I have rules in my house and most of them are for my mother, as she's the only real child here.  Most rules are to protect her (like don't go in the basement--per her physical therapist's orders, etc.) and some are to protect others from her.  And I made a recent rule that if she goes outside to smoke, she has to "air out" before coming near me, because she utterly REEKS like an ashtray.  And it really makes my sinuses act up (as does the smell of bleach, hot vinegar, etc.).  So I have rules about all strong scented shit that inflames my sinuses, and those rules are "they are not to be used in the house".  In the case of the "hot vinegar", it's so my mother cleans her fucking coffee pot while I am sleeping.  And since I don't leave my room until noon (I spend my mornings with my husband, watching YouTube videos together or one of our shows), that should be easy to do (though yesterday, she decided to clean it midday...uggh).  

My mother KNOWS my rules.  And she always disobeys them.  Not only that, she acts offended if I enforce them.  She's been taking to coming into the kitchen at 4:30 each evening, right when I am starting to cook.  My old rule was "GTFO while I am cooking", which she obeyed for over a year.  But now, she has a hair up her ass, and comes into the room right when I am starting to cook.  I cannot concentrate on what I am doing and will fuck up recipes if she talks at me (not to me, at me).  So I've been more vocal about her not being in there while I cook.  But she still does it.  So I leave it alone (my therapist said to pick and choose my battles, so now I just cook with headphones on).  But not today.  She loves to go smoke before sitting in there to read, and today I said "NOPE.  You have to go because you just smoked."  She said "I am," and proceeded to not leave (a trick of hers she likes to play with me).  So I stopped chopping potatoes and said "NO.  I mean out of this room.  Now."  She got hugely offended and said "FINE.  C'mon cat, let's go" she says in her ho-hum Eeyore voice, like that's going to make me feel bad.  "C'mon.  We need to leave the room" *ho-hum*.  I just giggled at her, because I do not feel bad nor do I care, since I am not the one stinking up the fucking house.  She then stopped in the hallway and turned on the other kitchen light, and said "Do you want that light on?"  She knows I don't.  I don't like unnecessary lights on.  And she just wanted to stop and make me smell her more.  I said "No thank you."  She then kept talking to her cat to follow her in her room and left the light on, so I reached over and shut it off.  

And when she does this shit, it offends me so greatly, because I know that she knows what my rules are.  And she doesn't give a fuck.  But then I remembered my mantra.  "She can only give what she has".  And she is nothing but full of defiance and selfishness.  Where that stems from, I don't know.  She loves control and showing others she can't be controlled.  Especially her doctor.  If a doctor tells her something, she will go out of her way to disobey his or her orders, just because she can.  And then she loves to tell everyone about it, because she thinks it makes her look like a badass.  "You can't tell me what to do!" is her mantra in life.  And I have to remember: it's not me she's disobeying, she's disobeying the rule I made.  Yes, she doesn't give two shits about what I want for my own health.  That I know.  But she doesn't have that mothering instinct inside of her, the part of her that should make her want to protect her child and help them, so she cannot give that to me.  She wasn't born with it.  Hell, she doesn't even want to protect and help herself, much less others.  I mean, sometimes she has it with her cats, but that's when she picks and chooses to.  Most of the time, they could be peeing blood and she'd say "Well, they had a good life" (for real, she did that once).  She even left our cat to have ear mites for his entire life until his ears were dripping with ooze and infected, and somehow that fucker still lived to be eighteen!  And she never once took him to the vet!!

God that cat stank.  Kind of like my mother.

But my point is, if she can treat animals that way, and herself that way, then why would I think she would care about my physical/health needs?  She would have let me die from a UTI back when I was 17 instead of getting off her ass to take me to the doctor.  So this is no different now.  But it's not about me.  It's about not being forced to do something she didn't want to do.  

She hates rules and will disobey them every chance she can get.  So the normal rules of "being a parent" do not apply to her, unless she has a whim to obey them.  And right now, she wants to push back on my rules to a) see if I enforce them, b) to see how much she can get away with, and c) she gets to play the victim by pretending I am telling her that SHE stinks, and not her cigarettes (as shown by the time she screamed at me "I CAN'T HELP IT!" as though her stink was some kind of unavoidable part of getting old).  She wants to be the victim so she can complain about me eventually her friend Christmas, or just so she can feel that victim mentally she loves to feel so much.  Even though all I am only asking her to do is leave the room until her cigarette smell dissipates.  

She can't give me what I want because she doesn't have it in her to think about other people (other than her favorite person, my husband--though that's even wearing thin with her).  So I should not take offense or see it as her trying to hurt me.  Even if she is, it's her vindictive game she's playing at payback for giving her rules to begin with.  Because my mother cannot do rules.  

We'll see how the rest of the night plays out, but most likely she'll come out to eat dinner and act normal.

BBQ baked pork chops and roasted sweet potatoes and roasted carrots tonight.  Yum.