Because you asked nicely...

...and not because it was the subject of the Based on Experience podcast while I was away...in the form of the weird foot fetish people on ebay. If you are such a person, my feet are apparently too cute anyway, and no, I don't want to hear from you. And I'm also not linking the podcast just because I'm mentioned as their one known female listener (awww thanks), but because they're funny, and I appreciate a podcast with no real theme or point, but that's immensely entertaining anyway. I highly recommend you take a listen.

Anyway, the new flops:



Totally cute, right?

And because I know that this blog is not so much fraught with overly-personal stuff, I think the occasional insight into my life could be a bit entertaining, or at least informative, so I will share the most recent crazy mom story. I would have loved to insert random pictures of my niece to try to distract from what is obviously the bad gene scariness of my family, but I discovered when I unpacked my camera, that for the entire duration of the vacation, my camera was on the take-only-really-blurry-and-shitty-pictures setting. I never claimed to be a photographer. I promise to post pictures, taken from a less camera-idiot person, when I get some emailed to me. Ok, on to family story time.

First, some background, so you don't think this is just a weird fluke of crazy. My mom has a long history of depression, which manifests itself in various behaviors, including past issues with alcoholism, manic mood swings, panic attacks, etc. Her family is all sorts of nuts, so in context, the depression is probably best case scenario. She is on medication, a cocktail which now seems to keep her on an even keel most of the time. When she is in a particularly stressful state, though, I don't think any concoction of pharmaceuticals could be enough to counteract it. She has been living in a house for the past 5 years that is the property of her employer, and though she doesn't make much money, it's the reason she's kept that job. The living situation is pretty much the paycheck. Over the past couple of years, there have been various disagreements with her employers (one of the two, in particluar; we will call him "A", for asshole), and she has known that it's probably best that she leave, but has been slow in taking steps to do so. She has, for the past couple of months, though, been actively searching to buy a condo.

The vacation I just returned from is something my sister and I do every year, and it is always a group trip with some of her husband's family, sometimes extending to our friends, their kids, etc. It doesn't include my mother, and though it's never been said outright, I'm sure she knows that on some level it's because the vacation is, in effect, a vacation for my sister and her husband away from my mother, who lives only a couple of miles from them. They are the ones who have to deal with her when she's having an off day or week, or just a bad episode of anxiety. Anyone who has dealt with, or is himself, a person with depression, knows that it can be extremely difficult to deal with when the medicine isn't quite working. That's not to say that we don't all love her, and do what we can for her, because we do, and my sister and her hubby have gone above and beyond. Because I'm so far away, the burden is very much on them. This one week a year, they get to get away and try not worry, but almost every year, my mom has some sort of issue just before or during our vacation week. In some ways, it's surely a cry for attention, however subconscious on her part. This year was no exception.

Just before we left, she and A had an argument. It would be unfair for me to say either party was clearly in the right or wrong, but because this guy is an asshole to begin with, despite my mother's faults, I'm still leaning toward him overreacting and making it uglier than it had to be. In any case, after a brief, angry phone call, he hung up on her, after he said that she was fired and needed to vacate the premises. This is not the first time those words have been said, and they usually are able to patch things up, but it is always my mother who has to placate him and make things right, because she, of course, is the employee in the situation. She went the 2 blocks over to A's house to discuss it, and he, in his rage, decided to call the police, claiming trespassing. To be clear, my mother may be the least threatening person on the planet. She may be nuts, but more in an if-you-hurt-my-feelings-I'll-show-you-by-crying-for-a-week sort of way, rather than being angry. It was his way of just being spiteful. The cops basically told him that he was abusing the 911 service, but told my mother to leave, and that was that. Until...my mother stewed over this for a couple of days (insert us all leaving for vacation here), and made a very poor decision. She took all of her business cards and letterhead from the company, put it into a metal bucket, set it on fire, and proceeded to leave the ashy remains at the end of her boss's driveway. In a rare case of actually getting mad instead of curling into a ball and crying, she did something truly silly. It escalated the situation, and her boss had her arrested for trespassing. When we called her from the beach a couple of days into the vacation just to say hi and see how she was doing, we got this great bit of news. So now there's a court date, and she's definitely moving sooner than she planned on it, and my sister came home having this mini crisis to deal with. Good times. Family is so much fun.

***Disclaimer: For anyone thinking of posting hateful comments about making light of mental illness, bite me. I realize this is a somewhat difficult subject for some people and that you could take offense if you are someone who deals with depression or a similar disease. If it offends you, just don't read this. We all cope with it in our own way. This is my way. Deal with it.