It has been a really tough week. But, I have learned to change my strategy and am feeling better about things. I have had a headache for the past seven days and I am tired of it. I now dread coming home and I am tired of that too. I live in a world of negativity and I am tired of it.
I am tired of grandma constantly bossing around my children. If I get tired of hearing it, I'm sure they do to. That is probably why they have seemed a little stressed out here lately. And when the children are stressed out, mommy is not too far behind. She insists that we all stay in the same room together and then the proceeds to sit in her chair and yell at us about all the things we are doing wrong. I mean, I have two small boys and they like to wrestle around with each other, GET OVER IT! The concept that I am their mom and I am allowing certain things to go on means nothing to her. If they leave the room, she will get up and follow them and then demand they come back in the living room where she can watch them. Meanwhile, I continue to send them into their room to get a break from the madness and play with their toys, and a while later she is right after them again. Today she asked me why I disagree with everything she says and so I decided to be honest with her and tell her that she needs to stop mothering my children and let me do it. That is my new stradegy...telling her like it is. Being upfront and as honest as possible. I even told her she was being paranoid the other day...which she totally was.
The other evening after dinner the telephone rang and it was someone wanting me to take a survey. Now usually I don't partake in these things, but this one interested me so I played along. Right away grandma starts telling me that I need to hang up because I am not supposed to talk to people like this. You see, we have warned her about giving out information over the phone because of all the scams out there. She continues to yell to me and then gets up and gets in my face, to which I wave her away. She disappears from the kitchen where I was and a few minutes later I can hear someone breathing into the phone...SHE WENT AND PICKED UP THE OTHER PHONE AND WAS LISTENING IN ON MY CONVERSATION!!! I couldn't believe it. After I hung up I asked her if she had picked up the other phone and she admitted to it with a no-nonsense air and told me "I just wanted to see what they were talking you into buying." Apparently, the thirty times I told her exactly who I was talking to didn't register.
The same night I notice that she had cut apart one of my boys' hooded towels. She doesn't like to fold them, so while I wasn't at home she cut off the hood and folded the towel up and put it in the bathroom cabinet. Needless to say, after that, I JUST ABOUT LOST IT! I think I actually saw red I was so mad. I seems like I leave her alone at home and, like a dog left by its owner, she goes completely crazy. She just runs around and gets into everything she's not supposed to.
I went to my friend's house the other day and we hung out for awhile then I did all my errands that I had to do. I was gone from the house a total of seven hours. I woke up early and put a pot roast in the crock pot and left it cooking on low all day. When I came home (remember it was seven hours later) the roast was boiling on high and part of it had been eaten. I immediately asked her about it and she denied doing anything besides stirring it. Apparently it was someone else. Someone snuck into the house, without her knowledge, and turned it up to high and then they ate some of it. You just can't trust your neighbors! Earlier that day I was kind of toying with the idea of getting a little part time job. And that little idea was totally shot to death when I got home. I realized that I can NOT leave her alone. I suddenly felt like a prisoner in this house. I can not get any sort of job because I can't leave her alone for very long at a time. I had the realization that my freedom is limited. When we first moved in I could stay gone most of the day and she was fine. I could even be gone for meal time and she would do fine. But that day I realized that things have changed over that past year.
