The Delicate Flower Card.

I realized this week that the Delicate Flower Card is so much more powerful than a Platinum American Express Card tied to an expense account. Next time around, I want me one of them damn Delicate Flower Cards. But for now, I will have to be happy about a bunch of mundane and nitty-gritty Catherine Triumphs. Involving insects and such.

Thing one: I had to call a pest control company to Chez Bossydog. The other day I was outside and saw these wee little ants marching up and down the side of the house, and apparently disappearing into a crack along the roofline. I knew they weren't carpenter ants, those are bigger. I knew I did not have ants inside the house. But...who are these guys? Where are they going, and I don't give a shit where, how do we stop them? And I also wanted to go ahead and get a termite inspection and bond in place before selling the house.

So, the ants are, as I thought, harmless. No signs of termites or carpenter ants or anything else expensive and bad. And the next owners will get a house with a termite bond and a contract for a year's pest control, just in case the harmless little bitty ants come back.

Thing two: I had another message from the potential job, a message from the HR guy letting me know that the decision-maker just got back from a long trip (international company, God knows where he was) and he will get back with me soon. I think HR guy wants me, or at least wants to get closure on this open position. It really is a good job and I will take the job if it is offered, but if it isn't, I will not lose too much sleep. So there's that.

Thing three: This contract work thing could become an almost full time job (but without the critical group health/etc.) if I let it. So I'm not too worried about Thing two.

Then, there is my mother. Oy. My mother is a very special snowflake and the Grande Dame of Delicate Flowers. I have to explain this, so that you understand that this is not a case of a spoiled bitch not wanting to deal with her elderly mother so she can go skiing and go to the Keys and spas and all that shit I do not have money or time to do. This is not about not wanting to deal with the changes age hath wrought on a previously motherly mother. No. My mother has not changed a hair since she was 40. In fact, I have more gray hair than she does, and she's 82, but that is neither here nor t(hair) in this issue. Because this is not a new issue.

The issue is, as it has ever been, avoidance of reality. Reality bites, it really does. It bites for me. I have been through enough Shit and Drama since 2001, I should get a free ticket to sitting on my ass and letting other people deal with shit. Yet, I have not been issued a Delicate Flower Card, so I am still dealing with reality. My mother desperately wants a Delicate Flower Card from me. She wants me to be her free pass from dealing with reality. My father went to his grave validating her Delicate Flower Card, and though I begged him to figure it out while they were still younger and healthier and mobile, he died leaving me holding the bag.

So tonight I went off on her, and damn, it was good. It wasn't ugly or mean, it was cheerful and honest and simply Reality. When she started going on about her issues, I pointed out that I couldn't do anything about them, and enumerated the issues I had to address, like, you know, being a widow in debt with no job in a hideous market, and ongoing health "challenges." Then I pointed out that it is only by God's grace that I am here to listen to her bitch, instead of being dead or brain damaged in a nursing home myself. Jesus Christ, my brain blew up and almost killed me last year. I should be seriously impaired now if I survived at all, and here I am lucky enough to be functioning, and dealing with unemployment and a hell of a lot of other stress, and this nutty little mother on top of the sundae. She has a paid off house in a gated community, health care and a pension check, and money in the bank, and yet she's the Delicate Flower? And what was her problem again? A rash? Ooh, it hurts? And her doctors are working on finding the cause? Yeah. And if living alone is becoming too challenging as she says it is, there are alternatives, and I'd be happy to have her living nearby. There's a very nice senior apartment place 15 minutes away, and I would go slap down a deposit on an apartment there for her tomorrow if she says the word. Silence. So it is her choice to stay where she is.

I had her all freaked out because she saw the crazy pressure she is putting on me, while I am dealing with a whole lot of other stress right now. That will last until...Saturday. Then there will be another crisis.

But for now, I will bask in making a Delicate Flower get a grip, if only for an hour.
So many of them never fucking do.

I want a Delicate Flower Card. I want to have that feeling of entitlement, that what I have been through was already So Much, I should never have to suck it up and shake it off and deal with what has to be done. I want to just sit on my ass and expect the world to adapt to me, and when it doesn't I will be a Sad Little Victim of Cruel Fate. Because that is how the Delicate Flowers do it.

Edited upon further reflection, because I did ramble on too much.