Question Of The Day, Friday, February 22

[Winchester]

Good morning! And Happy Friday!

Rick and I were talking about our mothers, exchanging stories about them and shaking our heads.

My mother had a habit of using a full sink of water and dish soap to wash one coffee mug. It used to make me crazy. She couldn't go to bed if there was a fork in the kitchen sink. Everything had to be washed, dried, and put away. When we were kids, Mom also washed our swing-set down with Lysol. Every single week. She had a dryer, but she always hung clothes outside to dry. It could be below freezing outside, but she'd go out and hang clothes. Rick's mother did the same thing. Me, I'm lazy.....I use the dryer.

Rick said that he could tell what day of the week it was just by what his mom made for dinner. Pot roast was always on Monday, roast chicken on Tuesday, and so on. He said it never changed when he was growing up.

What were some of your mom's habits that used to or that make you chuckle? What does she or did she do that just made your shake your head? I don't mean this to be negative, just maybe to share some humorous stories.

 

[weebeasties]

We had a guest bathroom that was NEVER used. Still, Mom would go in twice a week on her hands and knees to scrub it down because as she said, "I just KNOW there's germs in there!"

In the waste not want not category...
Mom would never throw out food. Even if that meatloaf had been in the refrigerator for a week and a half, she would still eat it. I can't count the number of times I would go to sniff a gallon of milk and the smell would almost bowl me over but Mom would say she couldn't smell a thing. I always joked that it was a wonder that any of us kids survived into adulthood.

 

[neely]

Rick said that he could tell what day of the week it was just by what his mom made for dinner. Pot roast was always on Monday

OMG, I couldn't believe when I read this. We must have shared the same mother because mine also made the same meals every day of the week and pot roast was always on Monday.

My mother was a "master ironer," if there is such a thing. She would not put laundry away until it was ironed. I remember she even ironed my father's underwear.

 

[Willowy]

The other day I was thinking about what people did with their time before computers. I guess they ironed undies and disinfected the swingset! I honestly don't remember what my mom did with her time when we were little.

My mom has extreme ADD. She can be totally reasonable one second, then totally unreasonable the next. She'll say one thing and then contradict herself 2 minutes later. She starts to clean out a cabinet, then gets distracted by something else, so the contents of that cabinet will sit there for a week until she might deal with them. She's always been this way. She probably would benefit from ADD meds but she won't take them.

My brothers have a ton of funny stories they tell about her. I don't remember any of them. I don't know if my brain blocked them because I found them traumatizing (I was an awfully sensitive kid) or if I wasn't paying attention at the time. One of their favorites is that she once found the fridge slightly ajar, and proceeded to start screaming and threw away all the food in it, screaming the entire time, because she didn't know how long it was open and "the food might have spoiled" (not angry screaming, but screaming like she was fighting off wolves or something, which is why they think it's so funny). She never showed any interest in temperature-based food safety before or since .

 

[MonaLyssa33]

My mom is ridiculous. The best anecdote that would fully describe her is when she took me to the ER in 2014 for a psych eval because I was having suicidal ideation and the doctor mentioned that the time was 2:30. My mom blurts out her favorite joke, "What is a dentist's favorite time? Tooth-hurty. 2:30. Get it?" I just shook my head and said, "oh my God, Mom." I still believe the doctor thought the wrong person was there for a psych eval. I do look back on it as funny, just to be clear, especially now that I'm no longer depressed.

 

[micknsnicks2mom]

i'm really enjoying reading everyone's posts!

 

[aliceneko]

My mum has quite a blue sense of humour, often leading her to crack an inappropriate joke in an awkward situation - which is a trait I've inherited from her
Waste not want not is also a motto my mum loves to stick by and will reduce everything down to the very last morsel. She hates admitting her age since she looks a lot younger than she is and often lies to people about her age leading her boss to believe she's twenty years younger than she actually is
My mum is also very sassy and is great at comebacks. According to her, she once got into an argument with one of her old colleagues at work some years ago, and as a result they told her to f*** off, to which she simply responded "no", smiled, and walked away. Sadly that's not a feature from her I've inherited well!
She's also travelled a lot, and always jokes that the only place she hasn't travelled to is the moon, since whenever someone mentions a country she'll often tell an anecdote from her time there. She used to work in advertising so travelled a lot for her job, which made her have a lifetime long love of travel.

 

[weebeasties]

aliceneko Your mom sounds like a hoot!

 

[amysuen]

I can't think of any that make me chuckle... She has to do all the dishes and clean off the counters every night before bed, but I admire that trait and wish I'd inherited it. She's in her 70s now and one trait I don't care for is that she's started putting things down. Like if she brings cookies over she'll say "They're probably any good" or when talking about her belongings "Not that anyone is going to want any of this junk anyway"

 

[Boris Diamond]

My mother...well, she was really smart. But nutty. If she needed to drive somewhere, she would get in her car and drive somewhere. Then she would look around, and if she was where she wanted to go, she would get out of the car and be about her business. If she was not where she wanted to go, she would start up her car and drive somewhere else. She would keep doing this until she got where she wanted to go. Thanks heavens there were only four or five places where she went often. We had to watch her!

 

[Tobermory]

Having grown up during the Depression, my mom saved and reused a lot of things that today we throw out. Bread bags and aluminum foil come to mind. She’d wash and carefully fold foil and put it in a drawer to use again. (Actually, I reuse foil if it isn’t messy.) When you’d open a drawer in the kitchen, all of these bread bags would spring out at you because she’d stuffed so many in there.

The last three or four years of her life, she would hoard napkins from the dining hall of her assisted living community. She wouldn’t use tissues because it was wasteful and instead, would painstakingly separate the two-ply napkins and use one thin sheet to blow her nose. Her rollator (walker) was absolutely stuffed with napkins that she’d taken from the dining room. The nurses and aides gave up trying to get her to use real tissues.

But her best and loveliest habit was her constant singing. She majored in music in college and her instrument was voice. Singing was like breathing for her. When I was growing up, I could always tell where she was in the house because I could hear her singing quietly to herself. She didn’t even know she was doing it. I think of her singing when I miss her the most. She died last May at 95.

 

[marmoset]

I can't think of anything. She's an awesome woman. I idolize her and my step-dad a bit. They are in their 70's now and are starting to slow down but only just.

She can be a bit old-fashioned in mentality and she was raised by a mother who was depression era so she can be real cheap when it comes to food but I look up to her for being spendthrift as well. I wish I was a little more like her.

 

[blueyedgirl5946]

Our grandmother was our mother. She was a saint. I love and miss her more everyday. During the growing up years, I thought she was old and set in her ways. Now I realize how wise she was. I never saw her do or say dumb things.
One of her quotes that I will never forget is "The best lessons ever learned are the ones learned the hard way. That is because you never forget them." How true it is. We were blessed to have her in our lives and to be raised by her.