How to survive 4 days with DM

[Really2018]

My mum has arrived from abroad with her fiancé. She has been here for half an hour, and I'm already thinking about acting out the plot from the Purge.

I need your help and ideas to entertain her and curb my fantasies of smothering her with my favourite pillow.

I love her dearly, but she is a massive handful and narc, has a never-ending waterfall of issues that she showers on anyone with ears, and is the reigning world champion of complaining.

I know this isn't strictly an AIBU, but I really need help to solve my predicament. She currently is on the phone to the motherland, furious about some package that hasn't arrived (but still has the energy to ask me what I'm going to cook for her later today).

Please help. I have attached a diagram.

A variant of Buzzword Bingo?

Make a list of things she could possibly complain about. Tick them off as she complains about them (in your head if you must, but on a written list attached to the fridge could send her apoplectic ). Double score if the subject she complains about is something no-one else in the world would ever see as a problem.

Sorry OP, I sound flippant. But I find black humour is pretty much all that would get me through this scenario. I hope others will come up with better strategies for you. hugs

Stay with friends for the duration. Visit after dinner time.

Give her and fiancé time and private space. LOL.

Maybe we should all play

A selection of the things she has complained about so far:

• airport parking
• the post
• the checkout lady in a supermarket back in the motherland (she didn't know 'her shit')
• the contents of my fridge ('should we go shopping or do you think you've got everything')
• apples ('English apples just lack the juice you would find in the motherland')
• the flowers on my dining room table (are for dead people)
• my grass
• her fiancé s phone (nothing beats 2005 Nokia)

Your grass ???

Where is the motherland out of interest?! Sounds a magical place 😂

Does your grass not offer the greeness that grass possesses in the motherland?

The grass is too long. I can't divulge the location of the motherland unfortunately, I'm worried it would be outing.

DM has finished her 'conversation' with the postal service and has concluded that the whole thing is a conspiracy theory. The postal people must have loved her package so much that they opened it, ate its contents, updated the evil internet to tell DM that the package had arrived, and played dumb when being confronted. The saga continues.

She's calling her laywer.

It's going to be a looooonnnnngggggg four days ...

I can sympathise, throw hypochondria into the pot and that’s my DM too. My strategy is to try not to engage, just bland “oh really“ and time out before she goes off onto another diatribe about something. I spend most of the time quietly seething and moaning to my DH. It makes me sad really, our relationship is not what I want for me and my DD.

Just nod and smile while writing ' STFU you narcissistic auld wagon ' with your tongue on the roof of your mouth.
Then resort to plenty of

OP, I highly recommend a big slug of wine. And the Complaint Topic bingo game.

Oh and lashings of eyeliner and back combing your hair like it's 1980s again so you can go full on Kevin teenager with eye rolls.

You have my sympathies OP.
Can you pop out of the house at all? Hide at the neighbours for an hour?

Or wear earphones with your music whilst she talks. Those Bluetooth ones are brilliant, with long hair she won't know you're wearing them.

Does your grass not offer the greeness that grass possesses in the motherland?
It's too long

Youve inbuilt entertainment for 4 days OP!! Keep us posted on next topics... We can keep you smiling!

Step 1. Take the dog out for a walk.

If you don’t have a dog, borrow a dog and repeat step 1.

Our poor dog is bloody knackered by the time my DM has gone home

@AGirlinLondon. Poor doggo, s/he probably enjoyed it at first!

Ps. Ask her more about the conspiracy theory ... and did she ring her lawyer?!

You have my sympathy, I’ve got 2 days with mine coming up and it’ll be one long joyfest of organising me, gossip about strangers I’ve never met or want to and PA ridiculousness 🙄 My highest aim in life is to make sure I never go the same way...

I do love your diagram though 😂

Oh, she's called the barrister and their entire family. Additional things she has complained about:

• my mattress (yes mine, not the one in her room, but mine. She came into the room, felt my mattress, pulled a face and said 'are these feathers, really2018 your mattress is so... uneven, I've got a wonderful mattress back in the motherland.')
• my fridge part 2 (she went out (thank you lord) to buy some additional food. She got lost (there is a god) and ended up in a pub for two hours.)
• the evil postmen who are the evilest people in the world and should be shot
• football (in general)
• playing card availability

She is now calling everyone she knows about the evil postmen. Four hours into her four day visit and I've had zero meaningful interaction. DH is rather conveniently working overtime and won't be back till 9pm. My kitchen knives are looking like the holy grail.

One wonders why if the motherland is so amazing she left?!

"Four hours into her four day visit and I've had zero meaningful interaction."
Silver linings

OMG it’s exactly the same here!!!!!! 2 days into a 4 day visit and I have to keep leaving the room. The complaining about everything and everyone. My DM is also continuously & suffocatingly ‘helpful’ in a very passive aggressive ‘your house isn’t good enough’ way. Nightmare. Wine and dog walks (we don’t have a dog but tempted to borrow one) are great strategies

I'm pulling out the Sherry

Dare I ask what you are cooking? An eight course taster menu wouldn't be too much to ask for, would it?

Have , lots of .

Borrow the phone off of her, and have a nice game of Snake.

Oh dear - I'm sorry to but you're a wonderful storyteller and your diagram is excellent.

Deep breaths and try to hang in there