Loveable, but definitely insane.

I've known that for years, but have just recently become reacquainted with the fact after moving back to Minnesota. In the years that I was separated by thousands of miles, I had allowed myself to forget what a crazy person she is.

But now I see her all the time. And she is crazy all the time.

I think the first thing to go was her awareness of the concept of time.

Ever notice that in professional football, the clock will say there's 1 minute 54 seconds left in the game, yet somehow in that minute they're able to run nine 30-second commercials, and you can make and eat a sandwich, do a load of laundry, and still have 24 seconds left on the clock?

My mom is like that.

If she says she'll be somewhere within 30 minutes, she actually means she'll be there by Thursday.

A teacher by trade, my mother spends hours in her classroom after school preparing lesson plans and getting materials ready for the next day. In the days before the rise of cell phones, my father would come home from work, make my brother and me dinner, then the three of us would pile into the van and drive across town to my mother's school, where my brother and I would spend half an hour throwing snowballs at mom's second-story classroom window in an effort to get her attention.

More recently, my wife made dinner for my family, and my mother arrived two hours late. Where had she been?

"Target," my mother said. "I bought towels."

"Towels?! For two hours you bought towels?" I said.

"Well, there were a lot to choose from," she said.

Actually, she didn't say that. There's no way you could have that short and direct a conversation with my mom.

It takes her 45 minutes to answer a yes-or-no question.

ME: "Mom, I'm hungry. Are there any apples in your fridge?"

MOM: "Well, I know that I like apples. I was going to make your dad take me out to Jordan to that place where you can pick apples. You know the place; you got your picture taken with the governor there. Not the governor now -- whoever was governor when you were a teenager. What was his name? It started with a 'P.' Pawlenty? No, that's the governor now. I don't like his chin. He has a weird chin. Have you seen it? It's hard to explain, but there's something just sort of off about it ..."

And on and on and on whilst you leave the house, go buy apples, and come back, at which point she will still be talking -- nothing stops my mother once she gets started talking.

Recently, amid dinner with my parents, I bit into my tongue. I winced in pain, tears ran down my cheeks, and I was spitting blood, but my mother didn't even break stride. She just kept on with some story about having wanted two desserts the previous day.

I'll save you 90 minutes and let you know that she did not have the two desserts -- probably because she hadn't brought the proper footwear.

My mother needs different footwear for every activity: She needs one kind of shoe for standing and doing the dishes, but if she's going to take the garbage out, she had better change shoes. When she heads out for the day, she brings with her -- in addition to the shoes she's wearing -- no less than a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of hiking boots, and a pair of sandals.

But her preparedness doesn't stop there. She'll usually also bring three coats. And a sweater. And two belts. And a liter of water. And a box of Kleenex. And a book. And her reading glasses. And her contacts. And contact solution. And dental floss. And bandages.

At all times, apparently, my mother is ready to climb Mt. Everest.

Perhaps my mother is a little too insane. Perhaps it's a trick. By acting like a crazy person now, none of us will be able to spot senility when she reaches old age. Mom will never get sent off to some lonely old folks' home, because my brother and I will never know when to send her.

Many years from now, my son or daughter will approach me and say: "Dad, Grandma is outside wearing three pairs of pants, a dress, and a hockey helmet; running around the yard and insisting that she's trying to catch geese with a coffee can and a piece of string."

"OK," I'll say. "What's your point?"

My wife, however, believes there is something more sinister afoot.

"She sees it all. She's taking it all in, Chris," my wife said to me. "I think your mother is a spy."

It would make sense, wouldn't it? Always late, always prepared for any contingency and capable of evading any form of direct questioning.

Perhaps my mother has put together a brilliant false personality to hide her true identity of a superwoman who is hunting down dangerous al-Qaida sleeper cells.

Or perhaps my mother's craziness is starting to wear off on all of us. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to change shoes.