This is a contribution from my dad

I wish I could say we used this fireplace and there was a toasty flame that helped dry my dad's socks, but alas, this fireplace is unused and my dad just thought it was a convenient place to hang his socks up to dry (as opposed to, say, the bathroom?).

Rose Hills Water

This isn't technically shit my mom bought. This is more like shit my mom saved. We just got back from Hawaii. My dad picked us up from LAX in our car. In the back seat was Lucy's suitcase, filled with mini bottles of water. Brad was like, "Harabuji, where did all these bottles of water come from?" My dad was like, "Oh, they're from Rose Hills Cemetery." 

Let me backtrack a little. My grandfather is buried at Forest Lawn Rose Hills in Whittier. My grandmother is buried in Korea. This past year, my dad decided to bring his mother's ashes to LA and bury her in his father's plot at Rose Hills. He made me call the cemetery to find out pricing, and it was pretty gross: "$3000 to bury two bodies in one plot; $850 to open up the plot on a weekday, $1200 on a weekend; $300 for a special urn for the cremains [I HATE THAT WORD]; $200 random fees; $100 to remove the grave marker; $100 to destroy the grave marker" blah blah blah blah blah. You get the picture. I told my dad and he was like, ok. So my grandmother's ashes arrived via Korean Air about a week ago, and my dad brought them to Rose Hills. They opened up the plot on Wednesday. My mom and dad were the only people who could attend the "ceremony" because my sister and I were out of town and my aunts and uncles were all working. But the folks at Forest Lawn had set out a tent and a dozen chairs, each with a miniature bottle of Rose Hills water.

So of course my mom took all the water. They'd paid for it, right? (And it probably cost $20/bottle, SERIOUSLY). Brad thinks this is so morbid of my mom and refuses to touch or taste the water. It's still sitting in the suitcase in our car.

Faux Marble

Less than one week after the marble altar atrocity, my mother outdid herself. She bought another dining table and chairs (we now have 4 sets in our house) for the basement. No one eats down there, but my mom doesn't care. My sister e-mailed me a picture. I am boycotting the house.

The rug is also from the army and is stained (my mom claims she can't see the stains and doesn't care).

I know what you're thinking. You think it's not so bad. I mean, it's terrible taste, but it's not like the marble altar upstairs. Except it is. Because this shiny table and its matching chairs are not made of marble or granite at all. No, they are made out of PLASTIC. Or, as my mother corrected me, they are made out of FORMICA. As if that makes it any better. This furniture belongs OUTSIDE, except not even, because it's upholstered in fabric. Plastic and fabric.

Like I said, I'm boycotting the house. This offends me on so many different levels. It would be gross even if it were made of actual marble or wood. The fact that it's made of formica/plastic/faux-marble is like adding insult to injury.

Long Time, No Post!

Apologies for being MIA. I just couldn't bear to go over to my mom's house recently. My dad would refer to trucks depositing new Army purchases at the house, and I would just stick my fingers in my ears and pretend like I didn't hear anything.

But Brad and I went over this weekend and both screamed Holy Mother of God when we saw the following:

Why is there a marble ALTAR covered with plants in the living room?! (The wood carving seems kind of temple like, too...I think my mom also got that from a thrift store, since it suddenly appeared one day, and not after a recent trip to Thailand or something). You might remember from previous posts that there's a skylight in the living room, and my mom is OBSESSED with placing her houseplants directly below it. She has bought at least 5 different pedestals/tables over the past few years, and she keeps swapping them out when she finds something bigger, better, and uglier at the Army.

Here's a sideview:

I'm in pain. The console table is also an Army purchase, as is the green patterned afghan on the couch in the background. I think my parents bought the painting at Fedco in the 70s. I know it's terrible, but I have a soft spot for it because I grew up with it. Unlike the other stuff.

So where, you wonder, did the glass tables that previously resided under the skylight go? Never fear, they just migrated to the next room:

Can you think of a more RANDOM arrangement of furniture?! The glass coffee/end tables are right up against the munchkin chairs, which are then pretty much right up against the piano. You can't get to the chairs. You will notice that the twin dolphins and the conchs have moved from the fireplace to the glass tables.

The conch shells are now filled with some cheap touristy shell necklaces that my mom purchased from some thrift store. She previously had the strands spilling out so it looked like the conch was vomiting. I think the current set-up is marginally less appalling.

In the background, you may have noticed the following bizarre structure:

My mom rearranged her stack of pots. The broken x-mas tree stand is still on the bottom, along with the pot and some random platters. I couldn't figure out what the thing on top was. My dad thought it was supposed to hold a plant, but it also looked like maybe it was a table with a missing top. I don't know. It looks like a ghetto Eiffel tower.

Welcome to the shit my mom buys

I don't even know what this is

My mom says it cooks eggs on both sides.

The Reappearing Calendar

This isn't something my mom got from the Army. She got this free calendar from the Korean supermarket, and she insisted we put it up in our house.
First she tried to hang it in our kitchen. We took it down.
Next time my mom came over, she rigged it to the window shade, using the drapery cord. Meaning we couldn't open or close our shade without getting it tangled up in the calendar. Brad was pissed and took it down.
Next time my mom came over, the calendar magically reappeared in Lucy's room, again tied to the window shade with a drapery cord. Again, Brad got pissed and took it down.
Today, I was sitting in Lucy's room, and the closet door was ajar.
And there it was. The calendar. Hung up among Lucy's clothes.