She's back!

After YEARS of going without my wacky mother, she's BACK!

To give you a quick update on Naomi, and how she's doing.

She has admitted that she has a hearing problem, which was a big step for her.  She's yet to admit that she doesn't remember anything, but we're getting there.  She still doesn't ask us to repeat things, she just goes with what she thinks she heard.

She's moved!  Last month mum and my aunt Connie moved into an apartment and out of the house.  She just couldn't keep up with a house that size, and it was one step away from being on Hoarders.  My husband and I moved in and are in the process of giving it a little TLC, but may just walk away from it.  We're not sure yet.  Depends on a lot of things, including our sanity.

And of course, she's still crazy.  That's never going to change.  Ever. 

So, stay tuned, and if you have any questions or need some advice, send those to me at fenwaysmum@gmail.com and I'll get them over to her and up here!

Do Zombies Reproduce?

This is a question that has been floating around my group of friends for a few months now, especially since Skippy and I can't seem to agree on this.

I grew up in a household where not only did we watch "the Westerns" every weekend, but it was okay for me to see violence and ghost rape, but not the gratuitous boob shot in European vacation. Basically, if it served my mother for me to watch horror movies Saturday morning with her, then they really weren't that damaging to a small child after all. My mother has seen all horror movies at least once, and more than likely two or three times if it was by Hitchcock or Romero. Zombies, of course, being one of her favorite genres since she was born and raised in Western Pennsylvania.

When asked this week if she wanted to see 28 Weeks Later, she wondered which movie that one was, and I said the new zombie movie that takes place in England, you know, the sequel to the one with Cillian Murphy's wang hanging out. My mother being a zombie purest simply replied, no, no, that's a VIRUS, they aren't zombies.

The woman knows her stuff.

So, I decided to ask the expert herself about zombie nookie.

"Mom, gotta question for you."

"What?"

"Can zombies procreate?"

"Huh?"

"Can zombies procreate?"

"Well, I don't know, why?"

"No reason, just answer the question."

"I have no idea, I've never met a zombie. But they're dead. But then again in that Dawn of the Dead movie the girl had a zombie baby....but she was already pregnant. Are you asking me if they can get pregnant once they're zombies?"

"Yeah. Sure."

"Well, no, not unless you count some of my relatives. They're dead Lori."


So there you go. My mother the expert weighs in on the topic. It saddens me that she doesn't see the simplicity of zombies beyond them just being dead. I know I'll find someone to agree with me. I just know it.

Mama's got a brand new job

Which is to say she really doesn't have one at all.

I'm getting her set up.....AGAIN to check her email, but in the meantime, send your questions and pleas for advice to naomi.kilburn@gmail.com

I check that email if you're thinking of sending any death threats for me to that email address.

Mom IS working part time now, so you might see her tooling around at her previous employer once again. She's just working in the gift shop now though, not the same as before.

If you were wondering how she's doing, she's doing great now after a pretty bad fall in England busting up her shoulder and noggin pretty bad. This year she had a small stroke which made her slow down and realize that her medication really IS important to take. Thank goodness Uncle Sam (and her fellow taxpayers) are paying for it since she's not really working much on anything other than my nerves.

But, have no fear, she's fine. Nothing is wrong other than some short term memory loss, which after all is what we love about her.

Happy Thanksgiving

I asked my mother today what she was Thankful for, knowing that she wouldn't dissapoint. Here's her list:


The cuckoo clock she got for her retirement from Chris since I hate it.

Medicare.

Zoloft.

Senior citizen discounts at Kohls.

Flight benefits.

Her church.

Her family.

BBC America, HBO, and HGTV.

Harrison Ford movies.

Remote controls.

Running water. (I'm not sure, maybe she felt the need for a bath.)

Mince meat pie. (BLECH!)

And last, but certainly not least, telephones.


So there you go, a list of things from a woman who is surely showing early signs of Alzheimers. When I told her that she needed to get on Alzheimer medication today, she told me to go get chemo and radiation for the cancer I might get.

Thanksgiving: the holiday to tell your family that you hope they die a horrible death.

Groundhog Day?

Well, it's official. The old lady is retired and already driving me crazy. This week's antics included:

* Her retirement party, where she neglected to tell me where it was, and after telling her four or five times to keep her phone on her in case I called didn't answer the phone the four times that I called her. Then, didn't understand why I was upset by it...you can't stay mad at someone who just retired though. It's their speed pass to Alzheimers after all.

* We watched movies last night with my friend Anna. Anna has never been around my mother during one of her "moments." We watched Capote, the new Dawn of the Dead (which the horror queen loved, but Anna only liked it when I said the people were gonna do it, and the zombie baby showed up. Anna was not impressed with Zombies) and then we watched V for Vendetta.

We weren't even thirty seconds into the movie. We were still listening to Natalie say, "...remember, remember the fifth of November..." when I asked my mother if she knew what Guy Fawkes day was. She looked at me confused, and said, "Groundhog Day?" I almost mentioned that no one would make a movie about that, but then realized how dumb that statement would be. Anna commenced laughing so hard that she had tears in her eyes, and I was laughing so hard I couldn't even pull the Raider out. My mother sat there so confused that she decided to read her newspaper until we stopped. Then I busted out with, "remember remember the second of February..." and we lost our shit again. Still confused my mother was getting upset I hadn't explained it yet, so finally we broke it down for her.

She didn't in fact know what Guy Fawkes day was. She does now though. She liked it by the way, and is a fan of Alan Moore, even though there was a long discussion about the Watchmen and how she wouldn't like it but wants to read it anyway.

* Today, DirecTV came out to fix her box in her bedroom before replacing it all together. She calls me after to ask me where Mandy was adopted from. I said, Camp Wolgang? And I told her the website. She said the guy didn't have internet. Still confused, I asked her what guy, and she said the guy that fixed her cable box because he loved animals as much as I did, and she got his number so she could call him and tell him where to adopt a German Shepherd. I asked her if she was trying to set me up with the cable guy, and she said yes because he was tall.

Evidently we've reached the point in my life where a guy is good enough for me based merely on his stature. Doesn't matter how smart he is, how he treats women, etc. As long as he's tall, he'll do for me. Her daughter. Her ONLY daughter. Her baby girl.

I could end up at the bottom of a well pleading for my life and screaming for a dog named Precious so I don't get made into a human hair-piece, but my mom wouldn't suspect anything as long as the guy was tall.

That's it for this week, stay tuned as I'm sure the hilarity will ensue.

Defrost?

Last week, my mother was driving my car for a few days. Why, you ask, would I let my precious, precious hippie mobile to be put in the hands of a slow-driving lunatic? Well, her A/C went out, and I can't handle my poor mother burning up in the Texas heat. Ahh….I know, sometimes I have a heart.

The problem was that the air was cool, it just wasn't coming out of the vents. I had something similar happen in a previous car and knew that it probably meant the fan was out which was far less expensive than replacing or fixing the entire A/C unit. I've done that too, and it was more expensive than the car was worth.

So, the plan was she was to drop her car off on Thursday, I would come and get her, give her my car and on Saturday while I was in Houston my friend would come and pick her up to get the car when it was finished. Well, Thursday night, she drives her car home and has no problems and told me that it was fixed. I was amazed at the mechanics efficiency and left it at that. She offered up no other information, and I thought that was that.

Then when I came home from Houston on Sunday, she told me that she had to tell me what was wrong with her car. I was hesitant to ask since last time this happened she had backed into someone in the parking lot of my job costing her $2,000.

What followed has to be the funniest mom story ever.

The night before the horrible A/C going out incident of 2006 it had rained out, and mom's windows were fogging up so she had turned on the defroster things because she couldn't see.
I bet you know where this is going, don't you?

Well, she drove home, turned off the car, went inside and didn't think a thing of it.
Next day, got in car, started it, and the A/C wasn't working. Of course it wasn't working, it was on defrost.

She spent three days worrying and fretting about getting her A/C fixed, when all she had to do was actually turn it on. Thank God the mechanic didn't charge her for this, since he got more than enough payment in seeing the look on her face when she realized what she had done. I'm sure it will be a story that goes 'round for years. I know I'll certainly spread it around that long, and pass it on for generations.

So what if it's been four months?

What's it to you?

I love CNN, and when I go to sleep, I have it going on my TV, just in case I wake up to pee, and something has happened.

To you it might be crazy, but today it proved not such a crazy quirk after all.

I woke up around 4:00 to go potty, and saw "Holy crap, breaking news, the world is coming to an end..." banners on CNN. In reality, al-Zarqawi had been killed which in itself is big news. It is, the president says so.

But that's beside the point. This website is about my crazy mother, isn't it?

I talk to my mother every morning before she goes to work. Really, it's her talking, and me grunting as I'm still asleep and just talking to her until she stops yammering and I figure I will call her later to find out what she really wants to talk about. It's normally nothing, but she's my mother, right?

So this morning, in an excitement that normally only Christmas morning brings, she proclaimed to me that they finally had bombed Zimbabwe.

Yes, she said Zimbabwe.

Thankfully my CNN watching habits serve me well, and I knew what she was talking about so I was able to to play with her a bit.

I then asked, "the entire country?"

"No, just Zimbabwe."

"The country, they bombed the entire country?"

"No, just Zim-bab-we!"

Yes, I'm this evil.

"What did Zimbabwe ever do to us?"

"Oh...you know, the terrorism and stuff!"

"Zimbabwe? The country in Africa? I didn't think they were known for their terroristic activities!"

"No, no, no, the guy...the Bin Laden guy...you know, Zim something or other."

At this point I let the poor soul off the hook, and I told her that I knew what she was talking about.

So, contrary to popular Christopher theories that my mother just can't hear me because I have a whiny voice, so he says, she really can't hear anyone.

There's a dose for you. I know that there are letters piled up in my email from months ago, that have since tapered off since people think my mother was being aloof and didn't answer them, we've just had a busy couple of months.

In other Mumsy news, she is officially one step closer to retirement, and as promised she will be plugged in and ready to correspond with everyone and give her advice first hand. She now has a laptop that she's really unsure of how to use, but she's able to check her emails which impresses me beyond belief.