Nerve Gratin' Time, y'all

My Mom came up to visit Monday evening and she stayed until Wednesday afternoon. She brought a friend with her.

At first, I'd been excited to meet her friend. After all, she is down visiting from Maine and had been my grandmother's best friend before she passed away. Over the past few years, she and my Mom have become friends. Anyway, what you expect is not always what you get.

One of the first things this lady did after arriving was pick up a rash of spilled cereal from one of Adrien's snack cups. I was completely aware of the cereal being on the carpet -- I just didn't see any sense in picking it up at that point because it would just get spilled again. The entire visit went on like this -- her picking up after me. The end result was me not loading the dishwasher the entire visit just so I could get on her nerves. The first night of the visit I ate a bowl of ice cream. I'd noticed her behavior and decided to purposefully leave my dirty ice cream bowl out on the bar that night. She moved it to the sink the next morning. Like I knew she would. At dinner that night she even proceeded to tell Adrien (while I had my back turned getting a plate of food) that he wasn't allowed to throw his food on the ground. How does she know I don't let him do that. Maybe I like him to. I wanted him to throw the food all over her. By the way, the food that fell on the floor didn't get swept up until the next morning...just to bother her.

The next morning she asked if she could do a load of laundry. I let her, but had to switch something of my own from the washer to the dryer. She took a shower while it was in the wash. In the meantime, I'd heard the dryer buzz and removed my clothing. A little while later she asked if I'd gotten my things out of the dryer and when I said yes, she replied, "So I can expect my stuff in the dryer?" Um. No. You can't expect that. I insisted she let me do the honor though. Later on, she decided to give me some advice on putting Adrien to bed. I was waiting for Adrien to fall asleep in the living room while watching a movie, and she decided to ask why I didn't just "put him down with a good book". Um, great. That would be amazing...if it were realistic. All throughout the day I had to listen to comparisons of Adrien to her grandson who is apparently 6 months older than Adrien, but a regular Baby Einstein. She insists he does his "counting," and when I countered that Adrien is learning to count to three, she corrected me in assuring me that by "counting" she meant he was starting addition and subtraction. She was sending him math books in the mail, dontcha know.

Wednesday was full of extraordinary annoyances as well. While my Mom was dismantling her air mattress in the living room, Adrien thought he'd help. He took some sort of plastic hose gadget and decided it was a good idea to try to "plug" it into the wall. My Mom's friend scolded him for it, and I assured her that it was completely fine because we had outlet covers. Boy was I wrong. It was not fine at all. She informed me it still wasn't a good idea. Thanks for the advice.

The last straw was snack time Wednesday morning. I was trying to figure out what Adrien wanted to eat and had the fridge open, allowing him full range of the contents. I asked him what he wanted going down the list "Carrots? Grapes? Cheese?" No, no, no...he didn't want any of that. He wanted some animal crackers -- or "tookies" as he says. Totally fine. He'd had a healthy breakfast. I guess grandmother of the year noticed my choice in snack and decided to let me in on a little secret: "It's nuthing for Abraham (her grandson) to eat vegetables for breakfast. He just doesn't know any beddah." Well woopty-fucking-do, lady. I'm so glad Abraham doesn't know any beddah. But the fact that Adrien knows and likes all of his food groups gives me greater hope for his nutritional future than a kid who knows nothing about the existence of tookies. Besides, all kids should have tookies. And who wants vegetables for breakfast anyway? Broccoli for breakfast and subtraction for snack time? I'm sure that kid is barrels of fun just like his grandma.

To top all of these annoying behaviors off, I had to listen to her gruff and grating New England accent the entire time. Sorry to all the yankee readers, but nothing grinds my nerves worse. I'm sure you guys would say the same of my drawl. I had to listen to words like cah (car) the entire time. Damnit woman, enunciate! There's an R at the end of that word, not an H! On top of it, she smokes like a chimney, drinks her wine with ice and has the personality of a rock.

My biggest peeve with her though had to be the fact that she found it necessary to pickup my house after me. Don't be so presumptuous, bitch. I'm glad she's gone. She can take her lack of manners and annoying accent back to Maine and stay there.