Heather Christena Schmidt

I don’t think that “party” is really the most appropriate way to refer to what has gone on the last few days with my Trailer Trash Mom and her Mother’s Day Mayhem. More like psychological and emotional abuse. Drama. And a lot of trailer trash, hillbilly shit.

But since we’ve officially entered the 24 hour countdown to this ridiculous event – this event that my Trailer Trash Mom planned, committed me to do all the cooking for without asking me first, demanded a cake that takes roughly 6 hours to bake, and then intentionally destroyed said cake out of anger; since we are in the countdown phase, it’s time to start the preparty.

Since all of you faithful blog followers can’t drink excessive levels of mimosa with me tomorrow morning before we head over to the assisted living apartment complex my grandparents live in (yes, I will be drinking mimosas until the moment I click my seatbelt), I thought we could do a little preparty of the blog-friendly kind with a little preparty countdown.

Prepartying With My Trailer Trash Mom –

Some Fun TTM Stories

#5 About six years ago my aunt got remarried. They had their ceremony at my grandparent’s old home right outside of Yosemite, sort of in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of desert and brownness everywhere. My aunt decided she wanted to have a “theme,” though, so they decided it would be Hawaiian. It was a Hawaiian-themed, trailer trash wedding, in the middle of the desert, with brown dirt everywhere you looked, in my grandparent’s backyard. Everyone wore a Hawaiian-themed outfit, none of which matched, and they went to Party City to buy a bunch of those hula girl and palm tree cardboard cut out wall hangings. Yes, fucking cardboard hula girls hung all over the goddamned place.

So my mom was the maid of honor and as such decided that she would be taking charge of the all the arrangements. She acted like this pig shit Hawaiian themed, hula girl cardboard cut out wedding was the wedding of the century. Quite frankly, I was embarrassed for her – even my aunt said she was going overboard. Then someone made the mistake of questioning my mother’s judgement on the placement of the tablecloths and she flipped her shit. She threw her trailer trash ass around for about 20 minutes, slammed the door to her bedroom, and cried for about 45 minutes until she walked out of her room as though nothing had happened.

#4 My mother had another meltdown a few years after that pig shit Hawaiian wedding, again in front of her whole family at my grandparent’s home.

She had been dating the guy that was formerly Marvin Gaye’s drummer for some time and that whole Madonna tour thing happened (he told her he was going on tour with Madonna and wanted her to be his groupie, which she believed only to show up at the Fresno International Airport to find out there was no such tour). The truth was that the guy was married, but before my Trailer Trash Mom found that out, she organized a huge family gathering for everyone to meet him over Thanksgiving.

I saw my mother planning that shit for about three months for the blessed day. Then, the guy never showed up. He didn’t just “not show up,” though – he called and said he was almost there and that his cell phone reception was “in and out,” then four hours later he still had not showed up so my mom proceeded to call him every few minutes until his wife picked up and asked her to please stop harassing them.

She stayed in her bedroom for two days that time, and her brothers and sisters all refer to it as “the Thanksgiving we will never forget.” As you see, my Trailer Trash Mom has a lot of issues beyond just being into this hillbilly crap.

#3 After my mom dated the drummer guy, she tried to find any other black man that could fill his shoes. She started spouting off that stupid “once you go black you don’t go back…” stereotype every time someone asked what she was looking for in a man.

She found a guy equally as loserish as her current husband, who happened to be an alcoholic and hillbilly all wrapped into a nice package, which my mom liked to call “the big D.” At the time, my mom was coming over to my dad’s house to hang out with me when I was there using his computer or printer or eating all his food (whatever reason I was there), and every time her boyfriend dropped her off he’d make it a point to tell my dad jokes about dicks and balls.

#2 My Trailer Trash Mom’s family are just as trashy and dysfunctional as she is.

The ultimate decision I made on the whole cake and food thing for this party tomorrow was to just redo the cake, make all the food, show up, hold my head high, and walk away with my dignity intact and a firm resolution not to be treated that way by any of them ever again. My Trailer Trash Mom has told her family a lot of lies about me, and while I don’t really care what they think or say about me, I knew I wanted to be the bigger person in all of this. And I didn’t want to ruin the day for my grandma and grandpa, who have little to do with all this nonsense.

I tried to repair the cake only for it to fall apart today. I put together a new dessert – a simple white cake with mocha cream and some chocolate tulip cups filled with custard. We made chocolate and marshmallow-covered graham crackers and packaged them nicely in to-go containers for all the moms coming as well. I made three appetizers: my famous deviled eggs, my amazingly simple BLT bites, and cubed caprese salads. I even carved an owl into the side of a watermelon to go along with the fruit salad skewers I made. And I should mention that I did all of this not feeling well, having eaten a bad bowl of creamed soup a few days ago, as well as worsening allergies set off by feeling so sick.

I didn’t have the space in my refrigerator to keep all of this food, though, and was going to have more to take over tomorrow anyway. So this evening we piled all of the stuff I had already prepared into my husband’s car to drive the food to my grandparent’s home, where they could store it in their mini-fridge.

While there, I saw two things that again reminded me why after tomorrow it is imperative that I walk away before things get even uglier: an invitation to a cousin’s engagement party, and an invitation to a cousin’s graduation party. We were invited to neither of them.

#1 I fully expect there to be some sort of hillbilly brawl tomorrow. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because up until this point everything has been hillbilly pig shittin’ dramatics. Or maybe it’s because of those invitations I saw. Probably it will involve me – it always seems to, although I prefer to avoid the drama.

But then it’s always the people that avoid the drama that cause the most by being so avoidant. Since I’m going bombed on my Mother’s Day morning mimosas, maybe this time I should just embrace it. When I worked in politics, some campaign workers and I were at a bar one night when a fight broke out. I turned to run only to see all of my campaign friends flailing themselves into the center of it all. I suppose it’s time I embrace the hillbilly brawl and jump in, head first. Since I’m walking away and never looking back, I may as well give them a show right?