Well, a week and a half until I move. Thank the sweet baby Jesus! My dad and stepmom are visiting this weekend, which is great. I had asked them to come about a month ago, when all that crappy stuff was going on, and I think this was the earliest weekend that worked for both their and my schedules. It should be nice.

As I said once way back, my stepmom is really ill, and she’s on oxygen, so travelling for them has become sort of a logistical nightmare. All these years they’ve been married, they had a dream to tour around Italy once my dad retired, but now that seems nearly impossible. Whenever she flies anywhere, she has to arrange with the airline to have travel tanks of oxygen waiting at the arrival terminal for her to get back on as soon as the plane lands, and the hotel has to have a big oxygen machine in the room, and so on. It’s insane. Thank god for Medicare, because it turns out that medicine is expensive. I know! You can thank me later for that bit of breaking news.

And THEN (no “and then!") (guess what movie that’s from!), the following weekend, my mom and stepdad are coming for a visit. The very same weekend I move into my new apartment, supposedly. That should be awesome and stress-free, if by awesome and stress-free you mean nightmarish and apocalyptical, because my mom is crazy!

Already, the crazy begins. I left some things behind in their basement in Maryland when I moved down here - things like dishes and crates of books and, um, my bed frame - because I’d have no room/use for them since I was sharing an apartment with others. But since the timing of their visit works out so well, I asked my mom if they could get one of those small u-haul trailers to hitch to the back of my stepdad’s car and bring it down for me.

Well, nothing is easy in my family. My mom called back the next day and was all, “Uh, I asked your stepdad about the hitch idea, and, as I suspected, his answer was a resounding NO. He does NOT want to hitch anything to his bumper. So I’ll just have to ship your things down to you.” Well, this is ridiculous. I don’t even want to imagine how much it would cost to ship dishes and books across the country. Surely it would be more than just re-buying the stupid things.

And as for why my stepdad refuses to hitch the u-haul to his bumper is a mystery. According to my mom, he said: “No! And this discussion is closed!” and then stomped out of the room. And refused to discuss it ever again.

Um…hello? He’s a tool.

So my mom can’t/won’t bring it up again. I don’t understand the big deal about this. Can someone explain it to me? Am I missing something? Do u-haul trailers wreck your bumper or something, and I’ve just never known it? Because he drives a Civic, not a Jag or a BMW or something, so I really don’t see the issue.

But then again, I’m a spoiled rotten only child, so it could totally be me.