Animals in the House

A situation came up where my mother's assistance was appreciated.  So she stayed with me for most of the week.  Went home once to take care of things at her house,  and came back later that day.

It's been hot lately - as is common for summer - and 5 days into her second stay she said she should be getting back, since she didn't leave that much water for her cat.

Her Cat.  I had forgotten that lately she had acquired a kitten, and I hate it.  My mother can become an animal hoarder - and the conditions of her animals aways just kills me.  Every memory that links my mother to an animal makes me cringe.

So, I know her cat is locked in her house.  I *hope* it is free to roam around, and isn't locked in an non-working, stinking, hot bathroom, like her last cat that died there.  I *hope* it can get water and food and all these days my mother has been away it hasn't been enduring this heat without.  But I can only hope.

This brings me to another point.  Mom doesn't keep a litter box.  Never has, never will.  She may *may* have a box or something filled with dirt or maybe she actually did purchase some kitty litter.  But it is NEVER maintained.  I speak from YEARS of experience.  Just trust me on this.

Then my mom gets peeved when the cat starts going in other places that are not the litter box.  But that by no means means that these other cat messes are cleaned up or dealt with.  By no means.

I really CAN. NOT. think about this cat at all.  Beyond this post I'll spend energy trying to not think about it.

Because it physically hurts my heart.

Dinner Chez Moi

I've got the potato chip crusted salmon in the oven for my spouse, hamburgers on the grill for the kids and I was just thinking about my journey as a cook for my family.

Lately, I've been using E-mealz to help me plan and prepare my meals . . it's been GREAT!

Anyway - it works for me, easy and usually has a variety with pork, beef, chicken and fish.

So - serving up these fairly easy meals, my mom has been lately raving about how WELL I cook, "Just like a restaurant!" and RAVING.

I admit it's been nice on the ego, and at the same time it bother's me a tad that she's so *amazed* when I do produce something palatable.

Today mother is not here - and with dinner almost done, and my wondering if I should use frozen vegs with rice or just skip the rice . . . I thought how she would once again be raving, were she here.

But in all honesty - these are not extravagant meals.  My mother would be awed at the put together meal at Dennys.  She would!  It's just not at all what we *ever* had at home.  *Ever* . . .

SO - any cooked meat with some colorful vegetables on the side and a starch of some sort is kinda amazing to her.

In my childhood, I can not remember a single put together meal from her.  Not. a. one.

I do remember some mixed up something in an electrical pan . . . but not regularly.  I remember getting the free lunch offered at the park.  I remember passing Burger King and wondering  hedging a bet that I could probably find food in the dumpster behind there, if I dared to look.  I remember longing for peoples scraps at public places.  I was about 7 or 8 at the time.  I remember being hungry.

We used to receive government help too - the government issue cheese, government issue powdered milk- *heh* I don't remember what else, but I know one of the things we got were the powdered eggs.

My brother tells a story about this hunger, he was about 9 or 10 years old at the time.  He too was hungry and looked for something, but there was nothing edible except this bag of powdered eggs.  So - what's a boy to do?  He added water, cooked them up and ate them all down.  It made a lot.  But he ate them all.

He tells me they vaguely tasted like eggs.

Soon after he ate them he started to feel sick.  He is traumatized by the experience to this day.  And it took him, he says, about 2 years before he could eat real scrambled eggs at all.

The crazy thing is that if my mother could have budgeted, we would have been fine.  Something that even as a child I released.  I knew, young as I was, that the reason we didn't have anything to eat is because mother would spend what little we did get from social security on junk.  Like coloring books and doll clothes.  Stuff she wouldn't let us use because they were for "gifts" or stuff that we didn't want, definitely didn't need.

Craziness.

So, I didn't grow up knowing how to cook, but I can follow a recipe.  And my spouse LOVED the potato crusted salmon today.  Even if the kid didn't.

:-)

Talked to death

I love the quiet. I don’t like talking to people. I don’t like when people talk to me. I often wear head-phones just so people will think I am listening to my IPod when in reality it’s not on. I have caught myself pretending to be deaf just so people will stop talking to me. Crazy isn’t it. Well, it runs in the family.


I remember my mother’s incessant talking. How someone can be speaking at all times is beyond me, yet my mother seemed to always be talking, flooding my head with unending words and words and words. Often biter reviles of people she was upset with or erroneous accusations of having been wronged by someone or something. And when I would chime in to correct or disagree I would find myself the target of her diatribe. Hours on-end of non-stop talking, at times, in stretches of 5 hours or more and chained together throughout the day as long as there was someone within earshot.

What was amazing to me was the absence of any kind of a break in the unending stream. I recall the odious feeling I would have of listening as she would try to produce words while she was inhaling. Body language, hints of disinterest and even pleas of “Stop Talking!” would pass as white noise to her. I would leave the room only to be followed into the next, immediately turning around to try and leave again only to be followed once more. On and on, day after day, year after year; I remember feeling trapped, suffocated.


There seemed to be no escape. No escape from the mess, and the shame that came with it, no escape from the animals, the stench or the irrational hoarding, no escape from the incessant talking.
When I was around 14 I decided I would rather be dead and decided to kill myself. An overdose would do nicely and became my plan. Not to ruin the story but I didn’t kill myself. I did, however, end up in the mental health ward of our county hospital having attempted suicide by overdose. I was literally trying to kill myself to escape.


I didn’t know then what I know now… things change. (Just ask my beautiful, considerate with her words, wife).

Having written this; I think I will go home, clean my house and take a nice long quiet bubble bath.

Memories that hit you in the gut.

I was in my late twenties when a memory suddenly came back - so fast and so strong that it felt like getting knocked in the gut.  Took my breath away.

I was small, maybe 8 or 9 or so . . . and we lived in an old house that had vents in the floor for heat?  I'm guessing.  They were rectangular, maybe a foot wide, 2 foot long . . .

I was little, so I'm just going off what it seemed like to me.  Anyway - the memory was me, sitting on top of that vent to keep it down, since a bunch of kitty faces where trying to push their way out.

Why those kitty's were in the heating vents?  Why so many that I had to SIT on the vent to keep them down - I'm talking about 15 or 20 cats - because my mom loves animals.

It's an unhealthy, hoarding, love.  Take, keep, and hold so close that it suffocates 'em.

This house had a basement, and that's where she kept the cats.  She thought kittens were wonderful and that it was cruel (not to mention would cost money) to fix em, so she didn't.  And the cats were allowed to multiply in the basement.

The basement already was at hoarder state, you didn't walk around the floor . . . you walked over stuff - but after a while, with all the cats, we didn't even go down there.  Mom didn't keep a litter box.  Every now and again she would send one of us kids down with dirt in a box down there for them.  We never removed the other ones.

The smell was so bad that you could taste it on the way down.  That had to be pretty extreme because, the house where we did our daily living already smelled super bad!  So, the basement smelled stronger than our  already bad smelling house that I was used to as a child.

And to feed them we'd buy a large bag of cat food, open it and just throw it down there.  I don't remember anything about water.

But there had to be water, because there were all those cats alive, and trying to push their way out through the vents.

And it hurt me so much to be sitting on those vents to hold them down, but that's what I had to do.

To this day I HATE it when I hear she has an animal with her.  My heart breaks for the animal, and I often felt relieved when I heard that one died - so the torture would be over.

And I've always been bothered by birds in cages, fishes in small bowls, etc.  They make me uncomfortable and sad.

And yet I never remembered this until my late 20's.  There is a lot I don't remember of my childhood.

Scary - isn't it.

Trash

I had to "hide" my trash today.  I usually have to be pretty sneaky since it's really hard for my mom to resist "rescuing" empty containers, bones, bottles or boxes . . . and if I can get it in there and cover it up somehow then it generally will stay there.

Today I had to toss these VERY MOLDY oranges.  My mother brought them over in this bag - but I don't know exactly when.  I just had to subtly take the whole bag and covertly stuff them down the trash - otherwise mom would pick the bag out saying that not ALL the oranges are like this and that some might only have a bit of mold which would be easy to cut off . . .

If mom would have found the bag - she would have taken it back out, but it's doubtful that she'd actually sort and cut said "good ones".   It's her M.O.

It may have been true - and I may have been entirely too wasteful,  but with childhood years of having dealt with moldy food, and in a position where I don't have to eat them now, I reserve the luxury of choosing not to save them.

I groan with annoyance as I tuck them under some crumpled trash - because I specifically told her not to bring over fruit or foods since we have all we/she needs or wants here, and have the means to buy anything she would like - but perhaps that why I found the bag- she didn't tell me about it.

She has an orange tree in her yard and it produces oranges abundantly - but she only likes to bring the oranges that have fallen from the tree (a lot!) so that we get the "eat em now or they mold" oranges.

We don't eat oranges that fast.

To her it is torture to think that the "perfectly good" oranges will be wasted.  Torture.

That's the way it is with everything.  So, big issues have been had when a little bit of milk at the bottom of my gallon jug has slightly soured.   When my mom is here I do not have the liberty to just toss it.  She insists on drinking it, or using it.  Even when we've had a fresh gallon ready in the fridge.  She absolutely insists.

So generally - if I want to throw something away while she is here, it has to be a covert operation. - I usually wait until she's gone and then I go through the house, the fridge, and freezer, around the bed she used, the one drawer designated for her when here, it's top, and toss out any other little surprises, salvaged trashed, bits of leftover toast or other foods someone didn't finish.

I'll stop there for now.

Doesn't everybody?

My mom is a hoarder, although mostly she will deny, deny, deny.  This isn't a picture of one of our houses, but it is strikingly familiar.  I can even tell you how it smells there  . . .

The first time I watched to show "Hoarders" my heart was racing the whole time.  I recognized and related with EVERYTHING!  That was my childhood . . . rooms like this pictured here, PLUS we had animals (most of the real bad hoarders do) and those animals wet and defecated all over the house, and that was left there.  But I'll talk about the animal situation in another post.

So, added to the animal smell, there was/is a rotting food smell - especially citrus.  And a moldy smell.  This mix is still with my mother.  When I go pick her up - from her house that looks pretty much the same - maybe a bit more walking space - everything about her has her oder . . mildew and more.  Her clothes, skin, etc.  

Since she IS a hoarder she constantly is picking up stuff for us and her grandkids - but if the items have been in her house for any length of time they come over smelling bad like that.  We accept it gracefully, but usually the items (if they can't be washed) disappear from the my house.

My kids love their grandma - but I did need to instruct them that grandma MAY smell when we pick her up, but to make a big TOO DOO about it would hurt her feelings so kindly, and for the love of Grandma , be kind.  When my kids have told her of her oder she either thinks that the kids are being mean to her, or that it was because of one specific thing - like she was working in the garden and my be sweaty . . . deny, deny, deny.

When I've asked her about a PARTICULAR room (of the many  all of them) she'd say "Oh that was just that room and EVERY ONE has a room they use for storage . . ."  Or something like that.

Rotting food, animal waste, mold . . . oh - and human stink.  One thing that is peculiar to mom is that in whatever home she has lived (with or without me and my siblings) the bathroom is either broken, or it breaks down.  For a while there we lived in a house that had an unfinished bathroom so we used a bucket outside.  I was about 13 then.  It was mortifying.  I can't remember what happened to the bucket once it filled up.  I think mom just made us dump it out somewhere.  

Yes.  Made us.  The kids.

When my mother had her period . . . GOOD LORD!  But I really think I'll save that for a different day.

Something else that drives me crazy

It's what I call "double parenting" me . .

My daughter, surprisingly, eats pretty healthy by choice.  She loves cucumbers, carrots, celery or apples and we usually have one or more of these with lunch that she helps herself to, but in the mornings she usually eats just a buttered toast.  That's what she wants and she does just fine until lunch time.

This morning we were getting ready to leave to go to walk to her school and mom starts telling her that she needs to pick something like an orange or something to eat.  Not ask or offer, but tell her she MUST pick something else to eat before she goes to school.  And I'm standing right there.

My daughter- meanwhile is starting to stress out, since this has NEVER been the case, all she wants is toast.

And I have to step in and put my foot down - That is not a rule here, mom.  My daughter has never needed to do that, and usually leaves like this.

I pretty much have to veto all my mom has just said.

I get a little resistance - some talk- maybe something to the point of "I was just offering" but to be honest I wasn't listening, because I didn't care.  My home, my daughter, my rules.

And like I said before - this is totally under the realm of "normal" if it just wasn't all the time.