Shady Pines: A Screed on Food

So the very same weekend as "Who Flung Poo," Audrey ends up in the hospital too, this time with YET ANOTHER raging cellulitis infection. She manages to call me and leave a voicemail about my brother, and never mentioned anything about HER being in the hospital--not that it matters to me really. She has gone WEEKS without calling me, and there she is, calling me to convey that my brother was in the hospital, and I have no doubt she wanted to gossip about what got him there. I wasn't having any of that, and let the call go to voicemail. She called again this past weekend, and again, I let it go to voicemail, as her birthday is on 3/1, and there is no way in hell I am going to call her twice in less than five days. Fuck that noise.

Before I get ahead of myself, here is a photo of what her dinner on Sunday was, at Shady Pines. Now mind you, she is on "self pay," and we're still waiting for the sale of her house to go through. 

The above is a photo of what you get served for dinner at a nursing home. Mom is on self-pay to the tune of $11,000 (and as of current writing, she has racked up close to $55-66,000, which is more than half of the value of her house). I have absolutely no doubt that they have it on file that mom is a diabetic who has diverticulitis. Look at that "welfare dog," plus TWO different forms of cabbage. 

Now I'm not a tube steak snob. I've been known to have a hotdog (on an actual hot dog bun!) and some cole slaw for dinner; however, if I paid someone $11,000 a MONTH for my room and board (et al), I'd expect more than this. And yet, there's a bit of irony, knowing how mom worked for 25 years in the kitchen of a nursing home--oh those poor souls! As if they didn't have enough troubles, landing them in a nursing home, but to eat mom's cooking on top of that? Surely it's one of the inner rings of Dante's hell.

Food has always been a continual theme in mom's life--food controlled her, and by extension, she controlled us with food. 

Years ago, I worked with a friend whose mom was from Ireland, and she boiled everything. She and I would go toe-to-toe, story by story, inventorying particular dishes each of our moms made that we were forced to choke back. I don't remember which of my mom's particular dishes won that contest, whether it was her grease-laden Meatball Stroganoff or her Bluefish Marinara. I am starting to dry heave a bit just thinking about this.

Then there's the matter of mom's Killer Meatloaf, which my sister and I are CONVINCED mom never actually cooked, but instead, she'd mix up the meatloaf and leave it out on the counter, unrefrigerated, until the sad, murky meat-slab turned brown and serve it up to us. It IS plausible, especially given how every time we'd eat her meatloaf, we'd all get sick. Every last one of the 5 of us, 6 if you include this one friend who was like a stray cat at dinner time, every last one of us sick, with a solitary toilet for us to all compete. TMI: Trust me. Nearly everything can be used as a toilet if you are desperate enough. 

Then there's the matter of birthdays, and how she'd use food to control the tone of our "special day." And this isn't something unique to me, everyone has a story. Every year for nearly 30 years, mom would make a German Chocolate Cake for my brother as she got it in her head that was his favorite--no dice, his favorite is an Italian rum cake!

The very last birthday I decided to give her access to me was the year I turned 31. Before the visit, she asked what I wanted for my birthday dinner and birthday cake. "Sirloin salad and red velvet cake" was my reply. This was the first and last of my birthdays where the Maharajah attended. And I guess mom changed the menu up thinking "he's Indian, Indians like HOT food" and she made roasted chicken parts and then promptly dumped an entire jar of Italian style pickled peppers on top (the dish was damn near inedible). And my birthday cake? Entenmann's crumb. And in keeping with her lack of Give a Fuck, she didn't even invest in a small box of birthday candles, and instead, jammed a 12 inch taper candle in the cake. The whole thing was so regrettable.

The only thing that could even come close to the birthday meal fuckery is mom's birthday gift bestowment. This was done so regularly, it almost is a trademark: she'd wait until the last possible moment to run to the supermarket or pharmacy and buy the first random piece of crap she could. She would hand the gift recipient the bag from the supermarket or pharmacy--and inside it would be: an unsigned birthday card, a roll of tape, a new Bic pen, a packet of gift wrap, and the shitty gift, unwrapped. She couldn't give a shit enough to wrap the gift or sign the card.  

The last birthday gift she ever got me was when I was 30 and was in the throes of leaving my exhusband. She went to the supermarket and bought some random clown marionette, making some claim that I should hang it above my bed, given the bed is probably seeing a lot of action with all the CLOWNS I date.

March 1st is her birthday. And I will get her the same thing I get her every year: a box of assorted sugar free chocolates. On the surface at least, it looks like a nice gift. My gift is passive-aggressive as all fuck, given mom has ZERO impulse control, and will eat the entire box pretty much all in ONE GO, shoveling each piece into her gaping maw before the previous piece is done being chewed or swallowed. She does this without fail, without exception, despite the box having a warning on it that "excess consumption causes diarrhea." 

IMHO, a "thank you" or other acknowledgment is the gift you give in return when someone does something nice for you. She "thanks" me the next day, in the form of a voicemail where she snarls into the phone about how my gift made her so sick/shit her pants--never once thinking that the chocolate didn't make her sick, but her LACK OF CONTROL was what made her sick. But whatever. 

So, to know the consistent diet of regrettable foods she'd serve us, and now know she's a captive audience at Shady Pines and they are serving HER regrettable food, it is karma in action, imho.

I have gone most of my life with the awareness that, in all probability, I wasn't going to get an inheritance, when I cast my gaze upon that welfare dog with the double dose of cabbage, I cannot help but think for at least a petty hot second, "that's where my inheritance is being spent." On a tiny, tiny level, I did have a hope of a consolation prize for the assortment of abuse and fuckery I received from my mother.