I love my mother and I'm so grateful for and I love my nephew but he's been a brat the last few days. Not bad but not following directions and HYPER. I get why he's in physical activities so often he needs it to burn the energy. BUT Mom doesn't help. She wanted him to try and calm down before dinner/bed time and also wanted him to read. She gave him an option of 2 things to do and he picked the non reading thing which wasn't what she wanted him to pick so she took it back and said he had to read.

Which just made him frustrated and upset. He didn't want to talk about certain things (going back to school tomorrow, etc) and she kept bringing it up. And while he was eating his dinner she was going through pictures on his phone "do you remember this, do you remember that" (which mostly he did). But he kept standing up to get a better look and then Mom would tell him to sit down and eat. And go to another picture. So he'd stand up to look at it and that would be fine then it was "sit down and eat".

And he was watching American Ninja Warriors , earlier, which gets him excited and he wanted to jump around on the furinture. Which was okay for awhile but then Mom said no. And E whined a bit and Mom said okay how many more times did E want - which was like 10. So she tried to negotiatie it down to 2 or three. I piped up with "You had your one more time already let's do something else" and Mom was contradicted me "No he can one more time." And he then he wanted more turns.

The big parenting thing for my brother is consistency and following through with what you say. So if you give E a choice and he picks something you go with that choice. If he needs to do something then there isn't a choice. And if you say one more time it's one more time. Granted my brother bends this a bit but Mom bends it a lot.

And I can see why he gets frustrated with her and I can see why E was getting frustrated. I don't know how to bring this up because any time I do it leads into I'm attacking her, I don't understand, Mom's been there for E and is pretty much his mother. And if I bring up my brother's GF (they've been together 5 years and E is 7 1/2) then it's "she doesn't really care about E like I do , I've been there from the beginning, she doesn't like me."

Plus there's some health stuff I've observed with Mom that I want to bring up anything like that she gets super defensive. Some of it is minor but there are a few things that really worry me that are linked to her smoking and she's super super defensive about that.

askye, how difficult. There are no easy fixes for any of that.

Very frustrating, askye. Of course your brother is likely the only one that can say anything to her. Consistency is very important with kids, but few of us can manage it completely. When the boys were little we were using a 1.2.3 thing and I explained the system to the grandparents and other family caregivers so we were on the same page. It's tough for sure.

And of course it is extremely difficult to see you mother self-destruct her health. In my experience of dealing with adults and their bad habits, it is a real mine field. You do have to express your concern and opinion, but then you have to be prepared to let it go. Adults get to make their own decisions even when they are wrong. That is a tough one for me, but I work at it. Except with my kids! I reserve the right to bug them for the rest of my life! (mostly kidding there)

I kinda got put in the middle because it was you can read askye a book or something. He picked the something and she took it back and made the only reading to me and then he wasn't happy with me.

And he has so much energy and I know Mom has trouble keeping up.

I got some healthy cookbooks from the library and I'm going to use those to make some menus. And I started the Buzz feed 28 day exercise challenge and she seemed interested. I'm going to see if she'll do a circuit of the upper body work out tomorrow.

askye I have sometimes had to extricate myself from being put in the middle as a caregiver between coworkers and the people we serve. It is so much easier when it's a coworker I am dealing with, than you having to deal with your mom. If one of my coworkers had offered a choice between two activities to someone then rescinded the choice, I would say something along the lines of, "I'm sorry, [coworker], you must have misheard. He chose option A." then pointedly begun to do option A with the person. If coworker attemped to insist on me being involved with option B against the person's wishes, I would take myself out if the equation. It's a heck of a lot harder to say, "Yeah, no. He won't reading to me because I am not available for that. I am available for playing cards with him like he said he wanted to do," to your own mother.

Have you ever disagreed with somebody online and erased your comments, as, you know, burying the hatchet? Because someone told me he did, and he wants me to now...is this a thing? I did it one time on Livejournal, I think, but that was because I thought the thing I said genuinely went beyond the pale and I didn't want either of us to be reminded of it scrolling past each other every day. I generally leave stuff up, come what may--is that weird? Because, I figure, if we were talking, I could only amend so much. ETA: After all that, Mr. "We Can Rebuild Them" did no such thing...his dumb comment about "almost like we're not disabled" is totally flapping in the breeze and I scrubbed my response.I mean, I thought that was...oddly paranoid before, considering nobody's security clearance was in the offing, but now I'm annoyed again, and after I sent him a friendly message...

Cereal: Can't tell you how much it bugs me to catch someone in a lie. Even if it's a stupid lie about something that didn't bug me that much(Although it is passive-aggressive to bring that up, and I guess, flounce away after I didn't immediately...correct the record or whatnot. blah. Don't care for that, either, especially.) In sum, "if you're going to lie to me, lie to me with respect."ETA: I am proud of myself for synthesizing a strong response about what bugged me about his technology comments. He may understand, or he may, as so many Amazon commenters have, decide that I am bitter and "just jealous" but I know I gave it the best I've got.

erika, I have no idea if that's a thing. Sorry.

It's so much easier to get things done when someone else is around to help with ltc. I mailed out a gift today, called about a bill, sorted through the mail, picked up chicken for dinner, and set it to marinate in the fridge. And I even was able to get myself a cappuccino.

It's okay...just something to add to my overflowing "Strangers=Irritating" folder Also, given that I'm not, like, swimming in disability pride, I'm actually a bit surprised at how frustrating I find the suggestion that there's some expensive gewgaw out there that could make me Okay(TM)(I will stop short of some of my compatriots by saying that if such a thing were out there, and had a proven track record, and wouldn't break if I dropped it/spilled stuff in it etc...I would try to use it. I'm not *that* attached to the Outsider Artist deal, right?)But, at 42, that feels like looking out my bedroom window saying "Someday my prince will come," or something else that I would never do.(Maybe if getting a new computer didn't make me sweat for a week, it would be different, also. Who knows?)

2016 is looking up.

I had coffee...well iced tea...with someone I met through another website. she was nice and it seemed to go okay. We talked about going to see a movie sometime.

Also my Best Buy Visa Gift Card saga is over. They refunded the points back to me which I used to get Best Buy Rewards Certificates. I should get confirmation in 24 hours that they are in my account. I used up the rewards certificates I did have (they were going to expire) but there is still a decent amount. I double checked the gift cards available but unless they had Amazon gift cards hidden there really wasn't much I wanted in terms of gift cards. But I'll look again.

AND I have an appointment on Tuesday to get help signing up for ACA healthcare. I just need to get some stuff printed out to take in and then I should be fine. That's a huge relief because trying to do it on my own was confusing me and freaking me out I'd make a mistake and get kicked off the program.

Also saw the new therapist. I kind of like her, I'll see.

Windy, I'm actually going to try a variation of what you said with Mom. It may work.

Oh and Dad got me croc slipper things for Xmas and they finally got here. I don't care how uncool crocs are these are really comfy.