lance_sibley | Feb. 24th, 2005

I had two phone calls from my mother today - both before I woke up. She's never quite understood why I'm not up at 6 in the morning like she is... well, that's not quite accurate, as I've been up at 6 every morning for quite a while now. It's just that I'm usually getting ready for bed about then...

It seems I have to go to my grandmother's lawyer's office tomorrow to sign some letters, otherwise they have to be retyped with a new date on them. (Don't ask me why.) I also have to go to her bank to sign some other documents to allow my mother and I access to her bank accounts. So at least there's some progress being made, finally.

Naturally, my mother kept harping on about how she wants to keep my grandmother's condo. (Actually, she said, "I'm keeping the condo, and that's final. I don't want to hear any more about it." *headdesk*) She kept going on about how I'll never get my hands on a condo in the Beaches for the price it's worth (an inherently self-contradictory statement), and how I'll be getting it when she dies anyway. As if I particularly want to live 30 minutes from the subway. Oh, and she again told me that I'll be getting my father's property when he dies, which is in the middle of nowhere several hours north of Toronto. I'm not sure where she finds the confidence to say something like that, since she and my father pretty much only speak at holidays...

I told her that the will explicitly sets out what's supposed to be done, but she's convinced herself (or let my grandmother's lawyer convince her) that that's not necessarily true. All I have to do is agree to let her ignore the terms that are set out.

Now, on the other hand, she's offered to give me the entire contents of my grandmother's bank account (minus the other bequests and funeral expenses), which is apparently somewhere around $100K. I guess I'll see when I talk to the bank and the lawyer tomorrow.

My biggest problem is that it's impossible to have a civil, adult-to-adult conversation with my mother on the topic. In her eyes, I'm still a little boy who just happens to have been alive for nearly forty years. She's of the opinion that I'm just trying to get my hands on my grandmother's money (which, while it would be nice as it would allow me to go back to school, is not the main issue). In fact, it went something like this:

Mother: You've got thirty years left to work. You don't need the money. You'll get a job in no time. I'm too old to find a new job when Manulife lays us all off. (She works for Maritime Life, which was bought my Manulife last year. She and her coworkers are convinced they're all going to be laid off, despite the fact that Manulife doesn't serve the same market as Maritime. That's why Manulife bought them in the first place.)

Me: It's not that easy these days. You don't understand the way IT works. Imagine that you went to school and learned only English. When you graduated, you were able to work in English for a few years. Then, suddenly, everybody started working only in German. Wouldn't you feel you had to go back to school and learn German?

Mother: That's your fault for specializing. Besides, she shouldn't have given you anything more than she left Nelson or Johnny (my cousins, who got $10K each). She was my mother a lot longer than she was your grandmother.

Me: I'm not a mind reader; I don't know why she set it up that way. But she did.

Mother: But she shouldn't have. I'm not giving up the condo.

It's my fault for "specializing"? *headdesk* Excuse me, but in 1985, when I started in university, the Internet was just a network of Unix boxes that had email and newsgroups... not the Internet we know today. Text-only. Monochrome monitors. C++ wasn't even being taught yet, much less anything else that's in use today. Everybody programmed in COBOL, PL/1 or Fortran, with just a little bit of C.

Part of me is tempted to hold my ground just to piss her off, because of her attitude. I think, after this is over and done with, I'll probably be speaking with her even less than I did until my grandmother became ill (which was about three times per year).

Come to think of it, this has been a week for making phone calls I wasn't looking forward to... and there's still one day left. I wonder who I'll be calling tomorrow who'll either disappoint or anger me... the only phone conversation I've had this week that wasn't irritating, I think, was with

dx4 last night. He made a rather nice offer which might help me out quite a bit regarding this fight with my mother.

Last night's bowling was less than spectacular: 170, 147 and 146. I'm not sure why, but I was having a lot of problems with the left corner, which is odd, because I'm usually stronger at picking up the 4-7 than the 6-10. I was missing the 4 and picking off the 7. I blame my sore hip and back. :( At least Greg didn't try to pull my pants down - probably because I remembered to bring the leather pants he wanted to borrow. (I told him about the lace-up ones, and he said, "Oh, those would have been perfect!" Unfortunately for him, as I've said before, they're wayyyyy too tight for me, so I can't see him fitting into them.)

One of the friends from my bowling league who was in Pegasus the night I was in there with

cuteteenboy was asking about him. (I think the second one was too drunk that night to remember talking to us.) Apparently Robert was a little surprised by the fact that

cuteteenboy so readily divulged personal information out of the blue. (I know

cuteteenboy was drunk, but he wasn't behaving all that unusually.) Obviously Robert hasn't spent enough time with me. After all, I'm supposed to be Captain TMI.

You Belong in the UK