The day an engineer draws up plans for an automated worrying machine, my mother had better start, well, worrying.
The reason i say this is that faced with an adversary capable of worrying non-stop day and night, without need for frivolities such as sleep, nutrition, or periods of discomfort springing from a worry-free environment, my mother is sure to be obsolete in a record time outstripping even the telegraph or the steam-drill. Stripped of every care in the world, and placed in an environment where she cannot possibly worry about anything (This is, actually, a valid statement; i will cite the endless vacations we seem to attempt to carefree destinations such as Hawaii, Yosemite, Various Health Spas and the Oregon Coastline; all to the same result.) She immediately falls ill with an incurable malady that cannot be diagnosed and baffles even the most tenured medical professionals when pressed for a consensus any less antiquated than the decidedly draconian "Nerves." General Anxiety Disorder may come close to encompassing the neurosis that my mother has, by the sheer force of her own determination to be one of the martyrs she and her schoolmates at Catholic School traded on holy cards, acquired. Of course, i say this in the way one might say "The general term 'dysfunctional' might encompass most disorders found in the latest copy of the DSM. On top of it all, she will not, under any circumstances, see anyone even resembling a psychiatrist; a fact i manage to sidestep, rather cunningly, if i say so, by referring her to our friend Richard. Richard does, assuredly, hold a degree in psychiatric therapy, but he is infallibly trustworthy in the eyes of my mother than any headshrinking quack, by virtue of the fact that he is also an ordained minister. i cannot account for her utter distrust of the medical profession, except maybe in tenuous connection with my father; but plastic surgery seems only vaguely like medecine to me anyway. The regrettable thing about our understanding with Richard is that he cannot prescribe antidepressants or anti-anxiety medecines, and he will sooner carry Moses over Jordan on his back than convince my mother to speak to anyone who can, although i am frantically searching the psychiatric community for an archbishop or the like.

~End of Rant~
Courtesy.
- posted by Third @ 7:19 PM