NOT SO HAPPY 2015 MELTDOWN

I rang to say Happy New Year to Peg at 2:00 AM my time and the first thing she does is scream "All the puppies are gone! She sold them all!"

She had had Carol Ann the collie breeder on the phone earlier and subjected Carol Ann to tears and hysterics, which Carol Ann doesn't much care for but feels badly about.

"Mother. Wait. Listen. Please. Just for a second. Of course the puppies have been sold, that's the whole idea. And you get the proceeds from one! $1500!"

"I DON'T WANT MONEY I WANT A PUPPY GODDAMMIT!"

How many times, have we had this conversation. 

Too many, is the answer. 

Nevertheless, because I am a patient sort of daughter, at least for about ten seconds into any conversation with my mother, I explained THE DOG CONTRACT again to her, and then again. And again.

The conversation ended with her in floods of tears yelling "How could you be so CRUEL!!!!" and hanging up on me. I knew she was there alone, three gay boys bearing food had just left, she'd told me, plus she had inadvertantly fired Dominick it turns out, after saying "DON'T BOTHER TO COME HERE ANYMORE!" which he took to mean he'd been eighty-sixed but really she only meant that night, that she wanted to spend the night alone in the house (except of course for Daddy, passing her by on the way to the downstairs loo..). So I rang her back. 

This second conversation of 2015 again culminated with her saying "How could you be so CRUEL!!!!" and then hanging up on me. 

So at 3:00 in the morning I'm writing Bonnie and Carol Ann and Trevor (one of the boys bearing food) and Dominick and now

THIS JUST IN: a frantic call from Bonnie, racing to Becket to take Peg to the ER. Seems she is in great pain, bladder spasms.  This has happened now 4 or 5 times, and it is because she neglects to take her oxybutin meds, which is FOR bladder spasms. And, as you might remember, she won't let any of us monitor The Taking Of Pills because SHE wants to be in CHARGE of them.

Meaning she forgets to take them. And then bad stuff happens.

She is at this moment home alone, the phone line is busy, I have no idea if it's off the hook or she chatting to her hundred-year-old friend in Minnesota or or or….the upshot being I get to sit here being unable to DO anything except wonder if my mother's last words to me are going to be 
"How could you be so CRUEL!!!!"