reliable if not exciting

My phone rings at 10pm. I understand that tomorrow is a holiday, but isn't it always better to call at not 10pm?

Mom: How are things?
A.: Fine...
Mom: Just fine? A few days ago they were good. What happened?
A.: Nothing... things are good.
Mom: What did you do today?

Mom does like to keep tabs on what I do.

A.: I went to the opera...
Mom: Did you bike there?
A.: No.
Mom: They should have bike racks.
A.: I'm sure they do. Whether they have showers is another issue... [I mean, there are a number of issues, but before I let myself continue to think of them, I though, 'are we really having this conversation?']

Mom told me about her day (a pleasant outing).

***
I recall something dad said many months ago-- that mom was a woman of extremes. He said this in a context of one of her political rants, and followed it with, 'if she weren't Jewish, she'd be anti-Semitic,' but it's true in a non-political sense as well. Many things in mom's view are all or nothing. In her frame of mind, since I enjoy cycling, I will always prefer to cycle everywhere. And there are people who do prefer to cycle everywhere-- read Sex and the City-- and I think that's great, if that's what works for you, but in a city with great public transportation, cycling is not always the most efficient way of getting around. What I'm trying to say is, my logic says that just because something-- be it a form of transportation, a career choice, or anything in between-- works for one particular situation, it's not the right thing for every situation. Mom's logic skips that step.

I've written much in these pages (see, for example, original Have You Applied to Google post) about mom's it-works-here-so-it-must-work-everywhere thing. I've also written about the time she tried to set me up with the son of a friend of a friend, the sole basis of the connection being that we both cycled to work. For her, my choice of transportation defined me in a way (for me, it was a choice of transportation).

The leap here, from previous posts-- the epiphany-- is that mom is projecting. I think I used to subconsciously wonder, 'what must she think of me?' whereas now I think, what about mom leads her to this kind of logic. Similarly, when I first became a vegetarian-- back when vegetarianism was newer to people-- I got a lot of nutty questions and some bizarre logic. People (largely, my parents' friends) would tell me that people like me blew up animal labs (apparently, for some people, to have conviction is necessarily to take that conviction to extremes); that eating plants also entailed violence; that if I wanted to truly live sustainably, I'd never get anywhere for fear of stepping on a single ant. All-or-nothing, I tell you. And I think I used to take it at least somewhat personally, but now I'm more prone to see it as a reflection of other person.
***

For some reason, this train of thought reminded me of an event I forgot to blog about in the China notes, although I've had a chance to tell some of you about it. We had taken a ferry up Shennong Stream, off the Yangtze, and were getting off that and onto some row boats. We were at the back of the boat, which was unimportant because the breathtakingly beautiful landscape was all around us. It was very peaceful, too, until mom started-- and wouldn't stop-- complaining that the woman in front of her had a huge head and however was she going to see anything. She said it once, twice, three or four times before I asked her to stop.

A.: Stop, please.
Mom: No, the woman's head is so big.
A.: Mom, Enjoy the surroundings and stop ruining for everyone else.
Mom: No! The woman's head is big and how dare you tell me what to do.

Dad agreed with me, mom accused him of always taking my side, and so on. But even though she stayed on the offensive, I think she realized she was wrong and just didn't like to be called on it.

A moment like this actually contributed to the ruin of my graduation from Smith. Mom's penchant for whining about and/or making a melodrama of the slightest thing really puts a damper on events, which is why perhaps-- or so the media tells us-- many women may have grown up dreaming of a wedding, but for various reasons I grew up dreading the prospect (I'll jump from that bridge when I get to it). For one thing, every time I stopped to say goodbye to a friend, mom yelled at me for spending time not talking to family friends who had driven out for the graduation. After teh ceremony, we went to a Thai restaurant, and mom started complaining about the food. It had too much salt. She said it once, twice, etc. It was clear she was going to keep saying it throughout the meal. I asked her to stop. She threw a fit and continued to be a selfish pain in the ass the rest of the day.

***
On the way back to the office from a meeting, my supervisor commented that one thing she wouldn't mind about working for some corporations is the kind of lunch you read about at places like Google.

***
On a completely different note, here are collected first impressions of Gracie:

-She's shaped like a rugby ball!
-Is she carrying twins?
-There goes Jabba the Hut.
-She's the size of both my cats put together.