Showing posts with label The Festering Village. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Festering Village. Show all posts

Saturday, May 07, 2016

The Festering Village

Village by the Sea - Maurice Prendergast

I wrote about Annie before. Here. Mr. Stan took off on us. Village life became too much and he now lives with his daughter about 60k from here. I miss him. Annie's had a few bouts of bad health. Enough to get her a home care worker every morning. Annie lived in a hoarder's paradise which you can read about in the Mr. Stan link. That's all gone by the wayside now as the homecare worker won't allow it. Her daughter comes by and takes pictures of Annie sitting in her uncluttered hell, idly passing the time away watching teevee with nothing to keep her hands busy. She would litter every surface and table and counter with junk. Her food was put in bags on the floor. Her basement was a fire hazard. Now everything sparkles nakedly and people visit and can sit down and have a cuppa.

This new Annie has to find other ways to entertain herself. And she has.

Her son is in a hell hole of a marriage. You'd have to meet his wife, Pammie, to understand it as she could be certified. For example, she's leery of me (that's another story)but she does call me periodically. A few days ago, for example, she called and without salutation said: "What are you going to do about my 9 kittens?" It turns out there are 9 kittens in her shed and she's already got 4 adult cats in her house. Around here in the FV, very few get their animals neutered. If I wouldn't take one or two or three, she threatened, she was going to drown them. The older I get the more firm I am. Not my circus and certainly not my monkeys kittens. Sorry as I am, pained as I am, I tell her to keep phoning others after she responds to my question about the SPCA. They couldn't give a damn, she says. Cats are overrunning the island, thanks in no small part to her and her ilk. Our town dump alone has about 40 feral cats running around.

So recently Annie's son, Jude, husband of Pammie, hooks up with his high school sweetheart and they are madly in love. So where do they hang out when together? In Annie's house. Overnighters. They even have parties with accordions and dancing with everyone invited. And Pammie? she hates her mother-in-law so she'd never go near the place.

But she complains around the whole village that Jude spends far too much time taking care of his mother now.

While the whole village knows the truth.

And this is just one slice of a story out of hundreds.