I wake up, yeah, 4:30 AM, feeling a little grim.  The snow should be starting now.  I haven't done yoga in months.  Mom is asleep in her bed as I slink out of her cluttered office room, taking my bathrobe along.  Down the stairs.  The cat is waiting in the hallway for me, beating me to the bathroom to squat his hindquarters low in the cat box, tail out straight, to urinate.  I watch him cover the scent, and he seems right handed to me.  It's a good survival technique, as I worry vaguely about the coyotes that are active at nightfall and the dawn.  Feeling pretty miserable, I am.   I put some effort into mom.  I was awake at a reasonable hour yesterday, I put seed in the bird feeder, as the deer family at midnight comes to deplete it.  Once I got the front storm door open, an icicle against it holding it in place, unmoving, I went for a slow walk in the sunlight up to the power grid station.  (Mom seemed happy upstairs reading.)   We share a Greek salad with chicken, leftover from the Port City Cafe, and she starts in, she needs a ride.  She already is angry with me for some reason, my correcting her about something.  But we get out in the car and make our little stops, I'm trying to get her a pair of drug store sunglasses, Foster Grant, a Sunday New York Times, the groceries.  She wants to go for a ride.  While the sun is up and out.  "Going home, that's a trap, for women," she tells me.  And she babbles on about little things as we go up the road.  We stop at the Kinney's Drugs after trying the quick mart by the McDonald's for sunglasses.  Mom, wear your mask, I ask.  You've got me all rattled, she tells me, as she tries on several pairs, while I hold her regular glasses, as patient as I can be now.  I get her out to the car, then remember I meant to get some fresh masks for the pandemic thing, and when I get back up to the checkout counter, having left mom in the car with the car running, mom is back in the front door, panicked, these glasses don't work.  Mom, they are sunglasses not reading glasses...  I make eye contact with the young woman at the checkout, swipe the car for $8, and get mom along to the car.  We get back to the apartment.  I get the groceries in.  I need another walk.

Earlier, after the first walk of the day, in bright sunlight under a blue sky now encroached up, just as mom comes down the stairs, and the phone rings, it's Betsy.  Thank god.  I put my coat back on and out the door to walk around the parking lot, after putting out the salad on the kitchen table, as she's starting her day with the bad messages of a Saltine.  She's in her car, after having breakfast at Ted's Bulletin in a Balston.  She'd sent me the text about how, "you know something is worth it when the benefits outweigh the sacrifices," which indeed has left me with some deep cutting personal questions.  We catch up briefly, and then she puts things well for me.  It's an issue of Dharma, what you have been put into this world to accomplish, as opposed to the worldly jobs and things you must do to support that.  There's nothing at all wrong with my being a bartender, in order to embrace my writing efforts, no.  She tells me her dividing line, the Dharma of her love of dance, and her job as fitness organizer at the law school, which pays the mortgage.  

After the sweet conversation--mom comes out onto the stoop to stare at me in her bathrobe for a minute or so, before going back in--I sadly feel the difference in my brain, how sweetly stimulated it feels now, after this whole long four months here straight with no real end in sight, I feel sentimental about Betsy putting things into terms for me.  Would I want to make a living taking writing as a commercial thing?  Not really.  My brow hurts, but my psyche feels so much better, and then I back in and share the salad with mom, unhappy that she couldn't figure it out on her own, the take out container in the blue plastic bag I brought out for her, tapping it in front of her as I held my phone in one hand, having slipped my coat on.

So now I'm awake, early on a Monday morning, still feeling tired, worn out, depressed, exhausted by her childishness, her inconsistencies, her volatility, and she's left crying after dinner because I let the cat out, and another day is ruined, ruined, ruined.

At the end of Monday, I need to get out of the house.  Small sized chicken breasts dashed with cayenne and ginger and curry powder, baked in the iron pan along with regular and sweet potatoes.   I took a break earlier, got out on my own for a while, I mean, just to do the grocery shopping without interruption, stopping by the drug store...  But I'm tired now, need to get away from mom and her conversation, her "everyone here hates me..." and all that.  

And for the first time ever, I go down to The Press Box on my own, and to sit at the bar and have a glass of wine, all by myself.  Allison, who is pregnant now, is behind the bar, her father is sitting with the village elders at the island bar, drinking beers watching the SU basketball game, Marisa her sister is there, and another server who also looks like fun.  She seats me at the end of the bar at the service end, putting down the folding part of the oak bar, are you sure, yes, we're not busy, a glass of Chianti, sure.  And I take some popcorn, take out my phone, watch a bit of the game, they all look like kids now to me, in a way that never occurred to me before.  I have another glass, that one too goes down easy, and so on.  I don't really write at all.  I text Betsy, having spoken to her the day before.  The place closes finally, and I drive home, and go to bed.  

I don't get up 'til 11:30 Tuesday, today, feeling the Chianti, five glasses, in my head.   I get up, take an Advil, try to rally with some green tea, get the low sodium sliced turkey and the hummus out for mom, have her take her medications.  She's itching for a ride, so, okay, after the long drive and the sunglasses ordeal purchasing Sunday, and leaving her in the house as it snowed heavy lake effect, I relent and take her out for a ride. 

First to the Stewart Shop, for the newspapers, a scoop of coffee ice cream for mom, a small coffee for myself.  It feels like it wasn't worth it, going out last night.  Next up, to the bank, to deposit a check for mom.  A quick drive by the lake, then we'll go on to the Big M for groceries while I still have energy in the wet falling snow.  I'm straining to hear a piece on NPR, a Russian film director talking about making films under the Soviet censor, and then the Hollywood censor, which is of course money.   Maybe she cannot hear the radio very well, but she keeps on talking and talking about the usual uninteresting things just to babble, the weather, a tree, the color of a car, what kind of car is that...  and so on, and when we get to the parking lot of the little supermarket, I tell her, look, I find this interesting.  And then coming back with a bag full of groceries, I try to bring up mom's sense of entitlement, about how I can drive her around for hours and she still gets mad at me.  But this goes off tracks and wasn't worth bringing up either, as she slips back into her passive aggression.  I guess this is over between you and me.  You can leave any time you want...  Oh, Jesus, mom.