Wonderful to be here! Thanks to all you special Women ~ [and men! ;)]

this sounds a lot like what my mom describes from my grandmother (who is still with us, stubbornly living alone and driving at 94). She has never worked a day in her life as an adult and expects all her bills to get paid, but thought my endlessly compassionate and self-sacraficing mother was a "gold digger" when my parents were first together. Pretty funny. My mom works around the clock for my dad as his secretary, his laundress, his cook, etc...he is a true chauvanist in many ways, and they've been hard-working, self-employed people still doing long hours in their seventies and struggling financially, so I think that label couldn't be further from the truth. She has been quietly patient about a lot of things, and I think is just basically racking up a ton of good karma. There's always good in a person - my grandmother cared for her daughter, my aunt, who had debiliting MS for many years, and she has a good heart, but some funny ideas about a lot of things. You can't change her, my mom knows that. She tries not to let it get to her, but I know it does sometimes. I think she'll just be reaping the karmic rewards of that infinite patience in her next life. I've been w/my boyfriend nine years, and his mother was a hard-edged woman that scared me a little bit. She died last year from a drawn out battle with cancer. I don't think she would have been in our lives very much, but I wonder sometimes what it would have been like to have her as a mother in law and sort of need her approval.