kakapo day

no, i do not have the cursing capacity of a toddler, im talking about the rarest, strangest parrot on the planet, the kakapo, which i learned about today in an old book i didnt buy at an antique store in amherst. apparently its virtually extinct which might have something to do with the fact that the damn bird refuses to fly and instead habitually hikes through the hilly forests of new zealand for miles each night.
well today was such a mix of excitingly rare and self-destructive events that i think it deserves to be called kakapo.
first of all, president barack obama. thats all i have to say because enough has been said about it already.
so i woke up this morning on my grandmothers couch and lay there remembering why it was such a special day and then, just as quickly, remembered there is a good REASON i avoid being under the same roof at the same time as my mother and grandmother.
what are three things that when combined, explode? because WE ARE THOSE THREE THINGS.
we are the trifecta of chaos.
were here because tomorrow im moving about 80 percent of my shit into my new place in boston (other ten percent comes next tuesday when i come back and stay for good) so we decided to come via grandmothers and make sure she survived the election, whatever the results. also, theres no sales tax in NH so its a good place to go to stock a new apartment because Nashua has every godamnn homeware store in this great consumer nation, including but not limited to: ikea, target, linens n' things, jennifer convertibles, jordans and pier 1. we visited them all today. anyway, it was a nice idea. unfortunately, for some reason having to do with the moon and the seasons changing and the fact that i'm setting out on my own, mom and i have been at eachothers throats for days and trust me i have TRIED to just turn off the circuit breaker that controls the buttons she insists on pushing but theres only so long i can bite my lip without biting it OFF when she spents 50 of the first 60 miles talking about how fat ive become and how it just takes a "little less chewing and swallowing" to fix it if i cared enough.
thanks mother. youre a genius.
i swear she brings out the worst in everyone. i woke up to the sounds of my sweet grandmother ( who i get along with perfectly when its just us,) raging around the house at war with my mother because she decided to criticize the towels grandmother hung up for her. bad move on moms part.
so then grandmother woke me up with an angry poke saying she was making breakfast and i better be ready to eat it, no doubt refering to the fact that id held a hunger strike through dinner the night before as a result of my two hour long car lecture on the size of my "rear end." anyone who comes to this house knows you really cant get away with turning down food, even when you think you do you realize that just means shes sending you home with that much more to go, so after id showered i braced myself for the breakfast of a life time. and thats exactly what it was. but of course, after a pointed remark about indigestion from dinner, mom decided she wasnt hungry and sat at the table on the phone with italy thus deepening my grandmother indignation and causing so much stomping, huffing and dish rattling youd have thought there was a dragon was in the kitchen. an hour later Gma was still force feeding me coffee cake, sitting across the table glaring at me until i pushed in another chunk, with my mother across the room smoking a cigarette on the phone saying in italian, "today were going shopping for a bed for daisys apartment. she was going for a queen size but i think by the looks of her these days were going to need a king."
by the time mom and i got out the door to go shopping everyone hated everyone else. how did that happen? were family, were lucky to have eachother, were all each other has, and yet walking out that door id been so provoked so many times i felt like kicking the shit out of something soft and vulnerable. i am not a fighter. i can write a nasty fight, for the stage and for my friends when they need their confrontations choreographed, but im not actually a fighter. i just appreciate the way a good fight gets you somewhere you needed to go. and yet these arguments go no where, they never arrive at the point.
after all what is the point? the point is, i love you. but it sounds a lot like i HATE you and it seems like no amount of peaceful reasoning or solo mental prep work gets me to the point where i can say what i actually mean for too long. i hate the person i become around my mother. its something ive worked on my whole life and youd think it would get better but for some reason it feels like ive never been so at her mercy, so controlled by her, so resentful of that control while simultaneously so desperate for her approval as i have been in these past months.
later i lost my mother in Target and after ten minutes of searching, started to get really upset. it was such a ridiculous moment, rushing through the undergarment section feeling like a little kid lost in a forest of bra-trees, wondering what my last words had been to my mother in case they really were my last... i found her eventually, cornering some kid in the household cleaning aisle who didnt even work there, he just happened to be wearing a red polo shirt, but couldnt get a word in edge wise because my mom was too busy demanding to know where she could find a Sniffer.
she meant a Swiffer. i corrected her. she snapped at me. the kid ran away.
we stood there glaring at eachother for about ten seconds.
and then laughed until we cried, until we couldnt breathe, until we had to sit down on the floor of target holding onto the shelves, holding onto eachother for support.