You Can Pick Your Friends, You Can Pick Your Nose.....

....  You cannot, however, pick your family.

I married a man- a wonderful man, who still entirely makes my heart stop three years and seven and a half years later.  He's handsome, a good father, affectionate, smart, and so.good.looking.  Yum.  Bluntly, he's the complete package.

He has a dirty little secret though.  His mom, is entirely nuts and way to involved.

If we need something and mention it, they buy it for us- and then tell us we can pay them back.  The first example was when we first moved in together.  We were entirely 100% broke and expecting Liam.  We needed a washer and drier.  We'd been saving for two months and I was starting to look at "bargain corner" second hand sets.  This got mentioned to my mother-in-law, who went out and brought a brand new scratch-and-dent set for FOUR TIMES our budget, and then told us we owed her.  I flipped a lid.

She has no concept of "healthy food."  I leave the kids with her and she'll brag about how healthy they ate while we were gone- two juice pouches and three packs of fruit snacks each.    OMG.

Further to her food issues- she can't cook at all.  The first meal she served me (and she was super proud of it) was a canned ham, rice-a-roni, and none-to-fresh bagged salad.  I ate as much as I could possibly could and tried my best to be polite.

She thinks she knows how to parent my kids better than I do.  She loves her grandbabies, no doubt about it, but she really only sees them once or twice a month for a few hours *with* us.  Our oldest is one of those people who really needs personal time to decompress.  You can tell when Liam has had to much- he gets entirely unreasonable and, well, rude.  My response is to remove him from the situation until he can re-center himself.  If she's there, she follows me and tries to "talk" sense into him.  My inner momma-bear wants to yell at her to "STFU crazy lady!" and then threaten to bather on to her endlessly while she's shaving her legs (which she has frequently told me is when she does her thinking).

She has dealt with becoming a grandma at a young age with retail therapy.  In some ways its been excellent.  Other times, she shows up at my house with bags of second hand clothes she got a rummage sale.  Not only do they smell, they're ridiculously ugly (matching hammer pants anyone???), and rarely are in seasonally appropriate sizes.  So, our tiny little sardine can house is regularly blessed with large bags of garbage that I need to appear thankful and excited for, pretreat stains, wash, and donate.  Because, you know, I'm bored and just dying for more laundry in my life.

 

All that said, she really does love her boy and our kids.  (I'm still not clear on how she feels about me.)  There are just days where I wish someone could translate between generations for me.  I'm still afraid she's into voodoo and I'm not gutsy enough to take that on, LOL.

Memories From a Past Life: Remember When the Bathroom Was Private?

I remember in my life before children, the quiet, the solitude, the break that going to the bathroom signified.  Work would be crazy or just annoying me and I could take a few minutes to get my "game face" back on before going over the deep end and telling my mom, my boss, or the stinky guy on the 5th floor the things that really were ruminating in the back of my mind.  I could go into the bathroom three steps from the loony bin, and come back out a normal, sane and functioning member of society.

The bathroom was a place I knew I could find some lost zen in a moment of need.

Fast forward to today.  I no harbor the foolish idea that the bathroom is a safe haven of any sort.  In fact, quite to the contrary, I know that the moment I walk through that door I am cornering myself.  Its like some sensor goes off the moment I sit and every living thing in the entire house wants my attention.  Ryan can't find his wedding ring.  Liam can't remember how to spell "Grandma."  Cora wants another piece of cheese.  The dog is sitting there, looking contentedly at me, eyes full of love.  The cat is doing figure eights around my ankles because she wants more food.  And Neve, is pressed up against my knees, screaming in my face and hitting me with a toothbrush. Did I mention that the President, Pope, and my mother are all simultaneously calling, in desperate need of my infinite wisdom (because, you know, as the mother of three small children I have tons of time for deep thoughts and examination of many diverse topics).

My goal is literally, to get in and out as quickly as possible.  I have come to accept that if I take to long the world will quite literally implode.

When I stood, hugely pregnant, at the precipice of motherhood, I knew this beautiful phase of life would pass quickly and I made a promise to myself to fully embrace and experience all the seasons of raising children.  Relinquishing bathroom privacy was not something I had really taken into consideration.

I wonder if the day will ever come when I go to, um, go, and I miss having a one year old screaming at me.