My Mother Comes to Dinner

My mother left this week to make her way south after staying for three weeks to help my sister Evie with Baby B. I had her over for dinner the night before she left and I almost lost it.  

I'm sure it will shock you to know that my mother has a little bit of a flair for drama.  She likes to do things in a big way.  Recently, what with Daddy's heart attack, my Grammy being sick, and Evie being pregnant, she's had to be more of a supporting character rather than the headlining act ~and in all honesty, as I have shared, she's done a bang-up job. As a result, she's come up with a few ways to ensure she is not lost in the shuffle.

She has a sore elbow, but being Grandma Wonder, she did not want to disappoint the children, so upon arriving, she invited them outside to shoot hoops and play catch while I got dinner ready ~which truly was helpful. Shortly there after, she burst into the house to the ice pack she brought with her out of the freezer. 

Did you know that you cannot successfully shoot hoops or play catch while holding an ice pack to your arm?  Not surprisingly, she was back in a few minutes later, mumbling about how it wasn't working.  I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but given our history, I knew it was best to just let her go and keep my mouth shut.   She found a sock on my couch.  I had been folding laundry earlier and I must have missed one.  I heard her comment that she would tie the ice pack to her arm. Except that it was a crew sock, not nearly long enough to accomplish such a feat, so instead, she just laid the sock across the top of the ice pack. I'm not really sure how this helped, except to keep her hand from getting cold and make her look even sillier.

She then sat with her ice pack/sock combo on her arm and moaned all through dinner. Inserting little comments so we were sure to notice her pain.  Things like, 

"It really hurts and I just can't figure out how to get it better," ~Maybe NOT play catch???

"You know, this isn't really made to be frozen. It's not really helping," ~You think?

"Do you have any ibruprofen?" ~Why yes, I do, but perhaps you'd like one of my prescription anti- inflammatories...oh, that's right, you have to be careful, because that my cause a flare up of of your IBS!

The piece de resistance was when she jumped up in the middle of the meal and started pacing because her hernia was acting up.  

It was quite a show. Knowing that I, given a lifetime of such theatrics, tend to get irritated more quickly than most, I was willing to entertain the idea that I was being oversensitive.  I said as much to LB.  Alas, even the normally unfailingly polite, trying to impress the parents  LB was astonished!

They say a good predictor of how a girl will age is to look at her mother. *SMH*

Never a dull moment, y'all, never a dull moment!