Christmas is my mother's childhood friend.  But the moment my mother moved away from the neighborhood, she never spoke to her again.  I grew up believing the Christmas was either mentally disabled or completely insane, because that's how my mother felt about her.  But then mother moved back and all of a sudden, Christmas was right there, ready to be her buddy again.  At first, my mother treated her like total garbage.  Because that's how mother is: when she has power, meaning when she feels good, and is in charge of herself, she acts like a lunatic.  When she has no power, well, she still acts like a lunatic, but in a different way.  When she has power, she will be cruel to your face (and behind your back).  When she has no power, she will only be cruel behind your back.  

And Christmas knows about all of this.  And yet, she still acts like a little puppy dog lapping up at whatever spills out of my mother's mouth.  

I wrote about her once, calling her the "unaware flying monkey".  I take that post back, because she's not unaware at all.  She's just as much of a lunatic as my mother is.  

And today, I have to call her.  

Ugh.  And now my stomach is in knots because I hate confrontation.  But I have to set this woman straight.  And if you read my last post, you'd know what about.  Because today she called to come visit.  And I can't have her coming over to start shit if she doesn't know the truth.  

Per their last phone call, she said "The next time I come over, I will ask your daughter (meaning me)...actually, I don't even know why I'd have to ask your daughter if you can go for a walk or not, because you're a grown woman who can make her own choices."  And my mother gave her some shitty reply.  "Yeah, well, she'll probably make me take that damned walker if I go!"  As though me making her take her walker is evil, even though she's a fall risk.  And even though her physical rehab guy told her if she goes for walks she has to take one with her.  But of course, I am the evil one for going along with what her doctors say.  

As for the permission part, apparently she told C that I don't allow her to leave the house and won't even take her for walks.  Which is total bullshit, because she's never once asked me to take her for a walk.  In fact, I have asked her several times and she refused to go.  So I stopped asking.  

So I have to call C and set her straight about all of this.  About the whole "holding her hostage" BS that was said between them.  Because I refuse to have this woman come into my house and have my mother say this kind of shit about me in my own home to her.  If it wasn't something that was so devastatingly awful (they both used the phrase "elder abuse"), I would leave it alone and just ignore it all.  But this is a serious accusation (C actually used the phrase and then my mother agreed with her).  So I need to fix it.  Not only that, I also need to bring up the stuff C said about me that was cruel just on its own.  I thought C was kinda sorta my friend.  I was wrong about that.  But then again, I been wrong about her since I've met her.  

I hate this stuff.  I hate having to deal with shit like this.  I hate that I have to in order to keep my family protected.  I feel that by living here, we are completely vulnerable to these idiots who want nothing more but than to hurt us.  But I've done it before and gotten through it.  And now it's just a money game--make more money, and we can leave.  It's as simple as that.  

Now, if I could just feel better, I could actually work on the money thing (I am having a bad flareup of my POTS right now...ugh).