Teaching an old dog new lines

Living with people who have … established … ways of thinking and acting can be quite frustrating. But if one can step away from the frustration (is it accurate to call wanting to pull your hair out and scream maniacally frustration?) it can also be pretty amusing. Those of you who know me or have followed this blog a bit are aware that I live in a house with my mom and dad. Dad has Alzheimer’s, so his set routines and "frustrating" behavior are basically medically induced. My mom on the other hand is very set in her ways, and her penchant for frustrating is personality induced.

She is one of those people who would much rather complain about what is wrong then fix it. So if you have a simple fix for something she seems not capable of actually hearing it. When this attitude is directed at you it definitely makes you want to crawl in a corner and cry for your mommy, which is all the more difficult since she is in fact my mommy. But seen from the outside it is probably rather funny.

Sometime conversations with her are like a classic vaudevillian sketch:

Mom: It hurts when I do this!
Me: Well then don’t do that!

There are numerous examples of these types of conversations with her. Too many to put in a little blog post. Maybe someday I will have to make an attempt at a book. "Conversations with Mom". Bound to be popular just by the title alone!

What specifically has me bringing it up is the new dinner conversation routine. Dad, who used to be a premier gourmand, has become rather finicky with food these days. The deciding factor seems more to be about how much effort is involved with eating then what it tastes like.  When he does not want to eat he will usually say "I am full!" Even before he has eaten, which basically means "You really don’t want me to put all that effort into eating that do you?"

My mother is the one who actually pointed this out to me.

Since she pointed this fact out one would assume she actually knows that certain dishes will not go over well with dad. But instead of not making them, she will make them and then complain to me for ten minutes afterwards that dad won’t eat them.

My standard answer of course is "Don’t make them then!" Which is as effective as asking a waterfall to go up.

Guess I don’t learn very well either!