Top Ten Reasons We Will Never Move Back Home

I've decided that many of the voices I hear regularly in my head are great at mimicking people in my life - their voices, their mannerisms, things they would probably say to themselves but never to my face (now that they've discovered I'm a crier).

My dear mother - a wonderful person and not one of these minions - was asking, yet again (and I was feeling guilty, yet again), about why we don't move over to the other side of the state, closer to where she is. The rent is cheaper, things are less expensive there, we'd be better off financially, yada yada. I love my mother and would live next door to her (in theory; in reality, I'd probably drive her nuts within 10 days).

Among other reasons - we've lived here for ten years and LIKE IT, the climate is nicer, we have friends and a good job - here's why we're over here instead:

1. "Having a blog is bad. Predators will find your children."

2. "Your [beloved family member] always seemed to me like he/she was 40 going on 14."

3. "Now that your [another beloved family member] is living on welfare, what is he/she going to do with his/her life?"

4. "Back in my day, children were to be seen and not heard." (My husband's brilliant response: "Isn't that when they used to hang people for being black?")

5. "Drive ten miles out of your way to personally say good-bye to your [another family member who couldn't care less], who has seen you more times in the last week than he has in three years, won't you, dear?"

6. *disapproving look at everything we do, say, don't do, don't say, think (she can read us like books)*

7. (After sharing an idea of something exciting and positive we might do in the future) - "You might think twice about doing that. Vera at work has a daughter whose husband's butler's baby-mama's dry cleaner did the same thing and she ended up with a tire iron through her bladder."

8. "Oh, honey, I wish you would go to the gym sometimes."

9. "If he changed jobs, you wouldn't have to live like refugees."

And my personal favorite:

10. "Dammit, take the money! You IDIOT! Oh, these people, they go on that show and they act all cocky and entitled, when you know their briefcase only has $1 in it and they're not gonna go home with JACK SQUAT! The *#@*& dummies." (This, while watching "Deal or No Deal." The guy was raising his blood pressure over a game show.)

It's not that we consider ourselves to be better than these people we call our family, and it's not that we can't or shouldn't forgive... but being the "not very good at confrontations" kind of people we are, we prefer to live at least three hours away from their mouths. For some reason they're always nicer - and watch less reality TV - while they're on the phone.

I just hope our kids don't find us too odious to live around, when they're grown up.

Famdamily Dynamics

Please enjoy this guest post by a dear friend, Second Fiddle.

You have to understand it isn't easy to have a birthday just two days before the biggest holiday of the year--tax day. Ever since I was a child my birthday was totally eclipsed by April 15. No friends were ever available for a party because their parents were busy getting their taxes done. Presents--if there were any--were always wrapped in Forms 1040, 1040 EZ and my personal favorite, 8915. So I have issues about my birthday.

But I've grown out of most them. I've learned to love the excitement of tax day in such a way that I'm so looking forward to it and the gifts I love to give to the IRS that sometimes I even forget it's my birthday.

However, old issues have given way to a new one. A bigger and even better issue. And it has to do with my mother. Once I left home my mom started to invite me to lunch occasionally on my birthday. I obliged when invited and it was fine. But then there were a couple of years when she didn't invite me in a timely manner and I got other offers first. (Yes, I had friends!) So I did the politely correct thing and accepted the invitation of whomever asked first. I mean, I didn't want to sit around on my special day waiting for the phone to ring, you know?

One year one of them even hosted a party for me--which was really something given how busy people are that time of year (you know, with their taxes and all and celebrating the all-powerful IRS). But I am blessed by good friends and they tore themselves away from their W-2s and their mortgage interest statements and showed up to a lunch held in my honor. You'd have thought my mother would be happy for me, right?

But the very next year for my birthday my mother sent me tickets to the queen mother of all guilt trips. "Well it was tradition for me to take you to lunch on your birthday, but then you preferred to go with your girlfriends..."

So I caved. I told my friends I couldn't make plans on that day. I realized that although the right thing to to do if my birthday was really about me would be to invite me for a time that was convenient for me, that was going to be just little too much to ask.

Oddly enough, in that sweet way mothers have, the tickets to the guilt trip kept coming years after I mended my sorry ways and reserved the day for her. Years.

Enter my sister. The favored child (I could tell you stories). Turns out she was coming to visit for tax day this year and she would be arriving on my birthday. Secretly I wondered, would this change the rules of the game?

So about a week before the big event I called my mother to invite her to do something with my family on that day, careful to let her know I wasn't sure what time my sister and her family would arrive but that we would try to go early so she could be home before their arrival.

The conversation continued and then the unexpected happened. My mother invited me to dinner for the night before my birthday. That way, she explained, if she got too far behind getting things ready for my sister she would have it out of the way. (OK, she didn't really say those exact words, but you know...)

Oh. I see how it's done. That was pretty subtle, actually. Especially coming from a person who thinks being subtle is hitting someone over the head.

Fortunately I've gotten used to the game over the years and I have come to find humor in the situation and am able to respond with laughter instead of tears.

So much for tradition!

Need a safe place to gripe? Use my blog for a shoulder to cry on!