WildflowerMom
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Posts posted by WildflowerMom
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9 minutes ago, scholastica said:
You’ve never struck me as weird, if it’s any consolation. I doubt anyone here thinks you’re weird!
Awww, thank you! 💛💛💛
I guess maybe ‘quirky’ would fit better? Idk. I have adhd so my brain can’t focus and I go from one random topic to another. Dh sometimes calls me ‘squirrel’, lol. For a lot of people, that would (does) really get on their nerves. I also find a lot of things funny that some people don’t. I’ve been ‘shushed’ at funerals, for example. Not for laughing at anything mean or anything, nor poking fun, just reminiscing about the people and such and laughed a little too loud. My beliefs are kinda all over the place. I just really don’t ’fit’ anywhere. It is what it is.
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Couple things: yes!!!! Having a dog (or two!) is absolutely humbling in the housekeeping department. Just while ago, I vacuumed my living room rug and I swear that I have enough hair now to create another dog if anyone would like one. 🤦🏻♀️
@kbutton, you mentioned your dh. My dh is not organized either. At all. But like yours, mine welcomes my help. I spent all of last week decluttering and organizing the utility room and his workshop, and he was genuinely proud of me (it was a boatload of work) and excited about the new space. He kept saying, ‘I can see what I actually have in here!’
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I don’t have any real friends irl. I’m too weird, I think. I don’t fit with any group.
eta: sorry, forgot to add my barriers. I have agoraphobia for one thing. But honestly, the close friends I’ve had as an adult all went nuts. It soured me from wanting friendships. Now, though, I’d love to have a friend or two, but who wants to be friends with a middle-aged woman who has no roots here in this community and is socially awkward? No one. 🤷🏻♀️
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3 minutes ago, Spryte said:
Oh! Interesting. I have IC as well, and it’s the reason I’m looking into PT. I’m getting desperate. If you have found anything else to help, I would dearly love to hear about it.
Complicating the IC, or maybe causing symptoms of it, I have an ongoing abx resistant infection.
IC specialist is recommending the PT to help relax muscles that are permanently clenched. So no to kegels and yes to learning to stop bracing and clenching all muscles. I wonder if that is the aim of your wand, as well?
Yes, that is my guess. I'm going to PM you...
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How timely! Just last night I put a 'pelvic wand' in my Amazon cart. It's shaped like an 's' sort of and supposedly you insert it and massage trigger points, which I've learned are basically where it's somewhat tender. 🤷🏻♀️ The wand is supposed to reach your obturator muscle. I have no idea if it will help me. I don't really leak anymore (bladder tacked up), but I have interstitial cystitis and pelvic floor therapy is sometimes recommended. Anyway, I'm hopeful this will release some tension and help with ic symptoms.
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And @Carrie12345, I'm sorry for hijacking! Seriously! It just hit a nerve. I'm done, I promise!
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1 minute ago, fairfarmhand said:
I’ve dealt with similar and what I wished had been done, rather than urging the person to deal with the anxiety and grief was to “help you organize “ so everything was in labeled totes. Not that anyone wanted all the crap. But so that the legitimately important stuff was boxed and categorized and at the end, the several important boxes could be grabbed and everything else dumped. In our situation, so many things that were needed and wanted were jumbled into random places that sorting it all out was a headache.
Thanks for this suggestion! I have tried. I really have. I've been thinking about this today since I opened this thread, and I really think the problem is that they (mom & dad) kind of poke fun at how decluttered and organized my house is and how I'm always wanting to organize. She'll make little comments about it when I say I'm organizing, and then she always says, 'come do my house'. I've *done* their house and within weeks it looks like a pigsty. It is mostly my father's crap. And I have daddy issues, so maybe that's why I get so angry about their house. He has always been the problem, no matter what the 'problem' is and right now I can't even go visit my mother because he has crap everywhere. She would be willing to put things in containers. And I have gone through a few areas and basically forced her to toss crap out. But it doesn't matter because at the end of the day, my father will come back in and make everything look like crap again. And since it already looks crappy, she'll just add more crap to the heaps of crap already there. It's like they're in this vicious cycle. I mean they are both at fault, but if he were gone, I think she would do much better at maintaining her space. And then that makes me angry because once again, he's the king of the world and gets to decide everything and ruin everything.
good grief, I really need to stop holding it all in and just let it out. I may call or text her this week and just tell her everything I'm feeling. It's probably better than just making excuses to avoid visiting her. I know she wants me there as often as I can be, which is a lot, actually. I could see her weekly if I wanted to. Problem is I don't and I'm so anxious from all the mess that I want to take anxiety meds while I'm there and then I can't drive. I mean, I can barely (literally!!) walk through the garage without falling or bruising my legs. My father fell last week in the garage. I'm not exaggerating the mess they have.
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4 minutes ago, Innisfree said:
I’m sorry this is so difficult.
I can actually relate to your mother’s reluctance to get rid of family stuff. I don’t know if she’s technically a hoarder, but grief at losing people can snowball, especially as the numbers that you have lost start to add up. I’m working to stay on the right side of the line between collecting and hoarding myself, having watched my mother slide into full-scale hoarding. So much of your life can become unrecoverable. You can easily get to the point that you can’t stand to lose anything with memories attached, and then it can tip over the edge into holding onto everything, because loss is so painful. Loss of people, loss of memories, loss of control. And then people start nagging at you to get rid of stuff, or worse yet they decide to do an “intervention” and just purge stuff without your involvement, and the loss of control is complete, and panic sets in.
If your mother is somewhere on this progression, I would suggest that grief counseling might be more effective than addressing the hoarding directly. I wouldn’t even talk about the stuff. Try to dig up some empathy and address the grief. Even just letting her talk about people who have died, looking through photo albums, might give you an idea of whether this is an issue. Tell her lots of people find grief counselors helpful these days. Normalize it for her, if she’s likely to resist.
Also… anxiety could be something you and your mother share. It could be contributing to your opposite responses to the stuff.
If I’m completely off base, forgive the intrusion. I’m sorry you’re facing this problem, but it’s good you have a plan for handling it eventually. If you can find a way to not be bothered by it now, that would be great.
Thank you for this reply and for your kindness and understanding!
I don't think hers is grief. I think she feels like "well, someone has to hold on to this family stuff, right?" Her parents were not sentimental in the least. Her siblings (5 kids in all) don't seem to be either. Out of all us grandkids (there's a lot), TWO care about sentimental stuff and they are the 2 I'll call to come collect stuff when she's gone. The issue for me that's probably the biggest issue is this: (and I really am trying not to come across as a b8tch, I swear, y'all). I have pretty bad anxiety and one of my triggers is messes. Her house = MESS. not filth, as much, but MESS. She knows that it makes me very anxious to be in her home. She tells me, "I wish you didn't have that". "That" referring to severe anxiety over junk everywhere. So she wants me there, pretty desperately (gets upset if I don't stay the night and instead comes for just a few hours, most of which are spent outside the house), YET she won't clean up. She and my dad just pile crap on top of crap on top of crap, to the point where I can't put my very small purse on the kitchen counter when I walk in because there is literally no surface space for it. Yet, she begs me to stay, constantly asks 'when can you come over???' I didn't realize how much it was bothering me until now and frankly it's comforting (not for Carrie, lol) to see another person dealing with some similarities. It's not like I'm not a good daughter. I am! It's not like I don't care about their feelings, dignity, agency, or anything else. It's that it all seems so one-sided. 'You come over here and do things for me and spend time with me' but ll make literally zero effort to make you feel comfortable or at ease.-
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3 minutes ago, Scarlett said:
I find with aging parents you just can’t win. Suggest they hire a cleaning? Offensive.
Go in and clean for them? Offensive.
Yet some parents sit around complaining that their adult kids don’t just ‘know’ what they need and rush to do it.
And then they complain because their kids won't come see them. 🤯
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3 minutes ago, SKL said:
There are services you can pay to do this work after someone dies, so please don't let yourself get this upset over it. Just put aside a little money and plan on handing it off when the time comes.
I’m already ahead of you, lol. She has a few furniture pieces that she sees as heirloom. I’m going to call my two cousins who want them to come get them. She has a few newer pieces of furniture that my ds will get if he wants them (i technically will inherit the house but will gift it over to him once I’ve cleaned everything out). Everything else and there is soooooooo much ‘everything else’ will have to be sorted and donated. I already know who to call to come get a lot of the stuff. It is just so overwhelming to be around it. Like anxiety attacks, just wanting to cry, that sort of overwhelm. I cannot take it anymore and I guess it’s fresh on my mind because she wants me to come see them and then I see this thread (sorry, again, Carrie, for hijacking), and I get so overwhelmed with anger and just want to call her and bless her out. And I obvs won’t do that, but it makes me livid. I can’t help it.
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I haven’t read replies, it just struck a nerve and I had to reply. While my parents house isn’t extremely dirty per se (well, it is according to my standards but I get other people=different standards), it’s an absolute nightmare of a mess. A nightmare. I am an only child and it pisses me off that I am going to have to clean that shit up when their time comes. It really makes me angry. There will be no grieving for me. Nope. Just this sense of absolute dread and doom that now I am left with this monumental task of cleaning and decluttering because they don’t care enough to do it before they drop dead. They’d rather just leave me the worst of the worst, sort of like a big ‘F*ck You’ to our only child. I’ve sent them a link to a hoarding/cleaning YouTube channel I watch and her reply? You can come here and clean for us. But I can’t. Because I’ve tried that and no one wants to let me throw anything out. They think I’m heartless because I don’t give one flying sh*t that some old dead person in the family touched something one freaking time and now we can never throw it out. I’m now at the point that I only visit every few months even though my mom begs me to come over and stay the night. Ha!!!!
So yeah, after reading my reply, maybe I should just tell them I can’t come over anymore and see that effing disaster pit of despair they call a house.
I’m sorry. I’m not trying to hijack, but I swear I feel your pain and it resonates with me. I don’t have any advice. Maybe do what I need to do which is just be so freaking blunt they can’t help but be embarrassed and do something about it.-
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For side sleeping, I recommend a candy cane shaped pillow like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078X1XBM4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1.
I don't recommend it for stomach sleeping though.
hth!
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22, married and pregnant.
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4 hours ago, Mrs Tiggywinkle Again said:
So he did mail some of them…
The plot thickens.
Oh shit. Sorry, Mr tigglywinkle. 🤣
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We got your card this week and dh goes is that a Christmas card? I said, Yeah, that’s just xyz, she’s got her hands full and we get them eventually. 🤣🤣🤣
it was a very pretty card! 🎄🎄🎄🎄
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I always let them know.
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I missed the first post and I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but I've been praying and will continue to pray for dd. (((Hugs))) for her...
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16 minutes ago, saraha said:
I have tried all the suggestions so far! Thanks for all the sharing. I am embracing all the options, but my kids just want the American “Ortega” taco. We are in a stand off. I want something magical, they want what they’ve always known.
This is what happened when my family had authentic Italian lasagna and meatballs with sauce. They faked it and told my sil it was good, but as soon as we left the house they said mine was way better. I use prego, lol. I love my sil's lasagna and meatballs, but don't make them because of ds and dh. 🤷🏻♀️🙄
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He is absolutely guilty. But it wouldn't surprise me if he had an accomplice.
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Still working on decluttering the storage room. I suspect that will be the only thing I do for the next several days. I did get some pasta fixed for supper. And dh’s late grandmother’s 83yo cousin called and chatted for a while. It was a welcome break from staring at screws, nails, nuts and bolts. My eyes look like this: 🤪.
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Dh was in the hospital for one week for each of his resections due to crohns and then out of work for one month for each of them. My guess would be some sort of major resection, plus extra recovery time in the hospital and at home. I hope she does ok and recovers well.
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I’ve worked my butt off today decluttering tools and I am exhausted. I just took some meds and am laying down. Dh picked up supper. My neck is killing me.
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Right now I'm working through:
The Not-Quite States of America by Doug Mack
The ONE Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan
At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon
Help is Here by Max Lucado
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1 minute ago, mommyoffive said:
Where are you ? Sounds like FL.
Congrats to your ds on his wedding. So exciting.
South ga. 25 is very cold for us.
eta: oh, and thank you! She's a wonderful girl! We are all happy!
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S/O midlife crisis
in The Chat Board
Posted
Holy sh*t. I think we’re twins. You just described what I’m dealing with now. The only thing I’ll add is that I am extremely interested in s*x all the time. I assume this is hormonal. Dh is happy about it, obvs. But in that regard, I feel like I’m 20 again. It’s kind of crazy. But 100% on everything you said. It’s a crazy time of life right now for me.