Saturday morning ramble

Like a good Jewish girl, I've been feeling guilty about snapping at mom the other night. That is, incidentally, just about the only thing that makes me a good Jewish girl, so I guess it's good for something. But I digress. Feeling guilty made me wonder about what had transpired and why.

If you'll abide a shameless mixing of metaphors, I'll tell you Thursday night was a perfect storm of snap-ready ingredients: just before bedtime of a long day of a long week, combined with mom's complete insensitivity thereto (as demonstrated by the timing of the call and screaming into the phone) and asking about my internet for the gazillionth time. I'm not kidding: see here and here, for example. I don't think I'm deluding myself: I've genuinely concluded that if my mother had 'met me half-way' by calling at a reasonable time and/or not calling to ask me the same question, I wouldn't have snapped.

Mom had no way of knowing that Thursday was a bad day, but, like equally obtuse RM, she might have understood by now that even though I'm not in bed by 9, I'm at least thinking about getting ready for bed, and I'm in no mood for BS conversations. I can talk substance; I can talk logistics; but I don't want to answer questions about my internet that I've already answered numerous times. I would not be annoyed if anyone called to talk about a problem or ask for help, but my tolerance for small talk plummets proportionally to my level of exhaustion.

Of course, I'm what mom might call the undeserving tired: it's not like I walked to work through ten feet of snow, carrying a fifty-pound handbag, and then performed any sort of manual labor before undertaking the same arduous journey home, only to make dinner for five kids before taking off for a second job. Nonetheless, there are some days when I'm just tired. Especially tired. As in, I'm-going-to-snap-at-you-if-you-come-between-me-and-my-bedtime-with-stupid-questions tired. Thankfully, the regular occurrence of that scenario declined when the live-in extroverted social idiot moved out, and even though I was almost that tired the night he put his hands on my feet, that would have been equally ridiculous any day. But I digress, again (hey, it is a ramble--that subject heading absolves me of any obligation to be coherent).

This also ties into mom's wondering why I don't call more often during the week, and I have to wonder whether she's made the connection--she did pick up on how tired I was. I'm not going to call when mom's being herself--which I've come to see as endearing--is going to push me over the edge. I'll call today to smooth things over. Because I'm a good Jewish girl.

***
I called home shortly after posting the above.

Mom: Have you done your taxes?
A.: I have--a while ago, actually.
Mom: Did you use software?
A.: Online version of Turbotax.
Mom: There are some free ones out there...
A.: My taxes were especially complicated this year because of the roommate, so it didn't make sense...
Mom: Didn't "make sense!" [Correcting my Russian]. You really need to take a night course in Russian or something--you truly are losing the language!
A.: Well, it didn't make sense.
Mom: I don't see what's complicated about having a roommate.
A.: It's a source of income not represented on a W2, and it entailed converting part of the property to a rental property. I wasn't about to f* around with a cheap tax program.
Mom: Whatever works. What else is up?
A.: Not much.
Mom: Work is fine?
A.: Yup.
Mom: Well, if you do anything else interesting, let me know.
A.: Will do.