It seems Chewbacca fucked a succulent plant and this was the result…

This past weekend was just full of shit that, if I could go back and do it again, I’d change everything.

Fridays are the days my mother comes to visit. Yeah, I don’t see her often. Most of the time she’s either playing with Baxter or checking her watch to see if she’s spent the obligatory amount of time here. I once told her I felt as if she didn’t enjoy coming to see me and she told me if she didn’t, she wouldn’t come up. Not sure that’s relevant… My sister has told her she’s going to put her in a home when that time comes. My mother knows I’m the jackass who would take care of her. She’s just setting this in stone, really.

However, she didn’t come alone this time. Her asshole boyfriend came along to see Baxter (he loves the dogs). I hadn’t seen or spoken to him since that incident where he flipped shit when my mother asked if he could print out a script for me to get important blood work done because I don’t have a working printer. Yes, he seriously flipped out about that…

What a fun afternoon that was… I put on that mask, you know, the happy one, with super glue…

When I was younger and still living at home, I used to rebel and talk back to him because, well, he’s a fucking asshole. Anyone who has every met him tells me he’s an asshole (as if I didn’t know it). After 35 years of knowing this man, I’ve learned to pick and choose my battles with him. Although there are some worth fighting and I don’t for my mother’s sake. She takes his verbal and emotional abuse and makes excuses for his bad behavior. I do not… I find other ways to get even. Not that I didn’t want to boot him out the one year when they came over for Thanksgiving. He said something so offensive and asinine that I almost came out of the kitchen to point at the door and yell, “Get the fuck out of my house!” I didn’t; but I wanted to. So Friday I kept conversation light to avoid him saying something stupid like usual. If we had it out now, he’d forbid my mother to see me. I don’t want her sneaking around to visit me. And yes, he’s that much of a dick that he would do that to her. It’s bullshit…

Saturday was national “get drunk and blow shit up” day, better known as July 4th. That’s what it’s really about anymore, not celebrating the US’s independence from Britain. It’s just an excuse for picnics, getting drunk and blowing shit up… Which, I might add, happens in my small hood. I live in a neighborhood of row homes with a street so narrow you can barely fit two cars side by side and one where people are parked on the sides of the road. The nice part is I get a free show by stepping out front and watching people set shit off in the middle of the road. It’s amazing none of the houses have caught fire in all these years… The down side is that quarter and half sticks are often set off (which make me jump) and Baxter tired himself out barking at the booms and crackles. It was his first year for this, so he barked at everything and literally wore himself out from barking.

Sunday, I realized I hadn’t been out of my house in a week, so I decided to check out this indoor flea market I was told about. It’s a half hour drive to get there, in the middle of bumble fuck. Honestly, I wasn’t impressed… I made 2 finds: a fox clock for my niece for Christmas and 2 French onion soup bowls (with handle and lid) from the 70s that I’ll use for decoration. It was indoors, very small and very hot (no air conditioning). When I left, I thought I may as well go to the most popular one that’s close to me as it was just up to road. I made some great finds! I got a Michael Kor knock-off purse for $20! I know it’s a knock-off, but it was such an attractive purse (one of my weaknesses) so I got it. I bought some hippie jewelry, some candy from a store owner who does flea markets and carnivals, found some great LPs, got pickles from the local famous pickle guy and bought patchouli scented hemp soap where I got free samples of CBD gummy bears.

However, there is a downside to my having done this…

It was hot… I’m talking feeling like you were in the bowel of hell hot… It was 95 degrees (F) and incredibly humid. I also went around 12:30PM, so during the hottest part of the day. Not a brilliant idea. By the time I got back to the car, I was breathing hard like I’d just run the marathon twice in a row. I knew it wasn’t just my being out of shape… Heat and humidity just exacerbates heart issues. Isn’t ischemia fun?! I actually considered going to the emergency room, sure I was beginning to get heat stroke. Instead, I pounded down the water I bought and sat in the air conditioning of the car until I cooled off a bit and felt good enough to drive home. When I got back into town, I stopped at Dunkin Doughnuts for an iced coffee to help cool me down further. It actually took several hours until I was completely cooled and that red flush in my cheeks was gone. Lesson learned (I hope): don’t go to an outdoor flea market when it’s hotter than hell.

The only good thing was those CBD gummies helped a lot. Normally I would have been freaking out and thinking I was going to die, but I was pretty relaxed and mellow.

Actually, I’ve been using the CBD oil someone had given me. Odd stuff… It’s like swallowing a mouth full of vegetable oil that was infused with a peppermint and pot taste. It’s actually pretty gross and I spend most of the time after burping up this hideous taste. However, I have to admit, it does keep me mellow, or mellow enough to make it through my day, anyway. Though I must say, I’m still kind of missing the point of it. I mean, yeah it relaxes you, but I don’t see the point of using this stuff if you’re not getting the high from it. I’m not promoting being a pot-head (like I was in high school). All I’m saying is that the THC in marijuana was what made me feel happy. No antidepressant has ever managed to do that. And the CBD in it helps me stay chill. So the oil helps my anxiety and little else. Better than nothing, I guess.

It’s been difficult to be happy lately. Honestly, I feel like I’m in this dark pit of despair most days…

I know they told me it’s nothing to get anxious about, but I’m seriously worried about my health. And no offense, but if you work in the medical field, you should know that telling someone that a health issue isn’t something they should get anxious about when you know the person suffers massive anxiety isn’t going to help. Seriously, that woman obviously doesn’t understand how anxiety works… Actually, I think her telling me that gave me more anxiety. Am I right, fellow sufferers?

Now, here’s the corker… She told me little except what tests they were going to perform on my ticker… Yesterday, I get this email about an upcoming appointment and had to go onto this “my chart” site for that particular hospital group. That’s when I found out that, apparently, there were after notes from my cardiologist appointment. Yet another diet change! And quit smoking, no more coffee (not even decaf because it has a little caffeine)… First of all, no… I’ll give up my vices when I know I have to. Second, why the fuck can’t you tell me this shit directly?! No, I have to go into that stupid site to find out what the fuck to do…

And then there’s the Morticia saga…

I’ve actually been brushing her off more lately. Sadly, I’m running out of lame excuses. I mean, I can tell her I’m in a mood and don’t want to talk, but that doesn’t compute, so lame excuses it is. I don’t have a choice… One night she’s blubbering to me how Gomez is so unsympathetic as to what she’s going through and the next day she’s telling me she had it out with him and says she thinks he may have finally gotten it through his thick skull. Seriously?! I’m sorry, but she’s the world’s biggest fool. She says the sam thing every time and nothing ever changes. Just this morning she was bitching about him to me. I should have told her that, obviously, she was wrong and is wrong every time, point out how often this pattern repeats (tried that once, she always claims she’s never said that before). It’s really a moot point, though…

Instead, I decided to go all psychological on her this morning… Which probably means she won’t call me the rest of the day because I did.

One of her biggest bitches and the thing she cries about most is that Gomez is always putting her down, making her feel inferior, making her feel guilty. Then she claims he’s changed, he wasn’t always like this.

Now, one nice thing about Morticia is that she literally has no analytic thought process whatsoever, which makes it incredibly easy to do mind of like an Inception thing. I plant the idea in her head and let it fester until she reaches the conclusion on her own… hopefully… Yes, technically I’m manipulating her, but it’s what’s best for me so she shuts the fuck up about how poorly Gomez treats her.

This morning, I planted a rather interesting idea to fester…

She was telling me Gomez keeps telling her she’s changed and insists that he’s the one who has changed. Mind you, the Gomez she thought he was never existed. I’ve told her that before, but it never stuck. So this morning, I gave her the Inception treatment…

I suggested that he was correct and that she was, in fact, the one who changed. She insisted no, it was definitely Gomez who had changed. This was where I became the master of manipulation… I said, “Think about this… Maybe it really is you who have changed… And the way you’ve changed is that you’re finally able to see through Gomez and see him for what he truly is and aren’t turning a blind eye to his bad behaviors anymore. Maybe they were there all along and you’re just now starting to wake up and see them. So maybe you are the one who’s changed, but it’s a change for the better.” She got very quiet after that… I know she’s thinking about it as I type this. She’ll think about that all day… Will it work? Who knows…

That’s the only advantage of me being in therapy most of my life…

The first psychiatrist I saw was this guy who looked like he was about 100 years older than Moses… He was a very odd man… He said little and had a face made of stone. The ultimate poker face, if you will. It was unsettling…

During one session, I mentioned that, for a brief time in high school, I considered becoming a psychiatrist. I really did… It was when I took the sociology and psychology classes. Anyway, he had asked me why I changed my mind and never pursued it. I looked him right in the face and told him, “I didn’t think I’d be good at it… Someone would come in my office, saying, ‘Doc! Doc! I want to kill myself!’ and I’d point and say, ‘There’s the window…'” And this stone-faced man with resting poker face… I saw the corners of his mouth turn up slightly and thought, holy shit, he’s going to break his face! Hahahaa… Seriously, though, I didn’t think a crazy person helping crazy people would pan out well. Besides, art has always been and will always be my first love.

Still… I really need to learn to stop stressing, stop being anxious and find that inner peace I’m searching for…

At one point, I thought I was close. I was happy, care-free (for the most part) and living in that hippie-dippy way that seems to suit me well. I was really finding myself and finding that inner peace… Then all this shit came up with my health and I began to lose sight of things…

My uncle is a rather strange guy… I just got a letter from him yesterday and he told me again to try yoga. The trouble is, my knees won’t do a lot of the poses. They screamed at me all day yesterday because I’d been walking the day before and because it stormed later in the day. He also tells me to meditate which is not easy to do. Sometimes the hood is loud. And Baxter is like having a toddler around (he tried to eat a dime yesterday). And Morticia calls a million times a day. When am I supposed to find peaceful time?! But perhaps he’s right and I need to do these things for myself… Well… when my knees stop screaming at me, anyway…