Plans for a cooked lunch today had to be quickly abandoned in favour of a quick snack, because mother only gave me short notice of the time she was scheduled to go out. We discuss what it will be: something that would be eaten on your lap. What she knows is that she's going out. What she wants is just to eat NOW. She doesn't think about the logic of the timescale, nor listen to a word that's said. She sets the table for lunch; knives, forks the lot.
She comes to the kitchen for juice. As I already had something to drink, I tell her, very clearly, that I didn't need juice. She pours 2 glasses of juice.
These are entirely typical of her and could be describing any number of small things that happen on any given day. And it's clear it's because her receive channel is switched off and she is permanently set on transmit, unable and unwilling to hear over the noise of her own self-important voice or thinking.
It is so frustrating and infuriating to waste perfectly good breath on her!
There is nothing about it that suggests dementia or senility.
Time-travel thinking ...
Having made and frozen her meals for next week (as I won't be here), I begin explaining them to her and mention that I'll make another fish pie later, from which portions can be frozen too and begin a sentence, "They may not be ..."
But she just could not stop to listen to the rest of what I was going to say and, simply had to interrupt in her know-it-all manner saying that, if the portions are not very big, she can always have them for lunch.
Well, we had, finally (usually), got it round to having our main, largest meal at lunch time, as this is recommended, not only from the point of view of weight control, but also for the immune system, I read. So the small portion for lunch logic doesn't stack and, you know she hasn't forgotten: look at what she did with the setting the table business, not 2 minutes before!
And I didn't say that, did I? I wasn't even going to say that ...
The portion sizes, frozen or not, will still be the exact same as they have been every other time - (same ingredients) and she has to know that they have to be equal, since she now only has ONE SIZE of dish to make it in (after she's thrown nearly everything useful in the house away: another long story.)
What I was about to comment, was that the fish pie portions may not be ... quite as successful (taste / texture wise) frozen and then defrosted and reheated, as say, something like the soups and stews.
That's all.
But no, as usual, she knows everything, including what you're thinking and what you're going to say, even before you do and interrupts all the time.
She does this to try to appear "smart". You and I know it makes her look like a totally ignorant, blithering idiot and, what's worse is she refuses to grasp the fact that, if she actually LISTENED sometimes, she might NOT always be wrong and therefore needing (she thinks) to try even harder still to appear right.
If she listened, she might learn something and then actually BE right!
All know-it-alls suffer from a lack of self-esteem, and what they seek, through their tireless attempts to impress, is usually approval and validation.
Now I know we all suffer from this to some degree. And we don't always listen when we should. We don't all FAIL relentlessly for 84 years though! That takes real stupidity of determination or determination of stupidity. :)
