“Why are we doing this?” they groaned.

“Because your father and I have the financial management skills of dope addicts and I want you to learn better habits than we have,” I explained again.

“Well, if we know you suck, why don’t we just do the opposite of what you do?” Tweenbot has never been the same since his discovery of logical argument at age 10 or so. “That way we don’t have to take a stupid class.”

“You know, you’ll start out that way. You’ll be like ‘now I’m going to do things my way’ and that’ll be cool for a while. Then you’ll hit your mid-twenties or so or get married or have kids and then you’ll start being like ‘OK, now I see what Mom was thinking,’ and then pretty soon you’re 40 and slavishly imitating your parents’ misery.” Silence.

Mouse joined us because Dino Spouse is working overtime in ur takses and my belle-mere is – well, at least she isn’t screaming obscenities. She has opened her door a couple of times and spoken civilly to various family members since taking to her chambers yesterday afternoon. My feeling of doom yesterday morning was somewhat warranted, it turned out.*

* Choose your own adventure! Read the snarky coda to this story or the serious coda to this story. Or, since I lack the technological wherewithal to code subposts or whatever from this phone, here are both.

Snarky coda: I offered her some fresh baked bread and expressed my regret that we hadn’t done anything for her birthday. She accepted and explained – quite calmly – that she hates her birthday because she’s 67 and living in a strange house where no one loves her and she works like a house slave. Then she went into her room and shut the door.

Serious coda: I really do feel bad about her birthday. Casino holiday notwithstanding, it still kind of makes me want to throw up that I forgot and didn’t get her any cards or warn the kids. Who wants to feel forgotten?

Operation Dino Freedom is not going to be easy. Dino Spouse says that his mom takes the idea of separate residences as the ultimate rejection, and he insists that we’re not financially equipped to fund two households. He is right. Yet I get a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I think about this for too long. I recognize this feeling as my flight instinct turning over, trying to start up the engine.

I don’t feel good about this, not at all.

Granted, she had her big birthday present already – her son took her to Atlantic City for a long weekend – but usually we would have marked the occasion itself with cards or something. I am shocked that I forgot until my husband reminded me last night.

Crap.

I have never once made it to the Art Night in Oakland Mills, though I always hope to. What I would love would be a crack at a high school art and/or home ec classroom for a few hours. I like painting greenware at the Pottery Stop. It would be fun to sit around doing artsy stuff in an environment where I’m not expected to buy anything. To give them their due, the Pottery Stop people are unobtrusive and friendly, and don’t mind when I sit and watch my girl paint.

I will eventually mark the occasion on Goodreads, but not now. Now I am in a parking lot waiting for Turtleduck to join me at Ranazul.

I got a Kindle for Christmas – the old school model, not the new kind with real web browsing and such. I find reading on the Kindle very agreeable. I was particularly thrilled to find a copy of A.A. Milne’s “Once On A Time” available for e-reader at a ridiculously low (if not free) price.

My paid writing gig has cut me back from weekly to monthly, which is a bummer in economic terms but kind of a plus in that they didn’t cut me completely when they had the opportunity to do so. Maybe this will envigorate my regular blogging a little. I hope it will.

It was 30 degrees out. I asked her if she needed help to get anywhere, and she said she needed to get to shelter. She was wearing a winter coat, a pair of light-weight pajamas, and sneakers without socks. I called Grassroots to see where I could take her.

This is when I learned about day shelters and the lack thereof in our area. Homeless shelters don’t usually let people stick around by day, and the one day shelter in Howard County only operates three days a week. The person I spoke with at Grassroots recommended some retail and public locations where she might hang out and wait for a ride to one of their cold-weather overnight sites. It being Sunday morning, none of them were open.

Doesn’t seem like these retail and public establishments where the homeless spend their days – say, The Mall in Columbia – would want to fund some extra days for the day shelter we do have in Jessup? Or maybe establish one in Columbia?

Hocoblogs@@@

I started looking up numbers this AM after my belle-mere got mad at me over the progress of the house painting. To be fair, Babushka has been the prime driver of our interior repainting effort. She is a fine house painter. Note that none of us have asked her to paint – she volunteered. But if we fail to share her enthusiasm for a particular approach or, say, rethink a color choice when a room is less than one-third painted and, sweet Jesus, I just woke up, lady, and you’re all in my face before I’m even awake or had a chance to say good morning to my kids or think about breakfast – well, then, she won’t paint anymore. She will not let us use her as a slave anymore. Etcetera. My blood runs cold.

Thank God, Dino Spouse will be home from Florida this afternoon. I am glad to surrender the role of Babushka control officer to my husband. Unfortunately, his surgical site is a-achin’ and a-leakin’ anew after a few days of improvement. I really hate to think that he’s going to have to go through more surgery, especially since all the options that remain involve higher risks of – well, risks of unsavory outcomes.

Now I will go order some groceries from the internet.