So today I was just sitting around, minding my own business, and my mother called. This – by definition – can never be good. Lately her hillbilly shit has been spreading itself all over the walls of my life. Today it wasn’t hillbilly shit, though. It was actually worse: Mothers Day Mayhem.
The conversation went something like this:
My Trailer Trash Mom
“Heeeeeeeather, how ya’ dooooin?”
Me
“Fine” (thinking to myself ‘Oh God, she wants something’)
My Trailer Trash Mom
“So … we’re going to be having a little party at the assisted living apartments for Grandma on Mother’s Day and I want to get you guys here for it. It’ll be at noon and we’ll all be bringing something.”
Me
“Oh, okay, let me just check the schedule with Nick and let you know later today.”
My Trailer Trash Mom
“Okay … and then you can let me know what you’ll be bringing so that everyone else can plan around it.”
… at this point, I’m sure you are all thinking wait, what the fuck? Yes, I was thinking that as well. So I said:
Me
“Oh … kay … well, what is the main dish going to be?”
My Trailer Trash Mom
“See … that’s the thing, we were thinking you could make the main dishes since you have that new multi cooker, and are such a good cook now.”
Long Pause
My Trailer Trash Mom
“Are you still there?”
Me
“Yes.” (I’m speechless at this point.)
My Trailer Trash Mom
“And we were hoping you’d make another one of those cakes you made for Grandma and Grandpa’s anniversary too.”
Putting all of this unbelievable and ballsy bull shit to the side for a moment, let me tell you faithful blog followers about the cake she is referring to. It was a marbled chocolate, vanilla, and red velvet cake with a homemade waffle cone garnish. The cake – because of the complexity of making all three flavors from scratch, as well as the waffle cone and frostings from scratch, AS WELL AS marbling it, took me a total of six hours to make. It was – by far – the greatest, most delicious cake I have ever made, but I vowed after that day to never bake that cake again, just because of how much work it was.
Back to my trailer trash mother, I quickly got off the phone with her, telling her I would have to think about it.
Then about two hours later, I was fuming over the entire ordeal, and conflicted because I know that if I were to not make the meal, my trailer trash mother and her trailer trash family would ostracize me and cause a terrible amount of trailer trash drama because “Heather’s always too good for our family…” Sitting in the parent-section of swimming, fuming and conflicted, I was thirty seconds away from calling my mother and saying “no,” and then she walked up. That’s right: my trailer trash mother showed up at the kiddo’s swimming class so as to seal the deal on the Mothers Day Mayhem.
I will spare you all the details of her ongoing drama about my grandma having a colonoscopy and how this will just be so nice for her. I will spare you her passive aggressively reminding me how little time I spent with her family while I was in graduate school. I will spare you the detail of how she manipulated me by reminding me that she will be returning to her hillbilly husband and their hillbilly trailer in hillbilly New Mexico within the next month. I will just cut to the chase, and the point where I am sure the majority of you will lose an enormous amount of respect for this, here bitch (if you haven’t already, that is)…
My Trailer Trash Mom
“So? … will you do it?”
Me
“Fine.”
I’m even going to make the cake.
Go ahead, lose respect for me. Call me a sucker. Call me a push over. I agree with it all completely. I don’t even know why I gave in to my trailer trash mother and her hillbilly Mothers Day Mayhem. But I did. Maybe a part of me does feel bad for how little time I spent with her side of the family during graduate school. Maybe I am a push over. Or maybe it really is as I said to her (after getting over being angry at her and myself): this is the last time I do this. I know, you faithful blog followers all say ‘yeah right, you’ll do it again.’ But, really, since she’s returning to her man, I don’t think it’ll be an issue.
I will now hang my head in shame.
Heather Christena Schmidt 
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