Ah, my boyfriends mother
This is really really long, because she's really really crazy...

She can be quite fun to hang out with, and you can definitely be more open with her than with my mother. She once told me that I'd be really fun stoned, not that she was advocating drug use or anything...

This goes both ways, though. I was browsing in a furniture store with her once, and she starting rating the beds based on how kinky the sex on them could be without collapsing or breaking them. This included a short rant on the benefits of old brass beds and canopy beds, because they're so much more versatile. I remind you, this is my boyfriend's MOM!

Unfortunately, not all of her psychoses are as amusing. A few years ago, our landlord asked us to shampoo our carpets. Fair enough, we have 4 cats, so they weren't exactly spotless. So, we mentioned to her that we were planning on renting a shampooer. She panics that we might rent a steamer instead, as according to her they'll permanently alter the carpet fibers and you'll destroy the carpeting and it'll never stay clean again, because steam is EVIL. So, what does she do? She goes online, researches for weeks, and buys a shampooer. I know what you're thinking, it's very nice of her to do that for us, and why are we calling her crazy? Well, for one, we were content to rent one and be done with it, and also, she had a shampooer in her basement, that she didn't want to lend us as we couldn't spread the contaminants in our rug to her house. She has hardwood floors.

So, she buys the shampooer, then gets on the phone and starts bargaining with the wholesale carpet shampoo manufacturer, who's legally only allowed to sell to professional cleaning companies, and convinces them to sell her a few cases of shampoo. She brings it to our apartment, and decides that the kitchen is too dirty, so we have to clean the kitchen first, so we don't track dirt over our clean carpets. So what does she do? She stays at our place for 3 days scrubbing our kitchen, also putting us to work (keeping in mind that we're both very busy with work and school) on useful chores like washing the refrigerator. This makes her realize that our pantry could also use some organization. Cue two day break while she drives to every Walmart in Chicago looking for ways to maximize our storage potential. She comes back with three different spice racks, a bunch of different shelving units, and spends another two days organizing the pantry. But what did she find? VEGETABLE OIL! Well, since vegetable oil can kill you, she insisted on throwing away all our oil and buying canola instead. Now, neither she nor we are healthy eaters in general, although we try, but I hardly think that replacing one oil with another oil is gonna make that much difference.

After the pantry, she attacked our bedroom. Another three days at our apartment, going through my clothes (including my unmentionables), then she brings them all over to her house to wash them, and brings them back. She uses this as an excuse to stay another three days. This time, she's emptying and organizing the closets, putting in new shelves, of course, and deciding for us where we want to store all of our stuff. She also worked through the nights, surviving on coffee alone, which meant that my boyfriend often passed out on the couch, so he could wake up for work at 5:30am, while I just made do curled up in a pile of laundry on the bed while she talked at me all night.

It's been about a month now, and the carpet hasn't seen a drop of shampoo.

During this, she also decided to put up curtains in our kitchen, bedroom and bathroom. The first curtains she got for the bathroom were pretty tacky, but luckily for us, our roommate burnt them down. She replaced them with a set I really liked, and I made a point of letting her know how much I liked them. Next week, she brings over yet another set of curtains (actually, two identical ones, with different styles of valance, so we can try them all out)), with fish on them, because she knows we like fish. I was already happy with the curtains I had! But these matched better, and also went well with the new toilet seat she bought us (nothing wrong with the old one, but this one had fish on it).

Still had dirty carpets, at this point. All of these activities also involved 3 day stays at our house.

At this point, she decided that I needed a new wardrobe. So, she went out and bought bags and bags of clothes and brought them to the apartment for me to try on. This eventually morphed into my having to go to the stores with her. Usually in the middle of midterm exams or something, too.

The boyfriend made the mistake of mentioning, as guys do, that a fancy new tv sure would be nice. We both realize that there's no way it's gonna happen, but this inspires her to sit on my computer, looking up tv's through the night, and trying to tell me, when I'm trying very hard to go to bed for class the next day, all about the different technology available. I couldn't seem to convince her that as long as there was a picture, and it was in color, I was happy. Also that we really don't have the money for a tv, ours works fine, and he's just doing the typical guy wanking over plasma screens thing. Unfortunately, no new tv appeared.

By this point, it was starting to get nice and warm out, so we dug out the grill. But our grill wasn't good enough. We HAD to have a propane grill, because grilling with charcoal a few times a year will give us CANCER. So she spent another week researching, then spent $200 on a gas grill for us. Very nice, except that if you're gonna grill on gas, you might as well just dangle a hotdog over the fucking stove, and save the trip down the stairs. Also, there are other things we really would have preferred to use $200 for.

We also cooked indoors a lot. One night, we couldn't decide between the 4 of us what to eat. I think it was simply a matter of what side dish we wanted. This sparked a half hour long tirade about how his grandmother escaped from the nazis on foot, and god knows what she survived on (strong hints of cannibalism), and how horrible it was, and here we were bitching about fucking potatoes, and just fucking pick something and eat it, you eat to live, not live to eat! Funny, as his grandmother was quite a picky eater...

Finally, though, after literally months of this, and 3 uninvited, consecutive nights a week at our apartment, we actually took the shampooer out of the box. We rearranged all the furniture, and got it going, but she wasn't satisfied, so she went online and bought a second shampooer. The plan was that she'd use the new one to shampoo, and the other one to suck up the water. She spent about 2 weeks at our house shampooing, and went over most of the apartment twice.

This is already obscenely long, but I've actually left out a lot. Like the new radiator caps. And the rubber strip at the bottom of the front door. And the three new doorbells.... She also panicked because she convinced herself that the lightbulb on one of our fishtanks would give us skin cancer. The tank isn't even in the living room, where we spend most of our time. I think you get the idea, don't you?

Oh, and she also called literally 6 times a day, leaving pissed off messages if we didn't pick up, and then called him at work and got mad if he wouldn't talk to her there.

To wrap up, my boyfriend can be tactless. If anybody should be used to is, it's his own mother, right? After all, who's in charge of teaching a young lad tact? So, after a few gentle hints that maybe she could give it a rest, he got a little more snippy about her harassment. So, we'd have situations like when we asked her to leave after 3 days once, and she started screaming and crying about how fucking ungrateful we are, and if we love her, the least we can do is at least watch this one movie with her, and then she'll be "out of our way." Finally, one day, she was having problems with the gas company at her house (bills still being sent to her recently deceased mother's house in Florida), and we told her that if her gas was shut off she could stay at our place. Unfortunately, the boyfriend made the mistake of mentioning that if she stayed with us, we really couldn't handle it turning into another crazy nazi work fest (my phrase, not his!). She flipped out, and hasn't spoken to us for 2 years now, thinking, I'm sure (she's told me she's done it to others), that we'll learn how much we needed her and will come crawling back. We're just glad for the break. I called her to invite her to Thanksgiving dinner that year, and she hung up on me after I refused to badmouth my boyfriend to her (and I've always been honest when I think he's in the wrong). Apparently, I don't want to get in the middle because I "just don't care about her."

So, sorry for the interminably long post. Congrats if you made it this far! Think reading it was bad? Try living through a year of it!

Click "I Like This" if you think she may need professional help.
(RDT <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <>< <><, Fri 6 Jul 2007, 5:14, Reply)