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My mother’s quitting smoking again and each time she does some basic skill set is temporarily lost until she feels nicotine-free.  This time, she warned me, it was her math skills and she’d been making numerical oopsies for the last four days.  She insisted that event tickets she bought for her and my dad reduced the amount of spousal support she was due rather than increasing it and after a dinner where I tipped $10 on a $50 food charge was met with “why the 50% tip?” I realized she was right.  After returning to my mother’s house:

Me: Happy day after mother’s day (that’s when we traditionally celebrate to avoid crowds).
Her: would you like to come in?
Me: I need to to use the rest room and I dare say your toilet is too…. dainty.
Her: Oh, ok then.
*I walk out, she sees me to the door*
Her: BE CAREFUL!

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Dad: So, how was Cleveland?
Me: Cincinnati.
Dad: Did you get to visit Paul?
Me: Peter.
Dad: I guess you’ll need your brakes changed.
Me: Oil change.
Dad: Did you call your mother for her birthday?
Me: Yes. Did you?
Dad: Yes.

At least he remembers the important stuff.

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Axiomic to my ethic of interactions is the anti-principle of “don’t give people homework”.  Unless you’re being paid or a gun could be pulled, no one gets to tell you what to do without some indication that this is a request, even if a strong one.  One may use “please” or “I would appreciate” or “could you” even but the moment a sentence leads with a verb someone’s in for some pain.  So when my mother said “Call me when you’re free on Sunday” my response was “no, I’m not going to.  You don’t get to tell me to do something .  I promise I’ll be home and free with the exception of using the bathroom between 1 and 3 pm.  If you wish, you may come over at your leisure.”  It’s a line I’ve wanted to say for two or more years.  Today I said it and my mother took it well.  She came over and commuted her business of picking up some element of her married life she’d forgotten on the previous ten score trips when she saw I had two stand mixers of which she wanted one.

Mom: I see you have two stand mixers.  Could I take one off your hands?
Me: Not gratis, Craigslist has similar ones regularly moving between $100 and $150 and that one’s in reasonable shape.
Mom: How about you give it to me for my birthday?
Me: I need something to sweeten the pot.  I love you as my mother but not “free stand mixer” love you in the same way you probably don’t “free car” love me.
Mom:  What else then?
Me: I give you the stand mixer for your birthday, you hem my new Scout pants and I get to throw another dinner party at your place.
Mom: Only if you save me some of whatever you make for the party.
Me: Deal.

On Stand Mixers: A stand mixer is a device that is at its best when not noticed; in the same way the writer doesn’t notice his pen for the words or the musician doesn’t notice the staff paper for the notes the Aristotelian Platonic ideal stand mixer would be invisible, of variable capacity, not shoot out a mushroom cloud of flour on activation and would either be silent or sound like a Mustang GT.  Barring a kitchen appliance plucked from the Realm of Forms® I’m happy with my new mixer but the previous white Kitchenaid was still perfectly serviceable.  Thank you to Cari Foreman for giving it to me around the time that 5th Dawn was released as by my best guess I’ve produced almost 2000 cookies by its mixing bowl.

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I lost a day of work making sure my mom didn’t somehow injure herself during the period where she had an eye cap on after cataract surgery and laser vision correction.  I slept poorly as she has nothing besides a floor that can accommodate both my head and feet simultaneously while supine.  I endured missing a day of Internet access on April Fool’s Day, the IT equivalent of Holloween and New Years.  But it was all worth it.  The knowledge of helping my mother? No.   The two free nice meals? No.  The real joy was watching her repeatedly poker herself in the temples in an attempt to adjust her non-existent glasses.

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I lost a day of work making sure my mom didn’t somehow injure herself during the period where she had an eye cap on after cataract surgery and laser vision correction.  I slept poorly as she has nothing besides a floor that can accommodate both my head and feet simultaneously while supine.  I endured missing a day of Internet access on April Fool’s Day, the IT equivalent of Holloween and New Years.  But it was all worth it.  The knowledge of helping my mother? No.   The two free nice meals? No.  The real joy was watching her repeatedly poker herself in the temples in an attempt to adjust her non-existent glasses.