A visit from Mom?

OK don't get me wrong. I love my mother dearly. But at the best of times, she is um, high maintenance. Now, with her husband failing, and with some health issues of her own, that has racheted up. Added to that, she has that "older person" idea of what a home should look like. And my home is the family home as in the family homestead with all the history that entails and the unspoken weight of carrying things on there in an acceptable manner. Trust me when I tell you my house rarely looks in an acceptable manner! I can't keep grass growing in the back yard. It does not survive dogs and children. (I have had it sodded twice!) My house is cluttered often (maybe that should say always?) and not ever as neat or clean as I know my mom would deem proper. We do not live in filth and squalor but we are not ads for June Cleaver's house either. 4 kids and a dog and a cat run through my house daily. We work and play and it has always been more important to me that we do things together than that we look perfect.

Unless my mom is coming to visit. We really did up Mothers Day for my mom this year. We always do something, but this year we knew she needed a bit of an emotional lift so we did a bit more. Mom wrote to me about a week or so ago and said "don't worry about doing anything for my birthday. You did so much for Mothers Day." Her birthday is the 29th of this month. I knew there was no way on earth I was really not supposed to do anything, so I sort of ignored that.

Then last night she wrote and said that she had decided she would like to come visit the 30th. Come in that day stay overnight and leave sometime on Sunday the 31st. Ummmmm, this is doing nothing for her birthday? I of course said she was always welcome. And she is. And I look at my house and now I think maybe I am spending Memorial Day weekend doing some serious Mom prep! I also have our vegetable garden to plant and we had planned to maybe hike one day as well. Kirsty works Saturday till 8 p.m. Hmmmmm. . . stress? What is stress?