WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2010

Woke up this morning at 5:48am to Carol hovering over me. "Holy shit," I say. "What's the matter?" she asks. "I'm sleeping. Let me sleep. Please shut the door on your way out. I need to sleep," I say in a high pitched, wtf/terrified way. After tossing and turning for about an hour I finally wake up and get ready for work. I walk into the kitchen to get my breakfast to go. No, "good morning"'s were interchanged. As I'm about to walk out I can't help but ask, "So, what were you doing in my room this morning?" "I heard something and came in to see if something was wrong." "OK," and with that I was out the door.
There isn't a lot to say about yesterday because I simply did not come home from the time that the car rental place picked me up at about 8:45am (an hour late) until 10:45pm (after work, working out and a movie). I told Cynthia, "hope you can make sure they take their medicine while you're there, because I'm not messing with them AT ALL today."
Why? Well, if you read Bill's post on Bultman.com, then you have a good portion of the story. When I got home Grandpa and Carol were in the garage looking at his car so I assumed they tried to drive it and Bill's plan to disable it worked. Grandpa looked pissed as he directed the car into the garage space. Never mind the fact that I can park a car in a garage on my own. It took me a second to get the bag of laundry detergent and paper towels I bought that day out of the back and by the time I turned forward, Carol opened my door and asked me if everything was alright. "Yes, except Grandpa looks like he's ready to kill me." She started mumbling about how a long time ago she realized she just needed to let his anger slide off her back... right. Grandpa was guarding the door to the house and demanded the keys. I said I had to set things down and that I needed the keys. I manage to get by him, but he yelled at me the whole way in to the kitchen. He wants to know why I took his car. He wants to (loudly) inform me that no one asked HIM if I could take that car (we have a lot). He says he needs the "little" car because the big one doesn't work and something about getting the neighbor over to look it over. I escaped to my room to see if Bill left me the pieces to put it together, but realized if I went to the garage I would surely be caught in the act of putting it together and yelled at even more. I suddenly felt trapped. It was getting dark outside so I didn't feel safe really walking anywhere by myself and if I took Carol's car I was surely doomed when I got home. I decide that I would have better luck walking in the dark then staying the rest of the evening with Grandpa so I go to the kitchen where he sat fuming (not smoking so I knew he was mad) to get everything taken care of health wise before I potentially ran away and never came back.
I ask him if he had had dinner and he starts yelling about how they already ate and he's not a decrepit who can't make his own god-damn dinner. So I give him his medicine and he explodes on how he doesn't need medicine. I try to rationalize, but this only gets him angrier until he says "get the fuck out of my house." I say "fine", grab Carol's keys and go. While I'm at the gym Bill talks to him telling him something like "this type of abuse is unacceptable and we're taking you to a home straight away if this behavior continues." and my mom reserves me the lovely rental vehicle I am driving now (a Ford Focus ironically). I don't really want to go home, but I'm encouraged by Bill's voicemail, plus I brought nothing with me except keys and my license.
When I get home I take a shower and I go to the kitchen to make dinner (I hadn't eaten in 9 hours) and Carol comes in to tell me that she needs the keys to her car and she'll just drive me when I need to go somewhere. I tell her that she has keys to her car and I probably wont need to drive her car anymore, but I might need to early in the AM for work and she wont be up. "Remember I told you those are my only keys to that car," she says like I am 5. "Carol, you drove your car last night, so I'm sure that isn't true," because she did, in fact, take her car for a drive at 2am early Monday morning. "No, I didn't" she says, and I'm literally shaking from head to foot because I'm so hungry and angry and sick of just having to internalize all of it. "I am not talking about it right now, I'm going to eat dinner in peace." I put my foot down. "Fine," she stomps off.
I'm looking into the freezer unable to concentrate on what I want to eat when I hear the distinct sound of Grandpa shuffling towards the kitchen, so I run to my room and lock the door like I really am 5. This doesn't help because then he's screaming at me from outside my door to give him back his car (WHAT?!) and I am afraid to open the door because he sounds so angry. Which means I'm basically locked in my room. I call my mom to have her call him so he backs off. So, then I'm curled next to my door trying to hear their conversation which starts off with him yelling at her that he's not yelling at me, telling her that he wasn't told I was going to take his car, then him asking her when I'm going to leave. Apparently he also said this nice line, "I don't really like being taken care of." and, to this I agree with my Mom who says, "No shit".
When he gets off the phone with her and I get ON the phone with her, I hear him quietly knock on my door, "Uh, can you come move the car into the garage?" He's so polite and calm I tell my Mom astonished, but he started losing patience in the 20 seconds that I didn't immediately open the door because he asks again in his normal tone.
So he has me guide the car into the garage under his stern dictation and then follows me back to the kitchen where I get to work on nachos because it's the easiest thing I can think of. Here we have this conversation over and over, "do you have the keys to my car?" "I need 20 minutes to eat." "well, do you work tomorrow?" "I need 20 minutes to eat peacefully." "You really had to call your mom?" "She's worried about me." "When you're done will you put the car in the garage?" "We just did, you can go check." [He goes and checks and comes back] "Do you know anything about my car not working?" "I need 20 minutes to eat dinner." By the 5th time we have the same conversation his voice is angry and menacing again. As I'm putting away my plate, he walks over to me and starts getting in my face about getting out of his house and I'm actually scared of this old man so I'm practically cowering and so he asks "what the fucks the matter with you" and I admit that I'm afraid that he's going to hit me. To which he announces is a "great idea."
Wish me luck.