I am an ungrateful, hypocritical wretch.
"Well, yeah" you might be thinking. "But what makes you think so this time?"
Mom is here for a visit. She's leaving next week, at which point I'll be mopey and sad and miss her. But we are heading on week 3 here, and I gotta say that I've got a serious case of ungrateful-itis. We do pretty much everything differently and both of us like things done our way. When I'm at her house, I can deal with our differences so much better than when she is at our house. After all, it's her house and she should be able to do what she wants how she wants and when she wants. Ditto for me.
But for the love of parental child relationships - I'm slowing going crazy here. Have I said anything to her about this? Nope. Why is that? Don't want to deal with it. It's good that on some level I realize that I would sound like a fool vocalizing some (possibly any) of the things that annoy me this visit. And I would. What has upset me enough to be blogging at 4 am?
Sigh
S woke up in the middle of the night and threw up. Since Mom was in the same room, she got S up, cleaned her up and put her to sleep in the bed Mom is using, then cleaned up everything she could see to clean because she didn't want to wake up S. That, my friends, is a great person.
So what's my problem? I woke up after having a dream about leaking water to realize that it was raining in through the open window in our bedroom. I closed the window and cleaned up the water, then decided to check on the kids since T's window was cracked open too. That's how i learned S had been sick, because I hadn't heard a thing. And cue the guilt. Mom had already put the sheets and stuff in the washer, so I came down to check on them. The washer wasn't done, so I filled my time cleaning up the kitchen which was in desperate need of some attention. And here's where my attitude goes downhill. Mom really and truly wastes nothing she doesn't have to, which is admirable. But that ends up equaling about eight partial bottles of water sitting around and no one knows which water bottle belongs to whom so they just sit there. It drives me nuts. If Mom sees me pouring it out, she..uh...suggests that I use it for some other purpose. It's reasonable, no? But instead I'm in the kitchen like a kid sneaking in after curfew pouring out bottles of water because I can now justify it since S may have a stomach virus and none of us want to take the chance that we get it too, right?! Right.
This leads me to notice all the stuff lying around on the counters. Now, it does not bother me nearly as much if it's MY stuff that I put on the counter, but it bugs me if it's someone else put it there. Yes, I know that makes me a hypocrite and a bit obnoxious -- just like my preference of sorting the silverware in the dishwasher by utensil. Yes, I know I probably need help. So I clean up all the stuff on the counters and get rid of tons of stuff that I know Mom would question my getting rid of, then I take out the trash because out of sight is out of mind. Or so I hope. This leads me to notice how dirty the counters are, so I clean those off. This leads to a mini internal tantrum over the coffee maker. Mom and Richard sent R a really nice coffee maker a couple of years ago. I refer to it as Darth Vader, because it looks like...well...Darth Vader. R doesn't see it, but imagination is not his strong suit. But I digress.
A day or so ago, I noticed a lot of water on the counter near Darth. I had started to clean it up, but Mom came down and wanted to do it. I'd say that I wouldn't complain about someone cleaning up my house, but that's exactly what I'm doing, so I'll just say that I had no problem letting her take over. Until I noticed tonight that the dish towel that we put under the coffee maker to catch spills was soaking wet. Call me overly cautious, but an electrical appliance sitting on a saturated dish towel just seems like a bad idea. Especially when said appliance is plugged in and used daily. GAH!
From there, I went to move the bed clothes from the washer to the dryer. Let me say again that I sincerely appreciate everything Mom has done, and cleaning up vomit is WAY up there. But please tell me why you would stick vomit covered stuff in a washer with regular clothes? Why? So that you can have a full load? Okay, I'll buy that...but when you put too many clothes in the washer, nothing gets completely or well rinsed and everything ends up smelling a bit like vomit, even over the Downy smell. So then I end up dividing the clothes in half and rewashing them. Plus, it skeeves me out to think my clothes have been washed with vomit covered stuff. I'm just picky that way. BLECH. This leads me to notice that even though Mom has done several loads of laundry, nothing is done the way I do it. To me, when you do laundry, it should be ready to put on and go. So clothing items should be right side out and not inside out, you know? And pairs of socks should not include one right side out and one inside out. It makes my brain hurt. And if you've seen all our shirts and pants hanging up on the bar beside the washer, why would you fold them (unevenly mind you) and then sort them according to girl/boy. T and R don't room together. S and I don't room together. T and S's bedrooms are beside each other and ours is on the opposite side of the house. I. just. don't. understand. And what's worse, I don't even understand why I'm so bothered by any of this. It's just silly. Silly and immature. I know it, really I do, but I'm still sitting here at 5:30 am in an unnecessary snit of my own creation because I don't want to say these things out loud.
Mom, I'm sorry. I'm glad you're here and I hope by cleaning and rearranging the kitchen that I've gotten a grip on my crappy attitude. If not, please feel free to ground me or put me in time out. I totally deserve. I'll work really, really hard to be better, I promise.
Anyone that reads this and can actually understand my point of view here, please feel free to post something in the comments. If nothing else, maybe we can start a support group.
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