In Your Family, it's Just One Kee-risis After Another

With that remark, my uncle's favorite girlfriend broke up with him, about 40 years ago. I'd like to meet her, so I can shake her hand. Because truer words were never spoken.

As I mentioned a few days ago, Mom is selling her house and moving to the southwest. Now, this was originally supposed to happen in a couple of years. The idea was that she was going to spend the next couple of years sorting through her house, which is full from top to bottom (full attic and full basement) with 63+ years of junk, plus of course all the previously mentioned "touched by dead relatives" stuff. Additionally, she's been holding onto stuff for my cousin (the orphan) and The Clam. I will polish my own halo here and say that I have nothing in her attic. Anyway, her parting words before she left for the southwest to spy out the land were, "Oh, I wouldn't do anything in a hurry. After all the market in Detroit is soooo bad right now."

Fast forward to now, when she has bought a house down there and put her house on the market, and is looking to move by the end of March. And she is going to pay $8500 to move every piece of crap she has, practically. Which is her choice. She's an adult. Supposedly.

One of my favorite work-related posters is "Poor planning on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on my part." (Except that it isn't actually true when the rubber meets the road.) Well, true to form, Mom has turned this into an emergency situation we are all involved in. Over the weekend, I foolishly attempted to act like a grownup and have a calm and rational discussion with her (on behalf of both The Clam and myself) addressing our issues with the latest crisis. I was calm, I was patient, hell, I was William Freaking Shakespeare in my eloquence.

So far, her response has been:

1. When I called her to tell her that my offer had been accepted (on my house, because, you know, things are going on in my life as well as hers), she forced me into a 20 minute discussion about how:
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
This isn't a crisis or an emergency.
She hasn't been pushy or demanding.
How ungrateful I am acting for being offered all this stuff (for the record, I don't think I am being ungrateful. I AM saying "No" to things I don't want, which I thought was my right. As far as the whole "ancestor worship" thing goes, this is not news. This has been a recurring conversation in our family for decades now. And Mom has participated in the conversation just as much as I have.)
How lucky The Clam and I are to not have to be having to sort through this crap when she's dead, like she's had to many times (she forgets that I have had to do it too, starting when I was 15 and my grandma died, and Clam and I still will have to at least twice more, when she and Dad go).

2. Today, when I found out via The Clam that our aunt may in fact have been laid off, I called Mom to see if she knew this to be fact, or if our cousin was exaggerating. She told me that (and this is priceless manipulation) she wasn't sure if she wanted to call The Aunt to find out, because she didn't want to be accused of triangulating. (I told her over the weekend that I didn't appreciate her coming to me to complain about The Clam or to try and force me to book The Clam's time for her. So you see, since I used the word triangulating, she's got to throw it back in my face, even if she doesn't use it correctly.)

I should have just screamed and slammed a door. It would have accomplished just as little, and I'd probably feel better.