Anyone out there have a crazy grandma?

  I'm sure to some degree it goes without saying for everyone, after all age just accentuates what we already are.  My grandparents were Russian Jews, they came here before WW2, luckily, but they still had many hardships.  From a clinical point of view my grandmother shouldn't have even been functional, so we shouldn't complain, yet try telling that to my poor father (more on that subject on a later date)  MY grandmother moved two blocks away from me one year after my first daughter was born, a convenient striking distance, she had this uncanny ability to show up exactly when I finally got to take a nap, or when the house was at it's dirtiest.  Otherwise I visited her almost every afternoon, she quickly had developed a new greeting for me.  You have to imagine a very strong, very wrinkled OLD woman with plenty of hut-spa and a thick Russian Jewish accent, or it doesn't really work.  I would knock on the door and she would pretend not to know who could possibly be there.  "I vonder who  dat can be, who is dat at my door, my my, who's dere?" "Bubbie it's me," Bubbie means grandmother in Yiddish btw, "me who, who could dat be at my door,"  "Bubbie it's Robin."  "Oh my, what a surprise," she would always wheeze when she laughed from ages of smoking.  She would open the door, and with a surprised look she would exclaim with a one hand waving, "You're Fat! Tell me dear are you pregnant again?" "No Bubbie I'm just fat." Well you are fat I mein idt,  come on ein, hav an eskimo pie," "I don't want one Bubbie, you just told me I'm FAT! "Well have a one anyways."  I knew it was futile to even bother arguing, feeding was her sole purpose in life, her second purpose was cleaning.  If you weren't well fed and well scrubbed you were in for a losing battle.  When I was baby I loved to eat, my appetite was insatiable, she loved to bake and cook and feed, so naturally we had a perfect relationship.  Now that she lived at Grey Gables and she smuggled food from the smelly old peoples dining room, things were different.    Yes I did say smuggled, you weren't supposed to take the food home, which technically made it stealing, her third purpose in life.  I'm not kidding, she was a communist, so to her it wasn't really stealing, it was her right, she was so cheap she would collect all these coupons and spend all day driving around to different grocery stores.  My mother would say she would spend ten dollars in  gas to save a buck.  I once asked my Bubbie why all her towels had hotel names on them.  She would wave that hand the way a priest does his blessing, only it was a scolding. Watsa matter wit you, we were poor Martin(my grandfather) had to travel for work! She always answered a question with what's the matter with you, and she was always yelling.  "Really Bubbie," I said with raised eyebrows, I was nine, but I was onto the old broad, "really, the Hilton Bubbie,"  she was the reason they started nailing down the television sets in hotel rooms I'm sure.
  Back to the subject of Eskimo pies.  First of all they smelled like old people and were sugar free with artificial ingredients, and if that's not bad enough they had also defrosted, fell apart and were refrozen, also they tasted like freezer burn and cigarettes.  Often she would forget about twenty minutes in and force me to eat another, sometimes she would go for round three which always send me over the edge and sweet little Robin would have no more of it, which is what I should have done with everyone in the first place before I too went crazy(but that's another story)

Let me see where do I begin

                                                          
                                                           "Joaquin Marietta's Gold"
   
  I once inherited a kid, not from a blood relation, but from a friend.  He asked me once if I would take care of his kids if anything ever happened to him.  It's kind of a long story, one which I probably never will blog about. It is relevant to mention that this super rad but very unfortunate girl had no social security number and no proof of her being born here,  I might also need to add that you cannot get health insurance, get a job, have a bank account, attend college, have utilities in your name, get a loan or collect your Dad's death benefits without a social security number.   It took me two and a half years to attain one for her, meanwhile on less than $20,000 a year we had to support a family of five.  I had a toddler, a pissed off five year old, a very distracted husband (third child) a grandmother with a deteriorating frontal lobe who lived two blocks away, a father who had just been diagnosed with cancer, and a very tortured teenager.  Did I mention that I was all of twenty five years old.  I was the hub of everyone's insanity which flowed freely like the Nile.
  I was not stressed out, that would be an understatement the size of the Pacific, I was truly losing it.  I tried so damn hard to unselfishly do the right thing, but the truth is I was truly unequipped to carry that much weight on my shoulders.  So I was crying on the phone to my mother, while digging up the garden, while praying desperately to God to save me somehow, to give me some strength, to send me some sign, anything please God!
   Before I continue I must add another very relevant story, bear with me.  I had this neighbor Gilberto Gonzales, he was about eighty, very kind, old school Mexican.   This entire story is completely true BTW.  One day Gilberto came over and told me about how our monster eucalyptus was giant when he was a child.  How all the houses to the east were orchards, there was a little alley where our fences meet.  He would sleep outside with his pals in the summer, he once saw a ghost in the tool shed that was near our house, she was all in white.  He also told me how he spent his entire childhood digging everywhere all over here, he gestured, searching for the long lost Juaquin Muirieta's Gold.
  So anyway I am praying please god save me, anything help me please!  When my shovel hits something hard.  I work the shovel around to unearth something very very heavy,  GOLD!!!  "GOLD" I yell, "mom I struck gold!"  "What," she asks.  "I struck gold."  "How big is it?" "About three inches, it's a brick, it's so heavy."  She calculated an estimated value, one which was enough to solve all our monetary problems.  Hallelujah I found gold my problems were solved, thank you god.  I run into the house to proclaim our fortune to my family.  Upon examination we decide it's silver not gold, I call my Mom back, she recalculates, Hallelujah, no more money stress, thank you God!  After further examination we discover that the brick of gold is really a bar of lead which has been painted with real gold.  At that very moment I felt the finger of God insert into my chest," HA HA," said the finger.  At that moment I understood all at once, God had a sense of humor, everything was somehow going to be alright because it really didn't matter anyway.  I wasn't alone and money can't solve your problems anyway.  Thank you God, hallelujah.  I keep that gold brick in the window between my kitchen and my living room, right where I cook, next to my garden it's the place I pray the most.  I have since then had money, it really didn't fix anything.  The gold brick has a thick layer of oxidation all over it like the memories of all that pain.  When people ask" what's that?"  I tell them it's my lead brick, it's worth it's weight in gold.