Don't know where to start- right now I am at home under a duvet while my husband and daughter are out enjoying the funfair. Yet another run in with my mother has left me reeling and I can't cope with people right now. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I don't know what to do next.
I'm 45, my mother is 73. Frankly, we're both too old to change! To keep this post under a million pages long, let's just say she has never been happy with my standards of cleaning and tidying. There are various reasons why I am the way I am- all look like excuses when I type them, but there we are. I am not a bad person.
Our daughter's going to be 4 next week. She has barely slept through the night ever. We both have full time jobs- DH leaves at 6am. We are lucky to work locally and very lucky that my parents look after DD outside nursery hours. She starts school in September.
We do our best to keep the bombsite that is our house under control, but not easy to find time that works while DD is awake and when she goes to sleep, we collapse. My parents are in this house every day for pick up and drop off (I don't drive, so I can't take her to them)
on Thursday we had the latest 'last straw'. Wait for it.....yellow broccoli.
For reasons beyond my comprehension, DD has decided to keep veg out of the fridge. I decided it wasn't worth an argument and let it continue. Mother discovered the broccoli before I'd had a chance to come downstairs. She described it as 'rotten'. It wasn't. There was also some spinach and potatoes, also apparently rotten. I never got to see them as Dad had whisked the offending articles out of the house lest we all die of yellow broccoli contamination.
Cue lecture about standards - I've had 45 years of this one- and the implications that my daugher's health is at risk. And we may all have food poisoning without even knowing it. Which is where my patience ran out. And I am told we live in squalor. Etc.
in the evening she comes in as if nothing has happened.
2 days later and they have DD for the morning so we can tidy up. This has by now been turned into a bigger deal than it really is. I phone to ask what time we're getting DD back. I get the usual answer to a totally different question, we go back down the yellow broccoli road and then I learn the shock revelation that inside a sealed box, which was inside a sealed bag, in a rucksack, were some leftover strawberries from last week, which we'd forgotten to take out after a walk. More lecture then she wound herself up into tears and hung up.
So I have made my mother cry yet again.
Literally the only thing that matters about my life to her is cleaning and tidying. She is stupidly over-happy if I do a bit of dusting and almost suicidal if I don't- which is more often than the first one.
I can hear people shouting (if they've survived this far) "so just tidy then" but it's not that simple. and if I do, there's something else. always something
When DD starts school, I'll be able to walk her there in the morning, so they don't have to come here, but in the afternoon, she wants to come back here and stay for the 2 hours before I get in, and cook dinner as well. They live 5 mins away. I don't think this is going to enhance the family harmony situation.
I have signed up a team of cleaners who come over and blitz every few months- I can't get on top of the tidying more often than that, so it's better than nothing.
I am crafty, knitting, sewing, etc. I hardly do any of it any more, as you can't enjoy yourself while there's chores to be done, but I do spend time with DD making things and to me the one hour I have with her before bedtime is precious. We have clutter. I created solutions, but they became problems. My mum 'tidies' by shoving everything anywhere it will go, so within one day, all the bits from DD's games are separated, never to be found again. Anything I put down, disappears and later turns up in the most random of drawers.
So I've sort of given up, as I'm going to be wrong anyway, whatever I do.
Finding this exhausting and hating myself. Even more so for my mother being in tears because of me.
We are all good people and everyone's miserable. My daughter is a fantastic little girl and I have worked hard to make sure she is growing up happy, healthy and confident, and with a sense of self. She is sociable and everyone loves her. I was a shy, quiet, nervous child. I don't want her to grow up like I did.
I'm so sorry this is so long.