September 22, 2008

  • I'm becoming a psycho magnet.

    I went to the super's office to get a new laundry card (I've misplaced
    mine) and was just filling her in on the psycho woman that verbally
    attacked me in the garage on Friday afternoon, when the woman walked in
    and started screaming at me and calling me a liar. The woman had her young daughter with her, who was behaving the same way, all snotty and making rude remarks, name-calling and sticking her tongue out, and telling me to shut up. She's like 10, maybe not even. This woman was jumping all over me. The super was trying to get her to back off, but she wouldn't. I lost it myself in a very short time, and told the woman she needed psychiatric help. What prompted all this commotion?

    Friday afternoon I came home with groceries, pulled into my spot in the garage and started taking my stuff out of the trunk. She had parked in the spot next to mine, which didn't belong to her. I didn't care, and I said nothing. But then she pulled her car out and turned, and then shouted out the window that I needed to move so she could go forward, further into the garage. I pointed out politely that there was plenty of room for her to back into the two empty spaces directly behind her, if only she cranked her wheel a little further to miss the corner of the pole. She had a small car and loads of room and could have easily done it. She started swearing at me, saying "Yeah, that's right, just take your time! I've got all bloody day!" She called me a fat slob, and I told her it wasn't my fault she got her licence from a Cracker Jack box and didn't know how to drive. Then called me a bigot, because she's black and assumes that anyone who doesn't like her does do because she's black.

    I did report her as soon as I got upstairs, but she had moved to her own spot by then and gone into the building. Theresa (the super I spoke to) said she knew the woman, that she's a bitch that goes around calling people bigots and picking fights. I'm told this woman has lived here longer than I have, so all this time we've never seen each other and suddenly it's twice in four days, and she's just psychotic. Now I'll have to watch over my shoulder for a while to see if she's anywhere near me. I don't know her name and she doesn't know mine, so fortunately that means she can't look up which apartment is mine. Still, I was so shaken by her attack that when I got upstairs I locked the door behind me. That's something I rarely do during the day.

    I phoned Shirley and apologised for losing my cool, and said I understood she couldn't take sides but I was glad she witnessed this bizarre behaviour. I plan to keep my cell phone on me when I am about the building, in case I run into the woman again and need to call the super or, if she goes really off the deep end, the police.

    I news of other crazies, my grandfather died a week ago last Sunday and his funeral was last week. When Grandma died, Big Dave's wife Linda freaked out and screamed and flipped the bird and swore in fron of the church as the funeral procession lined up. This time, guess who caused a scene? Yup, my mom.

    At the visitation, she and Dave kept arguing loudly over varying memories of events. Mom kept bullying Pete about wanting communion at the funeral service, even though Pete said he'd talked to Grampa about it already and he said Grampa didn't want that. So Mom started her tantrum and was calling Pete every name under the sun. he had already agreed (much against his will) to allow her to read a eulogy during the service, even though Tara was also giving one. Tara didn't mind Mom speaking, and they really didn't overlap as Mom talked about her childhood and Tara talked about recent happenings. Mom's only gaffe during her speech was ending it by saying her dad was a bigot, followed by quoting a long line of his favourite racial slurs. Now, it was no secret he was racist, but I thought it was in very poor taste to actually say those particular phrases in a church, in front of a crowd. Isn't it enough to say he was a bigot and leave it at that? Surprisingly, Mom choked up on the last couple of words of her speech. She still hasn't cried over Dad, so this crack in emotion was remarkable. We hugged her afterward and told her she did a good job.

    So we went to the grave side and they finished the service. Mom and some other relatives pulled flowers out of the arangements and put them on graves of other relatives in the cemetary. Mom got her scooter bogged down in a soft spot in the grass (possibly a fairly recent grave? <shudder>) and we had to pull it out and around while she toddled to her grandparents' grave. Then we returned to the church hall for the reception.

    St. Alban's Church is not wheelchair accessible. We had to lift the scooter up two steps to get it inside, then Mom sat in a doorway at one end of the altar to give her speech. When we left for the internment, we had to carry the scooter down those two steps. No big deal. However, Mom insisted we hd to carry her scooter up 10 steps to the parish hall "because it's a part of my body". I told her no. Gilly told her no. Al, who had taken the day off work to come along, didn't know what to do. The three of us went inside and took note that the tables and chairs were packed so tightly, there would be nowhere for Mom to scoot even if we did take it upstairs. I said we should just tell her she had to walk up and sit in a chair, and if she didn't like it she could sit in the car and scream while we all went inside. Unfortunately Gilly caved "because it's her dad's funeral." Seriously, she would have come around just fine if we had stood our ground. Now, the idea that tantrums result in getting what she wants has been further ingrained into Mom's mind. Dad always did the same thing, and it REALLY pissed me off.

    I stayed at the back of the room where Mom couldn't get near me, and sat with my cousins and their friends. I passed around old photos of us as kids, and we had a good laugh.

    In pleasant news, Friday September 19 was International Talk Like A Pirate Day. First Wench Gilly and I (Cap'n Ali) hosted a pirate party on Friday night. We all wore piratey costumes and drank a bunch of rum. We ran downstairs and Graham and I had a sword fight in front of the elevators. We chased Teffy the Ship Jester around the living room with the Dalek, and Waffles enjoyed being hit by Graham's clanging plastic sword. We played Taboo, and Gilly kept screwing up because she was really drunk. A piratey time was had by all! YAARRRR!!!