Reading: Blind Assassin

Moving: continuing to push maximum density

Watching: Phish

27 September 2000: Caviar (i.e. pre-Phish)

Today I brought my phone because I meant to call my mother. A while ago I told her I would spend the day after TJZ's wedding with her. I must have been smoking crack. Nisou will be home and I am not going to spend one minute away from her. The whole point of the great Mom-n-Lisa Day was allegedly to Talk. She won't address any of our Issues, which are plentiful, by phone or letter, and I refuse to waste my time at home with her when I could be at the beach. Beach I don't have in Denver, but I'm willing to communicate with her from here. She lives fucking four miles away from the beach but hasn't gone in years and won't attempt to communicate unless she's face-to-face.

This is, indeed, a fact I know all too well. When she came out here four years ago, she was here for a week. A week. Plenty of time to talk. The Climbing Tree knows I was just about as mean to her as I ever have been, trying to vex her into confrontation, but she nimbly sidestepped--actually just ignored--all my gibes and grunts. Since then, I have apologized for my behavior, which was markedly extreme, and told her what I was trying to do, and even as she slammed the conversational door with "But I think we have a wonderful relationship, dear," she said that we should talk in person sometime.

So I figured what the hell, she's only my mother, I can make the effort.

But no way. Not this effort. Not when it means sacrificing time with Nisou, who is much more inconvenient to visit. My mother saw me in July and even then she didn't understand my usual mode of conversation, thinking someone was an amputee when I described the person as dumb as a stump. And she saw me in November of 1999, when she wanted to know if I were going to consult a plastic surgeon. And in June of 1999, when she told me I was stupid. And in June of 1998, when she at least didn't take credit for a party my sister set up. And in May and September of 1997, when she violated my sister's privacy and called me a matron. And for over an uninvited and unwelcome week in September of 1996, which was a month after she saw me in August of 1996, which was the last time Nisou and I have been together. So no way.

RDC and I are flying out on the Thursday of the week of the second wedding. I wondered what best-manly tasks he might need the car for on Friday, but apparently that answer is none. Therefore at some highly undesirable hour I will drive down from the wedding site to Old Lyme and spend the day with her and visit my grandmother and hopefully go for a walk on the beach before the rehearsal dinner draws me northward. She can lump it, especially since she ditched the whole mother-daughter Communication Attempt nearly from the start: it's BDL's birthday and they're going to have a party with a passel of their fellow cult members. I suppose it could be worse: they could be Jay Dubs and not do birthdays. It seems to be a pretty plastic religion, though, in the bendy sense as well as the fake sense. No dancing and no drinking, but cards and gambling are okay.