Visiting Butthump, Oregon part 2

Because of the dog, I started a bucket list.

#1, place a constantly yapping dog (any old dog, certainly don't have a particular Daisy dog in mind) into a pillowcase and swing it around my head vigorously and toss it over the roof of the house. Any house. A random house, anywhere at all.

I don't have any other items on the list currently. And dammit, I missed my chance to take care of #1 when I was over there.

Mom and Dad have a double wide mobile home. It's over 30 years old, and still has the original small oven built into the wall. The door doesn't close properly, and my dad has to come and stick a table knife into the hinge and swear to get it to close.

That's not bad enough, though. The heat blanket around the oven seems to have disappeared, because the oven heats up the wall and the room. This is a concern. I brought it up while I was there.

"Oh I think it's okay," Mom said, breezily. "We really can't afford to worry about that right now anyway."

No, they can't. Not only did they spend 14 grand on a bathtub, they just spent 700 bucks on some twin beds for the guest room.

The beds are nice enough, I suppose. But in their little tiny town, merchants don't just make a living... they make a killing. They're usually the only one of whatever type of merchant there is (one grocery store, as you might expect, going there is not cheap... one furniture store, one drugstore..) and some types of business aren't represented at all. For example, one cannot buy clothing in Butthump. Except for sweatshirts/t shirts emblazoned with either the name of the town or ECLIPSE 2017!!

So I did go to the furniture store to see how much it would cost to replace their oven. And the guy quoted me a price of over a thousand dollars. I managed to keep from gasping and clutching at my throat, but it was close.

You can get one of those ovens on Amazon, by the way. About 400 bucks.

😱

We had considered getting them a new fridge, too. If we all contributed, it would be affordable, right?

Nope. Over a thousand dollars for a friggin' refrigerator, too. Again, there's a difference between making a living and making a killing.

The local grocery store has already started price gouging for the eclipse, too. A six pack of Aquafina drinking water is SEVEN BUCKS!!!

The small bottle of ketchup I got while I was visiting would be about $1.89 here. It was $3.79.

My parents are doing something I really need to do, too.
Dehoarding. But my mom only has clutter, I have clutter and dirt.
::Sigh::

Some of the things my parents have are worth money, as they've been passed down through the family for generations.

But all they care about right now are selling those things.

Quite a few family heirlooms have already gone out the door, actually.

When they cleaned out my grandparents' house several years ago, one of the things my mom got rid of was a complete collection of Playboy magazine.

EVERY one that had ever been published.

I know those would have been worth something.

Mom was horrified that her father ever thought about sex so she threw the magazines in the dumpster.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Oh, and my dad can't eat this and can't eat that. I understand it, he's not supposed to have a lot of salt and there are other things that don't help him feel better.

But he doesn't say that it's not good for his heart.

Nope, according to him, he can't eat this or that because... "I can't crap!!!"

That's dinner table conversation, by the way. I was NOT raised to talk about those things at all, basically, but definitely not AT the DINNER TABLE. My grandparents on both sides were refined. They taught good manners to their offspring, and my parents, wanting to be thought of as 'doing a good job' taught us manners, too. I guess they worked so hard to teach us manners that they used all of theirs up.

Also at the dinner table?
They talk about their colonoscopies.
It seems endlessly fascinating to them both.
I didn't say anything, though. I just excused myself and went off to the spare room for awhile. When they had finished their dinner, I came back and finished mine.

My mom's toes are turning dark. She had her podiatrist look at them, and he told her the medicines she takes mean that she bruises easily.

Yeah, and those same medicines are causing her those embarrassing accidents.

But does she tell her regular doctor? Say something perhaps like, 'The meds are making me crap my pants and I would like something different'?
No.
Instead she tells me that her blood work looks great.

My dad worked hard to aggravate me while I was there.
I love him dearly but that's pretty much what he does. Starts out being on his best behavior for a day or so, then his attitude starts to slide a little and he gets sort of, well, mean.

My cousin gave him a ton of information a few years back and he did a family tree thing on a cd for everyone. It's fun to look at now and then, but the computer I have now won't run it. When we were going through family pictures, Dad said that they're all on that cd. And I told him that I can't look at it because the operating system on my computer won't let me.

He went through the roof. This is not an exaggeration, he pitched a yelling, screaming fit. He was pissed as hell at all of us. We were 'ungrateful'. And because we didn't tell him that we couldn't see the stuff on our computers, 'a bunch of liars'. He went on and on. Louder, his voice got thinner, his face redder... not really good for his heart. And actually, not good for my attitude either.

I offered a few comments, but he wasn't going to hear a damn thing, he was ranting and determined to shout, bluster and have his tantrum.

As he got more and more shrill, I finally stood up and said, "Dad, I didn't come here for this. If you don't stop, I will pack up my shit and leave. I will not stay and be shouted at."

He had to yell a bit more because he doesn't go from 90 to zero quickly, but he settled down in large increments after that. I didn't want to leave, but I am an adult now and I can leave if I want to. He doesn't have the power over me that he used to. Thank goodness.

I don't hold it against him anymore. He can't help who/how he is.

I am glad that I don't have to be yelled at all the time, though. I really had enough of that while I was growing up.

So my mom likes religious trinkets. Tacky Jesus art. Jesus is on a clock, on plaques, on the refrigerator magnets. She has printed out all kinds of inspirational things and tacked them with actual thumbtacks to the walls of her trailer.
Figurines. Flowerpots. Candles. Little machine-made lace things with scriptures on them.

I have no issue with that, it's her stuff and those things are meaningful to her. I wouldn't take that away.

But most of the little figurines and stuff aren't worth anything, take up space, collect dust and other than being really, really tacky, there's nothing remarkable about them.

She will go through things and say they need to be tossed out the door. TONS of them. Without a second thought.

But if it says Jesus on it, she says, "No, I need that."

I really think she's afraid of a retributory bolt of lightning.
She kept every single piece of anything that said Jesus.

I bet if I wrote Jesus Jesus Jesus about 20 times on a piece of paper and hid it somewhere, when we came across it she would have said, "No, I need that!!!"

So I didn't get rid of any Jesus things.