Heartless

I am truly heartless. I got a call from my 21 year old niece, asking me what I had done to her grandmother ( yep, mother is up to her tricks again!) Well, I hadn't had a note worthy disagreement with mother, except...she did come by a couple of days ago to ask me to go on the internet and pay an overdue bill for her. I said sure, so she handed me her discover card, and a bill. Problem was it was her Discover bill!! Apparently she wasn't buying my explanation that you can not pay your credit card bill using the said credit card. She got a little frustrated BECAUSE said she, "You have done this for me before! Why are you not going to do it now?"
It is laughable, isn't it. That I sit here in my chaotic child infested, dog run, staring wild eyed at a semi NUT, thinking if I get upset, she'll start crying, if I laugh, she'll get angry, if I walk away, she'll follow. But I chose the middle ground. I smiled patiently and said, "Mother, write a check for it. Send it late, it's OK. LOOK! I have a stamp right here!" The little bit of enthusiasm at the end seemed to do the trick, and she wrote her check, and used the little stamp, and was on her merry, fuzzy way. APPARENTLY, that was just my take, since she proceeded home to call my sister (350 miles away) and weep over my calloused nature, and how I'd hurt her feelings. Wait, I'm betting she used the "she cut me to the core" comment, (it comes with a hand on the chest and a side back tilt of the head, eyes closed of course. She does that so well you can almost see blood dripping from under her hand down the front of her duster. (By the way, she wears one, ugly with snaps down the front... but I NEVER see her dust.)

So anyway, I tell my niece that perhaps I missed something and that I'd find out and call her back. Not mentioning how cowardly of my sister not to have called me herself. So, I called mom, on the pretense of inviting her to my youngest child's first reconciliation. For those non catholics, that is the first time you get to confess all of your sins to a priest. Yessssssir...Big stuff. She was delighted (as I knew she would be) and wrote it down on her St. Anthony's pocket calendar. Then she asked me for directions to the local French restaurant, and I looked it up for her, and told her how to get there. And well, it was just a pleasant little chat. Ok, talk to you later!

I called my niece back the moment I hung up. "Looks like the joke is on Sissy!!!" I say, "Mom doesn't even remember she's mad at me!! Nah nana nana nah!" Of course, now I get to take my mother to a reconciliation Event, and listen to her tell me how special it all is, for the gazillionth time. So why exactly I'm doing the booty dance, I can't say. Someday. Someday she's going to find out that I'm really a Quaker, and then I don't even know what kind of catholic mother guilt she's going to broadside me with. I'm sure she knows all about self flagellation. Shiver...