The ABC's of mom and daughter....starting with Z

I really like my post from yesterday.

This morning while I had my coffee, ok well first cup, I got to thinking about it and how it's amazing that something that can really make me nuts (I'm talking knots in the upper back in between the shoulder blades and stomach pains) was able to give me some tears in the eyes, belly laughs when I thought/wrote about it in a humorous sense. I'm not kidding, I've reread it several times and got at the very least a smile upon each read.

There's a guy who has a twitter account called shitmydadsays. He has 1,322,011 followers....and I'm one of them. Justin, the guy, has a book out now with shit his dad says, called, Sh*t My Dad Says. Now, in Justin's Twitter description he says he lives with his dad and his dad is awesome so, in comparison to my mom and I, that's a huge difference in itself. I won't live with my mom or have my mom live with me. Oh I'm not opposed to some short overnight visits for a good reason and have done it, but never anything permanent. I just couldn't and remain the sane same person.

Now, before you think wow, what an ingrate! what kind of daughter would not let her mom live with her? there's something special my mom has done for me regarding this. See, my mom's mom, my grandma, used to ask my mom repeatedly to live with her and my dad. Thankfully, for me, my mom always made it quite clear that there was "no way in hell that she'd ever have her mom live with her". Ahhhh....just writing that gives me a sense of peace. It lets me so off the hook, gives me a pass in a sense. I mean, what else could be more absolving of guilt than that?

But, I digress. What I'm trying to get at here is that perhaps the key to a difficult parent is to try and see some humour, or if I'm being truly honest, take a hammer and pound some humour into our relationship and our interactions. Obviously it can be done, I did it with our pre MDay outing. I didn't come home that evening laughing and feeling all "oh, mom, you silly bird....the things you do just crack me up". In fact, I drove home kinda grouchy and shaking my head in annoyance, all ready to moan and bitch to my poor husband.

Fortunately for both him and I (especially him) the look on his face when I shuffled out of my car with those big, dumb, disposable sandals had us both laughing and thwarted me poisoning him with my rendition of shit my mom says.

Yesterday was one of those visits that went pretty well. There were moments of near derailment, like when the topic of computers came up. Mom announced how she'd had the poor IT guy from our local internet provider on the phone forever with him attempting to help her get her address book back in alphabetical order. Just her mentioning the word "computer" is enough to make everyone in the room turn and look at me in anticipation of what might happen next. It's like, uh oh, here we go again....

As mom went on to explain how the guy was so great to help her and that what a shame it was that he'd gone so fast that she'd not gotten a chance to write it all down so she'd know how to fix it herself next time I reminded her that I'd been there done that at least once before and showed her how to deal with an address book gone wrong. She wasn't having any of that, nuh uhhh, anything she's ever been told about the computer she writes down and then is able to not bother anyone, just fix it herself. Like the other day, when she lost her "tool bar on the top" she was able to figure out all on her own how to get it back.

Umm, mom? Don't you mean all on your own with me on the other end of the phone for half an hour while my dinner waited? C'mon, remember? Remember when I kept saying, well, sorry I guess I'll just have to swing by and fix it, this isn't working over the phone...no, what? what did you just click? ok, so where are you now? what do you see now? Mom, what do you see now? K, do you see the X in the top right of your screen? Is your email open? No, not is your computer turned on, I'm assuming it's turned on, I mean is your email open? Your email...the thing that says outlook....the place where your address book starts Z...