Death Becomes Her

My mom's been dead since September 1, 2009. I remember it well. She had been nearly dead so many times that I figured this was just another one of those. The day before we were at a big party at a friend's house and it was my hubby's b'day. Mom and I had an up and down relationship. She had issues. Really. There were a few suicide attempts and the threat of more through her 30's, 40's and 50's. She was annoying, whining and overbearing. I pulled a knife on her once to get her to back off.

No, not a warm, fuzzy time together.

Of course with any mother/daughter relationship there were good times as well. She was my girl scout troop leader and was a riot. She was NOT someone to ever go camping. She taught me what it meant to say, "camping is staying somewhere that doesn't have room service". We weren't rich but if we were going somewhere we sure as shit weren't staying in a tent.

She was a creative person in a long line of creative people…and she HATED IT. There was nothing she wanted more than to have a quiet, boring, normal life with a big family. That wasn't what she had.

This past week I got an envelope from an insurance company, they used to carry my dental insurance at my old job and still send me the occasional solicitations for other services so when I saw the envelope I just tossed it out.

My brother called the other day. I didn't check my voicemail, I figured it was my sister-in-law and would just catch up with her whenever. Turns out that the tossed envelope was a beneficiary claim form for some annuity or something that my mom had tucked away for me and my brother. Huh. Who knew?

I called today to ask them to send me another claim form (because I'm a moron) and then I asked how much this little surprise was worth…cash-wise. OMG, they couldn't tell me! Really? Nope, they couldn't tell me until they had the death certificate in their hot little mitts. Weird, right? I mean, I identified myself giving all the right answers so what gives? What if we needed this $$$ to pay for funeral expenses or something, how would we know what we were dealing with? What if I needed this to pay my mortgage? So odd that they can't reveal this little detail.

My brother sent the death certificate out yesterday, they should have it soon…maybe then they can do the big reveal.

In the meantime I need to fill out the gritty details of the claim form, it's hard to fill out a claim form and allocate Federal taxes…when I don't know how much money it is. Let's face it, if it's something like $300 who cares? At that amount I'll figure out the income tax on my own…but what if it's more like $3,000…or $15,000, then what? Who knows?

Anyway, thanks mom, even if it's $30 there's someplace for it to go!

Suckah!

That's me, I'm a sucker for food shows and home improvement shows. I try to change the channel, I really do but they suck me in every time. The home shows are killin' me because they're primarily filmed in Canada and they try to make it sound kinda generic American but, well, those Canadian accents come through every time.

A current new entry in the home improvement field is "Love It or List It", I have yet to see an episode where they choose to love it instead of list it. Seriously people, let's break this up a bit here or move on from this idea. Every episode also involves that horrifying AH-HA moment when they're deep into the home renovation and they uncover some HIDEOUS undetected flaw, the roof is a disaster and rotting from the inside out; mold is climbing from the basement all the way to the roof; you name it they've found it in someone's home and that flaw is the breaking point that means they can't complete ALL of the renovations, suddenly there's no chance of getting the home anywhere near what the owner's wanted…shy of a MIRACLE.

But wait, isn't that what they do? They make MIRACLES! Well, not really. They don't make enough of a miracle to have the owner's love it and stick around. Oh this show, such a dirty little guilty pleasure of mine…tonight might just be the night, they might just LOVE IT…or not.

Sometimes

Okay, MOST of the time I get these thoughts in my head at work of things I want to look up online and then I never do it. It's so ANNOYING. I get home from work, I feed the dogs, talk to hubby, we argue over dinner, then sometimes we even eat dinner. We take the dogs back outside, toss the Frisbee. By then I've completely forgotten every thought I had at work. All of them…gone. I know that I had all these brilliant things to hunt for online. Now don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't do my share of web surfing at work…it's just that some of these things would take more than a quick look-see, they'd require some reading and poking around. Hell some of them might even be inappropriate work fare (too political, too anti-religious…).

Is tonight any different? Nope. I know that I had some actual items that came to me by midday and where are they now? Who knows but they ain't in my feeble brain.