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unhinged
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my mother has a whole shelf in one of the corner cabinets in her kitchen filled with carry out containers and lunch meat containers that she reuses instead of buying tupperware, the kind of stuff meant to be reused.
she mentioned again how she had to juggle all the bills when i was growing up, literally putting payments in the mailbox timed around my dad's paychecks with a hope and a prayer that she wouldn't overdraw the checking account and it finally hit me how poor i really was growing up. my dad worked 70 hours per week at two jobs and my mom always plastered a smile on her face but when i think of it now, the smile rarely reached her eyes. she was busy scheduling and calculating and calling to get late fees removed so we would have enough to eat.
my brother the chef threw out most of her carry out containers when we were taking care of our dying dad. she has to spend $50 a month at the restaurant in her gated retirement community (which she greatly resents, enough that she wanted to move out of the community before my dad died) so we all knew she would get new ones relatively soon.
'where did all the containers go?'
'jeff threw them away.'
she grumbled and swore under her breath but surprisingly said nothing to him about it.
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