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12:44 p.m. - 2005-12-02 Dinner anyone?Well, it has been just over a week since my Mother In Law moved in and all in all it hasn�t been as bad as I was dreading. She largely sleeps all day and most of the night. She is a packrat and has her room looking like a turned upside down laudrymat already, but I had already accepted that that room was not mine and am able to ignore it. I told her I didn�t want her pots and pans and dishes, but she brought them anyway, so our basement is becoming a warehouse, at least until the Spring garage sale. There are only two things that I am having trouble with. One is the smell. It is a stinky perfumey smell and I believe it is copious amounts of talcum powder combined with old lady smell. The smell has permeated the entire first floor of my house. The first few days, I almost cried, then I accepted it. Can�t do anything about it�gotta accept it. I just won�t have company over until her �departure� day�.not wishing that on her or anything, but just being realistic. Her use of talcum powder is so great that it took Mike 3 full days to get the talcum powder off of the surfaces, and in every little nook and cranny of her apartment. As a matter of fact there was talcum powder in the grain of the wood of her cabinets. We will have to do something about this as I don�t want my home ruined by talcum powder�.and it will ruin it. Once it gets in the grain of cabinets and into fibers of carpeting, it never fully comes out and it is a horrible smelling talcum powder. Aside from that, the only other trouble I am having is her constant talking about the food she eats, how it is staying down, how it is coming out and how it is affecting her innards. My Mother in Law and Husband both don�t eat much, however they are obsessed with food�or should I say, they are obsessed with the workings of their bodies and food plays a big part of that�they are always talking about food�what they can eat, what they can�t, and how what they can�t eat will affect them. Coming from a hearty family with cast iron stomachs, I find this behavior neurotic. The hardest part is that my Mother in Law talks about how food affects her while others are eating. As a matter of fact, others ingesting food reminds her of what she feels compelled to tell us about her food intake and���.. outgo. To fully describe the experience, I must give you some background on my Mother In Law�s persona. She is a thin, hunched woman of 89 who looks like she is 109. She is a mopey sort who talks with the slowest of southern drawls and is always complaining about her health, always depressed and has been slighted by just about everyone she has ever known all her life. She is also not the sharpest knife in the drawer. For the first couple of days, she ate well and didn�t complain. I think she was trying to be on her best �company� behavior. The slide into her old self began with pizza last Saturday night. �The pizza�s ready�, I exclaimed as I opened the box and passed out the plates and soda. �Well, Ah cain't have much pizza honey, I�ve had trouble going all day long and pizza makes me even more cawnstipated. Mike gave me some prune juice and pears and some of that Citrusil and boy I sure have been going�I don�t want to get cawnstipated again�you should have seen me today, I was just going and going and going and going.� At this point, the pizza had lost off of it�s appeal. She has another habit of chopping up whatever she is eating in such small pieces that it becomes mush. She went to work on the 2 tiny squares of pizza she decided to take. Within minutes, it was pizza hash. It made me sick to look at. She continued to chat about how her bowels had finally loosend, all during dinner. For the first time, there was lots of pizza left over. One day this week, I called Mike and told him I was going to get home late. He said, �what are you making for dinner.?� �I don�t know�why don�t you make a frozen entr�e for your Mother so she can eat early.� �We�ll wait for you.� He said �Well, dinner might only be a sandwich.� I replied. �That�s ok� he said, �she�ll eat a sandwich� �NO!� I exclaimed� �you don�t seem to understand�I don�t want to worry about feeding or eating with her tonight�feed her before I get home.� He seemed to take offense at this. When I got home, I was treated to the stories of the apartment clean out and the filthy fridge where he found open containers of food so old, you couldn�t tell what it was anymore. He then told me every little detail of Mom�s day including the fact that she once again was constipated and that he had fed her plenty of prune juice and more citrucil. I patiently listened and when the story was over, I made myself something to eat. While I was nuking some left overs, my MIL came out of her room. �Mike made me one of those frozen spaghetti dinners and it just went right through me.� I felt my appetite wane. �What are you making?� �Some leftovers� I replied. �Oh honey, I�d join you but that spaghetti just went through me and through me and through me and through me and it just wouldn�t stop.� By this time, the visuals that were in my head had my stomach bordering on nausea. I sat down with my dinner. �Well, I just gotta come out and see what your eating.� She exclaimed �That looks good but I can�t eat that�it�d just go right through me, that Citrusil really did it�s job and the prune juice and pears and oatmeal���she droned on and on and I was reminded of that character in Forest Gump, Bubba, who went on scene after scene describing the thousands of dishes one can make from shrimp. Since I can�t do anything about this situation but endure�,I will once again don rose colored glasses and make lemonade out of lemons�..this will be a good time to diet as I find myself with no appetite once I am home. P. I. Yarnsmith
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