The past couple of days have been pretty good, especially considering that the phone is still in/out of service (same with the Internet). Miss Cathy is pretty mad about the situation. She got so worked up yesterday I thought she was going to have an aneurism. She was cut off in the middle of a gossip session with her younger sister, Ernestine and man did that “tick her off”. I sat and listened to her rant for a while and I agreed with her. There are times when her emotional outbursts are misplaced or inappropriate but this is not one of those times.

When she is on the phone I try not to eavesdrop but a) the apartment is small and 2) Miss Cathy talks loud so I overhear some of what I cannot tune out. Lately, when she’s been able to talk on the phone I’ve heard her telling people that she’s so happy to be home and in her own bed, “praise God for answering my prayers” she’s oft repeated (like a lot of old people I notched that she’s gotten very religious in the last several years. My brother and I didn’t grow up with any particular religion and lord knows she wasn’t as “Praise God this” and “thank the Lord” that when we were kids, she was more prone to expletives. Who knows, maybe it’s something that just “happens” with age like osteoporosis.

All of the stress and anger over the phones not working really started to get the better of both Miss Cathy and me o Thursday. The Comcast workers were here right on time this AM at 9 and stayed for 1 1/2 hours and when they left it was with optimistic skepticism that everything was working. Well, the Internet is back up and hasn’t gone off line yet but the phone has a new problem-it drops calls about 5 minutes into a conversation. I was in my room trying to work (believe me all these distractions have not made it any easier to do a job that I don’t want to do in the first place) when mom call out, “Hello!” “Hello!” “Phone went out again.”

My first thought was that it was something she was doing wrong or had gotten confused but the same thing happened to me when I had to use the land line to call AT&T because (you’re never going to believe this) my cell phone started dropping calls-I know, there’s just some funky communications ”black hole” going on in this apartment.

I don’t know what the universe is trying to tell me but after a couple more hours of calling the Comcast guys to get them to come back out (no success), calling AT&T and having them troubleshoot my cell phone (the calls got dropped every five minutes because I was on the Comcast phone and they’d have to call me back) This just became too much to bare so I thought,” Fuck it!” I cannot stay in this apartment another minute.

I said to Miss Cathy, “ I don’t know about you but I need to get out of here, take a drive or go somewhere. Do you want to go out for a little bit to just change the energy around here?”

She was all for it. She told me she was getting “ticked off” and wanted to “cuss somebody out”. I could see that she was very agitated, I reminded her that we shouldn’t take it out on each other and that we should be good to one another, “we’re in this together.”

We got in the car and ran some errands; post office, gas station and then to the grocery store. Mom was able to walk slowly to the store entrance and I suggested she push the shopping cart because she could use the cart for support as she walked (a trick I learned form my old friend George told me that’s why you don’t see old people complaining about pushing a shopping cart). Just inside the door Miss Cathy plowed down a cupcake display with the shopping cart then proceeded to almost run into a couple of people as she wondered about the vegetables. She had the nerve to get angry and snapped at me when I told her she should pay attention to where she was going. We stood in the vegetable aisle arguing for a minute or two, she telling me not to talk to her “that way” and me telling her that she’s got to “take some responsibility for her actions” that “it's not other peoples responsibility to get out of her way”. We went back and forth a few times, loud enough that people were looking at us so finally I said, “Fine, I’ll just leave you to do whatever you want-plow into food displays, run people over, fall down if you want. I’m not going to say anything and leave you alone to do whatever you want”

“Good” she said, “We still friends?” “Always.” I replied, and we continued to grocery shop and chat as if nothing had happened.

Back home, Miss Cathy started to cook the tilapia; my job was to cook the corn. I went into my room to file mail and I realized that I’d neglected to write down a doctor's appt that I’d made yesterday for mom for I had to spend some time calling the doctor’s office (they weren’t answering the phone right away). That took so much time that when I came back into the kitchen to help Miss Cathy I noticed that she’d put the corn into a small pot to boil. Instead of leaving it I decided to transfer the corn into a larger pot then I left to go back to my room.

When I came back into the kitchen the first thing mom said was,” Did you turn the pot up to boil.” I said, “No, I just thought that since you had it on the stove that it was already set to boil.”

Somehow that started another argument between us, me accusing her of playing “Gotcha” (; laying in wait to find something wrong so that she could bring it to my attention, thereby making herself feel better and not the only one that makes mistakes or needs correcting-hey, that’s my take on it anyway and I stand by it.) And she accused me (once again) of being “sensitive” and how hard it is to say anything to me and around me.
Of course I took total offence to that and for some reason the way she says” sensitive” really get me going, and I still have no idea what she means by that. I told her that she’s lucky I’m “sensitive”, the fact that I’m ‘sensitive” is the reason that I’m here.

We went a few more rounds with me finally telling her that I was sick of her “laying in wait” to find fault with something I’ve done, I’m just trying my best here (she said she was, too) and that she is a pain in the ass, complains all the time and finds fault with not just me but Tony and Suemi as well. This last bit I said a little too loudly but I didn’t apologize, it was true and she needs to hear it. I know that what I said penetrated to some place deep inside her because she didn’t say anything and stood there listening. I felt bad that once again, I was raising my voice to her and being impatient but she just gets me so damn mad sometimes. I disappoint myself when I lash out at her and I know I keep saying I’m going to stop so all I can do is not beat myself up and do better next time.

I walked out of the room just to give myself a minute, when I came back we finished making the meal in over politeness, then we sat down in the living room to eat the meal together in front of the television focusing our comments on the “doctor show” we were watching.

I have been impressed that Miss Cathy has been keeping herself busy during the day. While I’m making my calls, she’s been going through her clothes, putting things in boxes for goodwill and tailoring other things to fit now that she’s lost 40 pounds.

She surprised me yesterday by coming out of her bedroom with a huge trash bag full of old paperwork that’s been in her dresser drawers for years ready to be thrown out. What surprised me is that she went through and threw things out voluntarily, for years she’s just been pretty much hoarding things and heaven help you if you suggesting it was time to get rid of anything. It’s been a couple weeks now that she’s been home and I can see that she’s more relaxed (even in the face of all the phone problems and people in/out of the apartment) and comfortable.