So Here's What I'm Thinking

I'm thinking, at just this moment, that I have put in my time with the elderly, and it's not my turn anymore. In other words, I love the ILs, but I'm tired of being on the front line. Which is to say, I am the only one here who answers the phone (unless I'm not home), and I'm tired of being the greeter. (I wouldn't mind getting out of Christmas again this year either, but I'm not willing to take last year's drastic measures, you know, developing a chronic gut disease.)

The ILs are cheerful to a bizarre degree. I can't imagine how either one of them would deal with a real crisis; I don't know if I've ever seen them faced with one. Every phone call begins with a cheery anecdote or an amusing question. (This is why I never take their call-waiting beeps; they launch into their conversation before I can say "I'm on another call; can I call you right back?") Or a stupid question. Such as the one that prompted this entry.

The phone rang at 7:02 and I see it's the ILs from the caller ID. It's the FIL, asking if R's flight is delayed because of the weather (it's pouring), and what have we heard from her?

Well, her flight was scheduled to take off at 6:55, and I was just checking the website where I saw it was delayed. At this point, it was delayed by seven minutes. I explained to him that I didn't know any more than he did, and she was certainly already on the plane anyway and couldn't be calling me. Ah, of course. He chuckled another amusing question for the Hubs and I brought the phone to him in the other room.

In this family, nothing goes wrong, because the Hubs and his mother keep everything inside so no one could tell, and the FIL and the Hubs' sister let everything roll off their backs so nothing bothers them.

I'm just ready to be done with that. Not that I want anything to happen to them, I just wish I wasn't always the front line. I wonder how we can convince them to start calling the Hubs' cell phone number?

So the closet is all done and pretty, R is, at the very least, at the airport (I talked to her after she went through security), and K had the adventure of stopping at R's apartment before class to leave her computer there for later and coming out to find a flat tire on her car (AAA came and fixed it) and then the engine light on when she left for class.

So I'm also thinking: when do I get to be old? When do I get to stop putting out other people's fires?

Okay, I checked again. Her flight took off at 6:59, which means they're already over the clouds and out of the rain. So that's good.

I'm not really in a bitchy mood at the moment, but the phone call pissed me off. The other night, the FIL called at nine fucking thirty, and started off with "Is this too late?" and I said "Wha ... ?" If any phone call after nine means death to me, then certainly a late phone call with their caller ID means certain death. (Which is why his voice confused me, other than that I was already asleep: once I had my glasses on and saw the ID, I was sure it was the MIL calling with bad news.)

Hey, as long as I'm bitching, last night I re-read F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," which I read long ago and loved, and I have to ask: what story is this movie based on? Other than the central device, that of a baby who is born old and ages backward, nothing is the same. In the story, the baby is born as literally an old man, not a baby with an old man's head. In the story, which is very good, the father enters the hospital nursery to see a full grown 70 year old man sitting stuffed into a crib. And it starts in 1860. I had thought I would see the movie despite my lack of interest in Brad Pitt, but now I really won't need to see it at all.

And as long as I'm asking for the impossible, I'd like the rain to stop now, please. Unless it's going to turn into snow, in which case it could keep raining instead. Or something.

WATCHING TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #1936
READING: How to be Good by Nick Hornby