fed up

I'm having a bit of trouble with the oldies at the moment...

my mother has developed an annoying habit of calling at the busiest times of day (but mainly night) in our household. for the most part I have been able to say "look you've called at a bad time can I call you later?" which I think is perfectly reasonable. in recent weeks she is calling as I've been walking in the door from taking the kids to their activities... this can be sometimes 7 at night and there's a whole lot of stuff to be done before I can think about my own dinner so in my action all stations mode I hardly feel like talking to my mum who more often than not just drivels.

last night (after I'd had a shocker of a day... and I'll elaborate on that in a mo') she called as I'm getting the kids organised for bed. Hubby answered the phone and promptly handballs it to me. feeling under the pump with the craziness bedtime can bring, seeing peace and quiet just within reach and already being highly annoyed about something else, I was a bit short with her... telling her I was quite busy and couldn't she call at better times? "and what time is that?" she asks "how about after the kids have gone to bed or during the afternoon?" "while I'm at work" "yeah" "right then" click... she hung up no doubt for effect and I'm sure to teach me a lesson but you know what? f*ck it!

on the other side of the coin and the reason for me being so testy prior to my mum calling.... may I present my mother in law
she too calls at the worst times, usually at 8:27am when I am just about walk out the door to do the school drop off and doesn't take the hint. Somehow I have yet to master the knack of being direct about such things with her.... it's trickier, she takes offense and then we must tread on eggshells for ages. gah!
so yesterday, she calls... it's school hols so we are not in the usual rush but I ask you... doesn't 7:45am seem just a tad too early to be finding out about the newborn great grandson? that couldn't wait till a more civilised hour? We got onto other things, she and Pop are babysitting this week for us and I have become accustomed to confirming dates and times with her as she has been muddled and forgetful. She recently came off anti depressants and I'll be honest I don't think it was for the best. Certainly she did not follow her doctors instructions regarding how to manage it and we have all struggled with how she has (or hasn't coped) but we have tried hard to understand. By no means do I think its any easy thing to do but I will say we are all impacted. Ok so with confirming days of babysitting we come up with some that don't correspond (which is disappointing but fine I can work around it and tried not to make a big deal of it) then she proceeds to tell me she wants to take Miss 6 to the movies that night instead of next Tuesday and she would stay the night. Hang on that's not what we agreed and something inside me snapped.

We had never agreed about her staying the night and in fact I am sure I had told her that Hubby and I had decided there would be no separate sleep overs for our kids (unless unavoidable) because the little one has started to notice and feels left out. But Miss 2 is too young to go to the movies... so a daytime session would be better and then Miss 6 could come home.  Here is where I hope most grandies would go "ok we'll do that then" but my MIL likes to have her way so she argued the point.

Trying to keep calm (because there is something about her that just sends me off the deep end) I tell her that I was not prepared to argue the point with her (god if it came to it I would take Miss 6 to the movie) MIL takes this as a red rag and makes a HUGE deal of backing off (and believe me that is so damn frustrating and infuriating because her aim is to make YOU/ me look like the bad guy).  It was all I could do not to hang up on her.

So that set me up for a very tense day... I am one for stewing over things... I called a friend, I spoke to Hubby, now I'm blogging.

It's just that I'm fed up, enough is enough surely? we can't go on not knowing where we stand with her and currently (and for a some time now) that's how it's been... a constant state of uncertainty

thanks for listening