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Denial is a powerful thing. There is a local woman who hit the gas instead of the brakes and plowed into a group of children on the sidewalk, killing one. Even though she went through a trial and she's been convicted of criminal negligence she still insists she did nothing wrong and she hit the brake.
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Way, it so hard when you know what's going to happen and you're hand are tied and no one will listen.

Of course she didn't tell DH, maybe now after an accident you can try DMV .

I think it's been a while since you and DH have been there. She may have gotten pretty frail since last time. People can really cover up things through a phone.
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She really has things sewed up, doesn't she?

Frustrating!!!

No response from DMV is frustrating too.

Doesn't seem like there is much you can do. Maybe another call to DMV?

Must be awful waiting for a crisis to happen. ((((hugs))))
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Of course she should quit driving . She can barely walk . I don’t know how she sees over the steering wheel , she’s so stooped over and short . Nothing we can do .She refuses to draw up a POA . Already reported her to DMV months ago with no response . She would never give us keys . I’m sure she has the second set hidden for this very reason . If we disabled the car she would call to have it towed and fixed . It’s a leased car , so we can’t steal it from her forever . We do not know any of her doctors .
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Not hearing from mil sounds like a good thing, "Side swiped" not so good. Hiding it from dh - whatever, She is playing her games. Prob time she quit driving, don't you think?
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Not really a whine but ……Hadn’t heard from MIL in over a week .
Today DH found out through the grapevine why he hasn’t heard from her .

It seems ( according to MIL) she got sideswiped while driving . At least that is what she told her other son . I’ll take that description with a grain of salt considering MIL’s lifelong distorted accounts of happenings where , She’s always innocent . 🙄🙄🙄

DH called his mother today to see if she would mention it to him and she didn’t . She still thinks DH doesn’t know .
It will be interesting to see if DH asks her about it when we visit her in two weeks . Hmmm 🤔🤨🧐
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Venting, I hope your today is better than your yesterday.
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Venting--sending some love your way. Always so happy when I see you return to AC.
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Hang in there Venting. 💌
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THANK YOU. You have no idea how much your (Gershun, Beatty) words warm my heart. Thank you! I will return to the forum later.
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((((Venting))))
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Venting, thinking of you 🥰
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I’m going through an extremely hard time today. (Nothing to do with caregiving). I hope things turn around for me soon.
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Ana - exactly. We are not the support system for anyone unless we choose to be.
It seems to me it's a victim's "poor me" game.
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Golden, we recently advertised to hire - very specific (uncommon) knowledge and experience. An applicant interviewed, but was not selected. Now we’re receiving daily emails - guilt trips of great detail - about why we have to hire him. His life story is certainly unfortunate but we are not his lifeline.
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Just me whining these days it seems.

I advertised on a Ft Mc site free furniture which includes a real leather chair and love seat in very good condition. Just pick it up at the arranged time.

Well long story short it didn't work out a couple of times with one person. I got the excuses, the health history, the child problems and so on, but no arrangement to pick up until I said too late. Then seemingly they found someone in 5 minutes.

So I got a long fb message explaining yada, yada yada. I sent one back saying it wasn't all about her. I had things to arrange to and if she couldn't follow up at the times she said, I couldn't deal with her.

I really wonder what this was really about.

On to the next person who wants it and hope I can get it done. I am relying on the good nature of the lady who has been cleaning and keeping an eye out on the place for me to be there to let people in to take the furniture and I can't waste her time and good will.

IMO R is not really ready to drive up even if I did some of the driving or we could do it. If we can move most of the stuff, before coming up, say next month when he is stronger, the rest will be one trip to the dump which I have a good company for and one trip to the Thrift shop, then bring a few things here. Sounds simple doesn't it, but when dealing with people it often isn't!
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send -as long as it works, I guess it's worth keeping. Glad you've got your flyer printed. We did complete everything finally.

I like your phrase. lol.
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Lol Golden!
We are experiencing same here, then ran out of paper.
But I have my flyer printed up early.

I usually console myself with the phrase:
"What can be done with paperwork can be undone by more paperwork."

The printer was given to us instead of throwing it away. My dH is in charge of keeping it running.
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Sometimes you are your own worst enemy.

I was woken up by Amazon delivery at 5:09 am this morning.

Yesterday was a busy day with R tackling all sorts of accident-related paper work. Forms, forms and more forms - police, insurance. medical...The printer was going like crazy and was misbehaving, which is not unusual, It's an old one. And I am the one do the printing and to resuscitate it, which sometimes takes a bit of work. After clearing the print queue many times, rebooting the computer and the printer, clearing the paper path, and finally finding that the connecting USB cable was failing and the ink was low, I ordered both from Amazon.

In the rush I neglected to tick the right box.

So I was woken up from a dead sleep at crazy o'clock in the morning by a call to buzz in the person delivering the ink. Aaaargh!!!

Thankfully, I went back to sleep.💤💤💤
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precious - you have to set boundaries as to that you will and what you won't do. No ,you can't make her happy. That's her job for herself. Doing for her things she can do for herself is not healthy - it's enabling. Bringing her junk food and things that are not good for her is enabling her bad habits. Lots of us have had many losses and have been through a lot. It's no excuse.

Apparently this is not gooo]d for you or for her. She needs to become far more independent and she won't do that as long as you are catering to her.

What do you do?

1) You don't nag her. She knows by now what isn't good for her and what she needs to do to help herself. You nagging her is not helping you or her.

2) you stop doing those thing that are enabling her so if she wants food or anything else she can get up and get it herself,

3) when she expresses unhappiness about these change, walk away, Don't engage in any conversation and don't listen to her complaints (abuse?)

4) You don't have to explain or justify yourself. You can make a statement that you will not be doing x,y z anymore and then let it be.

You are the one who has to change to make this tolerable for you. At some point you may want to look into assisted living arrangements for your mother. Her health will not get better. With an older husband you need to be enjoying your time together now.

All the best going forward i a healthier direction!
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Precious, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. I would advise you to not enable your mom. You might be doing things for her that she can do for herself, so stop doing that! Accept you can't change her and live your life you have built for yourself and your family,
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I can defiantly relate......the sun had not come up before I am hit with "She thinks she should get my own place to live in" (mind you we already own this home together) and I have no issue with her living on her on (would do us both of us some good) but here's the thing, she has mobility issues and does not do much around here (not that she has to do anything for me, but do what she can for herself) and I know she be in pain (knee/hip replacement is needed or so she said and her being obese does not help any) which is why the Dr and nurses feel she need to do certain exercises that would help her with keeping up her strength in her limbs, arms, etc....but all she does is order me to order fast food, bring it to her....and the rest is history. She now stays literally in her bed.....with bare minimum of getting up, moving about and this only makes the situation worse...on her and me. I love my mom with all my heart, I am not the enemy but she make me feel as though I am. She has been through a lot (lost her husband, two children, brothers, etc but not all at once) I know she deals with depression, but she's not on any medication for it or seek therapy, even though I have suggested.....I can't make her happy or satisfied it seems....well, as long as I just bring her what she wants (chewing tobacco since she was 16, which I hate, and of course junk food and fast food....if I did that and not nag to her about not having that, she is happy as she can be.....I don't know what to do anymore....I am the only living child left (lost two of them (38yr old and 43yr old about a 2yrs apart). I miss them very much, especially my brother....we were closer, but I have always been the ONE who was always around my mom....from day one it seems...I am married, have been now for over 13yrs (known each other since 2005 though). He is understanding and older....actually older then my mother, and he gets around much better then she does.....strange I guess. We both do what we can for her, but what she want is for people to do EVERYTHING for her....and not nag...or vent about it.....crazy.
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Cwillie, when I came on AC, I thought I was the worst human alive, because I couldn't deal with this sweet little old lady ( as what everyone was telling me) I honestly didnt feel worthy of anyone even answering my questions.

Then I found AC, and it was extremely overwhelming to me. One minute I'm being loved bomb by strangers, when I didn't feel worthy of any of it, or being feeling like I'm stupid for not knowing what people thought I should already know.

Personally I get what they are feeling and I get where they are and if they want to vent a little at the beginning or if there not clear , or there punctuation is not perfect.I get it. They are so overwhelmed, by what what's going on in there life, there brain is thinking with emotions , not logic.

On top of everything I was going through, I have a learning disability that made it even harder to express my feelings.
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Cwillie, I think we have to understand what these people are going through and where there emotions are, and what we are all throwing at them is a lot for them to handle at one time.

Golden I just looked that up EMDR that's interesting, I've never heard of it.

Waytomisery, I truly think Golden is right, I wish it was a generational thing. I ended up here because no one understood me and what I went through, with the guilt manipulation. So personally I think that really there isn't as much guilt used parenting , I think we just all end up here because we are desperately looking for answers and no one around us has them because they have never been though this.
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Hate filled rants? I don't think I have been reading the same posts that you have, cw. I do agree people feel they can say anything.

geaton, EMDR does work to reduce trauma around specific memories according to what I have read and first hand experience of a therapist. I wouldn't know where to start with the traumatic memories. There are too many. But over time and with counselling they do not carry the same weight in my emotional life. And there is more to recovery than dealing with trauma. It's also a matter or relearning how to deal with your emotions, how to deal with people, communication skills , repairing self esteem and more. However, it can be done. People are resilient.

way - I'm not so sure it is a generational thing. I have known delightful people from my mother's generation. My grandmothers and grandfather were good sane people, All of my aunts and uncles were lovely caring people. My friend's mothers were kind and caring and normal. However, these days therapy is more openly accepted which it wasn't in those days. My dd asked me once why didn't our family go for counselling. I said there wasn't any. Even if there had been mother would not have gone. In her mind she was OK, it was everyone else who was the problem.
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I hope the next generation doesn’t have as much FOG to deal with . I think that was pretty common in parenting years ago . I know my mother and mother in law were pros at it .

It explains all the people with guilt here.
Guilt trips obviously were a common way of parenting back then .

Then when a parent needs you they rely back on their parenting ways .
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Margaret - back in it's earliest days the Whine thread was essentially a conversation among a few members whose situations resonated with each other, it took me a long time to break into that clique! Of course now almost all of them have left the forum.
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I don't think I was here for your earliest posts Golden but for me I see a difference between your journey and the many posts we seem to be getting more recently, so many of them are in complete denial about the level of dysfunction they are living with and will vehemently attack anyone who doesn't agree with their narrative. And then there are the extreme, hate filled rants (but I guess we've always had those). Maybe that's just the way of social media today, people feel free to say almost anything.🤷‍♀️
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golden, you are right... I cannot imagine it. My good friend is an experienced trauma therapist who trains therapists in EMDR therapy for victims and so far I've heard it has a very high success rate (heard it from various people including ones on this forum). I don't feel right suggesting a therapy I've not used myself, but I trust my friend that EMDR is a safe and effective treatment option.
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geaton - even with therapy, which I have had off and on all my adult life for my family of origin issues, peer support from others going through the same is invaluable.

As way says - if you haven't been there you really have no idea what people who are living it are facing.
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