Go with the flow

One of the things I've learned being a caregiver, is to be flexible.   Not flexible as a caregiver, but flexible as a person.  To learn to go with the flow and not be so set in my ways I end up being miserable and causing the people around me to be miserable.  Life is too short for that.

I love my mother-in-law, but things have to be a certain way and there is no such thing as wanting to try anything new.  Oh, and it seems she hates everything.....except ice cream.....strawberry ice cream, not chocolate, not vanilla, but strawberry.

Making meals for her is a challenge because there isn't much that she will eat and the things she does eat she gets tired of and says she never wants to have again.  It's a balancing act trying to spread out what she will eat so that it doesn't come off the menu.   Of course, if we go long enough we can sometimes "reintroduce" the things she has sworn off.   I don't think I've ever seen her make a happy face when giving her options to choose from, it's usually a turned up nose.   The only time she gets excited is if I mention ice cream.

Even when we go out to eat, it's the same thing.  She turns up her nose at whatever they have and usually wants a combination of something that isn't even offered.  We had to stop letting her pick her food.  She would say she wanted something and then when she got exactly what she said she wanted, she picks at it, making faces as she eats.  Oh, and don't argue that it was exactly what she ordered, she'll deny it all the way to the grave.

Somedays, I don't think she knows how to be happy.  She definitely doesn't know how to go with the flow and that is not a person I want to be.  I want to enjoy life and all the experiences it wants to throw at me, even the caregiving.