Madden - Wreck has it spot on. Be the good wife be the good mother work hard and don't complain don't rock the boat and especially don't take any time for your own needs thats so selfish and poor dh having to cook dinners and food shop or look after his own kids. thats my mother in a nutshell.
we (dh &I) just dropped the kids to hers and I'm back home working. usually i'd work from theirs on a monday but couldn't face the hassle today. i feel cheeky that they're doing childcare when things are so up in the air but....
dm tried to start off with me again when we dropped them off. always has to have the last word. i told her i wasn't going to have that conversation while everyone was there and especially not before work. said bye to the kids and we left.
you must not rock the boat is the mantra for my mum. it is very much you do as your told. and you must do what's right. i was talking to my therapist about all of this a while back, and likened mum to the "OI FROG!" book. there's a line in it where the cat says "its not about being comfortable, its about doing the right thing" (when the frog decides he doesn't want to sit on a log, he wants to sit on a sofa instead because more comfortable (but can't because Gophers sit on sofas...)
you must do the right thing otherwise what will people think.
i've cancelled my AMEX today - its linked to DH"s card and he's been a bit snippy (we all have largely triggered by dd's sleep regression i think) about the spends on it lately and this morning, he started again. So a knee-jerk reaction from me was to cancel the card. Paid off my balance and the card has been cut up. i never wanted it anyway. it was more of a convenience thing so we could build up points. but enough of the snippiness over money.
need to reduce snippiness and increase happiness.