Tears and Urine

This just frosts my cookies.

I've spent the better part of my life being told what I like, how I like it, and whom I like - by someone, whom in all honesty, I don't like. What's more, they cannot even be able to retain the smallest (or largest) details about me.

Those of you who've been around a while?

You know about whom I'm speaking. For those of you that don't, let's just say, she's a good (or at least decent) mom to my two sisters and brother. Me? Not so much. She greatly prefers to tell me who I am, what I like, and what I don't like. Or, how I like it.

So perhaps it should not come as a surprise that suddenly out of the clear blue sky I've been a Sudoku fan. You know, since it's inception.

Really? Because I know me, and if you asked me? I'd have to say:

I detest Sudoku.

I've always detested Sudoku.

Her usual, in a nut shell. Getting it wrong. The Sudoku thing is the tip of the ice berg - it's in the fashion that I do not, for example, drink my coffee black. Now, she'll tell me to my face (repeatedly) that I take it black. (I'm a cream a sugar gal, and really? greatly prefer the caramel latte - anyone who knows me in the slightest most likely knows that). She carted cherry pie out one year, from across the country, made a HUGE presentation of said pie, only to then berate me for my look of confusion (and not well concealed horror, I admit) when faced with a congealed mess of cherry pie peeking at me from underneath the Dreaded Tupperware Lid. (Tupperware, mind, she left behind. A well used Cool Whip container, with a cracked lid. What, I don't even rate a tupperware container in one piece?! yes, I know, bitching at straws here)

"What do you mean you don't like cherry pie? You've always loved my cherry pie!" (do add in condescending tone, with the slightest tinge of edge) - no, I reply, I've always loved apple, or pumpkin pie. Cherry pie?

NEVER.

So, at the great risk of looking like an ungrateful, snotty prat, I am yet again royally irritated to open a box, from her, with a book for Fox (nicely selected, might I add) and a goddamn Sudoku book for me. Complete with note on how much she knows I love these. Anyone who loves these stupid things? Let me know. Currently, I'm saving them to send to her at Xmas, because she loves them. To note? She's got the rest of the pack brainwashed into thinking they like them too. Trust me on this one: only my brother does. I found a whole host of them holding up a potted plant at one of my sister's; and the other one uses them at Bathroom Entertainment Fodder, for those Hard To Read visits to the Library.

The Others, by the way, just carry on, as though being told what they like or don't is part and parcel of the Natural World Order.

Now, me, you might ask?

I love CROSS WORD PUZZLES. I'm good with words. Not numbers. I find those puzzles annoying to the highest degree - I'd rather have bamboo stakes driven under my nails than do one of those.

It's not the fact that maybe once she screwed up, and sent the wrong thing; nope, this is a constant in my life. No longer am I as hurt, bewildered why it is that she can say, recall all sorts of details about the other's, just not me.   Now, I simply consider her a thoughtless moron, who doesn't know me in the least. Sure, on one level, that still cuts me to the quick, she has known me my whole life, but on another?

I've finally (sort of) faced the fact that she doesn't really know me, nor is she interested in doing so. If she were? She'd not send me stupid ass Sudoku books, insist that I take my coffee black, adore cherry pie, put my unmentionables in the dryer (a cardinal sin in my house), or re-arrange my entire kitchen so it mirrors hers when she arrives. She absolutely would not try to divest me of my Lilly Pulitzer shoe boxes (clearly, I'm still not over that incident, or the fact that she wrote on the Kate Spade box - both sides, so I can't even pretend she didn't vandalize the entire box!). I don't wear yellow gold jewelry. I look like death in it, and I Don't Like It. I asked for pink plaid footie jammies? I got blue ones, with polar bears. I must have screwed up; she was absolutely convinced that I'd hate the pink plaid ones.

huh?

I don't, much to her surprise, might I add, eat mustard. In any form. On anything.

I'm not the one into Asian Art, or follow the Final Four (whatever in hell that really is) - I don't adore (hell, or even like) Tapas restaurants, and for the record? Just to set it straight? I like my cosmopolitans on the sweet side - that does not mean extra juice. In fact, unless I'm about to die from a kidney infection, I loathe cranberry juice.  And yes, if you're coming to my house, and you'd like to present me with a "thoughtfully selected" (do note the sarcasm here) gift from the liquor store, you'd know because you're freaking related to me that I'm a Grey Goose girl. Mandarin, if you can find it. Straight up, if you can't. Don't tell me that I'm sooooooo into that Polish, Gluten Free Potato Vodka - I can't stand the stuff. Take your You Should Be On A Gluten Free Diet and stuff it where the sun don't shine. When it comes to vodka, moonshine remains a better option that the Polish Potato Shit.

Basically?

Stop trying to tell me how to be me .

If you don't like me enough to know the little things? Clearly, you're not going to know the biggies. Like bad days call for cake, good friends can make you laugh until you pee (really, it's true) - that you'll both be laughing so hard you have to tinkle at the same time while still on the phone, which only makes the joke funnier. That I'd drop everything for a friend in need, or a crying one, especially if I've only heard them cry like three times, so I know it's bad news. I'll even let you blow your snot all over my cashmere sweater. Because I love you, and you're important, and in that moment, cashmere is not. If you call too early in the morning, I'm bound to answer the phone with "are you missing a limb, or are you bleeding from every orifice on your body?" - really, if you're calling at 5 am, it'd better be damn important.



Blood may be thicker than water, but I'm convinced that blood is not thicker than urine and tears. Those suckers bind people together for ever.