Whistling to the choir

I’m not entirely sure how, but I survived. 24 days of Duncan’s mother and we’re both still alive and not locked up anywhere. Here follows an irrational, hormonal, unreasonable, emotional rant. Feel free to tell me I’m a complete bitch, I already know it.

There are many things I don’t get about B, Duncan’s mum. I don’t understand why she walks in the road, why she freely admits things have changed since raising Duncan and his sister and then still tries to make me do things that are now considered not good (eg honey in water), why she can’t see that the 4-pint thing of milk in the fridge does not need replacing yet, why she buys things she’s never had before and then makes us eat them (eg the cheesecake she bought in Asda because she’d never had cheesecake. It was cheap and nasty, quite frankly. And you can get cheesecake in South Africa!), why she treats a supermarket like a department store (she spent at least one afternoon each at Asda and Tesco just looking at the food. I don’t know why.), why, when Zoe’s sleeping, she won’t talk above a whisper (even though I have the radio on quite loud, Zoe’s very used to it) or open the kitchen door (which sometimes sticks) but will happily take photos of her sleeping with a big flash in her face.

Yes, there were upsides to her visit. She got to meet her granddaughter for the first time and spend lots of time with her, and me and Duncan got to go out for dinner not once, but twice (for our anniversary and Duncan’s 30th). But none of this outweighs the fact that she made me feel not only like a stranger in my own home, but also like I couldn’t manage my own home. Everything here runs well, to order most of the time. I do things like meal planning to save us money so her buying steak when she can see I’ve already started making dinner in the slow cooker is just wasting money. She spent 3 weeks trying to buy me things I didn’t need or want and I ended up having to be very firm with her about buying me clothes I didn’t need or food that would just go to waste. 

And, I’m not entirely convinced that she didn’t wake Zoe up deliberately on the 2nd night she babysat. She spent all week saying, "I hope Zoe will be good and wake up while you’re out so we can have some time together." (Like I’d deprived her of spending time with her in the first place.) Zoe hasn’t woken up during the evening (unless ill) since I can’t remember when so was it pure coincidence that she woke up that evening we were out and wouldn’t go back to sleep? I don’t know, she certainly was very tired and went back to sleep when I put her to bed when we got home. One of life’s mysteries that won’t be answered I feel.

I know that this sounds hideously ungrateful and rude but I also know that the exchange rate between the pound and the rand is not the greatest, so for her to spend money on things we didn’t need was basically her wasting her money and this annoyed me and Duncan more than anything. Plus she kept buying clothes and food to take home for the family, even though she knew she had no more room in the suitcase or hand luggage. Why? Why? Why? How would she feel if we turned up in September and just started filling her house with random things we think she needs, or filling the fridge with food she doesn’t eat. Why am I made to feel like a freak because I don’t like fried eggs or huge chunks of fatty meat for my lunch?

Of course, Duncan thinks it was a great visit. But then, he got to go to work every day, so he didn’t have to come up with excuses as to why he didn’t want to go wandering round town looking at the shops for the 4th day in a row. I’m sure Zoe would have loved that.

I now have my house back but I feel like a bitch. Of course she mothers Duncan, she’s his mother and of course she wants to see Zoe, she’s her first grandchild, but why can’t she treat me like a human being rather than an inferior maid. Why can’t she relax and not feel like she has to do my housework for me (I should appreciate this but instead, it just made me feel inadequate), why does she have such an obsession with shopping?

The final straw was when she started calling Zoe, "my Zoe, my little girl" and taking her out of my hands the second she started crying (when most of the time she was crying because she was hungry and I was just about to feed her.) I don’t remember her being in the delivery room, I certainly don’t remember her being the one to carry Zoe for 8 and a bit months and then have the start of kidney failure trying to deliver her.

My own mother drives me up the wall with her ‘advice’ about Zoe but at least she’s never made me feel like an inadequate spare wheel in my own home.

Irrational? Yes. Unreasonable? More than likely. Hormonal/emotional? Definitely. Happy to be alone again? Oh, yes.

Until there is a next time…

xx