Binding Love

Ever since my mom moved back in with our family, I feel like I’m in a time machine or have discovered the fountain of youth. That’s because since she’s moved back, I’ve gone from being a 51-year-old man to a 7-year-old boy.

At least that’s how she treats me, and while we love having her back, I have to put up with it because I’m overruled in my own house. Since our son is away at college, I’m the only male in the house. My mother-in-law also has been staying with us, so it’s me against four women.

That would be my wife, my 13-year-old daughter, my mother-in-law and now my mom. They stick together pretty tight, which explains why my big-screen TV has been exclusively used to view American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.

The house chore dynamics also have changed. I have exactly the same amount of man-chores to do around the house, but since my mom moved in, it feels like they’ve multiplied. That’s because the stuff that I would do on my own, my mom now feels like she has to tell me to do them.

I know when I have to take the garbage bin to the curb, but she will remind me before I have the chance to do it. Same with changing out the empty five-gallon water dispenser bottle. I can see that it’s empty, and yet she feels compelled to point this out to me so I “don’t forget.”

The worst thing is that she’s containerized some of our kitchen ingredients to fit her needs. In other words, she’s transferred stuff like my Splenda sweetener into a plastic container. I use Splenda every morning to “fix-up” my oatmeal, a regime I started when my doctor said I needed more roughage.

I also add dried fruit and nuts to it, so it actually tastes pretty good. The other morning I was making my oatmeal in front of my mom. I opened the Splenda container and scooped it onto my oatmeal. My mom asked why I was putting her Benefiber on my oatmeal.

I guess for the last three weeks I was inadvertently adding it to my oatmeal. That’s like mixing cement with Super Glue. This actually explains a lot that I won’t go into detail about here.