MomTracker

[featherynscale]

Time of call: 33 minutes, 17 seconds.
Questions about love life: 7*.
New tactics introduced: "Do your friends ever try to set you up with anybody?" "Do your roommates work with anybody you'd want to date?"
Pleas for grandchildren: 1.
Response to denial re grandchildren: "Oh, everybody says that until they find Mr. Right."
Implications that I'm wasting my life: 3.
Questions about job: 0**.

* - Record High.
** - Record Low.

Comments

Oh, honey.

[saffronhare.livejournal.com]

If I ever do that to my children, will you pleasepleaseplease bash me about the head?

Re: Oh, honey.

[kittenpants.livejournal.com]

AAAHHH!!! FRANKENBUNNY!

[kittenpants.livejournal.com]

Thwackity Jesus.

Damn. That reminds me. I should call my mom.

I'd better check my bank account first to see how much I can pay her on the don payment loan. My "Mom Tracker" scorecard is mostly financial inquiries and conspiracy theories.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

No reason why I should have all the fun today.

The differences between my mom scorecard and yours may be regional differences. In the South, it's impolite to ask about money, and in any case, the accepted path to financial stability for a woman is to marry well, so they may actually be the same inquiries, just in different languages. A fair proportion of Mom's instruction to me on dating has to do with asking whether the gentleman in question has a house, a car, and a steady job, after all.

About the conspiracy theories though, no. If there are any of those in my conversations with Mom, they come from my end.

[kittenpants.livejournal.com]

Left messages on her answering machine and voicemail. At least, I hope I did. She uses the pre-packaged robot-like messages with no identifiable information, so THEY can't track her down. She also changes her phone number periodically to keep off of THEIR data records.

THEY being any combination of the following: telemarketers, the FBI, ex-husbands, her institutionalized mother, lawyers, her children, and tax auditors. Because as soon as THEY get confirmation of her phone number THEY will all fly to her house in black helicopters, take away all her money, rape her, seduce her current lover away from her, and install viruses on her computer so she can't play solitaire anymore.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

She's a special kind of person, your mother.

[kittenpants.livejournal.com]

So's yours. 33 minutes. Damn. Does she even bother with the southern facade of the oh-so-casual inquiry, or is this custom optional for blood-relatives?

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

She typically begins with casual inquiry and moves from there. By the time it moves from dating to grandchildren, the masks are off and the talons are out, though.

I told her if she wanted grandchildren, I was afraid she was going to have to adopt another child. This was apparently offensive in some way.

Re: dating, I told her that everyone I was interested in already belonged to someone else, which seemed both accurate and diplomatic, but was also apparently offensive in some way.

Ah well. Disappointment to the family, I am.

It's all relative.

[saffronhare.livejournal.com]

Let's see, an average call with my mother lately (please note that my mother calls me at least 3 times/week because I am her Favorite right now):

~ lasts approximately 17 minutes (with "well, I should probably let you get back to work now" spoken at least 3 times)
~ includes a summary of 2 or more doctor's appointments and medical conditions (hers and/or my father's)
~ informs me of a relative who is ill or dying or on display at a wake tonight
~ shares a countdown of how many days until she's visiting (15 and counting), and a confirmation that 1) I know she's renting a car so I don't have to pick her up and 2) I'm taking Friday off work so we can shop together (whee!)
~ asks if I'm excited about going to Disney in April
~ asks at least once when Andrew will be done with school and what he'll be doing with his degree
~ allows me to hear her dog whining for a biscuit
~ confides how happy she is that she doesn't have to work outside the home
~ laments that I "do too much"

Re: It's all relative.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Funny. My mother laments that I don't do enough. I do get the full family illness report, as well as the state of the pets' health and behavior, but, as I don't actually see said family or pets much, that's not too objectionable.

She did throw in a new one this time: volunteerism. "Do you do any volunteer work?" (Note: Mom disapproves of UUism, and will not openly acknowledge my religion, even though she couldn't possibly be unaware of it, so I try to remember not to mention the church.) I told her that I was still doing some community theater and that sort of thing, and behold: there was disapproval, and I was admonished to get more involved in things that involved feeding people or getting them clothes.

Fun, games.

Re: It's all relative.

[kittenpants.livejournal.com]

You mean you're happily unmarried, childless, AND you haven't ended world poverty?

One day, you're just going to snap and tell her all the things you DO in a given week, in excruciating detail.

Re: It's all relative.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

That option gets more compelling every day. And it's inevitable. In fact, here's the really great part: Mom and Dad want to come visit over the summer.

Won't That Be Fun?(tm)

Re: It's all relative.

[zylch.livejournal.com]

Wow... average call from my mother lasts maybe half an hour, but only happens once every several months. Granted, it helps that I didn't tell them my Lawrence phone number until three months after I'd gotten it. Email too is blessedly rare, along the lines of "Just wondering if you're still alive -- haven't heard from you in a few months." or "We're going somewhere; here are travel dates and contact info." My presence in Kansas is causing a distubing upward trend in these stats, however.

Re: It's all relative.

[kcwitch.livejournal.com]

my mother's calls are generally like that only a lot of time it's
-are you sitting down? some unknown relative is dying.
-you remember such and such? sure you do you used to hang out with them when you was two.

[kcwitch.livejournal.com]

yeah i finally paid off the mother unit so i owe her no money and she has no use for me any longer. she asked me to come over for thanksgiving so i can spend it with her, my once dead now alive uncle, and their cousin and kids. i am like ah...no...no thanks...none for me thank you. i mean if i am such a horrible, bitch, slut, whore, doesn't amount to anything and never will person then why would she want to spend time for me anyway?

[kaikias.livejournal.com]

My intense condolences. Thankfully, my relatives aren't in that habit (excepting a cousin who generally gets slightly TMIish answers in the hope of discouraging further inquiry; it doesn't always work, but I get to brag).

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Heh. No, you get a different game with your relatives. Of course, my family plays "refusal to acknowledge behaviors they don't approve of" as well as "harrassment in an attempt to elicit behaviors that they do approve of", so I get both ends.

[kaikias.livejournal.com]

Right. I know from the Happy Place. And maybe I'll start getting the harassment when I'm actually, you know, not living with my parents and a little older than 19.

Wow, what a prospect.

[rougewench.livejournal.com]

As much as it probably sounds glib, I would suggest you pointedly inform your mother that if she can ask you about nothing other than marriage and children, her aspirations for you are not high enough, in your opinion and you are not going to waste your time talking to her.

Then if she does it again, don't.


D.

[featherynscale.livejournal.com]

Ah, she has other aspirations for me as well, including that I should write novels and possibly go into politics, I just don't get to hear about those aspirations every time we talk. I understand that in my family, those who are not married by age 20 are not terribly likely to get married at all, and I regret to say that in all probability I'll bear out that pattern, so I would imagine that she's just concerned about my old-maid-ness. Presumably if I were to tell her that I was seeing someone, she'd revert to the novel-writing and the politics.

[saffronhare.livejournal.com]

And here I pause to give thanks for my Very Ordinary Family of Origin. I didn't know how lucky I was. (knock on wood)

And I thought my mom was bad

[matchgirl42.livejournal.com]

Oooh, my sympathies. I am sooo sorry.