Power struggle.

As I'm getting some ice cream out of the freezer, my mother says to me from her seat across the room on the couch where she's watching TV, "You know what's good on vanilla ice cream?"

I hate these questions. "What?"

"Peanuts."

Peanuts? Peanuts? Not that I object to anybody putting peanuts on their ice cream. But our son, her grandson, has a peanut allergy, so we (sadly)don't eat peanuts around here. I don't get it. I just don't get it.

"What's your point?" I replied. "Do you like reminding us that Daniel has a peanut allergy?"

"I'm just making a comment," she says.

Then, I figured that she was suggesting having peanuts on my ice cream, in fact, because she wanted peanuts on her vanilla ice cream, which she eats every night at 9:20 p.m. She has a bad habit of expressing what she wants by suggesting that you should want it. If I said to her, "But I don't like peanuts on my ice cream." She'd say, "Oh. Why not?" As if it was unheard of that I or my dad or whomever might not enjoy the same thing that she does.

Or she'll use something going on in our life to complain about hers. Like this morning. We go to church on Sundays. We like our church. We enjoy going. Hey, we get a couple of free, child-free hours. Heh. Anyway, my parents go to church, but she's always bitching about theirs. Always, always, always bitching about theirs. It's not so much that she's complaining, really, it's how she does it. It's with a kind of scorn and bitterness that come from somewhere deep down in the core of her soul. Ranting about something, anything is really about her only form of communication. How sad this really is, is not lost on me either. But what can I do?

Anyway, this morning first thing, she picks up our church newsletter and after reading it for a couple of minutes, exclaims, "Ugh! It's Youth Sunday." Her voice full of disgust. Disgust.

Now, we didn't get much sleep last night and what we did get, was pierced by the frantic calls of a frightened 2-year-old. Not sure what was going on with him, except that maybe he was having bad dreams, possibly having to do with the fact that last time Granny & PopPop put him to bed without Mommy & Daddy (DH & I went out on a "date" last night and Granny & PopPop babysat), his whole world turned upside down. Mommy didn't come home for a few days and when she did, she had this baby that ate up lots of her attention and was always on her lap. And she was even more cranky. (Plus, we think he might have a sinus infection.)

So, after a very rough night, the last thing I wanted to hear was my mother bitching about going to church, etc. as I'm trying to get breakfast ready for everybody with a hungry, muddled, sleep-deprived brain. If you don't want to go, don't go, but keep your fuckin' vitriolic spews to yourself. Grrr. Well, as it turns out, she just wanted yet another opportunity to bitch about the Youth Sunday at their church which took place last week and how awful it was and how it used to be so much better.

But, get this, they had no intention of going to church with us anyway, even if it wasn't Youth Sunday. They didn't bring clothes for it. So, why does she even give a shit about what's going on at our church?! She was scanning the newsletter looking for evidence of the things she hates about her church so that she could rant about them. Make sense? Probably not. Welcome to my world.

So, back to the peanuts in the ice cream story. . .
She just fixed herself a bowl of ice cream a few minutes ago. Guess what she added to it? Yep, peanuts. They brought their own jar from home. I knew they brought their own, even though I told them that we didn't want people to eat peanuts around Daniel in our own house. Daniel isn't supersensitive to peanuts, so I'm not superstrict about what people eat around him, but since it's their grandson, I guess I figured that out of respect and concern, they wouldn't eat them / bring them, etc. and certainly, wouldn't go around extolling the yumminess of peanuts on vanilla ice cream.

As I'm writing this, I'm realizing how passive-aggressive this really is and kind of shocked that there are not some topics that are offlimits when it comes to this age-old war of the wills that we've had going on. Don't get me wrong, though -- I don't think she even realizes what she's doing or how it's coming across.

She just wanted peanuts on her ice cream.

*sigh*