Don't Let Skinny Girls Hang Curtains

28 July 2020
Story #995

R. Linda:

Mam's friend Norma turned 70 yesterday. She has just built a home for herself down by the river and is very proud of it. It is a small place she built, as it is only her, her son, and the son's Thai wife, who speaks no English. She's been excited for the past year about having her own home, custom-built and in such a scenic spot. Everyone has been happy for her, as she would like to retire soon, which would be a dream come true.

If school ever starts again, the son will get his salary as a teacher, making Norma's life easier. The only problem is the young wife, who has decided she doesn't like New Hampshire. It is too cold, snowy, sparsely populated, and generally dull. The worst part of it is. . . no palm trees.

Being a woman of wiles, she has made the son's life somewhat difficult right along with dear old Norma's. She posts pictures of herself on Facebook in many artistic manners of undress as if she were single, there be never an explanation, probably because she can't write in English. She has on occasion posted strange videos of herself preparing a starvation diet of chicken soup and nought else and then going into the loo to bring it all up. She can be seen in her small garden with short shorts, a cut-off top, a wide-brimmed straw hat, singing IN ENGLISH "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" and they tell me she can't speak a word of it, well, yes, she can sing it!

This is all because she wants to move back to Thailand with or without her husband. She could visit Thailand every summer for 3 months, should she want to, but no, she wants to move back. They did that once, and she wanted to move back here only to Florida because, as you might guess, there are palm trees and ungodly heat in August! But even that wasn't good enough, and she went back to Thailand until this time they moved in with his mother.

The marriage has been a rocky one. She won't eat, she won't talk. When they moved in, she went into her and his bedroom, stripped back the blanket and hid under it for a week. True, she did not come out, but to get her soup and then right back undercover. Yes, she's bi-polar if you haven't already guessed and does not care to take her medication. This makes for an untenable situation for the husband, not to mention her mother-in-law, whose happiness has been somewhat dumped on.

Well, it was finally decided to send her back to her own mother in Thailand, but the problem is that flights are few, and those that are flying abroad are booked for months. Every day, the husband checks to see if there is an empty seat so he can send her home. So far, no luck.

This isn't the only problem. Before they moved in, Norma (trusting soul that she was) paid a painter $1500 to paint the inside of the home. He never showed up and took off with the money. She hired another at $1700 and did the same, only he did show up and only painted half the house. Her son had to do the rest himself. I tell ya!

So yesterday was Norma's birthday, the big 7 0, and for it, the son bought her a 50" TV. She was thrilled to the back teeth. He set it up and left to do the grocery shopping. They hadn't been in the house long, but they were moved in, and all the new furniture and curtains were the only things left to set up. Norma did that task with gusto because the house would be done once the curtains were up. Happy Birthday to Norma!

Norma spared no expense, and she bought drapery rods with a brass ball on the end of the rod. I'm sure you've seen them. The son had put up all the hardware before he left, so all that needed to be done was to get the curtains put up. The daughter-in-law threaded them on the rods while Norma was hanging the curtains. Norma got a phone call that she took in the kitchen, leaving the daughter-in-law alone in the living room. She got tired of waiting on Norma, so she got it into her head to hang the last curtain. Being a slightly petite, skinny gal, who was in the process of starving herself, well, she had no strength and the curtain with the heavy rod balls was no match for her. The rod whirled around and then went straight up towards the ceiling, and no, it didn't put a hole in the ceiling. Instead, it chipped the ceiling fan blade, which went flying into Norma's brand new 50" telly!

Norma said she heard a "little scream" but then saw her daughter-in-law going up the stairs, so she didn't think anything of it. When she went back into the living room to finish up the curtain hanging, she noticed the ceiling fan making a funny noise. Looking up, she saw the blade was chipped and part of it was missing. Then, as she looked on the floor to see where the rest of the blade pieces were, she saw this funny glass (the telly screen) and, looking up, saw the giant hole in the screen. She was baffled, she said. An hour later, the daughter-in-law came down to make her starvation soup, and nary a word was said about the broken fan and ruined telly present. That was yesterday, and still nothing.

WHO DOES THAT?

I dunno, just another day in the life of a New Hampshire resident.

Gabe

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