Yell until at last finally it sinks in

I don't know why I have to yell so much at my mother. Maybe it's because
of her attitude with some things.

Last week, after waiting longer than necessary, she got her Narnia
Caspian DVD in the mail, something she bought off Half.com. Only there
was no return address, and the DVD was a bootleg burn with a paper label
I could peel off which hasn't been just yet.

I got on her case about it, to stop playing Pogo right then, get on her
account at Half.com and lodge a complaint. Instead she just kept playing
Pogo and the more I yelled at her to take action this moment while the
thought was still fresh, the more she just got mad at me for yelling at
her. Unless I yell at her, the least likely it is that the message will
sink in. So anywho, for what seemed like an eternity, she finally gets
on half.com and contacts the seller. I told her to say that what the
seller sent was an illegal bootleg copy with a paper label and we can
tell when the DVD is a burn (it's usually some shade of purple) and that
paper labelled DVDs are not going into our players ever, and she wants
her $6 (supposedly) back. Well, the seller hasn't replied in all this
time, so she's finally going to seek justice from half.com.

Then tonight of all times, she's giving the dog a Greenie. I don't know
if people know what a Greenie dog treat is, but she seems to think these
are damn good, but at the prices in the store for some variations of
Greenies (like $32 a box) I'm buying what is sensible (though $4 a bag
for a bunch of these things is not as sensible as 99 cents for regular
crunchy dog treats at Aldi's). But for some reason she has to blurt out
that she ordered some "real" Greenies. But for the godforsaken fact what
I have been buying at the pet store IS a REAL GREENIE. WHY DO WE EVEN
BOTHER BUYING THEM IN THE STORE IF SHE INSISTS ON WASTING MONEY ON THEM
ONLINE??? Says so on the damn package GREENIE. The logo matches. Oh but
she goes on to say it's the one that "exercises the jaw more and cleans
the teeth". Um... What? Doesn't it say on the ones (she calls them
biscuits but they are REAL GREENIES dammit) that these do that, too? WHY
DO I EVEN BOTHER!? Anyway, that exchange brings on some yelling by me,
notifying her that $32 is on a dog treat is overkill. It's an
unnecessary expense, but for some reason it just does not sink in with
her.

Part of the problem is when she finds out she's got some extra $$$ in
the bank, she tends to spend it wastefully. I can't get through to her.
I think it was last night or earlier today when she mentioned buying one
of those stupid upside down hanging tomato planters. ARGH!! WE DO NOT
NEED IT!

We have a leaking bathtub faucet, and I will make an attempt to get her
to go in and share the cost of parts and maybe a plumber to install the
thing in the coming weeks. I still want to install it to learn how to do
it though.

Anyway, I yell and I yell common sense at her, and I'm going to yell
until I either get court-ordered control of her finances or she finally
listens and gets the idea without getting angry. It's because she does
what she does that keeps pissing me off because that's how we ended up
losing the Euclid Ave house and where we are now.

She refuses to take responsibility for her actions. She's got all this
cross-stitching stuff she bought and hasn't touched any of it now that
she's got a lot of time to do something. Why don't we sell it? (well,
for one thing eBay doesn't let people use money orders for payment
anymore, so that kills my use of eBay for good.)

It makes me wonder if I would miss my mom if she should happen to die at
some point. Parents aren't supposed to be asshole pains in the butt.

On an unrelated note, a paper labelled CD that I could not get read at
all in some DVD capable drives copied just fine in my mother's Dell with
a CD burner. Not a single problem pulling all the files off. But the
Win98SE box's drives? 50% read until it got errors. Even the other Dell
that I'm going to return at some point when they're ready for it had
problems. It has a DVD combo CD burning drive. Not a chance. I've had
this CD since 2003, and only now did it occur to me to copy it off
because of the paper label. I wonder why the CD burner drive did what
the DVD drives could not? Maybe a bigger laser beam for a better read? I
dunno. The main thing I wanted off was a 598MB MPG video file and that
came off no problem. Nice.