WARNING: PROBABLY VERY WHINY
If I didn't know better I'd swear my mom was trying to get me to live at home forever. When I get on a potential jobs binge (and consequently start feeling and probably sounding more than slightly panicky) she starts suggesting people I can talk to around here about what I should do. Once I establish with her for the millionth time that I have absolutely no interest in being here (hoping that the subtext of how crazy I am going living at home is obvious to her even if she doesn't acknowledge it), she advises that in that case I should start looking in the city, where I do want to be. She tells me to get some resumés together, get some references together, go in to my grandparents' place for a few days and get a newspaper. I point out to her that I've been spending countless hours online looking for jobs and she gives me that look... the one designed to convey that she doesn't trust the internet any further than she can throw it, the same look she gives me when I arrange to hang out with someone strictly through MSN or e-mail, without phone contact... she doesn't believe I'm ever going to really meet up with them. Tonight she started telling me actually useful information about non-students renting apartments that she could have brought up on any of the several other occasions we've already discussed apartments. You know. Weeks ago.
She's also apparently pissed that I flew the coop last Monday and spent last week at Kris's house without calling her to "touch base". I did tell her I was going, I had absolutely no reason not to go, I had a drive there and discovered that there is a bus between here and Halifax these days so I could resort to that for getting back here if I had to. Supposedly I also told her I'd call sometime by Wednesday or Thursday, but when I forgot to do this, instead of calling me, she instead opted to make the rest of my family miserable by bitching for days on end about how irresponsible I am and worrying very vocally about how she had no idea where I was. (Totally untrue.) It seems irrelevant that I regularly went over a week without contacting her while I was at school, and that I left the country once without mentioning it to her first and neither of these things were treated as if I'm a disaster. I only got back yesterday and I'm going nuts already. If I ask for a car I'm told I'm an immature brat, and if I go nowhere then how the fuck am I supposed to find a job other than here? Apparently Mom tells people all the time about how I'm not going to be around here much longer, so it seems she's playing dumb when I have to reiterate that I in fact don't want to be here. I'll grant her that living here with only Dad and Ian would probably suck an awful lot, but once I have a complete nervous breakdown I'm going to be of little help to her.
Another paramount problem of hers in her discontent with me was that I hadn't "taken" something to Kris's family when I arrived. Really. I had fifteen minutes to pack my stuff. I had no idea how long I was staying - a night? a week?. Was I going to hold up my ride by deciding to whip up a quick batch of cookies?? At some point later I mentioned that Kris's mom's side of the family had a mini-reunion this past weekend, a reunion that I only found out about after I'd arrived on Monday. She asked if I'd taken anything to that, and I hadn't. She couldn't believe she'd raised such a socially incompetent, ungrateful daughter. I pointed out that I'd helped with supper pretty much every night I was there and helped his mom repaint a room in their house, but that wasn't enough. Apparently I could have at least taken a bottle of wine or a fruit tray or something. I suppose I could have, but it frankly hadn't occurred to me and had I asked Kris to stop at Superstore on the way to this event so that I could pick up a fruit tray to take, I'm pretty sure he would have thought I was out of my mind and kept driving. This wasn't one of my family's potluck-esque picnic lunches, but rather a weekend at a cottage. And if the tables were turned and Kris was coming to a family reunion of mine (a happening I hope to stave off as long as possible, the poor lad) it wouldn't cross anyone's mind that maybe he'd make some squares first or something. Was I being unknowingly rude/ungrateful here?