E-mail from my mom
Aug. 17th, 2004 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistFor my own amusement (and perhaps the edification of others) here's an e-mail I just got from my mom. It's typical of the sort of thing I get from her, so I don't know why I seem compelled to talk about it today. Maybe I'm just bored. It's interspersed with my comments (which are, more or less, the things I think and sometimes say out loud when I read e-mails from my mom). But this way it's hard to get the effect that is brought about by the fact that my mom writes this all as one block of text, a sentence or two per topic but then on to something wildly different with no warning.
I will send the debit card
in my previous e-mail, I'd asked them to do this; apparently the things expire as if they're actual credit cards or something, and they got my new one as the expriation date on the one I have is this month.
because you need it for money.
Oh, that's what they're for!
We put your tax money into your account
My tax refund. I wanted them to keep it, as they gave me money to come over here when I didn't have the tax rebate yet. Leave it to parents to not listen to their offspring even when they'd get money by doing so. I feel bad about taking it, but it's not like I couldn't use it.
and could do that since we forged your signature to send them in.
They did?! That's unusual for my parents. I'm so proud of them!
We would like to know when you might be coming home.
Figures.
Like I said I would still like to do a family picture before November.
Good to know I'm missed. I wonder why before November? (I'll probably be coming back in November, actually; I can't leave before Andrew's gig at the Cavern, yet I'll want to be around for Thanksgiving.) I hate family pictures. She'll have to wait a bit more anyway, unless she wants me with the remnants of bleach in my hair (which she won't, being an anal-retentive perfectionist) for the pictures.
We had more wiriing done in the basement. We now have a light switch in the bathroom. Of course a light fixture that Dad and Chris complain because it isn't very bright. I say you don't need a bright light down there.
Our shower is in the basement. And no, I don't see why you'd need a bright light down there. Though I can see my dad and brother complaining about this. And I can hear my mom refuting it, in exactly the words she gives: "You don't NEED a brigt light down there!"
Grandpa is getting a little more frustrated each day. We had to switch card games a few times last week when we couldn't hardly speak without him getting upset.
My grandpa has dementia. It was diagnosed last fall, and at that point the doctors said by this summer he'd be getting noticably bad. My other grandfather had died less than a year before, and he'd had Alzheimer's for years, so my family knows how these things go. It's been a gentler decline this time, but harder to watch because I'm closer to this side of the family. This is, in fact, one of the reasons I want to be back home in the next couple of months; this will surely be the last Thanksgiving and Christmas at which my grandpa is anything approaching normal, and I want to be there for that. Christmas Eve is always celebrated at their house, and it has always been one of my favorite days of the year.
Mike and Mary have put up the house of Grandpa and Grandma Matthies for sale. They think they can get 99,900 for it has is. We'll see I guess.
(Gotta love the Germanic sentence structure here.) This Obviously proves that Mike and Mary (my dad's siblings, and the executors of their parents' estate) live in big cities. They'll never get that, especially for the house "as is" (my mom always mixes up "has" and "as," in writing and speech; it perplexes me); it's not been lived in since before I started college and it's not been taken care of. ("We'll see I guess" is my mom's way of saying she doesn't think they'll get that much for the house, either.) I'm glad they're finally getting around to trying to sell it, though. Besides it being a good idea anyway, it's also likely that my dad and his brother and sister won't have that much to do with each other now that their parents are gone. I don't think that's a bad course of action for them to take at all.
A lot of little things have been going on , but I won't bore you with all that.
At least she hasn't mentioned the weather yet.
Jan Bailey and I had a long talk last week. She still needs to talk to you when you get back in the country.
This probably isn't all that good for me. Jan's my "caseworker" from State Services for the Blind. Apparently she was around a lot when I was a baby and then a kid in school (I started school when I was three) but some stuff changed for her and I don't remember hearing about her again until I was in high school. Yet then SSB offered to help me with college (which ended up being merely monetary help in my case, since that's all I needed). Thus she always calls me before new semesters start, to see what's going on and stuff ... but if she had "a long talk" with my mom, that means that Mom started out, innocuously enough I'm sure, explaining that I was in England, I don't want to go back to school this fall, etc. But I can see how that would end up, with Mom spinning the story to fit her well-meaning but skewed perspective, because that always happens. I hate it when she gets to people before I do in situations like this, because when I try to explain my view of things I look like a liar or a deluded youth who should listen to her mother more. And since my mom isn't happy about me being in England and me not going back to school ... I don't need someone else--half-government official, half-friend of the family, who thinks she's got a vested interest in my future plans--on my case.
I guess I will close for now and talk to you soon.
Right. Better e-mail her back, before I forget.
I will send the debit card
in my previous e-mail, I'd asked them to do this; apparently the things expire as if they're actual credit cards or something, and they got my new one as the expriation date on the one I have is this month.
because you need it for money.
Oh, that's what they're for!
We put your tax money into your account
My tax refund. I wanted them to keep it, as they gave me money to come over here when I didn't have the tax rebate yet. Leave it to parents to not listen to their offspring even when they'd get money by doing so. I feel bad about taking it, but it's not like I couldn't use it.
and could do that since we forged your signature to send them in.
They did?! That's unusual for my parents. I'm so proud of them!
We would like to know when you might be coming home.
Figures.
Like I said I would still like to do a family picture before November.
Good to know I'm missed. I wonder why before November? (I'll probably be coming back in November, actually; I can't leave before Andrew's gig at the Cavern, yet I'll want to be around for Thanksgiving.) I hate family pictures. She'll have to wait a bit more anyway, unless she wants me with the remnants of bleach in my hair (which she won't, being an anal-retentive perfectionist) for the pictures.
We had more wiriing done in the basement. We now have a light switch in the bathroom. Of course a light fixture that Dad and Chris complain because it isn't very bright. I say you don't need a bright light down there.
Our shower is in the basement. And no, I don't see why you'd need a bright light down there. Though I can see my dad and brother complaining about this. And I can hear my mom refuting it, in exactly the words she gives: "You don't NEED a brigt light down there!"
Grandpa is getting a little more frustrated each day. We had to switch card games a few times last week when we couldn't hardly speak without him getting upset.
My grandpa has dementia. It was diagnosed last fall, and at that point the doctors said by this summer he'd be getting noticably bad. My other grandfather had died less than a year before, and he'd had Alzheimer's for years, so my family knows how these things go. It's been a gentler decline this time, but harder to watch because I'm closer to this side of the family. This is, in fact, one of the reasons I want to be back home in the next couple of months; this will surely be the last Thanksgiving and Christmas at which my grandpa is anything approaching normal, and I want to be there for that. Christmas Eve is always celebrated at their house, and it has always been one of my favorite days of the year.
Mike and Mary have put up the house of Grandpa and Grandma Matthies for sale. They think they can get 99,900 for it has is. We'll see I guess.
(Gotta love the Germanic sentence structure here.) This Obviously proves that Mike and Mary (my dad's siblings, and the executors of their parents' estate) live in big cities. They'll never get that, especially for the house "as is" (my mom always mixes up "has" and "as," in writing and speech; it perplexes me); it's not been lived in since before I started college and it's not been taken care of. ("We'll see I guess" is my mom's way of saying she doesn't think they'll get that much for the house, either.) I'm glad they're finally getting around to trying to sell it, though. Besides it being a good idea anyway, it's also likely that my dad and his brother and sister won't have that much to do with each other now that their parents are gone. I don't think that's a bad course of action for them to take at all.
A lot of little things have been going on , but I won't bore you with all that.
At least she hasn't mentioned the weather yet.
Jan Bailey and I had a long talk last week. She still needs to talk to you when you get back in the country.
This probably isn't all that good for me. Jan's my "caseworker" from State Services for the Blind. Apparently she was around a lot when I was a baby and then a kid in school (I started school when I was three) but some stuff changed for her and I don't remember hearing about her again until I was in high school. Yet then SSB offered to help me with college (which ended up being merely monetary help in my case, since that's all I needed). Thus she always calls me before new semesters start, to see what's going on and stuff ... but if she had "a long talk" with my mom, that means that Mom started out, innocuously enough I'm sure, explaining that I was in England, I don't want to go back to school this fall, etc. But I can see how that would end up, with Mom spinning the story to fit her well-meaning but skewed perspective, because that always happens. I hate it when she gets to people before I do in situations like this, because when I try to explain my view of things I look like a liar or a deluded youth who should listen to her mother more. And since my mom isn't happy about me being in England and me not going back to school ... I don't need someone else--half-government official, half-friend of the family, who thinks she's got a vested interest in my future plans--on my case.
I guess I will close for now and talk to you soon.
Right. Better e-mail her back, before I forget.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 10:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 10:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 04:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 05:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 12:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 03:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 03:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 03:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 03:47 pm (UTC)And I'm glad the people in my family who'd send Christian chain-letters and whine about not seeing me are also the people who haven't discovered e-mail yet. Or at least they don't know my address. Mwa ha ha!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 04:10 pm (UTC)And you're lucky.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 04:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 04:33 pm (UTC)No, I have poor luck aim. Much better. Well, not better, but grammatically correct. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 04:43 pm (UTC)But through this you and Tess found out that the other person is cool, so it must have been a clever ploy on your part to strike up a conversation with her, right?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 05:28 pm (UTC)Not very convincing, am I? :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 03:57 pm (UTC)*adds*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 04:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 04:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 05:29 pm (UTC)My work here is done.
Date: 2004-08-17 05:36 pm (UTC)Re: My work here is done.
Date: 2004-08-18 07:22 am (UTC)You can fill out my sex god poll (http://www.livejournal.com/users/gentleman_lech/68100.html), too.
Re: My work here is done.
Date: 2004-08-18 07:51 am (UTC)I'm afraid all I can offer at this moment is my When will the Sci-fi channel make a decent movie? (http://www.livejournal.com/users/soltice/129796.html) poll.
That, and my Shadowplay and other things (http://www.livejournal.com/users/soltice/128254.html) picture post.
Re: My work here is done.
Date: 2004-08-18 08:00 am (UTC)Re: My work here is done.
Date: 2004-08-18 08:13 am (UTC)Re: My work here is done.
Date: 2004-08-18 08:16 am (UTC)Re: My work here is done.
Date: 2004-08-18 08:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 06:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 06:50 pm (UTC)*ducks while Holly throws something at Tess*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 08:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 08:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 10:21 am (UTC)Edification is a good word; when I was debating with Lindsey, we would often use "communal edification" as part of our cases.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-18 11:38 am (UTC)