Froggy Foreshadowing

Grandma and Amanda came by to visit me today. I nearly escaped the whole ordeal--Lizzie and I had gone out for a walk around town when they came by the first time, and I'd left my cell phone at the house--but they spotted us walking up the street. Drat!

So they caught us and decided to come in and sit a spell. Grandma, of course, immediately proceeded to launch into her usual litany of complaints and ailments. "My knees/side/back/head/feet/hips hurt. . ." And I sat there thinking OF COURSE you feel bad Grandma, you have arthritis and you're overweight and you have heart disease. I mean, c'mon, tell me something I don't know. But all I actually said was, "Mmmm-hmmm, I know you don't feel good, you never feel good." Usually that puts an end to the complaining--at least for a few minutes--and fortunately it worked that time. But then she started in on the house. Specifically, the potential of having a bathroom decorated in a frog motif (something Lizzie has expressed a desire to have).

For whatever the reason, the thought of friendly little frog faces in the bathroom is just more than Grandma can bear. A week or so ago--whenever it was that we decided to make an offer on this house--Grandma announced that she would be decorating the bathroom in--take a wild guess here. . . Yep, BLUE stuff! But I told her that I was sorry, Lizzie had first dibs (she had already asked) on the bathroom theme and she wanted frogs. Well, Grandma had a fit. "I can't have a child's decoy in the bathroom." "I don't want a child's decoy in a bathroom that I have to use."

Child's decoy?

"Yes, a child's decoy!"

Do you mean a child's decor, maybe?

"Yes, that's what I said, a child's decoy."

Well, at that time all I said about it was that I would see to it that the bathroom was tastefully decorated in a manner that I deemed appropriate.

Obviously, though, that wasn't a good enough response for Grandma and so she decided to add the issue to her collection of things to obsess about. Which was why the subject was brought up again.

"I have a solution for the bathroom," she announced.

"Oh yeah?" says I.

The solution: she would have a shower curtain that she would use whenever she was in the bathroom and I could hang a second shower curtain for Lizzie to use whenever she used the bathroom because, again, she (Grandma) just can't look at frogs all day.

Um, no.

First off, having two shower curtains is ugly and tacky and I'm just not going to do that. Second off, it's MY bathroom and if I decide that I want to decorate it with a frog motif--excuse me, in a frog decoy--well, I will. Mess with me and I'll not only use frogs but little yellow duckies, too! Third off, while it's a well known fact that Grandma uses the bathroom a lot, she doesn't spend all damn day in there and having to look at frogs (and/or duckies :-) won't kill her, no more time than she'll be in the room. We can even get her blinders for her glasses so she doesn't even have to see the shower curtain, at least when she's using the potty.

But initially I didn't say any of this. All I said was that having two shower curtains was not something that I cared for and that her solution just wouldn't work for me.

Needless to say, Grandma was not pleased with my response and she continued to express her displeasure until I put an end to it by pulling rank: It's MY house and I'm going to decorate MY bathroom with whatever theme and decorations I see fit and if you don't like it you don't have to move in. You (Grandma) will have a room that you can decorate to your heart's content, but the rest of the house is MINE. Capiche?

I hated to be so blunt about it, but she left me no choice.

And while the subject was dropped then, she didn't really capiche at all. She just let it go. For the time being. The issue will rear its ugly head again, though, I have no doubt. Because, of course, there is a much bigger issue here than whether or not a few frogs hang out on the shower curtain: This is about how Grandma doesn't view herself as moving into my house and having to concede to what I want and live by my rules, Grandma views herself as moving into OUR house--essentially hers, mine and Donald's, with emphasis on the "hers" part.

Grandma just doesn't get--or, rather, doesn't want to get--what it is that she's getting herself into. I truly think that she thinks that this house is as much her house and it is anybodies and that she'll have just as much say as both Donald and I have. And that's just not the case. And I'm afraid. I'm very afraid. Because the whole reason I'm doing this is to help her out, to keep her from living alone, to give her another option besides her empty little blue house out in the country but if she refuses to cooperate and come to grips with the reality of the whole situation, I'll no choice but to have her move out. To Robin Wood or to an apartment or somewhere. She'll HAVE to get along or she'll HAVE to get out. And I don't want that to happen. I truly don't. But neither do I want to live the next however many years battling her attempts at trying to run roughshod over the way that Donald and I run our household.