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It's kind of hard to find the time and energy to post when your life is complete and utter chaos.
That's not an excuse, it's just a statement of fact.
Since I got laid off on Friday May 13th, the following has happened: I've been working around 50 hours a week at a temp job (they say they intend to hire me permanent in the next few weeks). We vacationed at the most beautiful cabin in the North Carolina Mountains. Liv got her driver's license. School started again and I now have a junior in high school taking five AP classes and all the chaos that implies.
Mom moved in with her rich boyfriend after selling/giving away all of her possessions, even her car, to make him happy. Mom was dumped and abandoned at a Chinese buffet by her rich boyfriend a week after moving in with him. This happened an hour after receiving from my sister the simple instruction of "Do not mention this conversation to him. This will make him angry and he will take it out on you.".
Mom has been living with my Rational Sister's family while she finds a new place to live. Thom has been sitting on the couch smiling and gloating with great self-satisfaction about our decision to buy only a two bedroom house and to never buy a sleeper sofa.
So, Monday night mom took a dive down my sister's stairs. Those in the know will remember that my mother is what we refer to in the industry as a "professional claimant" or a "Slip and fall queen" or an "eggshell claimant". What that means in non-insurance talk is that she's the type of person who falls down in places a lot. Because of her pre-existing medical conditons, any type of trauma can be expected to cause her great injury (hence the 'eggshell'). Oh, and she sues. A lot.
She was walking up the stairs after her shower with an armload of stuff and somehow came back down hard and fast.
My sister's stair rail is very simple. Something like this. Nothing sticks out at all, and the part on the end is curled under and inside itself.
Somehow, she managed to come down the stairs, smack her head and face on the tile floor at the base of the stairs, and catch her leg on the curled under part of the iron railing, tearing a six to seven inch long gash in her leg and losing a sizable piece of fatty tissue in the process.
Okay, let's be real here for a moment. I want to assure everyone that I love my mother VERY MUCH. She's a good woman at heart even if she's incapable of handling finances of any sort, religiously pushy, neurotic and crazy-making to the Nth degree. Also without her, I would have much less comedy material.
That said, the first thing that all of us thought was, "OMG, is she going to sue Rational Sister?" The second thing my husband thought was, "Rational sister's husband shouldn't have pushed her down the stairs in the first place!"
As an aside, Rational Sister's husband kind of hates my mom. Well, hate is such a strong word. 'Loathes' probably works better. As another aside, beer consumption at Rational Sister's house has jumped 53% since my mom moved in. That's a number that I pulled out of my ass but I feel secure in saying that the figure quoted is probably about 74% too low.
Rational Sister's husband is the one who held my mother's leg closed while the paramedics were on the way, and kept her from going into shock. He's also complained he was the one who had to lift her nightgown to check her for further damage. Rational Sister's husband is a bit of an ass but has been earning MAJOR points lately. Thom still suspects he pushed her, but my mother confirmed he was in the other room at the time.
Liv and I went to go see my mother (known to her grandchildren as "Mimi") this weekend. Mom looked pretty horrible. She has major black eyes, bruises and contusions, and 11 stitches in her leg. It's nasty.
Of course, she hasn't been following Doctor's orders (I come by my "bad patientness" honestly) and had gotten infected, requring a visit to the urgent care clinic to get mondo antibiotics and a cream that is supposed to be applied topically three times a day.
While Rational Sister and I were clucking over and rewrapping mother's wound, Liv kicked back and had a cup of coffee with Rational Sister's husband and their eldest daughter, V, age eight.
V told Liv all about how when the firemen came to take Mimi to the hospital, they gave her and her little brother some really awesome special fireman silly bandz shaped like ladders and fire helmets and axes and such. The kids really loved them.
I honestly think this is a GREAT idea. Something to kind of distract the kids from the blood and gunk and such. Of course, I wouldn't put it past the kids to push Mimi back down the stairs for more silly bandz, but we'll deal with that if and when it happens.
So V wanders off to watch us wrap up mom's Frankensteined up leg (while she's bitching that she just got vein treatments done and dammnit, it'll never be pretty now) and RS's husband takes a drink of his coffee and tells Liv how V sat at the head of the stairs and just basically watched everything unfold, and then after the paramedics left AND I QUOTE: "And then V went around picking up pieces of Mimi off the floor."
As we were leaving, my sister showed me the stair rail and the curled under bit and said, "Yeah, and there was this big piece of mom's leg hanging there. A big piece of fat. And V picked it up and said, "COOL! Can I put it in my dead things collection?"
Okay, so my eight year old niece has a 'dead things' collection. SHE'S A VERY NICE LITTLE GIRL AND LIV LOVES HER EVEN IF IT IS VERY "WEDNESDAY ADAMS". And also, Liv has already called dibbs on V to be on her team when the zombie apocolypse comes.
But I digress... But yes, she has a 'dead things' collection.
I don't think that RS let her keep the leg fat for her collection. I'm pretty sure, at least. Keeping juicy pieces of family members is considered gauche, after all. On the way home Liv and I were conjecturing that V would have used the chunk of fat like silly putty--you know, slapping it down on the funny pages to make a copy of a comic, or maybe throwing it against the wall to watch it slowly pancake down.
And then Liv and I (mostly Liv, though) composed a song about my mother. And this song is why we're going to Hell. Or we would be if we believed in it.
Sung to the tune of Ren and Stimpy's Log song:
She falls down stairs
she loses her hair
bleeds over the welcome mat.
She's round and she's fat,
she goes "bump-bump-SPLAT"!
It's Mom, Mom, Mom.
It's Mo-om, it's Mo-om,
her fat hangs off railings in chunks.
It's Mo-om, it's Mo-om,
And 'ginia collects it in hunks!
And maybe you had to be there, but the sentence, "And then V went around picking up pieces of Mimi off the floor" will never NOT be funny. NEVER.
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