I had been looking forward to Tuesday

At first I thought that I would go with him. It was just one day out of town to no place special. But I haven't been away for a very long time, and I thought that maybe just the one day would be nice. And one day away wouldn't hurt the plants or anything. A week away would be bad for the plants, cause I really cannot trust anyone to come and water them. Unless it is raining already, and then I have to worry about the house flooding. Not that the house might not flood if I stay, but at least I would be there to make sure that the pump is working properly (once it wasn't even plugging in). So I don't even think that three days in Waco is a good idea for me, but one day in the middle of nowhere might have been okay.

On closer inspection, we decided that it would be best if I didn't go. In fact, it would probably be best if he didn't get a room at all and just came back home that night. The place where he would have gotten the room was about two hours away, but the place he would actually do the work was just a little bit closer, and while I would rather not make that drive at night after working all day, he has done worse. And we are very short on cash now, even for motel rooms that they eventually pay him back for. We have to actually have the cash first before we can spend it on stuff that they pay back.

So I had been looking forward to getting out of the house for a day, but gave up on the idea. Then I got over it and starting looking forward to having the house to myself for twelve hours or so. I could sort through some clothes or do other work that I don't usually do when he is here. There's some stuff that I don't do when he is here, cause we will just end up getting in each other's way.

So we have a little bit to eat (which in fact was even food that he cooked), and then he leaves, and I take some time to do a few things on the computer before I get started doing any work.

And then my mother calls.

Now, I should know better by now. I just cannot talk to my mother one on one. But she calls and asks if maybe I would like to go and get something to eat.

Now, my mother has it in her head that the reason I don't talk to her very much is that I only spend time with her when there is something else in it for me, a bribe of some sort, like she is buying me something, usually lunch. And that isn't true. But lunch at a restaurant is usually the safest time and place to spend time with my mother, but I don't have any money, and I have to eat something anyway, so if she is offering to buy me lunch I usually go. But the truth is that now I usually don't want to go, even though she is buying me stuff, but I end up going anyway because I just feel like I should see her once in a while even when I don't want to.

She is still my mother, even if I don't like being around her and we really don't have that much to talk about anyway.

But I think to myself, this isn't so bad. She has called to invite me to lunch, and I've already had lunch. If I just go with her and have a soda, she won't have to buy me anything, I'll spend an hour or two with her in a public place, it probably won't get ugly cause it is in a public place, and then I can leave and I'll still have about ten hours to myself before my husband comes home.

And maybe since she isn't buying me lunch she'll get it out of her head that the reason we don't talk very often is that she has to buy me stuff before I will talk to her.

So we pick a place and agree to meet there in ten minutes. And I get there before she does, and I even manage to pay for my own soda. Now she doesn't have to buy me anything.

Now, most of the first hour or so goes well enough, and if I had just managed to stick to the original plan and leave, it would have been fine.

I am halfway through reading a book about why the bees are disappearing. This is very serious stuff. If the bees all die, we won't have any food. Well, maybe not literally no food, but a lot of the cultivated food that we take for granted just doesn't grow without bees.

So I try talking to her about the bees. She doesn't care about the bees. She is not one little bit interested that most of our fruits (and this includes a lot of stuff that we don't think of as fruits like tomatoes and almonds and squash and cucumbers), just won't be around anymore. I might as well have tried to start a conversation about Star Trek or Harry Potter. She just doesn't get it.

Anyway, she won't stick with the unimportant small talk. She has to talk about stuff that is important to her, and bees don't measure up, even for talk over lunch. So eventually it gets to some subject that I don't want to talk about. So the talk gets ugly, even though we are in a public place.

At some point she says something like if you say you will do something you can always change your mind and not do it.

Sometimes I wonder where I get my morals from. And I said so. If you say that you are going to do something, you are committed to doing it, except in the most extreme circumstances when something more important comes up.

Now I have seriously hurt her feelings, and I have to stay longer and smooth that over, even though she is the one who said what she said.

By the time things are better, I figure that I have wasted most of the day anyway, so I might as well go to her house for a bit.

Big mistake.

We played with the dog for a bit and mostly didn't say anything ugly. And then at some point she noticed that it is past when she usually eats dinner, so she invites me to dinner.

So much for getting through the day without her buying me anything. But I really did not plan to stay this long, and I do have to eat something and I don't have any money. If I had just had the sense to leave before that, it would have been okay.

After dinner, it gets ugly.

I really just cannot talk to my mother anymore. I felt fine Monday, or at least, what passes for that now. I just never feel really good anymore, and I suppose that I am never going to feel really good ever again. But Monday wasn't so bad. I didn't get anything done Monday, but I had plans to do something Tuesday and felt okay about it. I wasn't spending days at a time in bed feeling sorry for myself. I had the idea that things would eventually get better, even if they would never really be good again. But Monday I was okay, and then Tuesday I spoke to my mother, and usually after speaking to my mother I come to the conclusion that I can't do anything. I can't get a job that is worth having. I can't even get a job that I don't like that might eventually be useful. I am a drain on my family and I don't even deserve to have the car that I drive because I don't drive it to a job. Nothing that I will ever attempt to do is worth doing.

After talking to her I think that I might as well do nothing. I can't do anything. It isn't even worth getting out of bed to wash the dishes and such that I can do.

So I not only wasted Tuesday, but now I feel bad right before I have three days to myself, and I really should be getting something done then. Now I don't have any energy. Now I just don't see the point.

I eventually leave my mother's house and walk to the car. I cannot take anymore. She follows me. There is just no getting away from her. I try to be nice.

She finally allows me to leave. I think that I might have finally gotten through to her that I don't want to talk about things, but no. Her parting words were something like, we'll have to talk more about this later.

I go home. I don't even have an hour to myself before my husband comes in. It was a totally wasted day and I feel awful. He even mentions that the laundry isn't done. I don't even bother telling him that I've been gone all day.

Wednesday we went to see a movie called Moon. I only just heard about it a few days ago, and it isn't on a lot of screens, and it wasn't at our usual place. To get a reasonably priced ticket we had to go to a theater we had never been to before. It was okay. Moon is mainly about this one man who has agreed to work alone on a station for three years. If Silent Running or Solaris is your thing, then you would probably like this movie. But most people won't be really crazy about it. Then we went to lunch and did some shopping.

I should have stayed home instead of going out and spending money, but I felt so bad after Tuesday. I just needed to do something to feel better.

All of us are probably going to lunch Sunday, so I will see mother again, and I don't want to. Probably nothing bad will happen with everyone else there, but after Tuesday I am not looking forward to it.