Update: Netflix bandit strikes again

I just received this email from my grandmother:

There are two Netflix here. They are 1. Seamless 2. Viktor & Rolf: Because They’re Worth It!   Are they for you?

Love,

Grandmother – the keeper of the Destroyer who now steals my bamboo back scratcher and takes it away!

Because I’m sure you’re wondering.

1. I have never heard of ‘Seamless’ or ‘Viktor & Rolf’. I didn’t mention in my original Netflix post, but my grandmother also accidentally adds movies to the queue all the time and then accuses my mom and I of doing it. She then tries to pawn the DVDs off on us, insisting that we ordered them.
2. The ‘Destroyer’ she refers to at the end of the message is her cat, Bobby Cheddar.

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Misery loves company

Who taught me how to play poker via the exciting game of poker dice?

Who let me be Alex Trebec during the family Jeopardy games even though I couldn’t pronounce the words and no one could understand the question (technically the answer..for all you die hard Jeopardy fans)?

Who sewed me a beautiful smocked dress for Easter only to have me mark all over it in black permanent marker?

Who taught me how to make Gingerbread men cookies and homemade gravy?

Who made me watch ‘Misery’ at the tender age of 12 and then called my mom, during the part where she chops off that guy’s feet, to ask her if it was o.k. for me to watch?

Who has the coolest grandmother of all time? Me.

I know where I'll be on December 21, 2012

Some of my mom’s favorite past times include bossing me around and tricking me in to doing ‘things’ by leaving out key information about said ‘things’. More often than not this revolves around making me do various projects at my grandmother’s house. She’ll invite me to eat dinner there and once I arrive inform me that before we can eat I’ll need to rake the yard, take the trash out, organize a drawer and clip my grandmother’s toe nails. If my grandmother is the one who cooked, then I’ll usually comply. If mom made dinner, then I may put up a fight. But, I digress.

One of the projects I was gently encouraged to complete was cleaning out and organizing my grandmother’s pantry. I don’t know if you’ve ever cleaned out the pantry of someone raised during the Depression but it’s a life changing experience. Here’s a short list of some of the more interesting items I discovered (and I mean discovered in the most literal sense of the word) in the pantry:

• 6 new containers of Wisk laundry detergent – 32 loads each
• 8 cans of ‘wild pink salmon’
• 23 packets of lime jello
• 4,000 empty plastic grocery bags
• 14 boxes of cornbread muffin mix
• 7 tins of clams

In case you were wondering, not only is this an enormous stockpile for one little old lady but never in my 29 years on this Earth have I ever been served lime jello, pink salmon, cornbread muffins or clams by my grandmother.

When the world ends on December 21, 2012 you know where to find me. Curled up in freshly clean clothes, eating packaged fish in my grandmother’s pantry.

Undergarments Optional

Sometimes I feel more like my grandmother’s daughter than my mother’s child. My mom is all sugar and spice and everything nice, while my grandmother and I are a little more on the spicy side.  As my mom says, I am my grandmother’s ‘golden child’ who ‘can do no wrong’. Grandma is a good judge of character.

I like to use this close bond I have with my grandmother to push my mother’s patience (and sanity) to the edge. When I was younger, I used to call my grandmother and tell her that my mom wasn’t feeding me properly, in my most pitiful voice. By ‘properly’, I meant not fixing exactly what I demanded when I demanded it. My grandmother would then lecture my mom on the necessity of good nutrition and tell me that if I was ever hungry I could come to her house for a hot meal.

As I have matured, I’ve come up with new ways to use my grandmother’s comedic genius for evil. My grandmother has recently started telling me when I come to visit that she’s ‘not wearing a bra today’. Apparently, they are useless after the age of 75. I decided that this is definitely something I can use in my quest to embarrass my mother as much as humanly possible. Hey, don’t blame me, maybe my mom should have thought twice before she slid in the mud, fully clothed, at the half-time of my soccer game when I was 13.

So, now when we are about to go out for a nice family meal (to one of the three restaurants my grandmother agrees to eat at) I tell my grandmother to tell my mom that’s she is not wearing a bra to dinner because it’s just ‘too restrictive’. Talk about a winner. I’ll have to try and capture my mom’s reaction  next time. But, trust me, it’s priceless.

When you’re 78 years old undergarments are optional. Hell, you’ve earned it.

Netflix + Impatient Septuagenarian = Trouble

Over the past year, I have returned to my college days working nights as a waitress – or ‘Server’ as I prefer to be called. During the day and on the weekends I have worked to grow my consulting business. As a result, I’ve had little to no free time and certainly not enough time to visit my Netflix queue as often as I would like.

Another interesting change to the Netflix account during this time – my mother decided to give my grandmother control over the queue. She also adjusted the account so that all the DVDs are sent to my grandmother’s house. In theory, this was supposed to make things easier for my mom and I. No more frantic phone calls from grandmother asking where her DVDs were and demanding immediate home delivery. The plan backfired.

I have recently gone back to an 8-5 office job allowing me more free time  to enjoy the latest and greatest DVD releases. So, naturally, I have been updating my (or shall I say my grandmother’s) Netflix queue frequently with my requests. I began to notice that even though I requested a movie every few days and moved my request to the top of the queue, I had yet to actually receive a DVD. I would go back to the queue to check and my movies would mysteriously have disappeared – not only from the top of the list but from the entire queue. Or, in an even more mysterious fashion, Netflix would indicate that my movie was shipped and already returned. Hmmmmm? What could be the cause of this interesting phenomenon? My 78-year old grandmother.

After some investigation, I discovered that my grandmother has  not only been deleting my requests in the queue she has also received multiple movies I requested and immediately mailed them back to Netflix. She explained that she did this as a favor to me because she knows I am ‘too busy to watch them’. I am not the only victim in this heartless scheme. My mother has experienced similiar phenomenon, but with a slight twist. My grandmother censors my mom’s movie choices. If a movie my mother requests comes to my grandmother’s house, my grandmother will read the title and summary and decide if it is suitable for viewing. If not, back to Netflix it goes. Her latest film not to make the cut – Star Trek. Because “Anyone who watches Star Trek has a scrambled brain.”

I can’t wait to be 78.