*insert primal scream here*

[rikibeth]

I was feeling JUST FINE about my unpacking progress until my mother got here.

My parents (and my 93-year-old grandmother) came by after seeing the matinee performance of melovechocolate's play so they could pick up an antique mirror that was my other grandmother's.

I really didn't want them to even come in the house. I had WARNED them that it was still all over boxes and they would have to deal with that.

It was okay until I let her upstairs. Where I still had six boxes of baby clothes that I have to sort and itemize so I have a proper receipt for Goodwill to sign off on so I can take the tax deduction. I have several THOUSAND dollars' worth of tax deduction there. I cannot just drop them off with no documentation, and I have nowhere else in the house to put them, because the basement floor IS WET. So they're sitting on my bed.

It still leaves me half the bed to sleep in. It's not great, but guess what? That was a lower priority than dealing with the kitchen, or the bathroom, or keeping the living room to where we could still sit on the couch and see the TV and I could sit at my desk.

And of COURSE melovechocolate's room isn't all unpacked yet either. She's only here half the time! And she's at camp all day! And there have been things we've WANTED to do, like the Harry Potter book release, and getting her hair done so that it wouldn't be crayola red for the play... I figured I could get on her case about unpacking when we got BACK from the week's vacation in Maine.

Which I don't even want to go to now. At all. Because it will mean dealing with my mother for an entire week. After I wound up screaming at her to get out of my house.

AUGH. I unpacked most of the kitchen yesterday. I still have BriAnne's big box to sort through (I wanted to wait until she was here to help me with it 'cause it's Her Stuff) and two boxes of assorted Tupperware that I have to go through and figure out what exactly I'm keeping, which is to say not much of it, probably, just the expensive pantry-storage ones, and what i'm getting rid of. Yesterday when I was unpacking I got rid of three boxes of assorted Things to Freecycle, and today I dropped off two boxes of unwanted dishes and one bag of unwanted sheets-and-towels to the Salvation Army that's just down the road.

One thing I HAVE unpacked already? The liquor cabinet. Which has Bacardi. And when I was at Wild Oats last week I bought a bottle of pineapple-coconut juice. So I am having a therapeutic pina colada right now.

And trying not to break down sobbing.

I don't think I'm letting my mother into my house EVER AGAIN.

Comments

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Ohh hon. Oh that's just awful. I'm so sorry.

BUT. Eventually, you will be all unpacked and in your beautiful house!

For right now, have another pina colada.

((hugs you hard))

[florahart]

Wait, you just moved, you have priorities about what gets unpacked, and your mother had a cow?

Jesus. What. The. Fuck.

*sends more rum*

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

(hugs back)

Yes. Yes I will have another pina colada thank you very much.

The worst of this is, I was actually feeling MOTIVATED to unpack more, until she showed up, and now I don't want to do any of it at all.

I bet you know the feeling.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Well, my mother had a QUIET cow. All "but how do you sleep?" and "I thought this new place would be EASIER for you but it still looks awful." I was the one who started yelling.

Because when she is around, I can't be a grownup.

*drinks more rum* -- actually, the Bacardi is one of those big bottles with a handle, and yes, I AM having a second pina colada.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

A DOUBLE pina colada, even.

-- Oh, shit O goodness as misia says, DO I EVER. There's nothing like doing a job and feeling good about it and having a parental figure come over and tell you how much you suck at doing it to utterly destroy morale. Gahhhh.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

And she can't SEE the GOOD things I did like the eight boxes that were full in the kitchen yesterday and are not there now, or the bathtub that was all gunky this morning after my shower (how did it get dirty so fast when I cleaned it Tuesday?) that I CLEANED, or any of that. She only sees what's still wrong.

I don't exactly measure my pina coladas. I just slosh.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

SLOSH LIKE AN OCEAN WAVE

....well, it sounds like what she sees is _you_ don't have _her_ priorities, and you didn't do things exactly the way she would've done them, so therefore, it is Wrong. I used to get that alll the time from my parents -- I think it's like a parent-child Thing. "But this is my offspring -- how can they be so different!"

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And she is a Virgo, and I am a Pisces -- with Leo rising and moon in Leo too, and oh dear someday I should do a full chart on her because i bet it would help me understand even MORE why she JUST DOESN"T GET ME, and I have not devoted every second to unpacking since the move, and... argh.

Here is the sad thing, I had two pints of Guinness last night when eternaleponine and I went to see Black 47, and I was getting a nice gentle buzz off the second, and now I have had two solid pina coladas since my mom left and I am not feeling them at ALL.

At least not as buzz. I feel slightly less ready to explode. So I guess they're doing something.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

now I have had two solid pina coladas since my mom left and I am not feeling them at ALL.
At least not as buzz. I feel slightly less ready to explode. So I guess they're doing something.

Ohhhh boy. It is taking a lot of water -- er, colada -- to dampen the internal fires there! Man.

[head-shrinker.livejournal.com]

Recipe for disaster:

1 shift of living quarters
1 mother

Mix and stand back. Preferably several thousand miles back.

You have my utmost sympathy. ::hug::

[pentane.livejournal.com]

I'm fortunate then that my parents figured out a long time ago I'm different from anyone, including them.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Well, my parents wanted the Perfect Child to give the Perfect Childhood too, and they got me instead. ((grins toothily)) I was just what they wanted til I was about six. Then I started to be autonomous. They really never recovered. I still think they think of me as an investment that went dreadfully wrong, like one of those junk bond scam things. All that time, all that effort, all that money, and what's the result? Moi. Waste of space.

[alchemine.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain. I wanted to kill both my mother and my teenage sister when I moved last year. They helped me a lot with the packing, but when they started lecturing me about how I ought to spend my money, I was a nut-hair away from telling them both to fuck off and go home. We've made up since then, but I still get all "grrr" when I think about it.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

See, I was very nearly the Perfect Child until I got out of high school, and they were very supportive in doing things like getting me into private school when I was miserable and picked-on in public school, but then, well, I got my first taste of freedom, and combine that with a Crazy Boyfriend and MIT's stoner culture and oh did I mention that I was at MIT and I didn't have the academic chops to be a stoner there and still ace things, and...

A lot of my life since then has manifested as Not Living Up To Expectations.

And since they're being supportive and good about my lack of college degree and my lack of intellectual job and various other BIG things in my life, it all gets shifted over into SMALL things, like how fast I've unpacked from a move.

Grrr.

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

::hugs back::

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Grrr lectures.

eeeeeeeemo comment

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Holy shit, you were at MIT? I didn't know that, wow!

I didn't have the academic chops to be a stoner there and still ace things

//pats you Well....yeah, the dope does fuck up yr brain. I knew _one_ girl in college who would get stoned and do homework for hours, but she dropped out.

A lot of my life since then has manifested as Not Living Up To Expectations.

Oh ghod that is TOTALLY ME. That has BEEN me, since I was, like, ten and got called into endless parent-principal-teacher conferences and nagged and yelled at and endlessly hassled because I wanted to read instead of spend time in the hell of public school. I Do Not Fulfill My Potential. I Am a Disappointment. mwahahahaha. And they wonder why I went all punky and gothy. I think my attitude was v much, "Oh, you think I'm a fuckup? I'll SHOW you a fuckup." Ha.

....I dunno, I think my parents' love for me really sorta died right around when I dropped out of grad school; that was the last straw for them, wayy back in about 1995. They couldn't -- they still can't -- understand why I didn't get a degree and become a teacher and why I don't write anything let alone publish anything. They just don't know why. It baffles them. I have sent them THREE -- no, four, I think -- copies of When Someone You Love is Depressed. They never acknowledged any, not once. God forbid they actually READ something about depression.

((shrugs)) So. Fuckit.

Re: eeeeeeeemo comment

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

MIT for a year and flunked out. And some was the dope fucking up my brian, but really it had more to do with the dope making me think it was a good idea not to go to CLASSES...

And then I was at Wesleyan for a year, theoretically doing Medieval Studies, and sure I can still read Chaucer in Middle English (and TNH writing posts in Middle English when drunk) with total comprehension, and am loaded with trivia on the schedule of Catholic fast days and how they corresponded to the agricultural cycle, but that was when the depression first hit hard, and made me think it was a good idea to hang around the computer lab building a simulation of Harvard Square (for which I was fiercely homesick) on TinyMUD instead of GOING TO CLASSES...

Yeah.

I forget that I have not explained all of my life to you, Moi, and so you do not know JUST HOW SIMILAR we are and why I recognize myself so much in your posts.

But see?

There it is.

[greeneyes-rpi.livejournal.com]

Sometimes parents suck at being understanding. I try to tell myself that they don't mean to be a$$holes. ;)

Also, you may want to check out the maximum tax deduction you can take for donated clothes without having to have very detailed documentation and break up your donation into several years worth. I have been doing that with the "fat clothes" for a couple of years now. Unfortunately, I can't remember the max $$, but Turbo Tax tells me about it every year.

Good luck. Rum is good. :)

[eal.livejournal.com]

Oh man, have I been there.

I'm the daughter of the original neatniks. I swear.

Housecleaning every Saturday; floors so clean I don't worry AT ALL about B eating from them.

We'll go with -- I'm not like that. It has taken oh easily a dozen blow ups and two bannings to get my mother to knock it the hell off. She now brings a book with her and reads. She used to "clean up" for me -- narrowly missed throwing out an entire stack of papers I was grading. Yeah, not pretty that.

{{{{hugs}}}}

Damn, a pina colada sounds good about now :)

Yes, I like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain. I'm not much into health food, I am into c

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

made me think it was a good idea to hang around the computer lab building a simulation of Harvard Square (for which I was fiercely homesick) on TinyMUD

Ohhh wow. No, I did not know any of this! But wow, it does make sense.

((hugs you)) ((sticks tropical party umbrella in your pina colada))

[auspeople.livejournal.com]

I can add nothing to the above other than to say that I'm really glad my parents aren't like this.

All they do is call me a liberal. Which I somehow still consider an insult.

Try a mojito next. *hic*

[fabricdragon.livejournal.com]

i never let my mother in my house
i would need more than a pina colada. may i suggest upgrading to a nice frozen margarita? followed by a nice pitcher of gin and tonic?

its boxes.. boxes are not a problem, if she cant deal with it then she can pay for the basement treatments.. right?

see you after pennsic.....

[ashbet]

Oh, MAN, I understand that feeling very well -- EVERY time my mother comes over, she RADIATES disapproval about my housekeeping (and that's on the good visits -- on the bad ones, she starts lecturing and I get shrill and defensive.)

There's something about parents who REALLY know how to push our buttons . . . :/

*hugs you, joins you in the pina coladas*

-- A <3

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry, hun. My biological family are by and large my biggest critics so I feel your pain.

Just put your feet up and remember my motto ' Illigitimati non carborundrum! (Don't let the bastards grind you down) .