Surprisingly crap day.... thanks Mum

[CogitOCrapNotMoreSprouts]

Just had a phone conversation with DM for whom the adjective 'tactless' might have been invented. She was holding forth about some terrible woman and, just to illustrate how appalling this person was, finished with something along the lines of .... 'and how she has the cheek to pass judgement when she is an unmarried mother!!!!!....'

Yup... you guessed it.... I'm a mother and I'm unmarried as well. Ta-daaa... She didn't even skip a beat, never mind apologise. Gob running ahead of what passes for a brain as usual. I'm old enough to not normally let that kind of blooper throw me but feel surprisingly crap at the moment.

Anyone else having a surprisingly crap day?

[issey6cats]

aww mums they dont think do they my daughter occasionally comes out with something which shows shes in her world and not mine i let it go over my head dont let it get to you

[mashedpotatohead]

Awww, Cogito my mum is the same if thats any consolation.

On my hen do, she told anyone that would listen she never wanted children!

At a recent slimming club night she was describing a woman & said she's your sort of size, you know biggish! (I'm a 14!)

And over a recent run in with a car dealer, I said he's trying to suggest I'm nuerotic & my mum said that she could see why!

There are many more.......who'd have'em eh?!!

[CogitOCrapNotMoreSprouts]

I've had the size comments... And, on one occasion when I confessed to having forgotten a minor school event, I was told off for having a 'shocking memory'.... I've been travelling too much a lot for work recently so my fatigue levels are high, immune system compromised and my pissed-off-ometer is flicking into the red a bit too often.... There was another big chunk of the conversation about my DB which is far too long and boring to go into but effectively batted my acheivements out of the water by claiming he had simply been the victim of some bad breaks. (No he hasn't, I just applied myself better.... gah!!!!)

Is it too early for a gin????

[mashedpotatohead]

I have been reminded four times that I forgot DS1 school christmas dinner last year & how upset he was. This was four times after I told her I'd paid it! Grrrrrr!

You are wonderful in your own right my dear.

I think that would be classed as a christmas gin, so that's fine ha ha!

[CogitOCrapNotMoreSprouts]

The 'four times' thing I sympathise with. Only another four hundred to go, eh? :) It's as if they think, by repeating the problem ad nauseam it somehow undoes the past, rights wrongs and makes everyone who has long moved on and would just like to forget about it feel 100% better.....

DS lost a piece of clothing at school recently. Unusual for him but not uncommon in the whole hurly-burly of school life. And what does she do but remind me of the one solitary item I lost as a schoolgirl .... back in 1975!!!!!.... and rehash a 37 year-old conversation about thieves round every corner. Let it GO ffs!!!

[financialwizard]

If it is any consolation I am also regularly reminded of my past indiscretions (I am talking 25 years ago when I was a young teen). You'd think it was yesterday that I made the mistakes because it is all linked in to my 'failings'. She always does it in company with a smug look on her face. She did do it on the phone too but I have taken to telling her where to get off now.

[CogitOCrapNotMoreSprouts]

Do you think they all get together & take a course in this or something? I've actually told DS - who has not seen eye to eye with the poor woman since he was old enough to mouth the words 'go away granny' - that if I ever start behaving that way, he has my express permission to part my hair with a lump hammer. Oscar Wilde's words about 'all women ending up like their mothers' ringing in my ears ...

[mashedpotatohead]

You are not wrong Cogito! You clearly have not had enough gin luv!!!!!!

[CogitOCrapNotMoreSprouts]

Ticking off minutes until sun is over yard arm.... May have to settle for tea and a Hob-Nob in the meantime.

[BrevilleTron]

Wow Cogito. Your mum is clearly stuck in the 50's! I am now married but not to my DD's dad and I pay Child Maintenance to him and his lovely wife so she would have an apoplectic fit at me!

Feel free to tell her about me!

[mashedpotatohead]

It's dark here......fill your boots I say! Having said that, nothing wrong with a hob-nob!

[CogitOCrapNotMoreSprouts]

I was never married to DS's father and I've been a single parent since birth. Most of the time and to my face she's quite supportive but occasionally, when she's not paying full attention to what she's saying, I get to hear what she really thinks. :) Stuck slightly earlier than the 1950's I think. Didn't help that she was educated by those champions of alternative lifestyles and sexual liberality.... nuns Don't get me started on the response to my atheistic leanings.... LOL!

[cynnerthenaughtyreindeer]

Cogito, my mum has absolutely no filter. Or as she likes to say " I speak the truth." She has said some rude and hurtful things to me about my parenting, dress sense, and friends. She has the ability to make me cry at age 37 with four children. Someone once told me, I can't change her behaviour, only my reaction to it. I still have not figured out how to do that...

[MadSleighLady]

Oh god, the TEN YEAR FUCKING LOOP of "Well, you can be a bit dopey/forgetful/snappy/spendthrift, dear" based on a single incident in the 1990s. What the fuck is that all about? Even if they haven't got anything better to do than keep count of all your sub-optimal acts ever, WHY do they think it's appropriate adult-to-adult behaviour to introduce it as a "helpful" homily at apposite moments?

And my mum's nice!

[MadSleighLady]

And I've just realised I still think the 1990s was ten years ago.

[purrpurr]

My mum's like this. I am tempted to tell her to stop mothering me, but that wouldn't do any good. I do think you should be allowed to divorce your parents at the age of 18 and enter into a contract of friendship at any point after that if you wish to.

I know none of my friends would ever rather patronisingly instruct me to make sure I'd dried myself properly after a shower when I was 25.

[CogitOCrapNotMoreSprouts]

ROFL at 'dry yourself properly'.... :) I remember one holiday from uni when I was about 20 years old and being told cheerily... 'time you went to bed!!!'... and expected to fall in line. After several terms of hard-core drinkin', shaggin' and getting away with as little sleep as possible you can rest assured I never went home for the holidays again. :)

[Mintberry]

Oh God. In response to the Mums telling who tell you off for things you did as children, my Mum takes the biscuit... She still regularly reminds me of what a "horrible baby" I was, that I never stopped crying, and when I was a toddler I used to "frown rudely" at people on the bus! However will I repay her?

[CogitOCrapNotMoreSprouts]

Perhaps a rude frown would be apt...

[Katla]

Oh dear, it's hard when mothers say stuff like that should know better. I was going to shops with mine this week with my 9 week baby and didn't have my wedding ring on (as my hands are sore, dry and cracked just now and it annoys me, as does my mother a lot of the time) and she asked where it was as 'I wouldn't want people thinking I'm an unmarried mother'. I mean who cares what others think and I was a bit offended on behalf of anyone who she would judge and have an opinion on as it's none of her business

[louistheseventeenth]

My Dh says my mum thinks things and 'as soon as they are in her head, they fall out of her face'

Sometimes I do think they all go on a secret course on how to do this, Cogito.

I heard a great program about this a couple of years ago on R4 Womans Hour, and this lady rang in who had rushed to her mother's hospital bed as she had been rung up and told she had taken a turn for the worse.....

As she leant over her sleeping mother to kiss her for the last time, her mother opened her eyes and said 'your roots want doing'

[TheCrackFox]

Are all mums like this?

My mum mentioned, at the weekend, a school report that I did that my teacher didn't like. Yes, it was about a quarter of a century ago but why let that get in the way of her verbal diarrhoea.

[MerlotforOne]

My mum is a bit of martyr but generally loving and supportive. Some of her finer moments:

'You're reasonably attractive, but you'll never be beautiful' (to my self conscious, skinny 14 year old self).

'Ooh, shame about that B, does it come on a different certificate? Can you pretend you didn't do it?' (Her first words on hearing that I had achieved 9 A's/A*'s at GCSE, and one B).

'Your sister skype's me every day...' In a 'so why do you only call weekly?' Tone of voice, despite the fact that DSis is a SAHM of one baby and I'm a working mum of a 3 yr old whirlwind who still doesn't sleep through...

[MadSleighLady]

On a similar thread the other day somebody, forget who, said the mum-phrase most guaranteed to reduce them to instant spitting fury was:

"I hope you're not going to do that/say that in front of/to X person."

OHHHHH yes. That one.

[3monkeys]

Mum mum said to me tonight, when I was trying to get off the phone by telling her I hadn't had my tea yet "it won't do you any harm will it" I'm not thin but she's way bigger !!