Yo Momma

It's Mother's Day, in case you missed the E! Network's Tales of Hollywood Moms special this afternoon. The Remix and I spent the day with her mom, who graduated with her second Master's degree this morning.

My mom is in Las Vegas, spending a month or so with her mom, who is very sick. My mom is afraid to fly, so she decided to drive. In her Mini Cooper. With her DOG. (She tried to rope me into this, by the way, but 30 hours in a clown car with my mom and a flatulent dog did not sound like my idea of a vacation. That, and I'm a little light on cash this month, which would make going to Vegas pure unadulterated torture.)

Anyway, I thought since it was Mother's Day I ought to say something about my mom. She's been good to me, for the most part. Sure, she's overbearing, annoying, needy, and deaf; but she's also kind, generous, well-meaning, and forgiving. She's constantly trying to drag me to church, but I'll forgive her that, too.

I'm a little worried about ma, mostly because she's apparently lost her mind. This trip she's on to Vegas involved quitting her job, and didn't involve taking my dad. Personally, I think it's a religious problem. Like most religious automatons, my mom is constantly looking for guidance from a figment of the world's collective imagination. When things are going well, it's easy to pretend that "God" is guiding you...if, like my mom, you find yourself vaguely unhappy at some point, it becomes a little harder. Now she's looking for something to actually happen, looking for "God" to show her the way somehow. Of course, he won't, and so she's left feeling lost. My mom has committed too much of her life to her ridiculous beliefs to turn back now--turning her back on the whole thing isn't an option. Subconsciously, she probably knows what's missing, and eventually she'll figure it out. When she does, she'll be back to thanking her imaginary friend for the guiding hand, and she'll be right again. Until she's not, anyway.

This is aggravating for me. My mom is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and I feel like she's been railroaded by well-meaning zealots into a lie she's too comfortable with to challenge. Religion is perfect for people like my mom--she doesn't want to think objectively about things like premarital sex, gay marriage, or abortion. There's too much to figure out, too many people who know more about it, too many fancy statistics, too many gray areas. No, she'd rather be told what to think, complete with a pat set of reasons that are easy to remember and inarguable by virtue of being totally illogical.

I'm not mad at my mom. I love my mom. I don't want some ludicrous and antiquated religious sham to ruin my parents' relationship or my mom's life, though. She is fortunate to have some time for "God" to help her figure out what she wants--but once she realizes he's not helping, she better get it together quickly, before she follows in all her siblings' footsteps and makes a total train wreck out of her life.

Insert Superlative Here

What the hell? Where has everyone been? I've been sitting here, with all sorts of clever things to say, but no one was here to listen so they've all disappeared into the ether that is the interwebs.

Ok, ok, you caught me...my lazy ass has been notably absent from the blog world for quite some time. (57 days or so, actually, and probably not as notably as I'd like to think.) Anyway, if you're still with me enough to be reading this, you've probably one of the people who's simultaneously reading the Remix, in which case you know most of what's gone on with me in the past two months...but I'll recap anyway.

Remix moved in, and she's wonderful. The new condo is coming along nicely, though improvements have momentarily been suspended on account of funding issues. The cats like the new place, as much as cats have opinions about this sort of thing. Work is busy, but still fun and interesting. We're eating well here, both the Remix and I enjoy cooking, so there's something delicious to be eaten on almost a nightly basis, plus more than occasional cakes. (Both the Remix and I also enjoy cake.) I quit smoking, hoping to take advantage of the climate change to break the habit.

I'm enjoying the hell out of living with this girl. She makes me laugh, she's great company, and she seems to enjoy the hell out of it right back. She's full of ideas for decorating this place, but still interested in making it our place, not just hers, and she's making it fun for me. She's watching movies from my eclectic Netflix list, and I'm picking up new music from her list. My Tivo is recording reality TV right along with Heroes and UFC fights. Our books live on the same shelves, reenergizing our individual libraries by adding a whole new list of someone else's favorites. Most importantly, though, it feels like home. For both of us, I think. Hell, I know.

Yeah, you're happy for us, I get it. If I were you, I'd be sick of reading this already too. I don't know what else to say, though. We're living together, we're happy, and damn it, it works. We've both seen enough bad relationships lately to know how lucky we are--we could be trying to sell the place less than three months after we bought it. It happens, you know. I know a guy.