That 's hard, msbelle. I'm sorry. I hope where you are gets better, somehow.

Strix, I have the coins for M. from Shir. E-mail insent to your profile address.

Oh honey. Hoping something finds you to make the next five years enjoyable for your not-mom parts.

I get the resentment. Sometimes their expectations/assumption line up directly contrary to my reality. I put it down to our places in life being so vastly different and they're used to me being a certain way I was...the first 20 years of my life. And bending into the wind means saying no, but that doesn't mean I don't resent being put in the position where I feel like a heel for it, even as I know it is ok, and they're not calling me a heel.

It's hard to be mad at 'em, I know where they are coming from, but at the same time, they're worse about thinking about where I'm coming from.

One of the ones that irks me now is when they wonder why things x,y and z on my list are still to be done. Well, the thing is I have to work, there's only one of me, and I prioritize. Not falling down or on fire? They do it all the time and have gotten worse since their retirement. Especially regarding travel. Oh, but we'll pay! Yeah, well that isn't the issue here, loves.

Man, I feel very lucky to have such easy parents that cause me so little trouble.

Buffista Island looks better every day, and I'm actually not joking.

Maybe we could find a cheap castle?

Dracula's castle is for sale. Not particularly cheap, I don't think, though.

The thing is, my parents ARE easy. I love them to death and offer them up to anyone. It's just, we all came with buttons installed to push. They don't fuss when I say 'can't do that' or 'I didn't do that because x.'

But they are getting more perspective-blind as they get older (which, cue start of unease about senility etc.)

I mean, my mom once told me my visits home from college became so much better for all of us when I figured out how to come home as a guest, not a daughter and she did the same. (Er, not that I wasn't a daughter, just that we all shifted expectations in accordance to my independence from them.)

Which was a WHOA, INSIGHT. YES.

And there's some backtracking on that in the past few years. Not that issue specifically, just the awareness.

I adore my parents, and we spend all kinds of time with them since we've moved here. But as good as this town has been to us, I do wish we could go back to Yardley. And it's just not sensible now -- my brother's still in the Navy and may get posted overseas again, and my parents are getting older. My mom's been chronically ill with lupus since I was a child, and she has all kinds of other orthopedic issues, so more surgery is in her future. I don't resent them, because I love them, and we could probably live an hour or so away, but moving to any other part of the country just wouldn't make sense.

It's horrible to be stuck somewhere you don't like, msbelle. I'm sorry Texas didn't work out the way you wanted it to.

I just finished listening to this week's Wait Wait. Pretty good stuff.

Oh msbelle, I hope things get easier. I totally know what you mean about having to ask, and resenting the asking.