Okay, this may sound slighty petty or immature, but it's something that has really been bothering me and I just need to talk about it, get some insight, or advice. I am not sure if I am in the wrong here, being overly sensitive, or childish or if I have the right to be upset.

So, the issue is, I am 37 years old, single and raising three kids on my own. My 8 year old daughter has Autism and my 6 year old son has ADD/ADHD combined. I also have a 16 year son who is a big help to me, but he is still a kid and likes to do kid things. I work part time, mostly from home as I only have to go into the office 2 to 3 times a week. Most of what I do can be done from my home computer.

I don't make enough money however to qualify for a home loan, so my mom got a loan in her name so that I could get a four bedroom house that was bigger and nicer for me and my children. I get dissability for my daughter, I also get some childsupport, and of course what I make from my job, so i am able to pay the house payment myself. They take out money for the yearly taxes as well as insuerance. I pay the utilities, buy my own food, and put gas in my van myself. The reason I am saying this is because I want it known that all my mother did was get the loan in her name. She is not supporting me or paying any of my bills.

So now, here is where the problem comes in. She has set all of these rules and guidlines that I am to follow in case I default on the loan and she is forced to sell, she does not want the house trashed, which I understand. But I feel as though I am walking on egg shells. I live in fear that she may show up for an announced inspection, like she did last night. The kids were home from school and in the living room watching TV and I had gone up to take a shower. I had been cleaning all day, doing laundry, took the trash out, and I just wanted to relax a bit before starting dinner. So my mom comes in and she hits the roof. There is a toy robot on the kicthen table and a stack of kids books that were not put away yet. I had dishes rinsed and stacked on the counter, ready to go into the dish washer, but since I was doing laundry all day and then took a shower, I had not gotten around to doing the dishes yet.

I had a box of diapers for my daughter that were delivered and I put them on a kitchen chair so I could open the box. Huge mistake there, now the kids can't sit and eat at the table because the box is in the way, what a horrible trajedy that was. (being sarcastic here). I had three baskets sitting in the livingroom on the floor that were sorted into groups, my daughters clothes, the boys clothes and the last one was my clothes plus towles and wash rags. All are folded and ready to go up stairs but my mom is angry that they are sitting there, one is on the couch so there is no where for her to sit.

My daughters shoes are on the floor and not the shoe holder and her coat is on the floor not the coat rack. She took her clothes off and threw them on the floor while I was in the shower because I wasn't down there to remind her to put them in the hamper and my mom just ballistic. Why are there clothes all over the living room? I had two boxes sitting in another chair, one with summer clothes that are going into storage, the other with clothes that were too small and going to goodwill. She complained that that just looked trashy. One of the kids tracked snow into the dinning room, and I didn't mop it up, the carpet needed vacumming, and the counter in the kitchen had bread crumbs on it where apparently my son made himself a peanut butter sandwitch and didnt clean it up. My mom hit the roof.

She accused me of spending all my time on the computer playing and not cleaning the house. She said I don't watch the kids, I should have been downstairs with them instead of upstairs in the bathroom. She started crying and said she couldn't believe that I would let the house get this bad, that if childrens services was called I'd lose the kids. I was like really? because I didn't wash dishes, wipe the counter, sweep and mop?

I told her the clothes in the living room were clean, folded, in baskets, whats the issue? The bathrooms are clean, there is no trash laying around, no dirty diapers or pop cans. The dirty dishes are on the kitchen counter not all over the living room, the toys and movies are picked up and neatly put away, what is she complaining about? I told her that I did not think the house was that messy and she looked at me like I had just slapped her.

I don't get it seriously. I could understand if I had trash, cat poop, moldy dishes all over the place and bugs crawling everywhere but I don't…so what did I do wrong?

I'm about to just restict myself and the kids to one room upstairs. They can come to the dinning room to eat then we go back upstairs after dinner is over and been cleaned up. The bottom half of the house can be just for show since my mom seems to want it to be nothing more than a fancy doll house without a speck of dust on it. We can't live in the living room because it might get dirty. Maybe we should all live in the basement. I don't know what to do. I will never make her happy, nothing I do is good enough. It will never be enough.