Monday, December 12, 2011

Mother In Law

I love my mother in law.  She's sweet and kinda kooky.  She's easy to be nice to and I happen to be her favorite.  But, I can only handle so much.  She's on her way to being a hoarder.  When my father in law passed away, she sold the house they lived in and moved into a condo.  We filled up 2 of those rental dumpsters with garbage, not to mention all the stuff we put out to the curb over weeks and weeks.  She still had a bit much stuff (going from a 4 bedroom 2.5 bath house to a 2 bedroom 2 bath condo), but it wasn't too bad.  That was about 5 years ago.  Well, over the years she has collected a ton of stuff, mainly things like guidepost magazines and crafty type things for her to do.  But she collects more than she can do, so her tables are all full of stuff.

To top it off, her mom was very senile when she passed away a few weeks ago, and you can already tell that my MIL is heading down that path.  It's sad to see, but for the most part she's OK.  It's just that you can tell sometimes that she isn't really fully there, she is starting to get confused sometimes, and she repeats the same story over and over and over again.  So not horrible yet, but not great either.

So, this weekend I had my annual girls weekend with 4 of us that have known each other since forever (one since 4th grade, one since I was 12, and one since freshman year in HS).  There are others that join us during these weekends, but these 4 of us are the main group.  Well, one of them is one of the pregnant people in my life, and she is due in February, which is typically when we do this weekend.  So we did it this past weekend and just did it back in T Town, where most of them still live.  Since we were there and only doing a Saturday thing, I invited K to come with me on Friday, and let him have Friday to himself and I watched bug (we stayed at one of my friends) and then he took care of her Saturday (and stayed at his mom's).  Well, he needed to go do some work on the house that we rent out, so he left bug with his mom.  This is OK for a short amount of time, but when I realized that it had been almost 6 hours and he still wasn't done, I started to worry.  I told the girls that I was worried, so they told me just to call her and check on them.  I did,  she said everything was going good, they were eating some dinner, blah blah blah.  After the call I chatted with my pregnant friend and she made me feel a TON better about it.  Like I told her - my biggest worry was that MIL would stop paying attention and bug would grab a stack of stuff off of her tables and it would all come tumbling down. 

So.  About 45 minutes after I talked to MIL, K called.  He had just gotten home a little before and sounded worried.  APPARENTLY, my fears happened, A FEW HOURS BEFORE.  Bug grabbed something and a large picture frame toppled down on her HEAD.  This happened BEFORE I talked to MIL, so she blatantly chose to NOT TELL ME.  I was PISSED, and crying.  I called the ped, and everything did turn out OK (there was no vomiting, she stayed awake, no dazed eyes, etc).  So, I'm venting here, then I'm done with it.  It's off my chest and I'm not going to be pissed anymore.  BUT, I told K that she will NEVER watch our little girl alone, or at her place even with someone, ever again.  He agreed, so that was good.  It's just so sad to me that I have to make that call about my baby girls grandma, you know? 

I guess when she told K about it, she tried to get him to agree to not tell me, which he wouldn't agree to.  Good for him.  I hope that we aren't overreacting to this, but it's my little girls safety.  That is more important than anything in my mind.

4 comments:

  1. i swear magazines are taking over our house, my husband has SO many subscriptions, i HATE them. i don't blame you for feeling the way you do, i would feel the same way.

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  2. "She tried to get him to agree to not tell me." --> This would piss me off even more than her being careless! Thank god it was only a picture frame and not something heavier

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  3. Oh, that's so hard! Before MIL was killed this summer, I was starting to worry about this. I believe she was in very early stages of alzheimers and that it would one day be an issue for us, too. I don't know how I would have handled it, or how hubby would have for that matter. At least the 2 of you are on the same page :)

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  4. I would have stressed about my girls being there, too. Accidents happen, but that's an unnecessary risk to me. And it would really piss me off if people tried to keep it from me.

    We have a similar situation with my own mom. From the repeated stories and easy confusion to keeping her home unsafe for the girls. The last time they went inside her place was Christmas. It wasn't piles of things, it was the filth. We held both girls, wouldn't let them eat anything we didn't bring or that didn't come prepackaged and threw away anything that so much as touched the table. Gross. I don't get it, because I wasn't raised in a home like that. It worries me, too, what we'll do with and for her when she can't live on her own anymore.

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