There Ain't No Devil, It's Just God When He's Drunk

I've been home now for about 3 weeks, and so far, the waters have been mostly calm. Most of that, I feel, is due to Scottie being here, causing everyone to act on their best behaviour and, more importantly, keeping me away from dealing with that thing known as Grandma.

I had to take care of my granny for 3 months before she and my family moved to Boonies Nowheresville (pop. rumoured to be just under 2,000- I went to high school with more people!) and life was almost hell. Seriously, I don't think I drank more in Scotland or University than I did in those 3 short months.

Anyway, Scottie is sadly leaving me on the 31st to get back in time to work while i have to bide my time here waiting for my Visa (hopefully) to arrive. And I have a feeling that once he's gone, Granny is going to get pawned off on me. Again.

Things she has done so far:
Granny's dentures no longer fit her shrunken head, and she has a penchant to talk whilst chewing her food, causing projectile missiles of half-masticated dinner and lord knows what kind of gunk that has been sitting for months or years in the crevices of her fake chompers to spray in the listeners' general direction. For the record, those bits can fly distances!

She is by far the snoopiest, nosey-est, curious busybody that ever existed! "What are doing?" "Where are you going?" "Why did you come back at 3 instead of 4?" "Why are you watching this programme?" I have been crocheting the same shawl for 3 weeks now, and every night i pick up my hook, I get the same "What are you working on now?"

Granny is shafted down to the bedroom at the very end of the house, which is nice for the rest of the family because she is annexed out where no one has to deal with her. She has her own large screen HD TV, Satellite, Radio, newspaper, cat, and glass door out to the garden so she can watch her birds. But she still insists on exercise, so every now and then she'll thump her way down the long hallway to the living room, cane knocking against the walls as she waddles along. I've noticed that she tends to do this along when we are all watching TV together, or if she wants a snack. If we're all watching TV, then she interrogates us about what we're watching and how it reminds her a book or an article she once read on the same subject, and if we hold on, she'll go get it, except that she read it a while ag0, and can't remember if she still has the book or article, or if she gave it away.......and on it goes until we get irritated enough and shoo heR away.

When she comes in for a snack, though, she is as quiet as can be, trying to ninja in and out without being seen. This is because granny has some bad habits. First of all, she wants to nibble everything, so there will always be half a slice of bread in the bread bag, half a cookie laying around, half a bit of cheese, half a bagel, bits of halves all over the place. Secondly, she has this thing with margarine. I noticed it a lot when I lived with her-she doesn't really use knives to get the margarine out of the tub, instead she dips her pointer, middle, and ring finger into the soft buttery spread and then uses her fingers to smear the margarine on her half piece of bread. You can tell by the three parallel ditches left in the tub as evidence.

The last thing I'll reveal before boring everyone is her strange bathroom habits. The other reason granny is annexed down to the end of the hall is because directly across from her room is a bathroom. Technically it's meant for her room and my room to share, but ever since granny moved in, it's been firmly hers. This is because granny has incredibly bad IBS and has the runs a lot. A LOT a lot. But sometimes I'll pop in there to use the mirror or brush my hair. And that's when I notice that there always seems to be quite a bit of dirty water in the toilet, but never any toilet paper. Then I realised that for the past few months, every since finding out that this half of CA is in drought, granny has been going potty, wiping her bum, and...throwing the dirty paper in the trash can instead of the toilet. Now, I remember back when we were having a drought and the rhyme "If it's yellow it's mellow, if it's brown, flush it down", but NOTHING about disposing your IBS soiled paper in the trash can for weeks before having it emptied...no wonder there are always so many flies buzzing around that end of granny's room!