If I have to hear this phrase one more time out of her mouth, she's going to get an earful.  I am so tired of it.  I remind her to do (or not do) things because a) she has dementia and constantly forgets things, and b) she just doesn't give a shit about remembering anything I ever ask of her, and will no do the things I ask just out of spite because she doesn't like to be told what to do.

"Did you lock the door?"  We lock the back door (and front door) constantly since we have a dog who likes to open the doors and run away.  She will lie and say the kids left it unlocked (remember, they are adults), even though they were sleeping.  Or she will make a huge deal out of going back and checking it and saying "Okay, better check the door now or else I will get in trouble!"  Yet, I have never once yelled at her about, well, pretty much anything.  

"You smell like cigarettes, so please go to your room until you air out."  I am very sickened by the smell of smoke and nobody in our house can stand just how pungent this woman is after smoking (she will pick the cherry off her cigarettes-the lit end-which makes her fingers STINK, which makes all of her STINK).  This has been the rule since DAY ONE and she still gets angry with me about it.  It's been three years now.  Three fucking years and I am still having to tell her to do this.  If I don't, she will putter around to see just how long she can get away with stinking up the kitchen or living room.

"You need to shut your bedroom door, remember?  And keep it closed so the dogs don't get in there and eat all your cat food (that she keeps on the floor).  Also, so your cat doesn't get hurt because the dog hates him.  Remember?"  She'll get a hair up her ass and leave it open for absolutely no reason (today she even propped it open with a dirty blanket).  Her cat has stalked my dog and chased him down and attacked him and now the dog will try to attack him when he sees him.  This has created even more issues in our house because my mother will take this cat, who weights like 15lbs btw, and put him under her shirt and try to carry him in while the dog is in the kitchen.  The cat is a FREAK.  He has ripped my mother to shreds before over being scared of a door closing loudly.  So, having a dog who wants to eat him right there in the same room?  She makes horrible decisions that put her cat, herself, my dog, and us all at risk.  That cat will be finding a new home soon.  What kind of cat attacks dogs for no reason??  Like I said, he's a total freak.  And having him in this house, along with my mother, isn't safe for anyone.  But she likes to leave her bedroom door open so the dog comes in, tries to hurt her cat or eat all the catfood, and then she can bitch about it.

"Please don't touch my things in the living room."  I will go shopping, usually for groceries, and leave my bags in the living room, and she would go through them.  And I think she still does, thinking nobody can see her.  But now my son's room is the living room because our basement flooded and she wouldn't dare.  Also, she used to go in the living room and "clean" it, but move all my stuff around and put it places so I couldn't find it.  But again, my son's room is now in there, so she will leave it alone until we leave here.  Hopefully.  

These are the things I may remind her of on any given day.  I don't say any of them daily, nor do I get on her case about anything other than the not leaving the room after she's smoked.  But when I do remind her of any of these, her answer to me is always the same: 

"Yes ma'am" she'll reply in a shitty tone of voice.  

Recently, she's been saying it a LOT.  But recently, she's been coming in from smoking and fucking around in the house and then pretending I am hurting her feelings by telling her to go away.  "Ma, you smell like cigarettes, you need to go in your room!"  "Yes ma'am.  Sigh.  She KNOWS she's supposed to leave, but doesn't care.  She goes through this defiance with her smoking when she's feeling saucy.  Trying to push her boundaries with me.  The next time she says yes ma'am to me, I am going to let her know that I am doing her a favor by letting her smoke at all.  She COULD be living in a nursing home that doesn't allow smoking.  So, she needs to remember this rule or else get less cigarettes until she does.  Granted, I won't actually cut her cigarettes down, as I've gotten her down to 13 from 20.  But that doesn't mean I can't let her believe I would.  

I have other rules for her.  Granted, they aren't ongoing, as most have been resolved.  But none without a fight.  Like, a "bothering me every single day for months on" fight until I scream at her to stop asking me to do it.  Some of these rules are unspoken, but they are still the rule even so.  Remember, these are over a span of 3 years.  

"Please ask before you take my things and use them for yourself." She loves to take my things, especially outdoor items, and never once ask my permission, even though they aren't hers, and use them for whatever she likes and put them somewhere to keep them from me, as if she's marking her territory.  One time?  She stole my cart, the kind you use for shopping at a flea market, and put a bag in it and used it for dog poop!!!  This week, she grabbed my fencing I have for around my hostas so nobody mows them over and put it around her plants for absolutely no reason.  So I took it back, rolled it up and put it in the garage (which is a total and horrible mess right now).  So, what did she do?  Got into the garage and climbed over a bunch of shit (she's a fall risk, don't forget) and stole it back!!  So, I took it back again, rolled it back up and put it back in the garage, and then took the garage doorknob and turned it around so it locks from the inside.  She has no access to the garage anymore.  Like I've said before: if she plays games with me, I take away her access to things rather than keep on playing her game.  She could have REALLY hurt herself climbing around shit in the garage.  Only a total crazy person who has her bodily health issues would do such a thing.  And I can't believe she did it.  So, now she no longer can.  

"Don't clean my bathroom.  Only clean your own bathroom."  This has been a battle since day one.  She needs to learn to let go of the control she thinks she has over my items.  Back in the day she'd run her happy little ass in there with bleach, something I could not breath in (I have chemical sensitivities) which she knew about, and clean the whole thing, making me sick and giving me migraines.  So, the rule stood, no cleaning that bathroom.  She did anyways, whenever she liked.  Eventually, I did yell at her enough and she quit.  That is until Thanksgiving 2022, when she used my ER visit and subsequent severe pain to use my predicament against me to do whatever she liked.  We came back from somewhere and I found her in my bathroom, spraying it all sorts of bullshit, so I told her, in a calm voice, to stop what she was doing and get out of my bathroom.  She blew up and started screaming, so I went into the bathroom to use it and she slammed the door into my back.  The pain I was in was from my Mirena IUD causing a HUGE cyst on my ovary, which only hurt in my back.  So I turned around and shut the door on her, but she was pushing it open on me again and screaming and I was holding the door shut on her.  I should have called 911.  I don't know why I didn't.  But I should have and had her committed for a bit.  She was being an irate lunatic and later referred to it as just "being crabby".  Because narcissists love to downplay their violence.  Anyways, this was around 6 months ago and I hope she'll never try to clean that bathroom again.  But knowing her, she will just forget about it all go in there and do whatever she likes one day soon.  

"Don't use mop the kitchen as the floor is laminate and has a horrible film over the entire thing if you mop it.  Instead, you have to spot clean it." She recently mopped the floor on her hands and knees with a washcloth and a bucket.  I was PISSED because the floor looked like total shit.  She hasn't done it since, but if I find her doing it again, I am taking away what little cleaning supplies she has left.  

"Leave the backyard light on, always."  We have a HUGE backyard and we have coyotes out there beyond the fence (which is short).  So, I don't want cats or dogs going out if we see one out back.  But you can't see the in freaking dark.  Also, it's just safer to have a light on at night.  Duh.  All the houses around here are sitting ducks in the pitch black dark, just waiting for people to rob them.  But my mother thinks she's invincible and thought I was being an idiot for leaving the light on.  She also thought I was an idiot because I required the back door to be locked all night, too.  Plenty of times I would wake up and find my mother had been out smoking and refused to lock the door after she came in, both front and back.  So, I banned her from smoking out front and made a HUGE sign for the back to lock the door.  Eventually, when she refused to leave the light on enough times, I just ducktaped that motherfucker into the "on" position" and put a sign "do not touch" on it.  Boy, that made her mad, but that light has been on ever since.

"Don't leave the full garbage bag on the kitchen floor.  The dogs will get into it and you'll have to clean it up."  Cause I sure won't, because I didn't leave it there.  Eventually, she refused to follow this rule enough times (until actually recently), so now the rule is she can't remove the garbage bag from the bin anymore.  Period.  Or take out the recycling.   I wrote on the fridge with dry erase marker pointing to both, so she remembered the rule that she's not allowed to remove the garbage bag or recycling bag.  This makes her angry, but it relieves so many issues for us all, as for one, I'd have to pick through our HUGE recycling bin throwing away garbage she'd throw in there.  

"You are not allowed to do the dishes."  This was a fight to get her to stop doing.  Like, for almost 6 straight months.  Now she doesn't say a word about it.  Her dementia made her put away dirty dishes without washing them and once she dug the scrubbie I threw away out of the garbage and used it to wash dishes.  The idea of that makes me want to vomit.  I honestly wondered where we got this HORRIBLE stomach bug two years ago, like we were all puking (all but my hubby).  And I honestly wonder today if it had something to do with what she did with our dishes.  Maybe, maybe not.  But still, I am glad I put a stop to that nonsense.  

"You are not allowed to cook, especially not holiday meals."  She's got dementia and can't cook anymore.  But holidays, she's full of piss and vinegar and when she cooks or takes part in the holiday cooking, she's HORRID and abusive, so she's banned from it.  Now?  She refuses to even acknowledge any holidays at all and stays in her room all day and only comes out to eat.  Which is total fucking bliss.  

"You are not allowed to go for walks by yourself, go in the basement unless it's an emergency, or drive."  All of these are because she's a fall risk.  And the fall risk is because she walks sideways and can't see straight.  She hates these rules and used to even go for walks alone when we left the house (something she told me about later) just to prove she could.  But these are to keep her safe.  I have a lock on the basement door to keep her out and on the living room door so she can't go out front alone.  She can go out the back all she likes and cannot access the front from the back.  In case of a fire, she has plenty of space to get away from the house in the back if for some reason we weren't home.  

"You are not allowed to take out the garbage, bring the cans in, or get the mail."  She broke her wrist getting her garbage cans once.  So, I use the idea of her safety as the reason I don't let her do these things.  But in actuality, it's all for the mail.  She steals my mail, she gets ads for bullshit and she tries to buy everything, she gets ads for life insurance and tries to buy it all, etc, etc.  So, I told her it was dangerous for her to walk out to get the mail or the garbage cans without a walker.  She refuses to use her walker, so the problem seemed to fix itself.  But when she refused to stop getting the garbage bins, I locked the bins together so she could not move them with a bike chain (the bins are by the mailbox when brought out--so if she could get them, she could get the mail).  When she refused to stop getting the mail, I stopped the mail from coming to our house for two weeks and lied and told her I now get all my mail at the post office instead.  After we started getting our mail again, she forgot all about the mail and never asked to get it again.  Although she still steals it if she finds it in the house, so I have to be careful to keep in my room.  Even the recyclable garage mail I have to keep in a recycle bag in my room, or else she'll go through it and steal it.

"You are not allowed to roll your own cigarettes".  I bought a machine to make her cigarettes as it's WAY cheaper to make them than to buy them premade.  The machine isn't cheap and if I gave her free reign over making them herself, she would not only be smoking two packs a day, she'd eventually break the machine.  She bothered me for almost a fucking year over this one.  SHE wanted complete control over her cigarettes.  And I refused.  I eventually told her if she asked me again, I would never buy her anymore, ever.  She still didn't quit, but like everything, she got bored and wandered off and forgot all about it.  And now I have her down to a little over a half a pack a day instead of a full pack.  All by cutting her cigarettes down by one every other week.  It seems as though 13 is her threshold, but that's okay.  It's better than 20.  

"You have to wash your hands when you come home from the store or the doctor's office."  To this day, she still says "But I used hand sanitizer."  Yes mom, but you also touched a shit ton of things afterwards, like chairs and doors and whatevers.  And you refuse to not touch your fucking face when you go places, even though I keep telling you to stop.  And, you used to be a goddamned CNA for Pete's sake, and you KNOW you're supposed to wash your goddamned hands!!!  But not her.  She thinks we're stupid for asking to do it.  And she wonders why I don't take her places.  

"You're not allowed to go to the grocery store, the dollar stores, or pretty much anywhere but the resale shops and even then sparingly."  My mother is a fucking spendoholic and if I let her go to the store, she will grab every piece of candy she sees, every cleaner with bleach she sees, and every comforter known to man she sees, and fill up her fucking cart and act like she's in charge of the money.  One time, at a nursery, she picked out $130 worth of stupid-ass plants and expected me to buy them for her.  It was insane.  I was sooooooooo angry she put me on the spot in front of strangers, forcing me to say yes, and pouting when I started to say no.  So, after that, I limited her outings.  Then she went with us to Walmart and picked out boxes and boxes of really expensive donuts and around $50 worth of candy, and all sorts of bullshit ass cleaners.  So, I made her to go the car with my husband and took her cart and put everything back and had to make up some crap when I got home as to why her stuff wasn't there.  I let her keep some stuff, but all the shitty stuff, I put back.  And that was the last time she was allowed at Walmart.  Then I took her to the resale shop and she spent another $130, and that was it.  I was done.  I haven't taken her to go shopping since.  And now?  We've been able to save money ever since.  And she never asks to go with anymore, except every now and then.  Thank freaking goodness.  Now, when she wants something?  She writes it down and I buy it for her.  I pretty much buy her whatever she wants, whenever she wants it (other than really insane things, but those things are few and far between anymore ).  She never even wants to go shopping, as all her needs are being met.  She is a avid reader, so I go to the resale shops every other week and stock up on books for her.  Recently, I bought her around 10 Harlan Coben and related books (she recently found out she loves his books) that I am holding onto to give her when she'd done with the last batch I bought her.  She's going to be super excited.  She has no need for random shopping trips anymore.  I've broken her of her addiction to spending money she doesn't have (she used to not even be able to pay for her rent or other bills--one even being a $40,000 life insurance policy she just let go because she kept spending all her money on bullshit).  And it's nice to see her in a space that doesn't include shopping as a hobby anymore. 

I have had other small rules I've had to implement, but none more pressing than these.  Like "don't put citrus peels in the compost" and shit like that, as she kept doing it.  But that stuff is small stuff.  And today, 3 years later, she's following most of my rules to the point they aren't even rules anymore.  And know, I don't make rules to control her just for fun.  I have to both corral the crazy, and at the same time keep her safe.  But some of my rules?  Are just for me.  Like the smoking thing.  Which is why, even earlier today, this is still an issue with her.  As she DOES NOT CARE about anything that's for me.  It's like her one last stand against the tyranny that is the time that is ravaging her brain and body.  And me.  The tyranny of me.  The person tasked with taking care of her and making sure she's not hurting herself.  That little rebellious asshole.  So, much fucking fun.  "Yes ma'am."  Damn straight.  I once told her that her parents didn't raise her right and now it's my turn to be her parent and make her be the person they should have made her be back then.  That was in December of 2022.  And I meant it.  So maybe I should take that as a compliment?  She sees me as her mother.  So, maybe I should just respond "And don't you forget it."