The Mom Update

Gosh, I haven't done one of these in forever. Forgive me, please.

The Princess Mom is back, and in just two weeks has already caused many new gray hairs to appear on the heads of myself and my siblings. In fact, she probably caused at least 10 new ones just this morning.

Let me preface this by telling you that I didn't stay out in marriage-and-baby-land last night. I had made plans to celebrate a good friend's birthday at The Friendly Confines, and decided that it would be too much trouble to head back to Outer Mongolia via Metra and bus or cab at that late hour... so I treated myself to a room downtown. I didn't want to be hauling the sleep-like-a-baby machine around with me, so I knew I'd probably do some heavy-duty dreaming.

And dream, I did. Another one of those dreams that starts almost before I've completely drifted off to sleep, and lasts all night long.

About what? All sorts of strange circumstances that found me loaning my trusty Kia Sportage to The Princess Mom. Three times. And three times she got into successively worse fender-benders with the darned thing -- never hurting herself badly, but with the vehicle finally tipped backwards on its spare tire, with the airbags deployed. That's when I woke up this morning, thinking that I really had to stop trusting her with my vehicle. Or much of anything else.

(Nice way to start the day, huh?)

No sooner had I walked into my little corner of the office and started sipping a cup of coffee, the phone rang -- The Princess Mom on line 1. Since she knew I'd be home early tonight, there was no good reason for the call, except...

... to let me know that she'd taken a backwards swan dive off the stairs last night, resulting in a trip to the ED culminating in stitches to the scalp and an orthopedic boot on her right foot.

This is the third instance of the rapidly growing incompatibility between hardwood floors, heavy gravity and The Princess Mom in less than six months. And the most spectacular.

I was spooked on a lot of levels, including the fact that somewhere floating around in my subconscious was the knowledge that sometimes you just can't trust her to make a sensible choice.

Like slipper socks with treads, as opposed to fuzzy socks with no tread.

Like letting me, my brother or my sister-in-law carry an overlarge stack of laundry upstairs, rather than doing it herself wearing slippers like this.

Normally, I am the calm, sensible, easy-to-deal with one of her children.

Not today.

I informed her in no uncertain terms that she (and we) had not gone through all the hell of chemotherapy and radiation treatments and beaten back lung cancer only to have her break her neck on the stairs in a totally preventable accident.

I got loud. I got agitated. I got bossy. (Okay, I'm frequently bossy... but not on purpose, and never with her.)

She swears she won't do it again. She swears that she'll wear the slipper socks with treads I just bought for her.

She's banged up, achy and contrite.

For now.

Who knows what excitement she'll dream up for us next? (It's The Princess Mom we're talking about here. There'll ALWAYS be a next.)

Velociman thinks he knows Bedlam? Just wait until I introduce him to The Princess Mom...

Has anybody got an aspirin?
_____

Update: Maybe I need to get The Princess Mom her very own Urban Translator. That just might work.
_____