It's when I visit my mum that I realise where all of my neuroses and exceedingly anal behavioural traits have come from. The main example to point out here is that I arranged to meet my mother at 12, but know that she's always early (plus I want to buy a couple of things) so I get there at 10:20, and at 10:30 find I've missed a phone call from my mum, her voice slightly frantic because she hates talking on my voicemail, saying "are you here yet??"
So I go and meet my mother for our 12 o'clock lunch together, at 10:30.
Explain this to me.
Every time I meet up with mummy and bro I realise how very far removed I've become from my old, country girl self. Living on top of a mountain did nothing to aid the growth of my social skills, and as much of a misfit as I feel these days, I can't help but feel like the most cosmopolitan city-dweller on earth when we visit together.
Though I did catch up on the gossip of who's cutting down their trees, and the pagan rituals the nextdoor neighbour performs, and the feral cats that fight at night, and the backstabbing children of another neighbour who are trying to put him into a nursing home so that they can take his $1.5 million enormous property, and...
They should turn it into a soap opera.
The Lives of the Mountain Dwellers.
The SORDID Lives of the Mountain Dwellers. Or something equally exciting.
It's a shame though, because I think that living up there gives my mum some funny ideas. She's too far removed from everything, and watches too many reruns of
The Gilmore Girls and
Seachange. And she is tiny, and prim and proper, yet in the middle of lunch she blurted "those Gilmore Girls, what a pair of whorebags!" and made me choke on my sushi.
Gosh.
Woah! Check out how serious this post is!
P.S. I bought new jeans and peanut butter M&M's.