The flaky momma...a true life story.

My trips home are normally wonderful.
I always enjoy seeing everyone and it's great to be able to spend time with my family.
But occasionally, I find myself wanting to jump in the car and drive like a bat out of hell to get AWAY from it....
This mostly happens because of my mother.



My mother might be summed up in one five letter word....flake.(You thought I was going to say bitch, didn't you?)
Yep...flake definitely describes her better than bitch (although she can wear that coat like it was tailor made for her too.)

I'm going to have to go back a bit to really explain this in the best way possible.

From the moment of my first memory,it involves something faddish.
Whenever there is a new fad, it becomes my mother's favorite thing in the whole wide world.
I have lived through her hippy stage, disco stage, big 80's hair stage...well...you get the picture.

I lived, breathed and experienced everything vicariously through my mother....me, the unwilling participant most of the time.I equate it to the way a ball and chain feel once they've been clamped onto a prisoner...

My brother, thank god, went to live with my grandparents when he was 7 years old. He spent most of his time there anyway, so he just told them one day he didn't want to go home...so I was the sole prisoner.

Anyway....
I was a love child of the 60's,dressed in the psychedelic fabrics with fringes and beads. I could have choked to death in my crib (which as also adorned with the same fabrics but decorated with a bead curtain).
I was left to run outside, naked if I wanted (and you wondered where I developed a love for that kind of thing), with my hair bleached white and my skin browner than a coconut.
She filled my baby bottle with coke though, which would have clued me if I had the ability to comprehend it at that very young age, that it was just a fad for her...a phase. If she'd have been serious about the hippy thing, she'd have have been filling my bottle with goats milk or carrot juice or something.

We then moved into the peace activist's stage of the early 70's. While protesting the Vietnam war, she would regularly head to the local base to party and pick up a few things...(GI's mostly). She'd party with them and the smell of marijuana would fill the house. I'd sit out on the porch and read comic books or color in my coloring books because I didn't like the smell. I can still recall the fuzzy orange rug in the middle of our living room with a giant peace sign hanging above our pink and orange sofa. The peace sign was tie-dyed.
No wonder I needed glasses in second grade. The bright colors blinded me...

As I got older, she discovered disco and the hippy, peace loving woman disappeared. She chopped off her long hair and got a perm. She starved herself to an unhealthy thinness and looked like a dust mop...or at least that's what I though.
Gold lame'tube tops and designer jeans with heels and that freakin big hair. She'd flounce into the house and then flit out again...on her way to party all night.


"A shot of Flaky from behind, dancing at the disco."

How awesome is my paint shop art? HAHAHA!

I think she forgot she had a kid during that time. I vaguely remember her looking at me like "who the hell are you?" one night when she came home from work to change before going out.
So I spent the latter 70's a disco diva's house maid, more or less.

And finally in the 80's before she kicked me out, I was the caretaker of a recovering disco diva/slash big hair party girl.
I'm not feeling the need to go into that phase today, but let's say she was at the top of her flakiness....

When I was a kid, I used to sing "She'll be coming around the mountain when she comes" but I had made up my own lyrics to it.
I was creative like that, even from an early age...

She'll be coming home, when she comes.
She'll be coming home, when she comes.
She'll be racing like wild horses, running from all her divorces, she'll be coming home, when she comes.

She'll be bringing home lots of boyfriends, when she comes.
She'll be bringing home lots of boyfriends, when she comes.
She'll be bringing home mostly losers, who'll turn out to be abusers...She'll be bringing home lots of boyfriends, when she comes.

And I won't go out to meet her when she comes.
And I won't go out to meet her when she comes.
I'll be invisible and silent,so no one will get violent, no..I won't go out to meet her when she comes.

Not very funny I guess, but I was a weird kid. I had strange ways of coping with things.

In spite of all her different looks, she's always reminded me of Eunice from the Carol Burnett show.
You know...the flaky, self-centered thing.
The first time I saw Eunice in action, I thought to myself..."THAT is her, just toned down a bit...."


"IT WAS A SEVEN!"

Yep...that pretty much nails it...Flaky in the flesh.

So anyway, EVERY year since I can remember, my mother has thrown herself a birthday party. And it's always needed to be a big deal for her. Hell...her birthdays now are a bigger deal than mine were when I was a kid.
The year she turned 60, we planned a party for her, complete with signs and presents and cake. But because we were also celebrating the 4th of July and everyone didn't sit around and watch her open all her presents, she insisted that no one had given her a birthday party.


"I didn't GET a birthday party for my 60th birthday....*pouts*"

PLEEEASSSSE....How freaking old are you????
The degree to which it annoys me is beyond comprehension.
Seriously...

So this year, once again, we were forced to sit around and watch a grown 60ish woman, open her presents and make a big deal over herself....AGAIN!


"MAMA! Look what I got from Jer! (Which we all know is really Jerry) Isn't it the MOST beautiful thing? I LOVE IT!"

And believe me when I say this is the same thing she tells everyone about the gifts she gets from them...(except me of course...)
She sits in the center of the room and goes on and on about what everyone got her (except me..we've been over this before)and we all suffer through it. My brother could literally wrap up a dog turd and it would be the "BEST THING EVER!". I could give her diamonds and she'd glance at them and then make big over everything else. Thankfully I'm not concerned about it or I'd get my feelings hurt all the time. It does bother my brother though and I've told him, "Don't sweat it. It's not your fault she's a flake."
My brother and I are very close. We tolerate Flaky's actions because Nana kisses Flaky's ass and it's just easier to do it than get Nana all upset.

Flaky has this annoying habit of shortening people's names. For example, if your name is Bruce, you'd still be Bruce, but if it's Delbert, you'd be Del.
Iris would be Iris but Shelly would be Shel.
I don't fucking know how she makes the decision who gets a shortened name and who doesn't but it's enough to make me want to gouge my eyes out every single time she does it.

This post probably seems depressing and petty but you know, I needed to get it off my chest.
The woman makes me crazy sometimes.
Most days I deal with it just fine, but when I spend a couple weeks with her, it pokes and prods at my insides until I just have to get it off my chest....
After I do, it's back to my regular life.

Watch the Eunice video...it's funny. Of course I've always loved Carol Burnett so that makes it funny anyway...but it's even more so because it's a living, breathing example of Flaky...

Flaky...a true story and what will help sell my autobiography someday...

Sorry this is late today but my computer got a nasty virus earlier in the day and after hours of work and a system restore, it seems to be fixed.

THANK GOD!!!