IKEA with Mom

I’m not exactly sure what day it was on my trip to Ann Arbor but Mom and I went to IKEA to purchase a new head and foot board for her bed.  I had never been in one of their stores and was not at all mentally prepared for the overwhelming experience.  (For those of you who are unfamiliar with IKEA stores, they herd you through like cattle, have you follow the arrows on the floor so that you have to go through every part of the retail sales area were nothing seems to be grouped together. There are the obligatory slow walkers and the dyslexic who are fighting the flow of everyone  who are walking the correct direction.)  After almost forty-five minutes in the store we found the display unit. I figured out that then you have to write down the item numbers and the aisle and the bin that they are located in, and walk through the rest of the store to locate the pick-up area.  The tag on the headboard stated that it required three boxes to complete the assembling of the product, so I wrote the numbers down, and dodged  the masses until we arrived in the correct area. 

I grabbed a cart, found the bin and began loading the two boxes that were inside of it. While in the process of getting the third box, the following conversation ensued:

Mom:  What are you doing?

Me:  Getting the third box. The tag said that this was a three piece package.

Walking around me,  looking at the picture on the bin she said: “That’s just a support beam; you only need that if you’re not using a box spring.  The bed frame has supports that attach, so we don’t need that.”  “Are you sure?” I asked. “YES!”

With the cart loaded, we paid, loaded up the car and headed home.  I took the boxes to her room, opened them up and attempted to read the instructions.  There was no reading them; they were just generic drawings with part numbers written on them.  (My friend Brian commented that those instruction manuals are like cave man drawings and I totally agree!)  It took me about three hours and several “re-do’s” until I was almost finished. Low and behold on the last page of the manual it called for the piece that Mom didn’t need: a big support beam that runs the length of the bed straight down the middle!  The supports that she thought were included in the package were narrow metal bars that attach to the corners of the frame to keep the box spring from falling through -- not for load bearing.  Before I could bring this to her attention, she said “Hey!  You’ve got extra pieces over here.”  To which I remarked that I was aware, explained to her why, and showed her the manual.  “Oh, that must be for the people who don’t have box springs,”  she said.  “No, it’s a required piece of the furniture and you have to have it or else you may fall through,”  I replied. “No, I have a box spring, I’ll be fine.”

I am currently awaiting a phone call telling me that her bed has fallen to the floor.

The Hippie Approach

Recently, I went through a very rough period in my life that started with a breakup and ended with me finding peace. During the time that I was attempting to clear my head and learning to be strong, I unintentionally, started figuring out who the "Real Brad" is.

I looked back on specific situations and times in my life doing a post mortem; I did not like what I remembered. Rather than trying to resolve things, I had acted defensively, pushing people away, hurting them in the process. I knew then that my actions were bothersome to others but had looked at them selfishly from a better-than-me perspective.

While running all of this through my now clear head, I wondered, “Is this really who I am, who I want to be? Do I really want people to have this opinion of me?” The answers were very clear. "NO!" It was then that I decided to do a full self-examination. I came to the realization that my layers of self defense were driving people away or keeping them from getting to know the real me -- that instead of letting other people peel those layers back over time, I would do it myself; (for those of you who truly know me, you know that I am a good person...and the rest of you know I can be the sarcastic a-hole Brad); this decision was a difficult one. For the majority of my life I had used my wall as a defense mechanism and letting that wall down would leave me extremely vulnerable. Then is when I remembered that I cannot control anyone else’s actions; I can only control my own; at that point the decision to reveal the real me was very easy.

I've taken a kind-of Hippie outlook on my dealings with people now -- just be nice. So far it's working out pretty well, although I do have my moments...as we all do. There are some very toxic people out there who see kindness as an opportunity to spread their own venom. I have to ignore them, realizing I can only change myself. As I change, hopefully they will make a coordinate change -- one that’s for the better. If they don’t, then I have to be true to myself and move on.

Adventures with Mom

In July, I spent about ten days days visiting my mom in Ann Arbor during which I helped her out with various projects, one being remodelling her condo.  I love my mother very much and feel very fortunate that I got to spend that amount of time with her, but as you all know, spending a lot of time with someone can be trying after awhile.  Most of my Facebook friends have seen the majority of this but I wanted to share my experiences here as well.   

July 15

Was in the car with my mom earlier (she's a terrible driver, by the way, but that's off subject) and we had a little rapid fire Q & A session...here's how it went:

 Mom: You hungry?

 Me: I'm good.

 Mom: Well, you haven't eaten...you've got to be hungry.

 Me: I'm good for right now.

 Mom: Do you like chicken salad?

 Me: As long as it doesn't have fruit in it.

 Mom: I thought you liked fruit.

 Me:   I do. I just don't like the whole sweet and salty combination.

 Mom: You mean sweet and savory?

 Me: Whatever.

 Mom: Do you like Liquorice?

 Me: You know I don't eat a lot of sweet things.

 Mom: Well do you like it?

 Me: If I absolutely had to eat a piece I'd get the red...the black is absolutely disgusting.

 Mom: Do you like Tarragon?

 Me: I don't even know what that is.

 Mom: It tastes like Liquorice.

 Me: Red or Black?

 Mom: Black.

 Me: Sounds pretty gross.

 Mom: Well, I guess I won't be making a Tarragon Chicken Salad then.

July 16

Let mom drive again today...she jumped the curb in the Kroger parking lot with the right rear tire while I was sending a text. Scared the absolute living shit out of me.