My mother called me today, upset because she keeps getting packages from Publishers Clearing House.
"I didn't order any of this!" she cried.
The day before that she was crying because she was sure the guy who snowplows her driveway was double charging her. He's not. His invoice isn't that confusing to the non-old. Or non-drunk.
That effing Publishers Clearing. They send you "promotional items" that you have to pay to return or you get charged for. I have been the frequent recipient of my mom's lack of returned items. My donation box is full of them. In order to stop it you have to...well, I wasn't sure what my mom had to do because she was too confused to tell me. She just keeps paying to have them sent back, having written "I didn't order these!" on the outside of the envelopes. I know this for a fact because I'm the one who's been taking them to the post office and paying to send them back.
But today I decided to deal with those old-people-money-stealing-greedy-mother-effers-Publishers-Clearing-House and went online to see how to stop this. I filled out their online form after confirming with mom the name they were using on the packages, which, let me tell you without telling you, was a conversation with my mother that made me feel so drunk that by the time I hung up, I needed to open a fresh bottle of wine and work at getting drunk.
Until the online form I filled out kicked in, I told my mom to stop opening the packages and write "Return to Sender" on the outside of their packaging.
I can't wait for her to get into her new senior apartment, with a brand new mailing address and brand new phone number. She's going to be so confused that she'll just stop in time.
Not long ago she called me, wailing, because she was pretty sure the IRS was coming to get her. But here's the beauty of my mother - she's random and she didn't fall for it this time, instead of calling the number that they left on her answering machine, she spent hours on the phone waiting to connect with a representative from the IRS. The IRS told her that it was a scam and they weren't coming to get her. What a relief.
But she still called me, crying, to tell me the IRS was going to drop in and take her off to jail. I told her that they wouldn't but if they did, she'd be taken to the Bloomington jail where they get Burger King for lunch and she likes Burger Kind so it's all going to be okay.
I think she was disappointed that they didn't come to get her. Betty loves a Whopper Junior.
If you take off the onions.
And the lettuce.
And the onion.
I think Betty just likes a burger.
And I think Betty falls for my logic every time. How I couldn't figure out how to whackadoodle her into moving into a senior apartment before now is a mystery to me.!
