Stream of Consciousness

So this morning we get up, grab our respective newspapers, coffee, take our places by the fire.

It's a normal morning until my mother gets on a roll talking about the crime of the day (a truly heinous honor killing, I'll not follow suit and rant about it though I could) and attitudes toward women. Right on!
Somehow this rolls into one of her 'it's just like....' tales. This particular tale takes us back to her elementary school, a home ec project where she had to make a plaid skirt and a 'fat teacher' who was out to get her. The teacher apparently made her cut her plaid fabric too big resulting in an ill fitting skirt which of course landed her a subpar grade. My mom believes the teacher made her cut the fabric too big because the teacher herself was too big.
Yes I can see the connection....women's rights, honor killings, a subversive fat teacher out to fail a svelte fourteen year old.

And we didn't stop there. With nary a breath taken we were in a furniture factory where my mother worked with springs (at least fifteen minutes of detail on springs, fringes, upholstery buttons), the old Metropolitan department store in Stratford Ontario where she was a floor supervisor, Bill King, Doris somebody, a man whose nickname was Stewy and I don't know who else....I've heard these stories many, many times before but I go along. There is comparatively little happening in life at 83, I figure as long as we can talk in the present (so I know we aren't totally lost in the past!) then what's the harm in mom traipsing down memory lane on occasion (OK daily). At times she enjoys the reminiscing, other times it's an effort to make sense of her life (she talks a fair amount of her brother who was killed/murdered at 30, there are things in life you just don't get past).

As I say, normally I roll with this but today I thought my head was going to explode.
Yesterday we bought a house and so begins the process of packing, purging, moving, and selling another property here. Lots on my mind and on the plate. A 25 minute, 70 year old story was too much at 7:45AM. After we left the department store 'we' were talking about an even earlier job packing butter in a factory, a brief stint plucking feathers from chickens (seriously); you do see the connection between the aforementioned news of the day and all of this yes?

Suddenly the story stops, I reign in that fluttery feeling in my chest (similar to the fight or flight response I imagine) and all is calm.
For ten minutes.

I'm having an issue with a government agency which is proving extremely frustrating (they apparently have no staff so there is no one to answer a phone or a fax or an email), this unfortunately takes us back to WWII?! Mom is off ranting about income tax being a WWII measure and it should never have been allowed to continue. I point out all that income tax pays for, how life is a little improved over those times knowing full well that my words are futile--like pissing in the wind as they say.

It's first thing in the morning, I'm exhausted before I'm even fully awake.