caught with pants down...

ok, here's the latest from the "my mother is driving me crazy" files:

she calls me yesterday to tell me she was driving to her physical therapy appointment when she had a sudden, uncontrollable need to pee. she pulls over on the side of the highway, gets out and by this time is already peeing but goes around to the passenger side of the car and gets her pants down to finish the job. now i should mention here that my mother is 70 and has rhematoid arthritis, a bad back, and a bundle of other ailments besides the obvious incontinence issue.

well, once she's done, she can't for the life of her get back up again. her knees keep buckling under. the more she tries, the weaker she gets. then a truck pulls over and a man comes to help her up. he's having a struggle trying to get her up (not sure why, it's not like my mom is very heavy or anything...). meanwhile, she's trying to get her pants pulled up. finally they make it to the back seat on the passenger's side and the people in the truck are hollering "help is on the way!" the man asks, what were you doing down there? so my mom tells me, i wasn't going to say, well i just thought i'd sit around with my butt hanging out... so she says, i had to pee. next thing she knows, a fire truck shows up followed shortly by the police. a fireman takes her blood pressure and it was sky high. and he asks, what were you doing out here? and she says, i had to pee! and then she hears the cop ask the fireman, what was she doing out here? and the fireman says, she had to pee. the way word gets around, probably half of jackson, mississippi, knows my mother was peeing on the side of the road...

so she says, i don't know why this happened, i took my detrol this morning. and i say, maybe you need to increase your dosage. how many are you taking a day? she says, well, i take one whenever i'm going somewhere. i say, WHAT? they're not like aspirin. you can't just take them when you need them. you have to take them EVERY DAY. she says, well, they cost sixty dollars a month. i said, yeah, so. you have sixty dollars. but if you want to save sixty dollars, you can keep peeing in the street. well, i take them three or four days a week, she says. you have to take them EVERY DAY, i say. there's no point in taking them if you're not going to take them correctly. are you listening to me? i say. i hear you, she says. yes, but are you paying attention? i heard you, she says.

she heard me. and she has no intention of doing what i say. it drives me nuts because i know she will call again with another incontinence episode. and we'll have the same conversation over again. i don't know how to stop.

i guess i'm like a man in that i always want to solve her problems for her. maybe i need to distance myself and just give her sympathy when she calls. I mean, she's 70 years old. she's made it this far without my solving her problems. i guess she can manage well enough on her own.

love thy neighbor? um, no...

ok, i'll admit to being naive. i figured when i moved into a house, i'd stop having to deal with annoying neighbors. you homeowners can all stop laughing now. i said i was naive.

now when we started out it was all swell. we had ruth on one side and walter and nancy on the other and the endless parade of people in the apartment building named villa boitano–which we promptly renamed "boytowno"–across the street.

our favorite boytowno-ite was "bandana boy" who was in deep infatuation with his car and had to walk around it admiringly every time he got home. he was also known for his spectacular steering wheel drum solos. sadly, he moved away about six months ago and it all went to pot shortly after.

next thing we knew, walter and nancy had bought a house and were moving. for the record, they were perfect neighbors: never heard a peep from them. worst that ever happened was walter hit my car once, but that was all handled nice and neighborly like through insurance.

well, once they moved out, the owner of their house showed up, puttering around, getting the place ready for rental, you know. So my boyfriend, being the friendly sort, goes over to say hello and promptly gets an earful about how our retaining wall is falling down and needs to be fixed. so much for being neighborly.

ok, so we figure the guy is crochety and decide to keep our distance. but then i go out one morning and see that the curbs beside his driveway are painted a suspicious shade of yellow (a quick perusal of the street tells me no other curbs have been painted). the guy has PAINTED HIS OWN CURBS! who does this?

well, i'm all up in arms about it because we've got a crappy parking situation as it is and these painted curbs are only going to make it worse. i can't even go into the parking situation while i'm on this rant. it's a whole other rant entirely.

anyhow, next thing we know crochety man has chopped branches off our huge maple tree.

then the new neighbors moved in. for some reason, they think it's ok to hammer at 1:30 in the morning. why did walter and nancy move? why? why?

oh, and did i mention the new boytowno-ite whose car alarm goes off every time a loud car drives down our street (and you guessed it, this happens quite frequently).

so today the thing that happened that prompted this blog entry after a notably long hiatus is that apparently some neighbors in the townhouses behind us have taken issue with one of our bushes and whacked it mercilessly and left the mess in our driveway. lovely.

i should remind anyone who may have arrived late to the party that i live in seattle where all the people are “nice.” right. they will stop in the middle of the street if they sense that a pedestrian might be considering walking across the road, but they drive that very same car home and take up two parking spaces in front of your house. (oops, i said i wasn't getting into my parking rant. sorry...)

yes, it’s all maddening. but it’s an easy frustration. a shallow one. the kind i have so i don’t have to worry about my deeper frustrations. but then maybe i’m meant to let these go easily as practice for letting go of those frustrations I cling to more tightly. who knows?

all I know is, they’re not driving me out of this house because I love living here, despite all the frustrations. and besides, from the sound of this post, i've gotten way too old and crochety for apartment living anyhow.