Don't leave a voicemail, seriously.

Since my uncle died, my cousin David and I have been trying to get my mom and aunt to move in together. There are many excellent reasons for that, such as the fact that my aunt has Lupus and some of her medication makes her forgetful which leads to things like her leaving the stove on over night. This battiness is balanced by my mother's OCD in that she goes around checking to make sure the appliances are off and the windows and doors are locked at least a couple of times every day/night. You see, this is a compatibility of insanity.

When my grandmother was clearly not long for this world and I stuck around for her to finally die (my flip attitude stems from the fact my grandmother was evil--when someone says "well, she loved you in her own way" you can be pretty sure that that "own way" was probably through evil or at the very least shoving people down stairs), my mom and aunt were suddenly looking at real estate and talking seriously about buying a place together. Now, that's not what David and I had in mind--we essentially wanted my aunt to rent her place out and move in with mom. (They live two doors down, remember this part.)

My grandfather has some kind of weird "issue" with leasing property. I think he had some bad experience with renters, but my aunt suspects he's just such a control freak that the idea of getting a handyman to take care of repairs on a rental property is off the table and the hassle of it all makes him disdain the idea of being a landlord. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter; it's probably that he he has Grumpy Old Man Syndrome. But anyway, my mom has internalized this belief that being a landlord is THE WORST IDEA EVER and subsequently will not listen to my well-reasoned explanations of capital growth and sustainable wealth. What's new, what do I know, meh! My aunt is starting to listen to me, though, because of the state of the economy and the fact with so many people foreclosed on there is a bigger renter pool--which is horrible and capitalizing on other people's suffering is never good, but one has to deal with reality as it's dealt.

Aaaaaaanyway, so just when I start to think maybe the old biddies are listening to me I start to notice a pattern in the properties they're looking at--hey're all farms.

GOOD GRIEF, way to be totally impractical and make my life more stressful (yes, this all about me, thanks for asking, sweetheart). You know what two sixty plus year old, city-dwelling women--one a obsessive compulsive workaholic with a bad heart and the other with Lupus and a history of recurring cancer need to do? Buy 20 acres of land in the middle of nowhere in an area under serviced by emergency transport! Way to knock it out of the park on reasoned, well thought out plans, guys!

This is only compounded (in my mind) by the fact that I hate nature. It's fine through a television screen or on a postcard, but I don't like nature to touch me. My aunt is even MORE of this opinion. I don't know what my mom's deal is with her back to the land attitude--I suspect this was a virus she caught in Israel in her youth--but she's always had some crackpot plan to retire on a farm. How did she trick my aunt into going along with this? I think my aunt is just humoring her, but she may be misplaying this hand because mom's serious enough that she's talking about getting rid of STUFF, which is dire indeed.

I need to call David (who is managing my other cousin's divorce by being the go-between with the soon to be ex-husband, I wonder if he's ready to trade jobs yet) before this gets too out of hand. We went to look at this place with 16 acres of land with nature trails in it yesterday. NATURE TRAILS, people. Just kill me now! I asked my aunt why she isn't working harder to get mom to see the light of how old Jewish ladies are supposed to get condos and track suits and play cards all day, and she claims she's planted the seed, but I ain't seein' it. Christ, if they buy a farm, guess who's going to be called at 2 am for llama emergencies.

This weekend: going through all my grandmother's stuff to give to charity/whatever the fuck we're going to do with it.

Mom: I'll go through mom's stuff.
Aunt: No, Kassie and I will do it. [my mom is the most broken up by my grandmother's death, probably because she's delusional]
Me: WHAT? Way to stab me in the back!
Mom: Ok, we can all go.
Me: Oh, even better! Sign me up!

Send valium.

I was going to try to be better about posting these sorts of mundane things, but as per usual, I'm a total spazz.

Here's what I made for dinner:

Grilled salmon, grilled asparagus, arancini, and sangria.

Three of those are pretty self-explanitory, but let me tell you about my ridiculous fried rice balls.

( Arancini and Sangria recipes, as made up by me )