Everyday Randomness

Preposterous!

My grandmother is nutty. I mean it. She’s really loco in her own ways. Don’t get me wrong, I do love her to death, but her crazy antics are driving ME crazy, too. I’ve been dealing with her loony-ness for most of my adult life. She’s definitely OCD which makes things even crazier around here. I mean it, she really is. If she’s walking through walmart and sees a pair of shoes in the clothing department, she takes them back to the shoe department. Then she’ll spend the next hour sorting through the shoes making sure they’re in the right boxes and aligned perfectly on the shelves. God help us!

See, all my life my grandparents have lived just a couple minutes away. My grandpa owns about 200 acres of farm land. When the 3 sisters grew up and started moving away, my grandpa gave them each an acre of land, so I grew up on my mother’s acre on the backside of the property. When I was younger this was great. I was the oldest spoiled little granddaughter, so from a very young age I learned to pick up the phone, dial my grandpa and say, “mommy’s being mean”. My grandpa would ask if she was being mean, or if I was just being a bad little girl. I would always say, I don’t know but I’m coming to your house, he would laugh, and I would meet him at the creek below my house and walk through the woods with him to his house. In the summers, I would spend every minute possible with my grandparents, and I would cry if I had to leave, knowing I only lived 2 minutes away. As a child I always said, “One day, I’m living in Nana and Papa’s house when I grow up.”

When the day came that I got married, I wanted to move back home. We were living in an apartment about an hour away, so we started looking for houses to rent. I immediately thought of my grandparents old house. They had raised their family in the “little house”, and built a much larger “dream home” next door once they were retired. So, the “little house” sat empty for 11 years. I was about to ask if I could possibly work out a renters deal with them when my grandpa mentioned it first. As part of my wedding present, they spent all summer renovating the house without telling me, so 2 weeks after we got married, we moved in.

I didn’t think my grandma’s antics would have such a huge effect on the way things are now, but every little thing that isn’t exactly how she wants it drives her crazy. She’s the type who will offer to clean your house, and when she’s done you wont recognize it. Your furniture will be re-arranged, and you won’t be able to find a thing in your kitchen. My hubby works on a lot of cars. He’s a bit of a backyard mechanic, so he’s got this pile of car parts and a huge metal tool cabinet to keep everything organized. It never fails, as soon as he starts working on a car, he can’t find anything he needs. She’s rearranged his tool cabinet again. I mean, somehow my crock pot even ended up outside in hubby’s tool cabinet one day. I mean crazy!

So, with all this being said, you can understand a few of the things I’m dealing with. Well, a couple weeks ago this guy offered my dad 2 truck loads of free firewood. Seeing as how I have a wood stove, and we primarily use wood heat in the winter, my dad passed it along to me. We made all the arrangements for it, and told my grandparents about it. This morning my dad couldn’t get ahold of me….of course it was before noon, so I was still in bed! So, he called my grandma to let her know the guy would be dropping off the wood today. I woke up with the dog growling and barking with my grandma banging on the door telling me she didn’t want the wood in her yard.

I said nana, it’s going in the same place it always goes, on the woodpile behind the barn. She argued for 10 minutes that she wouldn’t have it in her yard making it look ugly. I was like okay, whatever you say. I called my dad, started to tell him what was going on and he laughed. He’s been dealing with her craziness for years, too, and partly blames it for why he and my mom divorced. Anyway, he said call her right now and tell her you’re not freezing your ass off this winter because she’s too cheap to put gas heat in the house. You’re getting this wood and there’s not a damn thing she can do about it. I tried to call her for 10 minutes, but she obviously took the phone off the hook, so I walked next door, and nicely told her that we had cleared this with her 2 weeks ago, she was okay with it then, and I couldn’t call the guys now and tell them not to bring it. It’s too late.

I said I’ll drag every last log into the woods, down by the creek by myself if I have to just so you will never have to look at it again. Like she goes to the barn anyway! If she went down there, she wouldn’t be standing there trying to argue with me that we’ve got plenty of wood to get through a couple more winters. The wood pile is bare. It got cold one night a few weeks back, and there’s so little wood left that I had to go snitch an armload from my mother’s wood shed just to build a fire that night! Haha…yeah imagine me going to my mother’s to steal firewood. To make a long story short, after arguing with her, I gave up.

I said fine, they’ll drop it off, daddy will come over, we’ll load it back up, and we’ll haul it all up to his pasture if that makes you happy. She agreed that would be fine. They dropped off the first truckload shortly after that. My dad will be over later this afternoon, and in the middle of the rain and storms moving in, she expects us to move it all day. At this point, I don’t know why I put up with this, but if my dad’s plan goes well, we won’t have to move any of it. He and hubby are going to cut up the logs, telling my grandma it’s so it’ll not only load easier, but be ready to burn. It will dry out faster that way, too! But then they’re going to put it all back in the pile and most likely she’ll never know the difference. By tomorrow she will have forgotten the whole ordeal, and will be looking at something else to fuss about.