Odi et Amo ...constantly.

Geez…where to start?  I had started another post, but ran out of time to finish it (or even really write something substantive).  My relative who died has been (or is being, or will be…we’re not going to be told, ever) cremated, and his ashes given to the proverbial “old Army buddy” to scatter somewhere secret that they agreed upon ever ago.  He said many times that the thought of people crying and whining over him really pissed him off whether he was dead or not, so he saw to it that no one will have that opportunity.  :-)  He was a stubborn Bohunk in that respect.  His wife, who is a saint (and you’d have to be one to handle him!  :-) ), was asked to not go to the cremation (by him) and to go get on with her life.  

I know she loves him and will miss him; there is no question about that.  They were married when she was twenty-two and he twenty-six, and for fifty-two years she made house, bore children, prepared dinners, and loved him very much.  I should be so lucky.  And he took very good care of her both in life and after, so if it had to end—which it does, for all of us—I guess this was one preferable way.  Probably if he had his pick, it would have ended about four or five years ago.  So this was not bad, except for that personal-sense-of-loss thing and the suffering and discomfort he endured in-between.  

And my car will be ok.  Shortly.  Hitter’s insurance company accepted full responsibility for the damage (yay!), so it is out of Hitter’s hands.  My insurance company phoned me to take my statement (they recorded it over the phone), and then I talked with the adjuster (or whatever her title is) for a bit; we had a really nice conversation and at the end of it, she advised me to *not* phone back Hitter’s insurance, to let her phone them instead.  She rang me back about thirty minutes later, and told me that they had accepted full responsibility and would pay to have it un-hooptied, with me paying out nothing.  Woo-hoo!  You go, girl!  

And this was *after* Hitter had phoned me (in the middle of a class!) the day before to ask me how I intended to pay his deductible.  Ummm…yeah; I hung up on him.  I may get around to prettying up and posting what I’d written before later.  If I do, I’ll stick it as yesterday, or something (though Blogger seems to have taken away the date-changing feature).  Whatever.  If not, I’ll stick it wherever.  

Butsoanyway.

I am in trivia chat right now, and have accomplished damn close to everything I had to do this week.  I have even put child-proof clippy things on my kitchen and bathroom cabinet doors so that Squooshable can’t keep opening them and eating what is inside.  I just have to finish an exercise (that I am dreading!) for one class, keep on keeping on in another, and ready a presentation for MMM.  Argh.  :-)  

Speaking of Squooshable, he is adorable.  He has discovered mirrors.  In the past week or so, I have caught him on my bathroom counter, atop my dresser, and on the top of this bench in my foyer, gazing into the mirror as he prances back and forth.  You can almost *hear* him saying, “Who’s the pretty cat?  Me!  I’m such a pretty cat!”  I swear—it reminds me of that old song that I can’t remember the name of, but it has the chorus, “I am a glamour boy!”  What was it…The Glamour Boys?  I have no idea, ‘cos at the time it was completely not my style of music.  But now that I own a Glamour Squoosh, well…I wish I’d paid better attention, so I could sing it to him.  :-)  

Speaking of old songs, I have had another song stuck in my head that I cannot identify again—for two days.  Argh.  And I’ll never find it, ‘cos the only part of the lyrics I know is “Sweetheart”, in the chorus, and they repeat it tons of times.  Bwaah!  The one I was ruminating before this one I’d sworn to hunt down until my death, but it plooped back out of my head already, and I cannot recall any of it now.  Sometimes I annoy the hell out of myself; I will hear a song being piped in somewhere subconsciously, not be aware that I heard it, and then have it stuck in my head for a few days.  Or I will hear a note or three that make me think of some obscure song that I never really listened to in the first place, and then whatever pieces of the song I have floating around in my subconscious annoy me for days.  

Butsoanyway.

Mom’s been gone since…I don’t remember when; I think it has been almost a week at this point.  I quit phoning her the day I was hit, after I phoned her to see if she’d heard about the death and to whine at her about my accident (she’s a mommy; that’s what she’s for, right?), and she yelled at me for bothering her ‘cos her roll was coming up.  Sigh.  No, I am not kidding.

Oh, wait—it gets better.

So Meg left for her tournament Thursday afternoon.  This one I think is WPT.  Her plan is to play in something that I forgot what it is, and then play in the ladies’ tourney, which I personally think is a mistake.  Women play very differently from the way men do (usually), and at the lower levels of competence they are (IMHO) very random in their play, and do not attend to the betting the way that they should (and no, I am not just saying that because they seem to ignore my bluffs—I see them do it to everyone; they are just simply ignoring the implications of the bets that are being made in many cases—I have made some money off that style of play when I *wasn’t* bluffing, and felt fairly guilty about it afterwards).  Both Meg and I (we have both been told) play more like men (though I am nowhere near as good as Meg is; I have just gotten very lucky a few times whereas Meg focuses on tournaments when she is there anymore).  I generally do not like playing with women for those reasons (no, I am not being sexist; try sitting down at a table with $200 or more and two or three women—you will see what I mean).  Meg has someone covering her classes until she gets back, but since they are all Tuesday/Thursday classes, she’s not missing much.  She told them she was going to a conference.  

::cough, cough:: pathetic addict.  Butsoanyway.

Well, when I phoned Mom she was playing craps.  She only plays craps and slots, and the ONLY reason she plays craps is ‘cos she likes to roll.  Sigh.  I shudder to think of what she’s been up to all off on her lonesome.  

Some of which I am getting to, eventually.  

So Mummers fussed at me, and then told me her sister had already rung her and told her.  Then I tried to tell her about my accident, and she said she didn’t have time to talk to me and hung up.  I can *feel* the love, I tell you.

Mom phoned me back the next day, but I had my cell off and so she left a message all about how she loves me but she’d love me more if I didn’t phone her when she’s about to roll.  

Okay, she didn’t *actually* say that.  But it was implied.  

So of course I told Meg about all this, and Meg was positively *cringing* over what she was going to fly over and find.  So today I come home and check my email; Meg’s sent an email telling me that she’s holding her virtual office hours (where she’s available to students via email and chat) in the Gold Strike ‘cos they’ve just hooked up wireless from when we were there last.  I *wanted* to just copy-and-paste the email ‘cos it had me on the floor, but that might be unwise; I’ll just recap it.  The subject line reads, “Holding v. office hours in a casino in-between poker hands”, and the first line of the body is, “No, it is not pathetic.”

HAHAHAHA!  Ummm…yes, it is.  :-)

Meg reports that Mom was playing craps next to TJ Cloutier.  No, I am not kidding.  And no; it is doubtful that Mummers has any idea who that is.  Probably she’s already fussed at him several times over the past few days for crowding her, coming up to the table and butting her out of her roll, or asking her to mute her god damned cell.  Sigh.  Yeah…she’s civil like that.  

And Hoyt Corkins and Scotty Nguyen are still in the tourney.  In case you cared.  :-)  Meg’s a big fan of Scotty’s, so much so that when she was in Vegas she wouldn’t even talk to him, even though she was standing right next to him for a really long time at one point.  Pathetic chicken addict.

And I say that with love…rilly.

  But the good news is that Mom appears to have actually been doing well.  In a financial sense, I mean.  Health-wise, she’s probably in the toilet about now.  When left to her own devices, her blood sugar ranges anywhere from 45 to 500, often within the span of a few hours.  And no, I am not exaggerating; when Mom was diagnosed with diabetes, her blood sugar was over 700.  No, I did not mis-type.  Seven HUNDRED.  She has built up an amazing tolerance for highs and lows.  And she will either go without eating, or eat fried things and crap like that, ‘cos she’s “only having just a little bit” and that’s okay, ‘cos in her mind thin = healthy, and so therefore she’s healthy, QED.   Sigh.  Grr.  Argh.  Bwaah!

And there are a few facets of my mommy which make this extremely ironic, but I am iffy about going into them here ‘cos they’re known by people who know me, so I’ll leave them off for now, however much it may make the comedic aspects suffer.  :-)  

Psychomommy.

What’s *really* funny is that for some reason, every casino Mom has ever gone to simply loves her to death.  *I* can play for practically three days straight in their poker room, and they send me Not Crap.  At least eight times out of ten, *I* have to ask for comps.  Not Mummers.  That is why she went up early, Meg informed me—she had howevermany free days sent to her in the mail from Gold Strike or Horseshoe (they are basically joined together in Tunica), and those days overlapped somewhat with when Meg was going to be there, so she accepted them and left.

And Mom *constantly* gets mail from all these casinos (both regular and email), offering her scads of free nights, free shows, free dinners, discounts…you name it.  They phone her.  They remember her on her birthday.  When she does go, they are offering her comps right and left; one time when she went with us (year before last, maybe?), I interrupted her on one of those god damned slot machines (can you say “lab rat”, boys and girls?) to see if she wanted to get something to eat with me; she did, and as she picks up to leave, some SlotPerson comes over and hands her a chit for a meal.  As we’re walking away, she hands it to me; I tell her to use it herself, and she explains that she already has two others that other SlotPerson(s) had given her.  I asked her if it was the same guy, wondering if he had like, some quota to hand out before he could go on break or something, and she said that the first person she wasn’t sure on, ‘cos she was playing and didn’t want to stop to look at them, but the second one she is sure was from someone different, ‘cos she asked them to hold her machine when she went to the bathroom.  

Oh, whatever.

Now contrast that with me, or even Meg.  One of the tournaments we were at, they even thought we were dealers and gave us nothing the entire time.  Even when we *asked*, we were told we had to ask So-And-So (who it turned out was in charge of taking care of the dealers that were in from Elsewhere who knew that we *weren’t* dealers, but we didn’t know what he did until about two days before we left), and he kept telling us that he couldn’t give us anything, so we finally quit asking.  I found out everyone thought we were dealers when one of the dealers was trying to pick me up in the elevator as I went back to my room and started asking me REALLY weird questions (I thought at the time), like where I worked and stuff (and I was thinking, “Goodness…gold-dig much, do we?” lol…seriously, though; I don’t remember what-all he asked, but I honestly figured he either thought I was massively rich, or a hooker) until I finally put the brakes on the conversation and flat-out asked him what in the hell was going on here.  In fairness, early the next morning (or it might have been eight at night; it’s hard to tell in places like that) I went down and fussed; they comped the majority of our stay, discounted the rest, and gave us other things (left up to Meg, she would have said nothing and just grumped about it to me…sigh), and the rest of the stay was normal-er (all like, two days of it…hmmph).  But my point is that generally Meg and I have to ask.  Mom not only doesn’t have to ask, but she gets actively pursued.  I don’t get it.

Maybe when I am old and annoying they’ll want me there all the time, too.  :-)