So apparently I'm a failure.  I know this is inferred by me, to take her actions and imply my own meaning behind it.  But I'm pretty sure I know my mother well by now and I know what she's thinking when she does particular things.  And then there's the fact that she's called me that before to my family members.  "I don't know why Shay has never done anything with her life" she said once at the family reunion right after The Great Awakening (which is what I call the time when I found out she's a narcissist and started this blog in 2013).  She said it because she was angry that I had told the world that I grew up in an abusive home.  She told my family I never accomplished anything in my life, then went home and told her BFF this, knowing damn well that BFF was going to tell me.  And not to mention every action she takes is to tell me "you're not good enough" or "you're a failure".  And yesterday was no different.  

So yesterday my kids said to me "Hey mom, wanna go shoot the air gun at some cans?"  Let me tell you guys, we are pandemic bored.  Now shooting is something my kids do regularly for fun (they're adults, don't forget), but usually I just watch.  But I thought this sounded like fun, as the air gun has no recoil and isn't very loud.  But as I walked into the kitchen, I saw the second bathroom's door open with the light on and I said to the kids "Dammit, why is the bathroom door open?"  and I reached in to shut the light off to find my mother on her hands and knees cleaning the floor with spray cleaner.  And it smelled awful.  

Now, here's the thing: my mother has her own bathroom.  I told her more than once to leave the second bathroom alone, that cleaning it and anything that needs to be done in it is my job.  This is because she's gone into that bathroom too many times to count and rearranged shit, removed items, put items in there, and whatnot, and I have to keep telling her to keep out.  I say "You have your own bathroom to decorate and mess with and clean, leave my bathroom alone."  But the biggest reasons is that I am allergic to fragrance (as well as cigarette smoke, bleach, and ammonia).  She doesn't give two shits and keeps on buying cleaners and using them in places that make me sick.  Not to mention her bedroom smells like kitty litter mixed with a horrible perfumed air freshener (she has both in her room, which is why it stinks like that).  She also smokes like a chimney and thinks lysol is needed to clean everything.  I AM BOMBARDED WITH HORRIBLE SMELLS ALL DAY LONG because of her.  It's horrible.  

And there she is, spraying freaking Windex on my bathroom floor (which has ammonia in it, something I'm very sensitive to).  And hot damn, if didn't smell awful in that room.  So I said "What are you doing?  You know you're not supposed to clean that bathroom with your cleaners!"  She replies "I know, but the floor is freaking filthy!"  Now, I use a cleaner (non-scented) on the floor that if I don't wash up quickly, it will dry sometimes and leave a tad bit of residue that attracts dust and dirt.  So even though it was just cleaned, it may look dirtier than it should in a couple of days.  Usually I remedy this, but forgot this time.  I said "If you want to see filth, go look at your own bathroom."  My mother leaves fecal matter everywhere in there.  I'm not trying to be gross here, but we're constantly cleaning the walls, the floor, the toilet seat, the side of the cabinet, because for some reason when she poops, it explodes?  I have no idea how it's happening, but it happens (and yes, her doctors know all about this).  And she will leave it that way when her physical therapist comes over and then act like everything is cool.  Yet, she spends two seconds in our bathroom (because my son made the wrong choice to use her bathroom instead of ours and she had to use ours) and all of a sudden she's like a maniac, acting like I never clean our bathroom.  Hence me saying that I am a failure in her eyes, because she can leave her bathroom looking like a truckstop of diarrhea but mine has a "dirty floor" and it's a HUGE deal now.

She kept going on and on and on about how gross it was (it really wasn't), trying to make me feel like a terrible housekeeper or whatever and all I could do was think about growing up in a home where all the floors would turns your feet black and how our walls were stained with two things: 1) third-hand yellow cigarette smoke and 2) our 120lb dog would rub his back up and down the hallway walls to scratch his back and there was a line down our hallway where you could clearly see where the dirt was caked in.  She never washed those walls buy maybe once a year.  It was disgusting.  I grew up in total filth, and now my mother wants to shame me because a tiny part of my bathroom floor was dirty?  Hahaha okay. 

The issue really had nothing to do with shaming me, though.  She can't shame me because I honestly don't care what she thinks.  What this was about was her lack of respect for me and my body and how it reacts to things in my environment.  I am very, very sensitive/allergic to strong chemical smells (my sinuses become inflamed, even the smell of vinegar bothers me, as does almost all artificial fragrance).  She's the type of mother that if I were allergic to shellfish as a child?  She'd have cooked it once a week just to prove I can't control her.  My parents used to leave garden fertilizers and pesticides in my son's reach when he was very little (like one and half years old) on purpose just to prove to me that I could not tell them what to do in their own house (and once, he did get into them and they blamed him for it--who blames a baby for things?).  They always put me (and eventually, my children) in danger because keeping us safe meant we were controlling them.  

What kind of fucked up parental logic is that?  

So today, I'm going to throw out every single god damned cleaner in the house.  All of it.  I don't care if she just bought it or not.  Then I'm going to replace them with my "Shay Safe" cleaners that I make myself.  They are just as effective and be scent-free and contain no harsh crap like bleach (which I am super sensitive to).  I'm also going to throw away her gross air fresheners.  It's going to be a clean air home when I get done.  I feel like every single damn day I am battling the constant smells of whatever grossness she wants to subject me to. 

Here's another thing: I fought her tooth and nail to not put a damn kitty litter in her room.  Her bedroom is right next to mine and she refuses to keep her door shut.  So 1) my dogs get into her room and rifle through her dirty kitty litter and 2) it fucking smells like horrible horrible-ness.  But she won (though when she goes in a home for a month or more after surgery that cat litter will be gone), for now.  I keep shutting her stupid door so I can at least walk into my room without having to smell hers.  

Also, she smokes, and smells awful after coming inside after having a cigarette (and I don't know how many times we've argued about her not smoking in the house...I am allergic and my son has asthma, and who wants their house smelling like that nasty shit?).  She stinks so bad after smoking because she loves to break off the end of it with her fingers to save half of it.  I used to smoke a long time ago, and for some reason when you do that to a cigarette, it stinks like horrible shit.  Worse than just plain smoking.  And she leaves these "half cigarettes" on the ledges by both the front and back doors, which make it smell awful when you go out either door.  So I always flick them off into the grass or into the canisters I give her to but her butts in.  

When she's not smoking, she's cleaning the entire house (very seldomly though) with her damn cleaners.  Like Lysol and whatever else she has (like using Windex on everything).  I used to use disinfectant wipes a lot when we first moved in, because we had lots of a workers in our house and I didn't want anyone in our house to get Covid-19.  But now?  We are literal hermits (per my orders).  Nobody comes in our house but us.  And only in the past two weeks has my husband started working again after being laid off due to the pandemic from the beginning of summer.  So there's no reason to have to use stinky anti-bacterial sprays all over the damn house.  I use anti-bacterial soap to wash our masks in.  And I use wipes to clean the car every so often.  That's it.  But my mother goes out and has an obsession with buying all the cleaners she can get her hands on.  Where was this person when I was a child and living in probably the dirtiest house I'd ever known?  Oh yeah, she was drunk back then.  Too busy buying beer, drinking beer, and thinking about drinking beer to clean anything at all.  

So I grew up in a stinky house because my mother let our pets shit on our carpet and never got our carpets cleaned, and now I still live in a stinky house because she creates ways to make it smell bad.  I have horrible allergies and chemical sensitivities and she just doesn't care and thinks I'm being an over reactive baby.  

For every little thing I need in life from her I'd had to fight for.  She makes me out to be the bad guy in everything because she acts like a disrespectful little baby when I ask her to do anything that she may view as me trying to control her (like she has ODD or something).  She refuses to acknowledge my needs in life, always has, so here I am, feeling constantly exhausted because I am sick of fighting for things that should just be a given. 

I also want to be able to relax.  I just want to be able to walk through my house without always plugging my nose or having horrible sinus pain if I don't.  I just want her to respect what I ask of her, but she never will give me that.  I know this.  So instead, I have to take drastic measures, like always locking doors (like my bedroom door, otherwise she comes into room without knocking every single day), hiding mail from her (she will get catalogs and go on online shopping sprees regularly), and now I have to throw away all her cleaners (this isn't the first time I've had to do that).  I hate having to be on top of everything she does.  She's like a toddler with a debit card and credit card and she's always making selfish or stupid decisions (like not taking her cat to the vet because that cat isn't her favorite cat--she only takes her favorite cat to the vet--she has SIX fucking cats and only one gets medical care).  

I am not her mother.  I raised my kids better and smarter than how she acts.  She's like my adopted misbehaved jackass that the farm couldn't handle anymore so they forced me to take her in.  She's always braying and kicking things and slamming her door when she doesn't get what she wants.  I didn't ask for this.  But then again, I am not in a position to walk away from it either.  So I have to endure.  

I just wish I had a better outlet for my annoyances.  Our house is so freaking tiny that we have zero space for creativity or creating.  Unless I want to use the basement, where her cats go and destroy all my stuff with their pee.  More stink.  And ruined stuff.  

I swear to god, I am not ever getting another cat in this house for as long as we live here.  As hers die off (we've already had two die), we are not getting any extra.  Geezus.  

Okay, I'm done ranting.  I'm going to go and throw away her cleaners now.  Here are the recipes for homemade ones instead: 

1. Baby Wipes. No, they are not homemade.   But they contain no harsh shit and do not smell.  I get the Family Dollar unscented brand (the blue bags) and they work just fine.  I use them for wiping down the outsides of toilets and baseboards and whatnot.  I use them clean up pet accidents (not pee, that's what paper towels are for, though I'll use a baby wipe to clean the residue off after soaking up with a paper towel).  I eventually want to go zero waste (or as zero waste as I can go), but we have so many pets, I have no idea how that will happen. 
   
   Oh, and the best way I use these?  Is for glass cleaning.  The trick is scrub the shit out of your window or mirror, and then dry off with a microfiber towel.  Works amazingly well, and no stinky ammonia smell from Windex or vinegar smell!
   
2. Half water, half vinegar, a squirt of Dawn.  I know it still smells, I know, but I can go less on the vinegar if need be.  And it dissipates faster than other smells.  I hate the smell of vinegar, but I will put up with it in case of really dirty stuff.  But, you can create a citrus scented vinegar so it will remove the smell (thank goodness).  Get some citrus rinds, rosemary, and cloves (I luckily grow rosemary in my garden): fill up a quart mason car with all that jazz half full and then pour hot vinegar into the jar, and let it sit 24 hours (or pour it all in cold, and let it sit for week).  Voila!  Non-stinky vinegar.  I have some on my counter right now that smells amazing! (lemon and lime rinds with a stick of cinnamon).
   
3. Baking Soda and Peroxide.  I think peroxide is a type of bleach, but it doesn't smell and is safe to use on your skin.  Wonderful scrubbing agent AND is a germ killer.  
4. Peroxide.  Put in a spray bottle and use as a cleaner all by itself.   You can use this on your kitchen counters, in your fridge, on your toilet, etc.  Spray and let it sit for five minutes before scrubbing.  Just make sure the spray bottle is opaque (or else it will ruin it).  Rinse clean with wet paper towels after scrubbing, just like you would any cleaner. And, the best part?  It's a disinfectant and kills H1N1 and Covid (and everything else).  So bye-bye Lysol!  You can still find peroxide at the Dollar Tree for a buck, but good luck finding Lysol anywhere!
   
5. Rubbing Alcohol.  I cut up paper towels and put them in a baggie and pour in the rubbing alcohol and bam!, non-bleach cleansing wipes.  They do dry it out, so don't do a lot of paper towels at once.  And yes, this is stinky, but the scent evaporates quickly.
   
6. Olive Oil.  I use olive oil as a way to revitalize my wooden spatulas and my cutting boards.  The trick so it doesn't go racid on your stuff is to make sure it's thoroughly removed after applying.  I also have used it as a furniture polish, again, removing completely after applying.
7. Laundry Soap.  I used to make my own laundry detergent.  I only had to make it twice a year and it would last that long.  It was great.  But after using it for YEARS on end, I found it doesn't clean quite as well as I like.  So I'm back to buying it.  Perhaps I'll make it again one day.  But here's my recipe (not mine, the one I use): Laundry Soap Recipe.  Though, I'd always add one container of OxyClean to it, as well, and use the OxyClean scoop.  Fels Naptha bar soap?  Smells freaking amazing, btw.  Also our vet said he uses that bar soap straight on his clothes when a cat pisses on him to get out cat pee smells.  And it works.  So there ya go :)  Now I need to make a spray out of it to clean cat pee out of things that aren't clothes.  Because my mother's cats piss on everything.  Yuck. 
8. Stove and Floor Cleaner.   I just recently found this recipe and WOW.  This makes cleaning my stove EASY and keeps my laminate floor thingies from warping.  I also use this on everything else, so it goes fast in our house. 
       1 cup Water
       1 cup White Vinegar (again, use scented vinegar as I stated above)
       1 cup Alcohol (rubbing)
       2-3 drops Dish Soap
      

Oh and I did shoot the airgun after her little meltdown.  And I shot a can on my first try about a quarter of an acre away!  I always tell the kids "I was a pro at Duck Hunt on Nintendo.  So I think I'd be a great shot if real guns just didn't have so much damn recoil!"  To find out, I was right! ha!  LOL