Is the Glass Half Full, or Half Empty?

OK, my mother has been here since eleven yesterday morning. It is now 7:30 Saturday night. I will leave her at the airport at around eleven on Monday morning. That makes us half way through the visit. I am trying to look at it as, 'hooray, we're halfway through!', rather than 'oh, sweet Jeebus, there's still half of the visit left!'. It is going so-so.

She doesn't DO anything. She sits there and tags along at whatever. She never offers an opinion, never makes a decision, doesn't really seem to have a lot of thoughts. It is mind-boggling how stressful that is. If I ask her what she'd like to do, all I get is, 'anything is fine, whatever you all want to do', but if I don't ask, and just announce that it's time to go to the library, or whatever, I feel entirely rude. Today, we went to the library, Uno's, Borders and Michaels, and she just tagged along everywhere. When I was a kid, that kind of silence was always an indicator of Very Bad Things to Come, and I'm pretty sure it's triggering that emotion in me now. Realistically, I know there's nothing that can or will happen, but... yeah. Plus, she's currently rubbing her scaly, crusty bare feel on my coffetable. There are long pieces of bleached-blond hair from the back of her mullet downstairs on my bathroom floor, because she cleans out her hairbrush and flings the hair. GAH. We have nothing in common, and nothing to talk about, so it leads to a lot of silence. I am a big fan of silence, but not when I feel like there's someone silently sitting next to me expecting Something, but they will not share with me what that Something might be. I feel entirely uncomfortable in my own home, and I HATE it.

DH has gone out tonight, and once I have to kids in bed I think I'm going to plead headache and go upstairs with my bottle of Zoloft and a big glass of wine. And maybe a chocolate poptart. Or three.