You tell your friends that keeping your mother from financial predators is like pulling weeds from the garden. You work methodically, trying to keep up, trying to get ahead. The weeds turn out to have deep roots and are opportunistic, able to change direction underground, nevertheless, the destination is always the same, to suckle off your mother. You want nothing more than to drive your shovel through the fattest part of the root, to cut off the lifeline. In this you always fail, because just as you are choking out one, others are sprouting. The weeds are clever this way. They are aggressive and mercenary and work best in the dark.