This post is dedicated to The Perfect Hypochondriac.
Ever since BF and I have been working full time, my Mom has been coming over for about an hour each day to watch Mr. Twister. She’s so kind and generous. She gives him (and our antisocial cat) fresh water and takes him outside to go potty and then plays tug with him until he’s tired.
It’s been a blessing and a curse. A blessing for the dog, a curse for ME.
Mom is disappointed in me. Yes, “disappointed” as in “I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.” The words that reduce most 12 year-olds to tears still have their power over me, even at 43.
I’m overweight, I’m a procrastinator and I’m a bad housekeeper. It’s 100%n TRUE.
I’ve kept these things from her for 16 years while I was away, but now she’s horrified. What really hurts is she’s right! I am a bad housekeeper. I suck!
I can do many things wonderfully, but I can’t seem to keep up with the normal, mundane shit, most folks do as a matter of course. She’s terrified that other relatives will come over to see the “progress” BF and I have made on this old house and see the squalor we actually live in. Truth be told, BF and I are quite happy with life here (usually).
Today she really got to me though. I stopped over to see her on my way home from work (so she can see me in business attire) to visit today and she was in rare form. She announced in tears that she didn’t want to come over any more because if she had a stroke while playing with Mr. Twister, emergency workers would come and would see my house and it would be condemned. Yes, “condemned.”
Ok, it’s true, I’m not a good housekeeper, but no one is going to condemn my house! I’ve still got enough of a grip on reality to recognize this. Comments like this have been a regular occurrence since BF got a job though and today it really felt like she’s wearing me down. I love her and won’t giver her shit back although she’s actually ENCOURAGED me to do so!!! I have this horrible vision of myself saying something smart to her and then having her die before morning.
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6 comments:
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!
Does this mean my mom will still be a raving bitch when I’m forty? The very few times I’ve allowed her to step foot in my house, she's ridiculed me. The garbage is too full, the weeds aren’t pulled, the floor isn’t clean enough. I wanna bash her face in! Excuse my French.
Me and Rey are just like you an BF, we’re perfectly comfortable relaxing in an un-perfect/unclean house while enjoying a few beers. Unlike you, I’ve let my mom have it a few times and then prayed that she’d die before morning. God bless her soul.
Barbora,
You are very patient with your mother. It doesn't sound like your place is even that bad; at the risk of engaging in one-upsmanship, I'm sure it can't hold a candle to our house, which is truly a place no neatnik would want to venture.
In fact, it's so bad that, in spite of the many hints Mom dropped to be invited over in recent years, there is no way I would do it because they, particulary my father, would have been unable to accept the way we live. I didn't even want them to know, because I knew I would sink several levels in their eyes. I really do envy people who are driven to just do what needs to be done to keep the house in order. I guess you either have the gene, or you don't.
Leila,
Most of my friends have found that our mothers mellow some time after we hit our 30s, and stay mellow (except for bitching about how their grandkids are being raised) until they get old and sick and crabby again. Of course, your mom tends to be, um, an exception, but you can always hope.
I am a rotten house keeper too. Which reminds me, I'm going to hire a stinking maid, because I just can't keep up. Dusting, bathrooms, kitchen sink... I hate cleaning!
Wow! I'd love to hire a maid...but I'd have to clean up around here before any self-respecting maid would touch the place. Please let me know how it goes.
Neatnik! Hell! Our place could scare a "Beatnik!"
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