What was the most recent incident in your life that made you upset?

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The answer to this question is a bit twofold.  First things first--my parents are splitting.

Now, this news is no surprise to me.  They've been rocky for ages--since the beginning, really, since their marriage was prompted by my conception--but especially the last six or seven years.  They've been separated twice, and my mom forewarned me that she was on the hunt for another place to live.  I think it will be good for them.  Healthier.  But it still hurts.

My husband and I have made a habit of driving the one-and-a-half hours to our hometown about once a month.  Last weekend was our first visit since my mother moved out.  In a word, it was awkward.  My father is holding up okay, for being the one fighting to stay together.  My mother, though, takes just about every opportunity for snide/whiny/sarcastic remarks.

I rarely notice this conversation hijacking anymore, but my husband does.  He asked about it on the car ride home Sunday night.  He made a good case of specific instances that I had completely written off, but he's right.  One such instance was during a discussion about weight.

I really ought to know better than to so much as think about weight-related topics around my mother, but I was so proud of the five pounds I've recently lost that I couldn't help but brag a bit; I also had to explain why I was turning down her offer of going to a pizza buffet for lunch.  Her response was nothing less than what I've grown to expect--something to the effect of "So now I'll be the only fat one in the family?  Great."  I laughed it off and said little else on the topic, while my mother googled a BMI calculator and determined exactly how "fat" she is.

A pre-occupation with weight makes sense for my mom.  She was once morbidly obese, but made some changes and lost a lot of weight at once.  Some of the weight has crept back up on her, as weight is wont to do, but she's still in a better place than she used to be.  But apparently, she's not in a good enough place to be happy for her daughter's healthy choices; she's too busy feeling sorry for her poor ones.

So I'm a little upset that my mom isn't pleased with my return to the "normal" category, but more upset she'd rather I be "overweight" with her.  I'm also saddened by this trend that Jacob has pointed out and that I can no longer ignore--that I can't even talk to my mother anymore without the conversation becoming all about her.  I think the day has finally arrived where I stop seeing my parents as the all-knowing, infallible forces of good in my life and start seeing them as they really are: just older, more experienced, but equally confused humans, like myself.

Moms, hairs, T-shirts and Honda Accords

Today's entry is a collection of four squares on one of the pages of 642 Things To Write About.  I'd tell you the page, but none of them are numbered.

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Something you never told your mother

My mother is, fortunately, still living, so fingers crossed she never checks my blog.  I doubt she does.  I love my mother, and I'm very much like her.  But sometimes I feel like I'm more her friend than her child, and I often feel she's too wrapped up in her own life to notice or listen to mine.  And that's okay.  We live an hour and a half apart, though she guilts me into visiting often.  She likes to revisit the past couple of weeks in humorous soliloquy about thirty seconds after I've set my suitcase down.

Anywho.  Confession time.  My mother assumes I was a virgin when I married my husband.  She never really asked, and I'll never tell her voluntarily.  He was the only one, though, and it was just six months before the Big Day--we were already engaged, and both of us knew the other wasn't going anywhere.  But as long as she keeps believing it, I'll keep letting her.

A missing body part

I, fortunately, have survived my first 20 years of life with all my body parts intact.  I do get a little sad, though, every now and again, thinking of the massive amounts of hair I seem to lose on a daily basis.  The hair catcher in the shower must be cleaned halfway through, or I'll be standing in ankle-deep water by the end.  I wonder, when I pluck a loose hair off my arm or shirt, if the little guy is sad to go.  I think of the foreign places I've been (that list is too short) where all I've left behind is the breath I'm finished with and a few stray hairs.  I wonder how long they last once they leave my head.

A piece of clothing you keep just for the memory

I actually have a gigantic collection of T-shirts sitting inside an ottoman in our spare room.  I tell myself I'll make a T-shirt quilt out of them one day.  Most of them came from high school--debate, band, theatre.  More often than not I paid for them with my own pitiful allowance.

The oldest item in your possession

It's my husband's car, really, but we've got this red Honda Accord that's older than I am and still running.  We call him Seabiscuit.  It belonged to my husband's mother's husband's mother (not Jacob's father, but the man we dislike enough to refuse to call him Jacob's stepfather), who hailed from Oklahoma and didn't leave the car to anyone in her will.  It's still in her name, but Jacob's mother's husband's brother (man, that gets complicated) sold it to us for dirt cheap.  It's a 1992 model, and on its last leg.  I think something's wrong with the transmission, so it's collecting pollen under our car port until we either (finally) get the title or get it impounded out of spite.  I'm fond of Seabiscuit, though.  We went on our first dates in that car, and I named him after a horse because Jacob is my Knight in Shining Armor.

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Well.  That was a lot of nonsense.  But now you know a bit [more] about me and I can stop saying it's been too long since I wrote something.