The trash bags are a good idea.
No church for assistance. H's mom was an alcoholic until 4 years ago, now she's a dry drunk. She has alienated the rest of her kids over the years. They stopped coming over for holidays because her mom couldn't not drink in front of the grandkids for those few hours. She chose drinking over having Christmas for most of her grandkids life. The rest of H's siblings don't do much at all. It's the built up resentment. So when H rolls in, it's a years worth of house stuff to do and H really is an exceptional person with a great heart to forgive a lifetime of crap. Get this, a lifetime of loosing time and relationships with your kids and what stopped her drinking...... a liver function test and being told by her doctor that he would have to take her off of her cholesterol meds. So, her fear of death.
Yeah, this is who will be living with us for a few months every winter once we buy a house. We're going to allow her to smoke in her room. This is a huge deal, since we didn't even smoke in our own home before. We'll spend the cash on an air filtration unit to help with the smell. She's not social at all. H expects that we'll see her come out at dinner and to get coffee randomly through the day. I'm sure that it's not going to be all roses but she needs assistance and this will probably be the first step in her getting used to the idea of moving in full-time. She's 70, morbidly obese, a chain smoker with a bad liver. I hate to sound mean but she's in really bad shape, so this won't be forever. Luckily, she doesn't whine. She really doesn't even talk that much. As long as we take her to bingo every week and let her smoke, she mainly hides in her room.
My mom needs to sell her house and get a condo. She can't do yard work and hates dealing with house maintenance. She hates having people there to fix stuff and hates spending her money on it. The last 2 people that she's hired has been the unlicenced shady type, who created as many problems as they fixed. As H says, after her mom, it'll probably be my mom living with us.
Thanks for responding, it helps to get this all out. The future's not looking up for us but we'll do what we need to do and as long as we all stick together, we'll make it.
Enid - if you go - bring black garbage bags for your clothes, bring the suit case into the house, pull the clothes in the bags out, and put the suit cases back in the car until it's time to re-pack.
Does H's mom belong to a church? Maybe someone from the community would volunteer their services to help with the house stuff? Especially the handy man type things?
Is this the one who is suppose to move with you guys? Is this still "a go"?
H's mom sounds like my MIL - but i'm ok with that, because having something to do beats listening to my MIl whine. She stills whines, but I can distract myself with throwing out more boxes that raccoons have peed on in the barn or putting tools etc away in the garage that BIL was too lazy to put back, or painting the bathroom ceiling or whatever. lol
My mom is starting it up too - with too much whining - but taking care of her "care free" landscaping. *snort* care free for her - plenty of work for me! She's only 35 min away - but it's annoying and I recommended against about half the stuff she put in 7 years ago. She's never been a gardener and the landscape guy set her up - I think he thought she'd hire him to maintain it. They aren't broke, but they don't throw their money around.
...but I've had a some vendor Doodle and the Doodle rocks!
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