The walls have ears

Today was a bad day with Mom. I should have cancelled...knowing how tired I have been...so frazzled with work, getting ready for our annual Christmas party...just trying to have some kind of life.

Mom was being bossy and difficult the whole time...ordering me around her apartment...having me spot wash areas of her rug...all the while telling me that we were going to go to the drugstore, to eat...and then to the grocery store. She insisted while I vacuumed that someone had come into her apartment and stolen one of the attachments to her vacuum. Oh, boy...here we go...that is the only thought I had in my head at that moment.

She did have her holiday decorations out...which she had insisted three days ago she was not going to do this year. One piece was something my Dad had given her which made her cry as she was telling me that it was the last Christms decoration he had purchased for her.

We made it to Rite Aid and she started being really difficult right away. Where were the Tums? Where was the wrapping paper?. Things were too expensive. She hadn't wanted me to come in with her because she said I made it harder for her to shop. The truth is she cannot shop on her own ...she can't hear the clerk telling her the amount of her bill and would wander for a long time before she found anything she needed to buy. As we headed for the car Mom told me that she had fallen again today. I asked her why she hadn't told me earlier. Her answer was that I would make her get an X-Ray. I told her I wasn't interested in forcing her to do anything.

We finally made it out of the parking lot and headed to McDonalds for lunch. While we were eating our lunch Mom confided that she was going to receive a small increase in her Social Security monthly payment. She did not want to discuss it in her apartment because she believes that the property managers have her apartment electronically monitored. This is a long standing paranoia of hers. I just told her that I thought it was great that she was getting an increase. She went into great detail about how much money she was giving my brother, his family and me for Christmas. Of course, overall Mark gets more money to cover him and his kids because of the simple fact that he has children. This seemed grossly unfair to me and I told her so. At this point, my patience was just about at the breaking point. I cleaned up the lunch stuff and got her to the car. She wanted to go all the way up to another store, but I told her we were going across the street to Safeway..end of discussion.

Once we got there we muddled through as usual..her not remembering what she needs and spending an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what she would have for my brother to eat for lunch all week. We made it through and got to the car. As we were driving away she said she had a secret that she would tell me someday. I just lost it with her. I told her I didn't want to know her secret and that I was tired of being manipulated by her. Mark can just take care of her. Right...like that is going to happen. He considers it a big deal to take her to the bank. When I got her home she started being nasty again, so I just dumped her groceries and took off. I am just fed up with her and her behavior.