chaos (m)

Dinner with the Olympic skaters was relatively uneventful.  At first, I was a little disappointed that it was so seamless....we got to Legal Sea Foods in Harvard Square, we ordered, we talked, we ate, we left.  Everyone behaved well.  It was pleasant.

As it turns out, it also was the calm before the storm.

Sunday...the skating show starts at 2 p.m.  H has to be there at noon to practice his solo.  My husband takes him to the rink.  I eat two hard-boiled egg whites for breakfast and drink a cup of green tea.  So far so good.

My mother notices that we have a loaf of pumpernickel bread.  Why don't I make cream cheese and olive sandwiches to use up the bread?  I know they are her favorite and she wants one, but she's like the character Modell in the movie Diner...indirect. 

Me: Do you want a cream cheese and olive sandwich?   Her:  "Well, if you're going to make one, I'll have one." 

I make the sandwiches.  I look at the clock: 11:30 a.m.  My husband calls:  "Leave early for the show...the traffic is bad.  There's a baseball game, a walk for Multiple Sclerosis and the Skating Show all happening at the same time in the same space.  It's a zoo."  My husband is not prone to hyperbole...in fact, the opposite (he recently slammed the car door on his thumb, suffered a severe gash and a broken bone, came into the house and calmly asked for a Band-Aid).  I know it must be bad.

I tell my mother we have to leave by 12:45.  She decides NOT to come to the show today as she saw it Saturday night and is "not about to sit throught THAT again."

Okay, I'll take you home first, I say.  "Can you color my hair and set it before we go?" she asks.

Really?  Really?

I do it.  I quickly apply the dye solution, run upstairs to shower and change, come back just in time to rinse her out and set her hair like I'm on amphetamines.  I run back upstairs to apply make-up.  I get downstairs and she's in the laundry room.  If she had been on the Titanic, she would have been in the laundry room while the ship was sinking saying "Well, you want to have a clean shirt when you go, right?"

Just as I'm packing up the car to go she announces: "The laundry room has a funny smell.  I think there's a gas leak."  I check it out.  It smells like gas coming out of the inside of the dryer.  Quick decision.  If I stay and have someone check it out, I will miss my son's show.  If I don't, the house may blow up.  We leave.

Get in the car and call my neighbor, Joan, for advice.  She says her husband will come over to check it out (he's a builder).  Then she calls back and says we should call the Fire Department.  They are right at the end of our street.  I call them, explain I'm not on the premises but that my neighbor will let them in.  Joan agrees to meet them at my house and let them in.

Meanwhile, on the Mass Pike, another drama is unfolding.  My mother doesn't have the keys to her house.  My brother took them and didn't return them.  "I can't go home...I won't be able to get in."  I look at the clock.  It's 1:10 p.m and I have to drop her off and go back to Cambridge for the show.  Her hair is wet and in curlers.  There's no way I can bring her to the rink.  We press onwards towards her house and get her elderly tenant to come down to let my mother in which annoys my mother greatly because now she thinks she's "beholden to her."

Head back to Cambridge.   Traffic is hideous.  Just hideous.  I'm going to be late.

My neighbor, Joan, calls.  The fire department says there is lint in the vent and do you know that is the cause of 15,000 fires each year?  Vent lint.  Not on the screen which I clean every time, but deep in the vents themselves.  How the heck am I supposed to reach that to clean?

Also, the fire department wants to know why my neighbor is at my house instead of me.  She explains she's the "Gladys Kravitz" of the neighborhood, but the fireman is too young and has never seen Bewitched.  He doesn't know about Gladys, the neighbor who is involved in everyone's business.

 Almost 2 pm and I'm in line for the parking lot. Reach for my wallet to pay for parking...feel something soft and squishy.  What's this?  My mother's cream cheese and olive sandwich.  It's 72 degrees out and this will not last in the car for 3 hours in the sun.  It's almost 2 p.m. and I'm starving.  I eat the sandwich.....and immediately regret it.

Get to the show at 2:10.  They start late because they know people are in traffic.  I sit down and reflect on why I ate that sandwich, why I have poor impulse control, why I'll never be thin.