Day 11 of my mom's 14-day visit. Although I would not call her stupid, Lrrr would. I love my mom, but this has been a stark reminder of how hard life is when you don't plan, don't listen, don't think, and don't learn. It's been so exhausting. The key driver behind this spike in unpleasantness was the decision to bake a cake with my kids. It's a fucking cake. It's a forgiving medium. It was made in part by children, and in part by a perfectionist who is too scattered to follow written instructions. The result was several hours of my mom stamping around, crying, leaving damp and dirty paper towels all over my house, and expressing her horror and self-loathing over the state of the cake. But it wasn't just her cake: it was my kids' cake, too. How are they supposed to take their grandma losing her shit over how much their cake sucks? On one level, I am seeing all of my worst qualities played back at me but amplified to maximum volume. I see characteristics I worked to stamp out of myself on full, unpruned display. The impulsiveness, the lack of follow-through, the martyrdom, the aggressive self-deprecation to ward off any criticism, the inability to comfortably half-ass things, the external processing, the poor boundaries, the withering self-criticism, the blaming of other people for problems. And I'm seeing it for what a terribly toxic thing it is, when it seemed like the only normal thing when I was a kid. We ate the cake. It was fine. It was cake. If it was a competition, it would not be a winning cake. But there is no competition. It was sweet and my kids loved it and they were proud. At least, I hope they were proud. They've been bombarded by messages that this is the most fucked up, awful cake ever and that at least someone should never be allowed to make cakes again. Throughout the day, I have been trying to stop my mom and tell her that the entire point of this exercise is to pass time, have the kids learn something and to spend quality time with grandma, and to make dessert. I have told her that she cannot make this my kids' problem or their fault. I have had to hide my keys to keep her from leaving the house to buy a replacement cake. She doesn't listen. She doesn't follow instructions (like the order of operations in the recipe). She spent the whole day panicking and reacting and suffering for her own half-cocked reactions, when even ten seconds of reflection would have revealed the answer. She asked me the same question a dozen times. She evaluated everything at every turn, never failing to dump shit on herself. I don't know if she has dementia. But whatever is going on is awful. I can't let these traits be passed on to my kids.