The idiots beneath us

Well, the cold weather has warmed up. It's Monday and yet I'm off work, home, and enjoying the holiday! How cool is that? Much to catch up on for writing, but maybe I won't take the time to review everything that's happened, as that would be tedious for both you and me.

Saturday the landlords came over and fixed both closets. Now my Mom and I can both hang up our clothes, yay! I had a dream last night that my son's closet collapsed! We were all three planning to go to a movie on Saturday afternoon. My Mom hasn't been to a movie for 20 years or more and I haven't for awhile, either (but not THAT long!) so we picked out "The Pink Panther" with Steve Martin as one we all might like, also one that my son hasn't seen yet. He sees a lot of movies with his friends. He had to work right after the movie would be done, so needed to get totally ready for work before we went to the movie.

Turns out there was no hot water and he really needed to shower before going out or going to work! We had heard clanging and banging in the "secret room" bathroom right before this, so he went downstairs to ask the guy on the bottom floor if he was fixing something, had the water heater shut off, etc. When he knocked on their back door, he said a voice said "Come in" so he went into their kitchen (and saw the weird winding stairs up to the "secret room" bathroom) but nobody came to talk to him even after he said "Hello" "Hello?" loudly many times. So he went back up upstairs.

My Mom was putting on her boots, apparently not understanding exactly what was going on. "I don't think you'll need to do that yet, Mom" I told her, "We probably aren't going." So I went to knock on the downstairs' front door. A boy of about ten or eleven answered. I asked him about the hot water and he said, "We don't have hot water either." and that he'd go ask his Dad. I also asked him (to ask his father) "Should I call the landlord?" I didn't really want to bother them again, they had just fixed our closets a couple of hours previously.

The boy came back and said something about having separate water heaters, which really made no sense to me so I said, "So both water heaters are out? Should I call the landlords?" I was really wishing the darn father would just come to the door, I could hear him and a woman talking in the recesses of the apartment but neither came to talk to me. So I went back upstairs and called the poor landlords, feeling quite a pest. But it was necessary because we needed some hot water.

The husband landlord showed up quite quickly. He first went downstairs to talk to the guy (who is a friend of theirs) before coming up to talk to me. Turns out the stupid guy had spilled or poured wax down the drain. He had been banging and clanging on the pipes (which were clogged) and running hot water for over an hour and had run the hot water tank out! Now why didn't that idiot just 'fess up in the first place and let us know? What an **s to not tell us so we called and bothered the landlord. I'm not impressed. Pretend that I just typed some more bad language and insults against him!

Saturday I took my Mom to her bank and to the pharmacy to get her prescriptions filled. Sunday I took my Mom to her new church. We found the handicapped parking the the handicapped-access door. I stopped and picked up the Sunday newspaper before stopping to pick her up again after church. Later we went to the local mall to get food for Ricky, the chinchilla. They only had the pellet stuff in the pet store and Ricky won't eat that stuff, no matter how hungry he is. So I asked which would be the next closest, rabbit food or hamster food, as both of those had dried vegetables in them, which Ricky loves. It surprised me the hamster food is the closest to chinchilla food, so I bought that and some more ferret food.

Then we went to the laundramat which is only a block away from us. It had new machines that I had to figure out, but we purposely hadn't brought a lot of laundry. This was sort of a trial run before bringing the dirty bedding and the LOTS of laundry creating by moving. After our one load of clothing was clean, dried and folded, we went out to eat at the cheap little hotel restaurant where SLA and I often go out to eat. My Mom liked the food and had a box of chicken pieces to bring home as leftovers. I had steak and eggs and ate all of mine! No leftovers.

Today my Mom drove out to her old house to get a couple of light things, like her pills and to meet with her friends for coffee. She hasn't driven by herself anywhere since the move. Although she would come into the city once or twice a week before that and can find her way around here. She and her friends meet for breakfast every Monday morning and while she may not keep going out there every week, she wanted to this first week, at least.

So she's gone for a few hours and my son is sleeping. Ahhhh. This is turning out to be quite an adjustment for me too, although I'm basically enjoying the company. My Mom (no offense to her) is turning out to be quite a lot of work for me. There's a lot of things she can't do and she needs a lot of help. This move was a good thing as now it really scares me to think of her living alone out there! This was good timing. Even though I was visiting every week some of these things I had no idea were becoming difficult for her and that there were some problems.

Have a Happy Monday!