Saturday, December 17, 2011


Mother is visiting us in our new home.

My sibling just had their first born and mom was hurrying from her state to theirs and thought to stop here along the way.

I do believe she was hoping/thinking we would be going down ourselves to see the new baby and she'd just ride along.  Nevermind that it's about 600 miles away and I already- before she left her state -clarified that we wouldn't.

I will only touch upon now how her arrival was scheduled for mid December at a convenient 8pm that got moved to the 5th at 2am, to 6th at 4am, which actually ended up being at 4PM.  And we are about 1 hour from the bus station (small town) and it is it's own form of crazy to try to accommodate all these changes when mom doesn't have a cell phone.

Grumble here about total disregard to our own family's schedule.

Mom's MO is to announce her plans and what you need to do for her.

So - come she has, looked around at the senior apartments, fallen in love with our town and people (they really are great) and she is talking about leaving after the new year.


But that is not why I'm motivated - compelled - to write, even though all that info is related in this: Rationality.

So - very typical to her she brings along food, tucked in bags, filling at least one of her suitcases (large) and such.  And generally not in your typical food containers - she has a predilection for containers that leak, like old shopping bags, used plastic containers that should have just been tossed out.  You get the idea.

Today I'm cleaning up the boys room, what mom is using while here, and I come across a leaking bag that has (again) mysterious items inside.

I set up a place for her at the breakfast bar with the trashcan handy and instruct  er, ask her to go through the bag and take out what's good and throw the rest away.

It took some *cough* encouragement on my part but she actually did eventually sit down to address the bag.

Two of the items she pulled out was a container of peeled bananas and a large bag of pre-baked frozen potatoes from Olive Garden that she received from the senior center.  (Are those donated food fresh anyway?) So lets just assume that the bananas and potatoes are fresh on . . say Dec 3 when she left her state . . . she kept them in the suitcase that I just found today. That is unrefrigerated perishables at least, at least, 2 weeks old.

She is unwilling/unable to just toss them.  Olive Garden potatoes are *SO* good, you know. And the weather temperature is cool and all . . . even in our home.

So I set her up to boil the potatoes . . . questioning the whole time WHY she was doing this, why she felt she needed to keep the potatoes and bananas, why she felt she needed to bring them along anyway?  Why why why  . . . and her thinking is that if no one can eat her (smelling rotten) potatoes then she will keep them for her dog.  About 600 miles away.

It's a lot of potatoes.

And as we've seen before - she will force herself to eat some nasty stuff.

There is no reason for this.

At least not in our reality.

And the bananas?

I just have one word of warning - beware banana bread as gifts . . .