busy bee.

Has it really been two weeks? Really?

When I started writing this post, I thought it had only been a week since my last post. Wrong-O (or as my mother would say - because she's weird like that - wrong-o, long-o).

Anyway.

In addition to another round of feeling sorry for myself, I've spent the past week being the pseudo mom of the house. On Tuesday, my mom had surgery to remove her gall bladder and to do something about her herniated umbilical cord. I say "do something" because I'm no medical genius and since I don't exactly know what a hernia even is, I can't say what it is one does to correct it.

I've decided it's very weird when your mother is incapacitated. My mom has rarely been majorly sick in my lifetime. In fact, I couldn't even cite another instance where she was forced into bed because of illness or surgery. So in my recollection of life in this house, there has never been a day where my mom isn't being my mom.

This, of course, means that many of her duties fall to me, while my dad takes care of the rest (and my brother kinda just keeps getting to do whatever he wants). Mostly I've been doing what you'd expect - cleaning, laundry, helping with meals, and doing dishes. OH, the dishes. My dad refuses to do dishes, so it's always my task. Quite frankly, I'm glad to do it to the extent that he's terrible at it. But I'm getting so sick of it. I have come to the conclusion that there will definitely be a dish washer in my future home, NO compromises.

On top of all that, my "deal" with my parents about living here is that in lieu of rent, I have to do five hours of housework per week. Not a bad deal, but of course, this means I get to do everything nobody else wants to. I washed my dad's MESS of a car last weekend, I've trimmed the hedges and raked the yard twice already, and then there was today. Today I had the wonderful task of re-painting the gate to our backyard and the piece of fence on the opposite side of the house. And we have a chain-link fence. Right. Never mind that I picked the windiest day to do this and my drop cloth was fluttering in the wind, but the silver paint I was using isn't exactly washable. After finishing the job, I examined my arms and saw a few little drops and thought I had done a decent job of not turning myself into the tin man. Until I came inside and looked in the bathroom mirror and discovered that - as usual - I had gotten little pin-prick-sized droplets all over my face. Cut to me using paint thinner to remove it. PAINT THINNER. ON MY FACE.

Add that to the humongous pile of dishes I got to do from my dad making eggplant parm, and you'll understand why I promptly treated myself to a vanilla chai latte and chocolate iced donut from Dunkin Donuts.