11:37 AM
freakin' exhausted from going to bed too damn late (5:25 am), being awakend by my mother for some unknown reason too damn early (6:45 am) and waking up before 10 and not able to get back to sleep.

I try to get back on a schedule, but then I get a creative burst and that's shot all to hell. The thing about creativity is you feel you have to use it or lose it.
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I'm wondering what it is my mother said when she came into my room this morning. We are two totally different kinds of sleepers. I'm exceptionally hard to wake up, she's a very light sleeper. If I fart in the middle of the night, she's in the hallway, "What was that?!" I'm a different story. She was screaming at me this morning, which explains my headache now, but it all came out like Martian. I've told her a million times not to tell me anything important (let alone try to get me to say something logical) when I'm half-asleep. She assumes I know what happened and I never do.
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It probably has something to do with the toilet in my bathroom leaking all over the floor. It's been running constantly (you have to take the tank off and lift up this so-called watersaver hose to make it stop) and yesterday she got on this thing about how it's being ripped out of the walls "because of our weight." Everything bad that happens is because of our weight. The toilet is 15 years old, for goddess' sake and none of the parts used to make our house were exactly high quality, so it's a miracle it's lasted this long.

It was merely an annoyance and, light sleeper that she is, it keeps her up at night. Then late last night she decides to try to fix it. Instead, she caused it to start dripping from the tank. The sink in that bathroom has been a problem for years and years. It sprays all over the room -- toilet, top of sink, floor, mirror. It probably needs a washer, but the faucet is too corroded to just change that, so we need a whole new faucet. Besides, the stopper and its puller are missing for some reason I know not and have been for years. Shortly after I came back, the water stopped turning off completely, no matter how hard you turn the handle. (Funny, unlike the "crack" in the wall, she didn't bother calling a plumber for that, just complained it was going to make the water bill go up.) A few weeks ago she decided to tinker with it, someone who's never fixed anything to my knowledge, and ended up taking off the hot water handle completely, which she thought solved the problem somehow. It still sprays and runs constantly, but now there's no hot water. I just don't understand that.

Meanwhile, she's getting estimates for thousands and thousands of dollars in painting, carpet and other cosmetic repairs. Yes, the carpet is 15 years old. Yes, the bedrooms and bathrooms have not been painted in about 13 years (they look fine to me, but I'm not constantly looking for fault, like she does --- don't ever let me have a small hole, spot or button missing, she always has to point it out and harp on it) I guess that's another big difference in our outlooks I don't care about superficial bullshit...I care about functionality. I could give a shit less about paint, carpet and the new screen doors she had to have, but could we please, please fix the sink that's been broken for 12 years? Could she please stop reminding me about the hole I made in her bathroom wall by slipping and falling (which she doesn't believe, despite that portion of the wall being paper thin...again, not the best materials were used here) 12 years ago and maybe fix something that affects us every single fucking day? I don't care if you want to paint your room lavendar and green, I want a toilet and sink that work. Why have I had to beg her and Dad for that since high school? I just think those are basics that should run properly, I don't think that's asking a lot. Funny, she never nagged him about the holes he punched in my wall, their bathroom wall, the door in the den...I've got to get out of here, it's just not a healthy environment, for so many reasons.
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I have no idea if she's called a plumber or if she wants me to do it. She had a plumber here yesterday to look at what she thinks is a crack in the wall caused "by our weight." He insisted it was just wallpaper peeling, though my mother told him we're the only people who've ever lived in this house and there's never been wallpaper under the toilet. "Well...we can debate it," he said, "but that's what it is." Uh no, we can't debate it, because it was never there. As it turns out, it was a combination of a thick layer of paint and the drywall peeling, which might've indicated a leak. Anyway, I guess she won't want me to call that guy.

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