Ok so I am 18 months into living with my mother, and while for the most part things are going well, there is always the odd thing that leaves me pondering what I am going to be like when I am 70.
For instance the charity shop mug buying. Lately Mum has decided that visiting the charity shop once a week "to see what they've got in" is a necessary part of life and invariably she'll come home with some weird and wonderful mug that someone else has chucked out for whatever reason and she'll stick it in the cupboard with all the purposefulness of "there see what I've bought you" while I am left wondering a. did we need another mug and b. why does she keep buying them when she only ever uses the one mug and never deviates for love nor money from this favoured mug, thus leading me to believe she must think I am missing something from my life and clearly a mug from the charity shop will full fill it.
Then we have the tidying up, the shoe polishing and the dishwasher. While I'd be the first to admit I am not the tidiest of people I don't actually believe I let things slide that badly, and while I appreciate the help she offers sometimes with keeping things under control she does drive me up the fecking wall when she gets "busy" with my washing, or the cup and plate I've been using or when the kids have left their shoes not quite in the cupboard. Its the huffing and puffing the accompanies this task that drives me up the wall. The "actually, I'm feeling really poorly and I shouldn't have to be doing this for you" speech I get as she shuffles over to a napkin that Chip has just accidentally dropped on the floor leans over with a dramatic flurry sighing and mumbling about passing out as she does it. GRRHH Mum, I didn't ask you to do this, you are not my cleaner PA that must follow mine and the kids footsteps in case we might make a mess. I wouldn't mind, but if you go in to her "areas" of the house its not exactly a palace of perfection and she's quite a messy person on the quiet.
I have to spend quite a bit of time reminding myself I am 40 years old not 14 and that I am a capable, productive member of this family and society and that she's only doing this stuff and moaning about it because she is finding it difficult not being able to be as productive as she used to be and so because she's so full of her own self doubt about having a valuable place in the family, she's constantly trying to undermind my place in the family and we come to blows when she can't.
She wants Hubbie to take her side on all things, how I behave, how the kids behave, what the animals do and whose fault it all is. When one of the biggest changes to our lives is that Hubbie no longer believes the crap she talks and moans about me, whereas before he and I would argue because she'd wound him up against me, and, at the end of the day if all those things she complains about or feels I am unjust about if they were really true or really that bad, he and I would never have got back together and she wouldn't have asked to live with me.
While I know I am not perfect I am grateful that Hubbie now doesn't allow the bitchness and stabbing in the back my mum has a habit of doing to both her daughters about both her daughters to effect him and wound him up anymore. Also she needs to learn that while he doesn't think the sun shines out of his kids bottoms only he and I are allowed to say anything that isn't positive about them. It is the nature of the beast in the fact that most us believe our children are a direct reflection on ourselves so cussing them is cussing us as well something no one likes. Only my Mum can't see that moaning about the way my sister and I behave and bitching about us behind our backs only serves to make her seem either a useless mother or the reason we turned out the way we did.
Anyway these are all little and annoying things that I am living with on a daily basis not to much to worry about and not that bad. Just a little irritating if you know what I mean lol.
