My mom recently retired. She now wants to visit more frequently (it looked like she was aiming for 2x/year at one point, but we seem to be settling more towards 1x/year).

This causes me a ton of stress. It's not that we *fight* - we don't. It's that we don't really relate at all. It's all very superficial, there's no real connection, my mom is unable to actually listen/respond to anything negative, and honestly, she was just emotionally absent and neglectful my whole childhood.

I get that a lot of this is her stuff... and probably stems from her childhood, but her visits cause me SO much stress.

And, she doesn't ASK. She tells me when she will be coming. Last time she did this, last spring, she told me one weekend (which I cleared), and then bought plane tickets for another weekend. She also decided to leave Monday morning, which meant I had to get up before 5am to see her off (I usually get up around 8, she's always up early.)

It's just not fun for me... and weekends are the only time I have to get errands done, and decompress from "the job that is making me hate my life even more".

So my question is... how do you deal with stuff like this? Given that she doesn't exactly *ask*, I have trouble finding a window to say "no". She basically told me on our last phone call, "Oh, I have to come see you and celebrate your birthday! We'll have to plan something for January!"

I told her definitely not January, just like I told her last year... because she'll end up snowed in here!!!! So now she's saying March.

Is there a nice, polite way to say, "Mom, I'm glad that you want to spend time with me... but I've had a really stressful year in 2014, and am not planning to have any guests in the near future. If you're going to be in town (staying in a hotel or with friends), I'd be happy to meet you for dinner one night. Otherwise, I'll let you know when I'm up for guests."

Does that sound awful? And, yeah, I'm probably going to have to print this out and run it by my T - "mom issues" was definitely on my list of "things I need help with" !

Thanks!