The Tent Person

This past summer, I visited home with my friend Kathy and her husband Andy. One afternoon, Andy and I had walked into the backyard to get some air. My parents have quite a large backyard. It has (what used to be) an outdoor barbecue (more on that later...), a pool, pool house, and my mom's chicken coop. Looking out over the backyard, I noticed a tent pitched beside the pool house. Not only was there a tent, but it was pitched on a fairly steep incline.

Unfortunately, not the actual tent. This photo was pilfered from Memorial-Day-001.jpg

"What the heck is a tent doing out here?!" 

"Who knows..."

"You know, if I were to pitch a tent, I would have picked a site that was flat, instead of inclined," I remarked jokingly to Andy.

"It actually feels nice for my back to sleep on an incline," a voice behind me said.

I turned, and a man I didn't recognize was standing there.

"Hi...?" I said uncertainly, unsure what this stranger was doing in our backyard.

"Your mom rents me the pool house, but since it's not ready to live in yet and the weather is so nice, I just sleep outside in my tent. I have a bad back, and the incline really does feel nice for my back."

"Oh..." I said, and the man wandered off.

Okay, let's stop to think about this.

MY MOM HAS A RANDOM MAN LIVING IN OUR BACKYARD.

I had the opportunity to talk to my dad about this. Apparently this man's name is Michael, and due to some sort of mental illness, he is unable to hold down a job. So he lives in our backyard and takes care of my mom's chickens. (Yes, my mom has chickens, and she's been doing it longer than it has been trendy to raise chickens in your backyard.) My dad thinks that this guy is in some sort of relationship with my aunt, who also lives in my parent's house- which is how my parents know him. He told my mom he'd pay $500 a month to live in the pool house, but according to my dad, he paid up for the first few months and then the payments stopped. My dad suspects that Michael has been pilfering things from the house and sleeping in our house without their permission, but hasn't been able to kick the guy out since he takes care of the chickens and we need somebody to take care of the chickens.

Yes, my mom has a random homeless man living in our backyard who takes care of her chickens... and my dad suspects that he stealing from them. Oh, and he's possibly romantically involved with my disabled aunt.

You really can't make this stuff up.

Hi, looking forward to this or next !

When I was about a month pregnant, my mom texted me around 1:30am.

MOM:

MOM: Hi, looking forward to this or next !

MOM: 

MOM: Attractive

Alice, do eat a lot of green salad Roman for folic acid for the STRONG Neuro.  System as I gave you as the best gift. Pass it on !!!

-------------------------

What's with the random photos of pregnant women???

122 pounds

So, my sister and my mom are on their way to visit- they're flying from Burbank to Salt Lake tonight. Traveling with my mom can be rough, since she insists on bringing her own food with her. So, for instance, when my parents went to Europe this past fall, they brought huge luggages full of groceries, Tupperwares and ziplocs of cooked food, bottles of green juice, and a hot pot so they could cook in their hotel room throughout the trip. My dad reports that this was quite a painful experience.

Tonight, my poor sister texted me from the airport bewailing the ridiculousness of the luggage situation.

HOLLY: Mom had a luggage of food that weighed 122 lbs.
HOLLY: They only accept bags up to 100 lbs and over 50 you have to pay $75. 
HOLLY: Mom had a thin duffle bag that she stuffed some of the food into and we got the bag to 95lbs.
HOLLY: Her other large bag weighed 60, so we moved stuff to her small luggage to make it work.
HOLLY: Then at security, she had to find a plastic bag to put a bag of tofu that had broken open, so I gave her a bag that held my toothbrush.
HOLLY: I am sweating and I can't wait to be with you...

She then sent me some of these choice photos:

Tomatoes? Broccoli? What other goodies do we have here?

They needed the large hand truck to bring her luggage to check in!

I am assuming that this is her other large piece of luggage.

See, we don't have broccoli, tomatoes, or ANY groceries in Utah, so she needs to bring all this stuff from LA- and pay an extra $75 to do so! (They always fly Southwest if they can so they get two free checked bags.) Despite that fact that I've pointed out how illogical her actions are many times in the past, my mom still insists bringing her own food. Why? I don't know... but I text her point out the obvious again:

ME: Hey mom we have broccoli and tomatoes in Utah too. Next time you should save on extra baggage costs and go grocery shopping here!!!!
ME: You just paid $75 in extra baggage fees to carry groceries worth less than that to Utah instead of just buying groceries here. This is ridiculous.
MOM: You are right . Time is the essence. Dad and I , we need time together to rekindle.
ME: Mom, you guys can go grocery shopping together. It does not take that long.
MOM: Ok

(Please note that the punctuation in my mom's texts is actually what it looks like. I have no idea why she puts spaces on both sides of her periods and commas.)

Then my sister texts me:
HOLLY: Lol, did you scold mom? Hahahaha
ME: Of course
ME: What did mom say?
HOLLY: Just to not tell you stuff or you'll scold her.

Sigh. My mother.

Oh thank goodness for your John

Remember when we bought my mom TravelJohns for Christmas? (TravelJohns are these disposable portable urinals consisting of a molded hard plastic component to "direct the stream" and a bag with a liquid solidifying agent to contain the urine.) My mom is pretty notorious for not really using presents that my sister and I buy her, so I didn't think much of it. In fact, after my husband and I bought them, we agreed that it was more a gift for us kids to laugh about than something my mom would actually use.

The next March, the whole family went to Mammoth for a weekend to ski. My husband, then boyfriend, came along as well. My mom and I were standing around at the bottom of the ski hill near Canyon Lodge, one of the largest lodges at the resort. We were near the large map of the ski area, where lots of people were milling around, waiting for their friends and family to finish their runs.

I should probably mention here that my mom wears a teal and purple one-piece suit when she goes skiing.

My sister and my mom at Park City Mountain Resort.

She likes to brag that she got it for very cheap at Bargain Box, a local thrift shop which has been the location of many many bad clothing decisions on the part of my mother. The problem with my mom wearing a one-piece suit, however, is that she often really needs to pee. And one-piece suits are not easy to get off. Add to this the fact that my mom uses an old CamelBak when she skies, and because it does not have a sternum strap, she uses a complicated system of elastic hair ties and the extra webbing from the shoulder straps to secure the CamelBak across her chest. So in order to take off her snowsuit to pee, she has to undo this complicated knotted strapping system to remove her CamelBak and then get the top of her snowsuit off. To my knowledge, this has led to at least one accident in the past.

So there we were, standing at the base of Canyon Lodge, near the big map, with tons of people skiing by, meeting up with their friends and family, and getting into lift lines. I was talking to my mom about something, and then turned for a few seconds to look up the hill for my sister. When I turned around, my mom was skating toward the nearest trash can with a full TravelJohn in her hand.

HOW HAD SHE PEED RIGHT THERE WITHOUT ANYBODY NOTICING?!?!?! With all her clothes on??? I had been standing right next to her the entire time!

My mom made her way back to me and nonchalantly said, "Oh thank goodness for your John."

You can't sit there

Once my parents heard that I was being admitted to induce labor, they headed out from LA to drive here to Salt Lake City to meet their first grandson. Or, at least, they started thinking about it. My parents don't mobilize very quickly since any trips out of town first require preparing more than enough food and green juice (more on that later!) for the entirety of the trip. I stalk my mom on FindMyFriends, and I know for a fact that they didn't leave home until after 10:30pm, California time. I was admitted for induction around 4pm, Utah time. And despite all my assurances to them that  the induction was going to take time, so please be safe and don't drive through the night, they headed out way after dark. Actually, they first told me not to worry- they were going to drive until midnight and then stop at a hotel. I know this was a lie because they didn't stop until they reached Primm around 2:30am- thank you, FindMyFriends. 

At any rate, they arrived in Utah late the next day. As I had driven myself to the hospital before knowing I was going to be induced, my car was at the hospital- along with my husband's, so we asked for my dad's help to drive my car back home. My dad followed my husband back home and then my husband went to sit in the front passenger side of my parents' car.

"Oh, no- you can't sit there," my dad told my husband. "There's stuff there."

And so there was. 

And in half of the back seat too. 

But the entire back cargo area of the car, a 4Runner, was empty and surprisingly clean. 

Apparently, my parents had driven the 11 hours to Utah with one person in the driver's seat and the other in the back. Whatever works, I suppose.

The Tennis Ball Can

This story is truly mortifying. I claim it as one of the most embarrassing moments of my entire life, although to be honest, it's only embarrassing for me because... well, we're talking about my mother here.

(photo yoinked from http://www.pennracquet.com/images/ball_courtone.png)

Thanksgiving 2008, my husband and I had been dating for about a year at that point. He had already met my family, and since he was staying in town for Thanksgiving, my parents invited him to an annual Thanksgiving get-together that my mom's side of the family has in Irvine every year. Since there were seven of us going, (my parents, my sister, my aunt, my grandma, and then-boyfriend,) we took two cars. My dad drove the minivan, while my then-boyfriend (let's just give him a handle- how about B?) followed him with myself and my sister in the car. We had directions to the place, but since we weren't familiar with the area, we were just following my dad. So we followed my dad on the freeway, exited, and then  drove into a residential neighborhood. It then seemed like we were lost. My dad was driving slowly, turned onto a side street, and then pulled over. Puzzled, we checked our directions- this wasn't our destination. But we pulled over behind the minivan to see what the plan was.

My mom then got out of the passenger side with a tennis ball can in her hand. My bewilderment turned into mortification as she squatted slightly on the side of the road and proceeded to urinate into the tennis ball can. B was incredulous and thought the whole situation was hilarious.

"IS SHE... PEEING?!?!?!?!?"

"STOP LOOKING STOP LOOKING!!!!" I yelled, reaching across the car to try to cover his eyes.

"OH MY GOD, SHE'S PEEING!!! ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD!!! IN A TENNIS BALL CAN!!! DOES SHE KNOW THAT WE'RE RIGHT BEHIND THEM!?!??!"

She then turned, poured the urine out into a bush on the side of the road, and gingerly stuffed the can itself into the bush as well. She got back into the car and we proceeded to our destination, scarred for life.

That Christmas, we got her a ten-pack of TravelJohns.

"Like"

So my parents have a new grandchild. It's their first, and they're understandably very excited. My husband started an iOS7 photo stream for the baby, so we could all share photos and videos of the new baby amongst the family. (And so I didn't have to subject Facebook and all of my sort-of friends/acquaintances to a million photos of our very cute little boy.)

(So my mom recently dropped her phone in the toilet, so the phone she is using right now is under my dad's AppleID- which is why it says "PETER" instead of her name.)

She did soon learn afterwards how to actually "like" photos, but I sure got a kick out of this.

The Poopy Tomatoes

This is the story I tell when I want to efficiently prove to somebody that my mom is crazy.

(photo yanked from http://likethedew.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/tomatoes.jpg)

It begins over 2 years ago, when I received an email from my mother about composting with human waste. Google it- people are doing it. If you're okay with the idea of fertilizing your garden with human poop, there is a safe way to do it. It involves carefully composting said waste with a goodly amount of mulch or other biomaterials, and ensuring that the pile gets turned enough such that all the harmful bacteria are killed by the heat of the decomposing waste and mulch. So I read the article my mom had sent, was pretty certain that my mom wasn't going to follow these tedious instructions to do it safely, and emailed her back to let her know that it was a terrible idea.

Then I forgot about it for a year or so.

I visited home last summer while I was pregnant. I was sitting at the dining room table when my mom came by with some tomatoes. Try them, she told me. They are fresh picked from the garden! I reached for them, and then stopped.

"Wait, they're from the garden?"

"Yes. Fresh, so delicious."

"Are you fertilizing with poop?"

"Oh, that doesn't matter."

"Yes it does. Are you? I'm pregnant. If you're fertilizing with poop, you're running the risk of spreading disease. Remember cholera???"

"Aiya, you don't understand photosynthesis. There is no bacteria in the tomato!"

"Mom, this has nothing to do with photosynthesis! If you're fertilizing with poop, the bacteria is in the soil, and you can't tell me that the tomatoes aren't touching the soil!"

So after some fruitless arguing, my mom refused to believe me. I refused to eat the tomatoes, and my mom's feeling were hurt. I felt a little bad. Maybe my mom was composting the human poop the right way, and her tomatoes were safe to eat after all.

Fast forward a few weeks, when my sister's boyfriend was staying with my parents for two weeks to help them out with their business. (Oh, more on that later!) The maid told him what was really going on:

"She has me put grandma's dirty diapers in a pot, punch a few holes in it, and then has me bury it in the garden!"

One day, when my parents finally sell the house, some poor guy is going to be digging up the back garden and is going to find dozens of buckets, filled with soggy plastic diapers full of shit.

Sh*t My Mom Does

Apparently, everybody thinks that their mothers are crazy. I can't tell you about the number of times I've told people that my mom is crazy and have them respond, "Oh yeah, my mom is crazy too", or "I'm sure she's not that bad. Everybody thinks that their mom is crazy."

It's not until I tell a few stories, or until my friends spend a few days with my mother, that others start to understand what I mean when I say that my mom is crazy.  And my husband? He really understands. He was the one that suggested that I start a blog to document all the crazy things that my mom does.

So here goes!