Ach! Mein Leibschen!

My mother and I have always had a pretty good relationship. There have been the few odd days wherein I felt she was psycho, but then again, I'm pretty sure she felt the same way about me. We had a fairly good relationship all through my HS years, and when I moved away from home, she was honestly heart-broken, if only because it meant that her "baby" was leaving... I would have thought after raising 5 children (2 of them not directly hers), she would have been leaping for joy. But my mother is one of those rare people who love to take care of others, for the sheer joy of cleaning up after them - though she'll never tell you that.


You see, Mum is CDO - it's like OCD, but it's in alphabetical order, like it should be. Specifically, she's nuts about cleaning. She was lucky, as my father made enough money to allow her to stay home and indulge in said pasttime, which made it virtually impossible to leave a mess lying around as a child. It also meant that I was taught to cook cleanly, bathe cleanly (no water splashes on the floor, etc), play cleanly... Something that was literally unheard of for most children ages 2-7... Even though I could find the world's coolest pile of muck, sand, and clay, I managed NOT to get it all over my clothes most times - and when I did, it wasn't ground in. Why? The fear of the look of overwhelming disappointment on my mother's face.


I only remember her snapping and becoming physically violent with me once - mostly due to something else that wasn't my fault... She ended up dragging me around by my hair at that point (I was 13 or so), until I answered her question. The rest of the time, it was either a disappointed look, or the sigh... The sigh was worse, because it denoted a "I know that I taught you better than this... and yet, here you are..." tone to it. I always ended up feeling about 2 inches tall, and rushed around attempting to make amends for days afterwards to keep from hearing the sigh again.


Mum is coming down this weekend. She was, at first, going to bring the children with her and come down yesterday. I let her know that it probably wasn't a great idea, as it was a 6 hour drive down, and Fred wasn't going to be home until after 6pm - which meant that there'd be no help getting the dresser up the stairs to the 2nd floor apartment where we live until late, which would mean a sleepover... This inof itself wouldn't be bad, but for the two-year-old, who would inevitibly get into EVERYTHING and drive both Fred and I batshit. Not to mention the fact that we had no clue Mum was coming down until Monday night when she called, and we'd just come home from an event - so the apartment, as usual, was thrashed.


She decided instead to do the smart thing, which was to swap vehicles with my sister, drop off the kids with their mother (my sister), and load up the dresser into the van and drive down for a mini-vacation. She'd be here for Pirate Karaoke, which would be fun, and a little mini-visit with me and Fred. I got off the phone with her, and immediately began to panic as my eyes took in the apartment and all its messy glory...


I've been cleaning ever since. Fred's gone from being bemused and slightly guilty to being totally amused and still slightly guilty (he's been working, so hasn't been able to do much in the way of cleaning). I've gone from a slow, slight worry to full-blown panic about the house. It's not clean - it's definitively better than it was, but it's not clean... While I realize that my housekeeping style has always been "yeah, it's cluttered, but there's not much trash wandering around", Mum's housekeeping style has always been "a place for everything, and everything in its place". She once organized my father's workshop, for the love of the Lord and Lady... Why? She was bored!


My head is pounding, my stomach is cramping, my back has seized up, and I no longer have any muscle groups in my upper and mid-back to hold the stress, so it's moved down to my ass and hips... I can't walk, sit, or get up without pain...


I need a margarita... or a valium... or both... Is it too much?


~M