Agenda? HA!

About the only thing that I got done from my list from yesterday was to walk up the street and check Future Shop for the 80s TZ. Nothing yet. *sigh* If I hadn't needed to get out of the apartment and get coffee I wouldn't actually have bothered, as the weather was rather nasty today. After a few days above freezing, where all the ice and snow had melted and I could wear my shoes instead of my boots, winter came back with a vengeance. When I woke up today I couldn't even see across the street, the blizzard was so heavy. And the streets have six-inch deep slush puddles at every intersection, so crossing the street is an adventure in scuba diving. Especially when a car decides to make a turn at 40 kph right in front of me.

By the time I schlepped home again and read the paper, it was time to go out again, this time to go to the First Thursday pubnight. I had meant to call cuteteenboy to see if he was coming this month, since he hasn't been since October, I think, but ran out of time. (Sorry - I hope you weren't waiting for me to call. Assuming you even remembered that I had mentioned it during one of last week's phone conversations.) Saw the usual suspects, and somehow got embroiled in a conversation about how to get Mike to pay me back the money he owes me. Not that I don't appreciate the advice, but how the heck did we get onto that subject? Was it because I was complaining about my mother dragging her feet on dealing with my grandmother's estate? I know I must have brought it up, because although I'm sure some folks already knew, it's not the sort of thing that my friends will generally bring up of their own accord. All I know is that I was feeling a bit uncomfortable, though that could just have been from the throbbing headache and other pains I've had since I woke up today. As predicted, my back hurts, my legs hurt and my arms aren't feeling all that great either. Walking is an adventure. Balance? Ha! (And don't go blaming the beef stew in Guinness gravy I had for dinner. Or the two pints of Mick's Red. I'm perfectly sober, just sore from last night.)

I hadn't logged on all day, so I had about 90 emails waiting for me when I got home at midnight. My spam quotient is way down these days - or maybe it's just that I'm getting so much TT Exec and Communications Department email that it's overwhelming the spam and making it seem more sparse. Not that I'm complaining. I need neither Viagra nor a penis enlargement. (Was that TMI?)

Now it's 4:30, and even though I logged on to TrekBBS a while ago, I haven't actually read anything yet. I did get caught up at the TT message board, though I discovered that I don't have the authority to post in one of the fora that one of my committee positions requires. Saved the posts in a text file for when 'Moose gets back to me on that.

( Quizzage )

My mother is a travel agent for guilt trips.

I had that phone conversation with my mother around 6:30. It seems that she did go to visit my grandmother's lawyer earlier this week to give him my grandmother's banking information. She also discussed the condo with him. Apparently, she would be allowed to keep it and live there despite what the will says if I agree to allow it, so the purpose of her call was to try to guilt me into doing so.

She started by pointing out that when she dies, I'll be getting it anyway, as I will my father's property near North Bay (which is useless to me, as I wouldn't be able to get there and don't even know how to find it). The problem with that is I don't want the thing! Living somewhere where the average age is about 120 isn't really appealing to me. Nor is owning property a couple of hundred miles away that I can't get to.

She then moved on to tell me that she was "shocked" that I would want the money. And not only would she be shocked, so would her friends. I told her it wasn't about the money, it was about honouring my grandmother's wishes. (Though the money would be nice right now, I'll admit.) If my grandmother had wanted my mother to live there, she would have just willed it to her outright rather than instructing us to sell it and split the proceeds. What's the point in there even being a will if it's just going to be overridden? (My mother actually used the phrase "we can get around the will" in the conversation.)

But, my mother says, she wants to move out of her current neighbourhood because she's nervous about coming home after dark, and so would like to move back into the Beaches but can't afford to. She also feels that she wouldn't be able to get a mortgage at her age, with her income, but she wants to stop paying rent.

She's also concerned about the rumours that her department at work are all going to be laid off or moved to Waterloo. I tried pointing out that Waterloo was a nice little city, the cost of living is much lower, and it's not as though she does anything that should necessarily keep her here. Apparently that was a "ridiculous" suggestion. Yeah, I know she was born in Toronto and has lived here all her life. But I've lived in Waterloo. It may be too slow-paced for my tastes, but it would probably be nice for her. She might be able to answer her door when someone knocks without being afraid of being shot, or go to the store after sunset.

Then she played the timing card: she said that if my grandmother hadn't died when she did, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. I replied, "But she did, so we are." (C'mon, Mom, this isn't an alternate history novel... there's no use playing "coulda-woulda-shoula". She was 84 years old, and not immortal.)

She also tried the investment card: condos are real estate, they're a good investment. I asked her, what good is an investment that just sits there and doesn't provide any income? Sure, my RRSP is just numbers in a computer, but the mutual funds provide a return that increases its value so that I'll have income after retirement (assuming I don't have to withdraw it to live on in a few months). I can talk all I want about the value of my memorabilia collection, but the value of a tangible asset doesn't exist until it's sold or rented. I suggested that we rent it out and split the income, but she refused to listen to that suggestion.

Oh, and she pointed out that my cousins were only given $10,000 each, and my mother's two aunts, one of her cousins and her childhood friend were given $2,000 each. "She could have just given you $10,000 and that would be it." Well, she could have willed the whole thing to charity, too, but she didn't.

I really don't know what's best here. On the one hand, there are the instructions in my grandmother's will. On the other, I don't want to spend the next ten or twenty years or however long listening to my mother lamenting what a bad son I am for not letting her keep the condo for herself and forcing her to live in a neighbourhood where she's scared to go outside and won't even answer her door. Not to mention listening to her characterize me as being more interested in money than in her happiness (remember, all those statements above were her assessment of my attitude).

I'm telling you, when I die, if the executor of my will decides to ignore what I wanted in favour of their own wishes, I'm coming back and haunting them, with lots of poltergeist action and vomiting of pea soup.