I worked at the office until nearly 8 tonight. Because here's the thing: if you've only been on a job six weeks and you expect to take off a week for vacation, even if you told them before they hired you that you'd be taking this week off, you still have to finish just A TON of work before you leave.
Especially if you want to have a job when you return...and you want to return to that job with the respect of your co-workers for not only your enviable tan but also for the way that you left your clients for a week with absolutely nothing to want. If you have aspirations like that, then you work 12- or 15-hour-days the week before you leave.
So I left the office around 8. My Kid, he's been over at his buddy's house playing Halo 2 since about 4:30. Nothing to worry about there. He'll start ringing me when he gets hungry. Because that's all mothers of 12-year-olds are good for, you know. Providing sustenance. And money. And balances on the iTunes account.
So I promise My Kid I'll bring him food home. Dinner, you know. Kids today...they expect all kinds of shit. But I'm not so much in the mood for McDonald's since I'm going to spend all of next week IN A BATHING SUIT. So I stop at the little tapas cafe on the way home where I regularly get my morning lattes. A nice asparagus cheese pita and a chai latte ought to get me through the work I've got facing me for the rest of the evening.
I consider bringing in my laptop and continuing the neverending cycle of work I'm trying so hard to get ahead of, but figure no. I'll zip in and out. I can use a few minutes to relax. No sooner do I come in and sit at the counter then a familiar face appears outside the front window. Oh holy shit. That's my mother's boss.
You know...the woman who gave birth to me 38.6 years ago. The one who hasn't talked to me since the funeral of her husband which I so SELFLESSLY ATTENDED and yet she still had the tenacity to send me a card the following week which I foolishly thought was one of those direct mail "thank you's" from the funeral home but turned out instead to be a hand-written note from my very own mother admonishing me for "ignoring" her at the funeral and how pitiful it was that EVERYONE IN ATTENDANCE noticed what a HORRIBLE, AWFUL DAUGHTER I was even though, I thought, it was pretty big of me to attend the whole thing in the first place since the man wasn't my father and I couldn't stand him or any of his relatives.
Or mine either, as it turns out.
Yeah, so THAT woman who gave birth to me. She works as a nanny and frankly, her complete and utter devotion to the hellchild she keeps is part of the conditions by which I am unable to love her any longer.
So I'm just about to order something for myself, and I see this face outside the window that I recognize. And I say (apparently out loud), "Oh, holy shit. That's my mother's boss."
And there's one guy in the cafe with a laptop and he's looking at me kinda weird. Because I start saying, "Go away! Don't come in here!" and trying to shoo her off from the front door.
And he says: "I don't think she's your mom's boss...she works with me."
Oh how fucking complicated can one cafe visit get???
So then I explain to him, "My mom's a nanny. She keeps her brat kid."
And then SHE COMES IN.
WITH HER HUSBAND.
AND BRATTY-ASS KID FROM HELL.
And I'm all, "So much for my relaxing chai latte."
And I go get my laptop from the car afterall, b/c I'm thinking that this is a blogging opp that simply CAN NOT BE MISSED.
Eventually, once they've ordered and sat down, they must realize who I am, b/c I catch them looking at me A LOT while I type away.
The kid? Not quite such a hell-raiser as he was the last time I had to encounter the brat, but the parents sure were high strung about his behavior. I'm thinking, if you really were that strict all the time, he wouldn't be such a shit.
Did I ever tell you the story of how this kid LOCKED ME OUT OF THE HOUSE? Oh yeah. Once, when I was at work at my old job, my mother called me all whacked out of her mind on prescription painkillers and said that she'd just had oral surgery and was on all kind of drugs.
Of course she wasn't calling to share her bounty with me, she was calling b/c she was whacked out of her head and couldn't be responsible for her charge AND NEEDED ME TO LEAVE MY PAYING JOB TO COME TAKE CARE OF THIS BRAT WHO CALLED HER "NANNY."
Swell.
God, posts about my mother can get LONG, can't they?
So, being the responsive, if somewhat put-upon, daughter, I left MY PAYING JOB to go watch her hell child so that SHE could get PAID FOR SLEEPING IN THE BACK BEDROOM IN A PERCODAN-INDUCED COMA.
And here's the thing, I have a bit of a background in childcare. The only job I held in high school was babysitting. And my first two years in college, I worked in a day care.
So I'm fairly prepared. Or so I think.
Until this little motherfucker LOCKS ME OUT OF THE HOUSE.
That's right. I'm trying to entertain him and I take him outside to play. If I remember correctly, it's late winter/early spring and not all that balmy outdoors. But I'm doing my best to amuse this young man...until he starts insisting on digging up the front beds. I did my best to distract him but to no avail. Eventually, my insistence became too much for him, and he stormed off into the house, leaving me to pick up all of his plastic gardening tools from the front yard. Which I conscientiously did.
And then I went back inside.
Or I tried to, anyway.
Here's the thing.
(I may have said this already.)
The little motherfucker had LOCKED ME OUT OF THE HOUSE.
Never, but never in my life or anywhere in my child-keeping or even my child-rearing career, has any child ever locked me out of the house.
I mean, the good news is, my mother was whittling away the hours in the back room under the influence of some good Rx. So all I had to do was ring the doorbell about 89 HUNDRED TIMES and eventually she woke up and let me in the house. At which point I tried to put the spawn of satan into time-out but unfortunately his overly protective nanny didth protest too much.
So the little shit went unpunished. So there you have it. A pretty good impression of my mother and her most beloved non-grandchild.
Oh hell. The main point is: I'M GOING ON VACATION NEXT WEEK. FUCK ALL!!!
Follow up 7/21: Well, I could see THIS coming from a freaking mile away...Mother called me today. At work. At my new job. She offered to pay for the counseling if I would go with her so that we can work through our problems. "I refuse to give up on my family," she says. I say hey, whatever gets her the help she needs. If she wants to sit in a room with a third party so that I can list out every sick and twisted thing she's done then I can do that I guess.
