h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"chata" in the Brazilian Portuguese I learned means "boring", "Irritataing", "tiresome" etc. It is a word I apply daily to our renter. We had to rent my mom's room in order to afford to pay for my mom's assisted living. The renter has been in the hospital for almost 5 months but continued to pay rent to save the room for herself when she got out, so we can't complain about that.

But she has very few family or friends and she wants us to be her family in addition to all the help she needs because she is not fully recovered from her hospital stay. We can't do that. We have our own problems with my mother which are constantly overwhelming. I am constantly overwhelmed by both my mom and my dad's stuff. My dad is overwhelmed with my mom's stuff as well as probably me since I'm not that easy to live with.

So I'm sitting in my room on my computer. I leave the door open for air circulation, but maybe I'll have to stop doing that. The renter, in her wheel chair, stops in front of my door and drones on about nothing for 10 minutes and there's no way to get away since she's in the door of my room. Chata Ela! What an annoying person.

She's alienated most of her family. She's latched on to her step-brother's family because he's a mensch. His wife doesn't appreciate it at all as she ends up doing most of the errands for our renter that she can't do. The wife often ends up yelling at our renter about what a leach she is, but our renter never takes it to heart. She just complains about having to walk around on eggshells around the wife.

The Renter's daughter came out to CA while the renter was in the hospital earlier in the year (for the same condition a bad hip replacement) and found an assisted living arrangement for the renter to move into after she got out of the hospital. The renter refused to move into assisted living. Her daughter went to her church and told them something that made the entire church turn their backs on her! Then the daughter returned to the east coast and won't speak to her mother at all and she is not allowed to see the grandchildren.

I don't know what's going on that the renter is not telling us. I don't really want to know. Instead of moving to assisted living, she convinced her step-brother that she didn't need assisted living and he found our ad in the pennysaver with a room to rent. Our house is sort of accessible, in that there are bars in the bathroom the renter uses and there aren't a lot of stairs. She convinced us she could live here unassisted, but that is not entirely true. She actually requires quite a bit of assistance for someone who thinks she's independent.

Your revelations raised my eyebrows! She sounds like she is going to be a difficult person to have living with you. You certainly have my sympathies, and I have no words to say about how to move forward on this situation. Blimey!

Well, her health IS improving. Hopefully she'll improve to where she is less needful of having stuff done for her. If she gets worse, we'll have to tell her she can't live here anymore. She'll have to move to assisted living, I think. And of course her needy personality is unlikely to change.