Visiting Brian's Mother - Part 1

Arrived at my mother-in-law's house and parked in the driveway. Letting the dog out in the backyard, we were immediately sent out to run errands because Mom had fallen recently so she doesn't get around very well and is on pain medication.  We took her car to do her errands for her while she stayed home.  After dinner, we tried to get her to rest while I cleaned up but she has a special method of loading her dishwasher and wouldn't rest until she did it herself. We stayed up and showed her pictures of the rental property we renovated in Calgary and then pictures of our upgraded home in Chestermere. When we went to bed Brian and I both had to laugh that in less than 2 hours his mother had already irritated us both.  

We brought our coffeepot into the house because his mother only uses a one-cup coffee pot. We had it set up to just turn on the button. The next morning when I came inside and started to get a cup of coffee she said, 'Oh, I don't want that much coffee'. I smiled to myself and said, "This cup is for me. You can help yourself with as much or as little as you like." Brian was still asleep in the motorhome. Mom said to me, 'Don't you think you should shower first before Brian wakes up and wants to take a shower?' My answer was a simple, 'nope' because I try to keep my answers short as possible with her. I sat down at the kitchen table and began working on my laptop, still smiling to myself because I refused to be offended this time because I know she doesn't mean anything by it.

Well, here's the deal. You just don't tell his mom anything. She will not leave it alone. We have some major decisions to make today and we made the mistake of telling his mother and she pestered Brian all morning until she left the house to go play Bridge.  At one time in my marriage that would have surprised me, after all we just got here yesterday and haven't seen her for two years. However, I'm not surprised anymore because his mother never passes up the weekly Bridge game unless she is sick or traveling -- but then when she travels its usually with her Bridge group. She really is amazing for her age and I admire that she is so active.

So what was she riding his butt about you are probably wondering. Well, Brian really thought we would be living here by now so he chose not to renew his drivers license before we left Calgary. Unfortunately, the license expires this coming Friday, Oct 1st (his birthday). So after that he won't have a valid license. We were trying to decide if he could get an Ontario license and list his mother's address as home, OR should he fly back and take care of it then fly back here because we wanted to stay just a little longer (Brian's birthday and thanksgiving is coming. We decided to extend our stay a few extra days and I will have to drive.

This afternoon, while his mom was playing Bridge, we went shopping for a few more groceries for her. When his mother came home she tried to 'direct' Brian on the dinner meal he was creating. I was in the living room writing this blog. I heard the two of them arguing over the expiration date of things in the refrigerator. Suddenly, I got the feeling I was on the tv show "Hoarders"!!!! Brian said, "Ma, when was the last time you cleaned out your fridge because this stuff expired two years ago...like March 2008?" She said, "Well, I've wiped it down a bit on the shelves." Brian came over to me and whispered, "I think we are going to have to go through that fridge because there is a lot of crap in there that is really old." I just smiled and nodded thinking, 'Yeah, you get right on that, she's your mother and I'm not touching getting into that one with her. She wouldn't even let me load the dishwasher last night without trying to take over so I just rinsed and stacked the dishes for her.