I’m back with the daily weather report. It’s 50F right now, but got up to the sixties earlier. Here is my post from yesterday in which I talked about whatever was on my mind. We’re supposed to get up to 78F tomorrow. I have a private lesson, which we might actually be able to do outside if it doesn’t rain (afternoon showers are predicted). I don’t mind going outside in a drizzle as long as there are no flies/mosquitos/wasps/other bugs. If there are any bugs, I will not go outside.
Bugs love me so much. The last time I went out when there were bugs, I got bit by a wasp–and I couldn’t help but scratch it. Therefore, it got infected, and I had to go to the doctor for antibiotics. Fortunately, a ten-day regiment (started with seven and added three) worked–even though the first seven days didn’t completely do the job. My finger was swollen to approximately four times the regular size (only a slight exaggeration), and I feared that it was going to be worse than it actually was. Fortunately, the last three days of the treatment took care of it, otherwise, who knows what the fuck I would do?
My long-standing joke that isn’t really a joke is that I’m allergic to everything including air. Another is that I like the outdoors as long as there’s a door between it and me. The third is that I like the outdoors, but the outdoors hates me.None of these are really jokes, though. Everything outside affects me negatively, which means I stay inside as much as possible.
When I used to play tennis as a kid with my family and my parents’ friends, the mosquitoes would eat me alive while they left my father strictly alone. As a result, he did not believe that they bit me (anything that did not happen to him did not happen at all), which was doubly frustrating.
Honestly, it’s such a pain. Whenever I’m outside, I feel like I have to be on my guard. The problem is that I can’t really protect myself against things like wasps because they’re too fast for me. If I didn’t have to care about infection, then I wouldn’t worry so much. I don’t mind getting bit (I do) as long as the bites don’t blow up.
To wildly switch subjects, my mom told me about being audited by the regulatory board that governs the field she’s in. She needs to get 40 credits (which is common in many careers) a year, which she easily did because she taught/trained a lot. The problem was that she did not keep any records, so she has no proof that she did any of it.
She complained that the board had gotten so strict with the little laugh she did when she was annoyed/flustered/upset. She also has an issue doing anything online because she has an almost phobic response to it. She knows that it’s irrational, but she can’t do anything about it. Or rather, she won’t get the help she needs to get past it.
Her brain starts panicking when she has to fill out a form, and then she starts pressing buttons willy-nilly. She can’t read anything as she’s just too flustered, and then she reaches out to my brother or me in desperation. My brother is the tech guru in our family, but he’s not always the best teacher. He’s impatient and thinks people know more than they do. My mother is anxious, nervous, and has a terrible memory. Even more so when someone is impatient with her.
In fact, she’ll call me sometimes before my brother even though I know less because I’m a better teacher. I’m more patient, and I know enough to help her more than half the time. Sometimes, my brother and I will team up and help her at the same time.
I can sympathize because I panic at times and then everything I know flies out of my brain. Especially if there is outside pressure on me.
With my mother’s situation, I understand the frustration. But, on the other hand, those are the standards of her occupation, and she knew that. She was taking a gamble that she would not be audited, and she lost. Them’s the breaks. I can sympathize with that as well because it’s something I would do, but she cant’ really be pissed or upset about it now. I mean, she can (and I would be as well), but it should be at herself because she was the one who took the gamble.
Look. I’ve done that as well. And I can sympathize with being panicked over it, therefore pushing it to the back of your brain so you don’t think about it on the regular. I am very good at doing that myself.
That’s why I half-emphasize with her and am half-exasperated with her. She reminds me too much of the part of myself that I don’t like. But also, I’m more self-awar e of about my flaws than she is. Or rather, I’m more open about them. She knows her own issues, but she won’t admit them. If she does, she’ll just shrug and keep doing them.
The other thing is that she’ll try to foist it off my brother and/or me. We both do what we can, but at the end of the day, it would be so much easier if she just learned hot to do online shit herself. Easier for us, I mean. I guess it’s easier for her to ask us to do it for her. And, to be honest, at her age, she may not have the capacity to learn.
The biggest issue is that it’s all in Chinese which neither my brother nor I speak. So my mother has to translate for us if we’re trying to help her with something on a Chinese website. If it’s an English-based one, then it’s more chaotic as we have to translate two ways.
I don’t mind helping out now and then, but I do mind the unspoken assumption that I’ll take over and do it for her. Not only do I live in two very heavy Guess Cultures, but my family is so dysfunctional when it comes to communication that it would take a five-hundred page manual to figure us out.
More tomorrow.