u/janebenn333

For context, I live with my elderly 87-year-old mother in her house as her primary caregiver.

I got up this morning at 7:30 a.m. had a light breakfast and immediately started on chores: water the front lawn, remove weeds and other growth from between cracks in the landscaping and the edge of the driveway, remove weeds from the flower beds, water the flower beds, wash the driveway and pathway, go to the backyard and tend to plants in the flower beds, do weeding in the vegetable garden, transplant two plants that aren't doing very well, water the garden, deal with ants coming into the basement, do a load of laundry, clean the bathroom, put away dishes that were washed last night, take garbage out, load the fridges with cold drinks, and finally at 9am sit down to rest.

Not going to lie I feel drained already. And the day is just beginning. I still have to finish the laundry, put away some clothes, do grocery shopping for the week, prepare meals for the day, wash the floors and somewhere in there I have to go visit a sick relative.

How is this still my life? I know how it's still my life. I agreed to help my mother age in place after my father passed away. This is not how I wanted to be spending this period of my life.

EDIT: Thank you for the advice; I know I need to pace myself more and I know I have to get more comfortable with things being messy for a bit, not being done until tomorrow and just plain old saying "No".

Newbie vegetable gardener here.

I'm working with a garden inherited from my late father; it's a very large vegetable garden area and when I started in spring I could only manage to till and prepare a small part of the garden. Also the garden is right up against a ravine with a lot of rabbits and groundhogs and chipmunks so lots of wildlife to eat vegetables and plants and flowers if you know what I mean.

I bought a bunch of pots and filled them so that I could (a) spare my back and (b) hopefully stave off some of the animals from eating what I grow. I have two large pots with pepper plants all doing quite well, flowering and some peppers starting to show up. I did plant 3 or 4 in the ground just as a way of seeing what would work better. They are doing less well, interestingly. And then I have one smaller pot with 3 plants in it. Those plants are NOT doing well. It may be the size and shape of the pot, I'm not sure. But I'd like to rescue those plants if I can. I do have other pots so I have some questions.

Is it safe to transplant them into other pots at this time of the year? How can I help them survive a move if I do that?

It is normal to retain more water when the weather is very hot. It's a temporary thing and is how your body deals with keeping your body cool when it feels very hot.

This is why people who take diuretics for health reasons are sometimes told to reduce their dosages or stop them for a while because it causes problems.

So if you're living in the middle of one of these horrid high heat events and you're finding yourself bloated, reduce your sodium, stay hydrated and don't get frustrated if the scale isn't moving as much.

Just a note: diet, low sugar drinks or zero sugar drinks often contain sodium to add flavour. So probably the best drink during very hot days is water.

UPDATE and EDITED: Ok guys I asked for advice and I got a lot of honest comments and opinions. I appreciate the directness. I need to fight this need to do everything and just let my kids manage these things without senior management oversight and supervision. Thing is I'm actually retired and should be over all this nonsense but habits die hard.

I am an elder Gen X (61 years old) and I have two millennial children (one is 34F and one 30M) who are primarily out in the world on their own living their own lives.

For the most part I just hang back. I provide moral, emotional, physical and sometimes financial support when asked but try not to become, as my son affectionately called me for years, the "momager".

What my son meant by that is I am a hyper organized person. In my career I was middle and then senior management for decades. I was used to planning, delegating, thinking ahead of the curve, strategizing -- you know all those things we Gen X'ers basically are known for. This was because I was parentified at a very young age. My parents were silent gen and I am the oldest daughter so boom: I was basically put in charge of a lot of things starting from maybe age 10. I won't bore all of you with the details but: latch key kid, prepared all the meals, cared for younger sibling, sent out to buy cases of beer and cigarettes -- all the things.

So when my kids were kids they would tease me about my lists of things to do, detailed itineraries for trips, notes in point form instructions for chores etc.

As they got older though that quality didn't resonate so much. They weren't looking for me to manage every detail of their lives, they wanted autonomy and I heard that and let go. I was raised by a very controlling mother and I didn't want them to have the same complicated relationship that I have with her.

But, fellow Gen X'ers, I admit I struggle sometimes with the different approaches millennials have to Gen X'ers. My oldest is currently waiting to get approval for a work visa in Europe. She has an employment contract, her plane tickets booked and is waiting for the employer to confirm her visa. It's been maybe 6 weeks since the application went in and she has followed up on status only once. ONCE!!!!!

I've gently suggested she follow up again because anything can happen. She says no, the immigration specialist knows how to do her job and my daughter doesn't want to "annoy her" by emailing too often. Maybe it's my Gen X brain but how is following up on something that you are waiting for being "annoying"?

Is it a Gen X thing? Are we just wired to be hyper vigilant and wanting to manage everyone's work???

My 87 year old covert narc mother has always made everything about her and as she has aged she has found the ultimate reason for things to be about her: she's old.

We should plan our lives around her, because: she can go at any time. I've mentioned the flaw in this argument i.e. that anyone can go at any time and that only difference with dying when you are old is that you are probably going to die of old people things. But "I may not be around very long" is something we can all say.

She rejects that premise lol.

I have two adult children in their 30s. They have full busy lives. One does not live in the city; she has to take a flight to visit. The other lives in the city but he's young, he works full time and he has a social life. So we might see him once a month.

My oldest is flying in to visit for a few weeks. My mother asks me in a sort of annoyed way: "So, are we going to see [my son] at all?" I answered that we will but not this week, with World Cup and Pride Week there's alot of cool stuff going on in the city. He's living his life.

My mother's response to this: "Its just that I want to see my grandkids together around me; because I'm old."

Uh. Ok? I replied that my kids are young and they have full lives. She did a "Hmmm" thing and stopped insisting.

It's not enough that she has guilted and roped me into being her full time caregiver; now her grandkids should put their lives on hold too. LOL no.

This week I officially have lost 40 pounds and I am three pounds away from the goal I set when I joined. I did not want to set a very audacious goal at first; preferring to work towards one goal and then reset to a new one.

So now I have a question: I've been successful thus far (I do points tracking only; no GLP-1) and I'm a bit nervous or anxious about keeping the weight off. My plan is to hit my target and then set a new target to lose another 10 pounds. I could go lower; even at ten pounds under my target I'm still technically "overweight" but its a weight I'm comfortable at and I'm not sure I want to be much lighter to be honest.

So my question is whether there's now a new setting to keep going but not at the rate I have been losing (which has been 1 to 2 lbs a week)? I paid for a year and I'll go for the year and I want to keep it off this time so how does this work???

For context I am 62 and I care for an elderly widowed mother who is 87. My mother has had literal lifelong health conditions that put her in a category of needing extra support through medications and she can't live alone. She's unable at this stage of her life to prepare meals for herself, clean her house, do laundry, groceries etc. She thankfully is well cognitively.

But she is also a person who resists and fights constantly against the impacts and natural outcomes of aging. She has severe osteoarthritis and yet every day when she gets up with pain will question why she's in pain. She lost most of her hearing years ago (mostly due to working in factories for decades) and yet will go most of the day without hearing aids insisting she can hear fine even though everyone ends up yelling so she can understand. She has mobility issues and most of the time is good at being careful to not fall but refuses to use her walker/rollator in the house. She also refuses, outright, to think of something like a senior's residence or assisted living putting the burden on me. Because going into a home is "shameful".

All my life my mother's approach has been to fight and fight hard against limitations. And I get that, we are all taught to not let obstacles get in the way and to advocate for ourselves etc. Sure. But there's a limit to how much you can fight. Eventually you do hit a wall and what the "fight" mentality has done to my mother is she refuses to admit that she might need help. She'll ask for some help here and there, what she thinks she's entitled to, but in the end to the outside world, she's perfectly fine to live at home because she has: me.

Now I agreed to care for her a couple of years ago so I am not complaining about that. What I've learned in the process though is that as I age, I am learning how to say "no, I can't do that the way I did 20 years ago and that's fine, because I'd rather protect my health and well-being than my pride."

And that is a huge deal. For example last year I signed up for fitness and was kind of mortified that I now had to qualify for low impact 60 plus classes. "What am I old???" The answer is: yes. I can't do high impact running and aerobics anymore. I have one knee especially which I injured in a fall that has never responded well to exercise and use. So yes, I'm going do the low impact fitness now and that's okay.

I also completely gave up alcohol: fully. I do not drink beer or wine. Why? I realized I can't tolerate it anymore. One glass and I'm tipsy. My stomach doesn't like it either. And, I saw what it did to my late father who spent his final years dealing with cirrhosis of the liver which turned into cancer. Yeah, I've gotten too old to feed crap to my body.

I want to live another 25 years and for that I need to adapt to my age: not fight it. Aging doesn't mean boring or ugly but it does mean different. And that's okay. And saying "no I can't do that the way I did when I was 40 or even 50" is also nothing to be ashamed of

I live with my 87 year old mother; moved in to care for her when my father passed three years ago because she can not live alone and refuses to go to a senior care home.

Feeding her is such a challenge. She is so picky. Only one brand of Yogurt is acceptable. Only 2% lactose free milk (God forbid if I bring home 1% because the other ran out I'll never hear the end of it). The tomato sauce for her pasta must be prepared a very specific way with very specific ingredients. If I miss one and I tell her I didn't have it, she will say it doesn't taste as good as she makes it. If I don't tell her she won't even notice.

She wants one brand of instant coffee; I bought a different brand and she freaked out refusing to use it. There was a specific bread my dad used to drive half an hour to go buy for her, I told her I'm not going to do that and now she barely eats any bread.

Buy her pork chops, she says they're good but she has trouble chewing them. Prepare chicken and it's too boring; she doesn't like it. She likes sausages but only a specific brand; anything else she "doesn't trust". I buy her deli meat and she'll eat it ONLY the day or two after I buy it because afterwards it's no longer fresh. So then she complains there is "nothing to eat".

Preparing meals and shopping is so stressful and she has said she won't go to a seniors home because she'll never eat; she won't like the food. Does she like any food????

When I was a child I got no choice. What was on the table I had to eat. If I didn't like it, I didn't eat. Interesting how now that the tables are turned I have to basically have an a la carte catering business.

I'm sitting here as she's complaining the the Canadian government isn't doing enough to help old people pay their bills.

This morning the complaints were about the US administration and how they are unable to stop the war in Iran and are siding with Israel and they're all "crooks".

Then complaints about how there's too much pollen in the air and she's sneezing and can't sit outside. "Waited so long for the nice weather and now I can't even sit outside because it makes me sneeze so much."

I could keep going. The list of complaints from just this morning to now (its 330PM) have felt endless. I can't sit and relax in the living room because I'll be bombarded with this litany of negativity. At one point I just had to go sit in the bathroom for a while to get some peace and quiet.

Yesterday a friend of hers came to visit with us and we sat and had a coffee and my mother started with her political complaints, complaints about the neighbours, complaints about a nephew who isn't taking care of his backyard and this friend looked at me wide eyed like "is she for real?" Yes, unfortunately she is.

In fact. I can't think of the last time my mother seemed happy and just glad to be alive. She loves misery. We were sitting in the yard enjoying the sun and the birds in the birdbath and what does she talk about: "that hedge needs to be cut down it's too high". Ugh. Can we just enjoy the day without a task?

I have two adult children; one is 30 and one is 34. They both live independent lives; both are single and have no children (although my son calls his cats his kids, lol).

The issue is they are both very anxious people and go through phases where they need/seek-out a lot of emotional support.

My eldest, my daughter, lives on the other side of the country and is soon going to move to Europe to work for a year and she's very stressed and overwhelmed with tasks and I get a lot of long messages and phone calls where she is essentially unloading all her stress on to me as I listen. She resists any direct intervention from me, however, saying that she's not asking me to fix anything she just wants to talk. Fine. So I listen.

My son is a very anxious young man. He has OCD and although he manages fine most of the time, he will obsess on certain topics especially with respect to his health that to me seem a bit ... much. I know he's fine when I don't hear from him for a long time. When I get a lot of calls from him, I know he's spiralling and needs someone to talk to. He'll call me at night. He'll call me multiple days in a row. And I have to resist sometimes telling him that he's overthinking.

I'm going to be real: it's a lot. It's a lot to be on the other end of the phone listening and not being in a position to actually fix anything for them. My son will listen to advice; he's seeking it out. My daughter is a little less open to that. And there are times when I think about how, when they were kids, they were a lot of work and there were problems but they were little kid issues about friends and school and activities. Now, they are sharing grown up complicated problems and I struggle with not "carrying" their problems if you know what I mean. I want to be there to listen and support them as needed but it's sometimes exhausting.

I've heard of sundowning and when I first moved in with my elderly (now 87) year old mother to care for her, she would indeed become very agitated in the late evening and even do things like wake me up from sleep at 1am or 2am saying things like she's sure she heard the doorbell ring (she has very poor hearing without hearing aids) or she had just thought of something vitally non-important to tell me to do tomorrow.

But lately that has shifted. She no longer wakes me up at night but now what I find is she's very agitated and upset in the mornings. She'll wake up angry or in pain due to her arthritis or generally not well and will "act out". That's the only way to describe it.

I've read all kinds of things on how to handle this type of agitation, one of which is "gentle reassurance". But how do I gently reassure a person who woke up this morning to tell me that her cell phone, which she has for emergencies only, is not working because she hasn't received a single call in a month.

I gently explained that no one else has her number but a very small group of people and they call her or reach her other ways. She then became upset that it can't be working because she hasn't been receiving spam calls and I gently explain that a spam filter is applied and it's good to not get spam. I pay for this phone so that if she is home alone and her power and landline fails and she needs help, she can reach me.

Then she became convinced someone had tampered with the phone because there were photos in her gallery she didn't put there. So I go take a look and they are literally a couple of dozen screenshots. So I showed her how easy it is to touch a button on the side of her phone accidentally and a screenshot will save to her gallery.

"No! Why would I do that? Someone is tampering with my phone and they added those photos to my gallery. And you don't believe me!!!" I deleted the screenshots for her.

Then I demonstrated to her that her phone does receive calls and she can call me with it but the phone was muted. She said "yes why wouldn't I turn my phone to silent when I'm asleep".

Anyway this proceeded for half an hour of her being visibly upset and frustrated.

This is just one of many early morning agitation stories lately. I don't know what's worse!

One of my siblings told my mother about a relatively minor problem they are having. I call it minor because I figure anything that can be fixed without a huge amount of effort is not a big problem. Big problems, to me, are things that are literally life altering.

In this case, something broke down in her house. She's upset over it because she has to buy a new one and she's kind of low on funds right now and it's just frustrating. To my mother it became a huge major issue.

(For context my mum is 87, she is a covert narcissist. I live with her as she became widowed a couple of years ago and is too elderly/frail to live alone.)

So my mum, being my mum, opens my bedroom door shortly before 1AM and loudly yells "Are you awake? ARE YOU AWAKE?" I replied that I obviously am now. And she proceeds to dump on me that she feels so awful for my sister that she is worried she's going to become depressed and why does everything have to happen to my mother (???)." I fail to understand how something breaking down in someone else's house is happening to my mother but after all, this sibling is the golden child.

I'm trying to get her to go sleep so I'm, "we'll deal with it tomorrow". My mum keeps going, saying she wants to offer my sister some money BUT what if my mother ends up needing it sometime in the future? If she gives her this money now, she may end up needing that money. Like all narcs, her arguments went in circles sounding like she's doing something good but then... somehow not?

In the space of a half hour discussion it went from "I'm worried for N" to "I'm going to end up in a hospital, I'm so upset and I can't sleep." Finally after dumping all her anxieties on to me, she went to bed. Now I am the one who can't sleep.

How does this relatively minor, fixable issue suddenly turn into "I'm going to get sick and die?"

My mother is 87. She has many many health issues that she is medicated for and are reasonably under control.

Last year, 2025, was a banner year for ER visits. I tracked about 15 visits. She experienced hypertension, serious UTI's, heart failure, one case of taking too many meds, a minor surgery needed and pain. It was her worst year for arthritis flare ups.

Well, during one visit she had a bad headache that was determined to be about the horrible arthritis in her neck which caused the pain to radiate into her head. During a head CT a radiologist observed "small meningiomas". So the ER doctor referred her to a neurologist. Her case wasn't deemed urgent so we went on a bit of a long waiting list and the appointment is next week.

The thing is, I personally think it's a waste of time. Her cardiologist who she sees twice a year and is part of a large brain and heart centre told her that this was not necessary. That small meningiomas are common in older people and that 90% are slow growing and benign. Regardless, at my mother's age there wouldn't be much they could do anyway. She's too old, has too many co-morbidities and the primary treatment is surgery which she probably is too weak to do. The other thing is she is asymptomatic; they were found incidentally.

Thing is her primary care physician suggested she should go anyway. So my mother, being my mother, decided to go. And I'm so concerned because she has health anxiety. She will start to worry that she has brain tumours and every headache going forward will be a symptom. Sigh. At this point I'm going along with her plan but she has a tendency to change her mind and perhaps things will change beforehand because I really don't want to be dealing with the emotional fallout that is likely from her.

A few days ago I posted about my elderly mother's (87) tendency to use the word "we" whenever she needs or wants something done around the house. And it seems like a lot of people experience the same issue with their aging parents.

So yesterday she did it again. She said that "we" need to move an appliance from where it is to another spot. And this was at the end of a very long day when I had spent hours on cleaning and gardening. So I said to her that "we" aren't going to move it today, I'll do it another day.

She looked at me and said "I know you don't like me using the word 'we' and you want me to say 'you' but I don't say that because I don't want to sound like I'm ordering you around."

I replied to her that it doesn't matter if she uses the word "we" to feel better about it, in the end it's "me" who has to do it so, what's the difference? She said that if she could do it she would, but she can't. And left it at that.

And it hit me. My mother is a covert/vulnerable narcissist. She has many chronic health conditions and has made her illnesses a central part of her personality as well as a reason that she should receive special treatment.

(For example, we had a huge argument last week that she should be receiving disability benefits but she doesn't fit the definition of someone with a disability; she's just old. She didn't like that.)

And before anyone thinks "yeah but she's sick", she worked all her life, right up until she was 60 years old. She has come through multiple surgeries. She has lived, at this point, 7 years longer than any of her siblings, her parents died in their 50s and 60s, and she outlived my father who was the same age as her. In fact I can count on one hand the number of her close relatives who are still living and made it past 80. So while she is indeed elderly and in delicate health, my entire life, starting when I was maybe 10 or 11, she has made me her caretaker rather than accept help from anyone else.

And yet, I don't think I've ever heard her say to someone, ever, that she is grateful for what I do because to her, it's a sign of weakness that she can't do it herself. So when she is using the word "we", I think she truly views me as an extension of herself.

And so to use a simple request like: "when you have a minute, can you please move this thing to the cupboard for me?" seems almost impossible for her. Because to her, I am her arms, her legs, her eyes so why would she ask me to please do something for her?

Anyway, no advice needed. Just something I'm working through because I'm trying to learn through all of this how *not* to behave with my own adult children as I age.

I moved in with my 87 yo covert-narc mother 3 years ago after my father died as she can not live alone. I've since retired and one of the things I've done as a way to pass time is to learn how to tend to my late father's lawn and garden. It's very large, flower beds, vegetable gardens etc. And learning about the plants and the trees and even experimenting with growing vegetables has given me something new to learn and do.

A few days ago I was trying to diagnose and deal with a large perennial plant that looks like it has some kind of damage from this horrible winter. I researched how to handle it online and started to trim away damaged leaves and based on what I read it just needs some time and it should recover.

Well my mother comes out as I'm doing this and said that now that I've trimmed the plant it "looks ugly" and that I should cut away healthy leaves because it "doesn't look even". I explained why I did what I did and why I shouldn't cut the healthy parts but she didn't care. "Well it looks awful, I don't like it. I think I'll just rip it out." Even when I said that all it needs was some time and it will look better, she kept saying "it looks ugly, I don't like it, rip it out."

I finally said to her "So wait, if I get sick or injured and a foot needs to come off as treatment, you going to suddenly kick me out?". She said "No, don't be stupid. But this plant is for beauty and decoration and if it no longer looks good I don't want it." I replied that as a plant it will recover, and it needs care and time. "I don't care and I don't want to look at it."

Well, I refused to rip it out and it would be hard to do anyway, it's been in that yard for probably over 15 years. She got upset that I never listen to her and stomped inside.

And I thought, well, she just summed up the biggest part of her personality: everything needs to look perfect and if it doesn't she just gives up on it. She doesn't want it. She critiques anything and everyone that isn't esthetically pleasing to her. Even at her age the outside of her house is incredibly important to her. The grass, the flowers, the porch...everything.

I get it. I totally get it. My elderly 86 year old mother no longer has the strength or stamina to do what she used to do in her house or her garden.

And I completely understand that the only reason she is able to "age in place" in the house she and my late father lived in for decades is because I live with her and agreed to take care of things.

But everything that happens in this house starts with a "we". Just a collection of the things that "we" are doing in the near/immediate future. This is not a complete list.

• "We" have to touch up the paint on her outdoor balcony because she doesn't like the colour.
• "We" have to rip the grass out of the flower bed in the backyard because it looks bad.
• "We" have to pull out the extra wild plants all over the yard because, again, it looks messy and awful (her words).
• "We" have to wash the rug next to the back door.
• "We" have to mop the basement floor.
• "We" have to trim the yucca plant because there are diseased leaves and it will spread.
• "We" have to wash the windows and call the guy to clean the gutters.

Just in case you're wondering "we" is "me" because my mother can't do any of this stuff. She says she used to do all these things and now it's all out of control because she's not doing it anymore. (Although at one point she let it slip that she had to beg my father to remove grass from her flower beds.) And tonight she literally whined for a good half hour about how all these things are vitally important and must be done asap.

This is on top of, by the way, daily meals, grocery shopping, laundry, housekeeping.

So I said to her that I would do these things but I would do them at my own pace. That I can't do it all now, as she insists. She started to complain about this statement for another half hour about how "we" have to do these things because the house and garden look "abandoned".

No. No they don't.

So here's my issue with how this is all being framed, aside from the fact that I'm being asked to take on a ton of work in a short period of time. My issue is that she has, in effect, decided that I am an extension of her and these responsibilities transfer by default to me. No question about whether I have other plans for my days or if I'm tired or if I am capable of these things. "We" just have to get it done.

And when it's "we", this makes it look like I'm getting some help. I'm not. In fact, today while I was planting the vegetable garden and flowers, she was outside a total of 20 minutes, telling me what I was doing wrong, pointing out all I haven't gotten done yet and then went back inside as makes sense for her health and condition.

Anyway I'm just venting. I know I can always say "no" but when I do I get harangued and harassed about how these were all things she did "all the time" and I should be able to do them too essentially shaming more for not being good enough.... yeah, whatever.