(no subject)
It's my Mum's 50th birthday today. Jerry and I had planned to travel to Folkestone to spend the evening with her, but she caught wind of this last week and forbade it. It wasn't a 'don't come, but i want you to come' instruction either, it was full-on 'you're NOT coming'. I was worried about her being alone and unhappy, but the best I could do was wake up and phone her this morning to say happy birthday - which I did. And then fell back asleep.
My Mum is one of the most kind-hearted people in the world, but she's a bit unorganised and unmotivated. I always indulge myself to think that I inherited my best (and my worst) characteristics from her. For example, she is struggling with money at the moment but she'll still buy ace gifts for people or things for her classroom that she can't afford, just because she doesn't want to let other people down. She was so apologetic over Christmas for not buying more presents and seemed to think that it would 'ruin Christmas', when the things that I did receieve were boss and, besides, the most appealing thing about this Christmas past genuinely was to go back to Kent and hang out with family. There was a point sometime last Autumn when she revealed to me that she'd been living off toast all week. Yet at the end of November I made several fake bids on a pair of boots she was auctioning off on eBay to raise the price (sorry if you recently bought a pair of purple boots from Next - you'd have got them for about £15 cheaper if I wasn't so amazing at e-fraud) so the Paypal credit would pay for make-up from eBay for her god daughter. I suppose that you can't feel sorry for such foolishness, but I totally admire it.
Jerry and I (and, by the sounds of it, her bank manager) have been trying to get her to calm down, stop and think about the best way to do things - and to make an effort to be less wasteful. And there is a lot of room for improvement here (from looking at her, I've learnt that we perhaps don't need as much money in life as we think we do, and have tried to do other things with some of my income). But only on certain things, I think it's more important to be a good person than to be organised with money. Ideally we'd excel at both - but if it's one or the other...? I guess that being able to eat trumps both of those, however.
Therefore I was really happy when I phoned her again this evening, and she said that a couple of other teachers from her school were coming over for dinner. She sounded much more chipper than she did this morning, and enthusiastically mentioned that someone had brought in a cake to the staff room (decorated with fossils - it took me 45 seconds to understand that it was a joke). So, yes, happy birthday Mum, I hope you enjoy curry, and I hope that they don't try to make you pay for it.
My Mum is one of the most kind-hearted people in the world, but she's a bit unorganised and unmotivated. I always indulge myself to think that I inherited my best (and my worst) characteristics from her. For example, she is struggling with money at the moment but she'll still buy ace gifts for people or things for her classroom that she can't afford, just because she doesn't want to let other people down. She was so apologetic over Christmas for not buying more presents and seemed to think that it would 'ruin Christmas', when the things that I did receieve were boss and, besides, the most appealing thing about this Christmas past genuinely was to go back to Kent and hang out with family. There was a point sometime last Autumn when she revealed to me that she'd been living off toast all week. Yet at the end of November I made several fake bids on a pair of boots she was auctioning off on eBay to raise the price (sorry if you recently bought a pair of purple boots from Next - you'd have got them for about £15 cheaper if I wasn't so amazing at e-fraud) so the Paypal credit would pay for make-up from eBay for her god daughter. I suppose that you can't feel sorry for such foolishness, but I totally admire it.
Jerry and I (and, by the sounds of it, her bank manager) have been trying to get her to calm down, stop and think about the best way to do things - and to make an effort to be less wasteful. And there is a lot of room for improvement here (from looking at her, I've learnt that we perhaps don't need as much money in life as we think we do, and have tried to do other things with some of my income). But only on certain things, I think it's more important to be a good person than to be organised with money. Ideally we'd excel at both - but if it's one or the other...? I guess that being able to eat trumps both of those, however.
Therefore I was really happy when I phoned her again this evening, and she said that a couple of other teachers from her school were coming over for dinner. She sounded much more chipper than she did this morning, and enthusiastically mentioned that someone had brought in a cake to the staff room (decorated with fossils - it took me 45 seconds to understand that it was a joke). So, yes, happy birthday Mum, I hope you enjoy curry, and I hope that they don't try to make you pay for it.