibit the excecution of The Plan and make Mom angry.
More than a year ago, in the days before Christmas Eve, I endured what epitomizes The Plan and how my agenda, comfort and personal desire to brush my teeth or even change out of my pajamas is not part of The Plan. This entry does not do it justice, because at the time, I thought my frustrations with The Plan were unreasonable. All the events are there. Just keep in mind that I did all of those things without even having been given the oppurtunity to get dressed. And all I had been told was that we were going to the grocery store and thus did not need to get dressed. From 8 am until 6 pm, I was running around bending to my mother's every whim in my pajamas.
I really feel for that poor man who is going to have to listen to "I didn't even want you to come and you already went to the bathroom once today and I thought I would do some antique shopping while I was here, and look, you didn't have to come. Let's go in this store, I think it will be nice." when all he thought he was doing was helping her get the title for my car.
