It’s All My Fault

Let’s just get this out of the way right now.  It’s always my fault. 

When I first met my MIL, she was for all intents and purposes, “normal.”  We both had mother issues.  We were kismet!  All was good. 

I will say that I don’t spend a lot of time talking to any of my in-laws.  Not for any other reason than hating talking on the phone.  Now and again, we’d exchange a nice email, but for the most part, we’d only see them when they came into town. 

My MIL and step-FIL are drive by visitors.  Meaning, they will have coffee or lunch with us when they are in town to visit other friends.  It’s got to be a whole trip.  Not just coming out to visit us and spending the day with us.  But I digress, that really isn’t my in law beef right now. 

A few months ago, right around Christmas, my MIL called my husband and said that she didn’t think that I would love my baby (I was, at the time, about 7 months pregnant.)  Nice right?  This was based on stuff that my step FIL read on my blog (hindsight being what it is, they have my url, and have for years, back in the day when blogging was new, they had both of our urls), and then relayed to my MIL, probably in attempts to upset her.  I don’t know.  This upset my husband and of course, I spent a good week crying about how I was going to be a shitty mother.  My husband ended up in the hospital with heart palpitations and anxiety attacks and she refused to apologize.  She really didn’t get it until her therapist told her it was all her fault.  It took a while for the light bulb in my husbands head to go off and stick up for me.  But he did and all was “OK” for awhile.  It was tense, but I could deal with it. I know a lot of her issues have to do with her not resolving issues with her estranged mother before she died. 

And of course it’s my fault. 

Then my son was born.  And she didn’t walk to the crazy, she RAN to the crazy. 

I am convinced that your parents go certified crazy after a grandchild is born.  Especially a first one.  Something breaks.  They short circut.   My IL’s now disregard our feelings entirely.  Especially in regards to child rearing.  If we tell him he doesn’t like to be held a certain way, they do it anyway, surely because we’re new parents and we couldn’t possibly know anything.  Like you know, I don’t know my own kid. She invites friends over when we visit to pass our son off to them, without asking us first, and then conveniently can’t get a hold of them when we ask her to make their friends visit another day.  She’s also made several off handed comments to me about our choice to formula feed.  Which pisses me off to no end, because it was a joint decision, but I know she secretly thinks that I have stuck a hanger up my husband’s ass and have made a puppet out of him. 

So of course, it’s my fault. 

My first mother’s day, we’re spending with friends.  We had no idea that other family was flying into town to spend time with my MIL for a joint Mother’s Day/ Birthday for my step-FIL.   When we told them we had other plans, we were guilted to the tune of “have a nice life” when we put our foot down and told them that plans had already been made.   Clearly it’s a control thing now and we’re playing that game. 

This?  This is also my fault. 

And to top it off?  We’re moving, cross country. 

Say it with me now,  It’s ALL my fault. 

The “Eyes” Have It

My MIL has two boys (both perfect, of course). I married her younger son, M, this year, after dating him for 5 years. Now, I know what you’re thinking…I had 5 years to get to know this family…why didn’t I run? Well, she was pretty nice until the day that M bought the engagement ring. Literally. Her first comment when her proud son drove an hour to show his parents the ring before giving it me were, “I get half of the holidays”. Should have been a warning when M relayed that to me right after our engagement. Apparently, I am not as clever as I thought I was.

It will also help if I give a little background on M’s older brother P. P, as I mentioned, is perfect. (according to his mother) Then obviously it stands to reason that P’s wife, the first “girl” in the family, would be perfect as well, right? Of course. She is in the Inner Circle, I am not, and never will be. Never mind the fact that A is an absolute airhead that can’t tell her head from her…I digress. Well P married A while they were in college. They were from the same small town, yadayadayada. Well, A is an only child. Perfect! My MIL simply includes A’s parents at every holiday, and they’ve yet to spend any time away from the in-laws. (Did I mention they all live within 5 minutes of each other?!) Anyway, P and A now have 2 perfect children. We’ll call them Princess and Prince. Both blond with blue eyes. Important for later.

Moving on. After many bitter and hateful attacks from MIL during the wedding planning process, I’m a little gun-shy. I never allow myself to have more than a glass of wine at their house, because I feel like I always need to have my wits about me. Instead, I bite my tongue, waiting for my husband to stand up for us, which he always promises to do before every visit, yet never does when he needs to. You see, M has grown tired of his mother’s nagging after all these years, and has developed the ability to block everything that she says. (Note to self: develop this ability quickly!) So this particular exchange happened like all others, where she attacks me, but M doesn’t hear/understand how mean the comment was until the ride home, when I explain.

MIL: Isn’t “Princess” (P&A’s 2 year old daughter) the most beautiful little girl you’ve ever seen?

Me: Sure.

MIL: I mean, she has the most gorgeous blonde hair and blue eyes.

Me: Yep.

MIL: (staring at me) Hmmm…what color are your mom’s eyes?

Me : Brown. (The same color as mine)

MIL: What color were your dad’s eyes? (He passed away 2 years ago)

Me: Brown.

MIL: What about your grandmother?

Me: (Deep in thought, trying to remember, as she too is gone. Apparently, she thought that I was looking at M, trying to figure it out)

MIL: Why are you looking at M? He doesn’t know what color her eyes were! (cackling)

Me: I was just trying to remember…it’s been a while…

MIL: Oh, well. I was just wondering if there was any hope that you two would have children with blonde hair and blue eyes. I guess not…

Me: Well, Adolph, I really hate to disappoint you…

Just kidding about the last line…but I really wish I would have said it.The nerve!! And the fact that no one else thought it inappropriate…even scarier.

Racist MIL

No, MIL, my baby doesn’t “take after me” (I’m of Hispanic descent). Repeating it won’t make it true.  He has jaundice.

I’m glad you think that “mixed babies are beautiful” and I should just accept that he’s “got my colouring”. Try not to be disappointed when he gets better.   

My MIL Doesn’t Like My Directions

When her and step-father come to visit it is always a crap-tastic party.

EVERY TIME we give them directions to our house, and EVERY TIME they choose to ignore them.

This leads to cell phone calls about how horrible the traffic is (we live near Boston, yes it’s gonna be worse than East Nowhere, NY), how the people can’t drive, and how confusing everything is.

Well, no shit sherlock. It is confusing when you trust the fucking internet over your own Daughter-In-Law (me!). The internet directions take her on these really weird routes that are so round-about and confusing that even me, who knows the highways, gets confused when I read them. So why, oh why, does she insist on using them?!?!?!?!

Then when she gets to our house it’s like WE did this to her. “I’m so tired from that drive. These drivers are enough to give you a heart-attack. I don’t know how you can live in such a confusing place”. I wish she would just come out and say what she wants to say, she wants us to move back to East Nowhere. I also think she harbors some resentment towards me for taking her son away from her (we moved to the Boston area for my job).

Now that we have a baby it’s even worse. “If you lived close by I could help you guys out”. Hahahaha, I don’t WANT your help, you loon!

Political Senility

Husband and FIL were carrying on some small talk yesterday at lunch. Somehow the conversation turned towards Al Gore and his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. My husband should have pretended to choke on a chicken bone at the very moment the words “global warming” came out of my FIL’s mouth.

My FIL is – for lack of a better word – Brilliant. Truly, he is the mind behind many great things that happened in our city. He can carry on intelligent and meaningful conversations in almost any circle.

Unfortunately, he is afflicted with Political Senility.

“It’s bullshit! Global Warming? Ha! It’s 30 degrees outside and the normal temperature should be in the 50’s. It’s a scam. A political scam to get more tax dollars. Blahblahblah, spewspewspew.”

Husband asked him just what scam did he think they were trying to pull, and who is “they”.

FIL replies, “I’m not prepared to debate this with you at this time,” and the conversation promptly dies.

You brought it up, you pompous ass.

Just One Reason I Hate Survivor

My husband and I needed a babysitter for a couple of hours on a Thursday night so we could attend a zoning committee meeting that had our potential-homeon the agenda.

The SIL kindly offered to watch him at her house.

These arrangements were made early in the week. Thursday afternoon, with only a couple of hours to spare, SIL called my husband and said that she now was not going to be home, but her husband still would be. She advised that we not bring our son’s favorite movie over (per her earlier suggestion) because her husband wanted to watch his TV shows.

Guess why she couldn’t watch our son? She was going out with her friends to the bar to watch Survivor instead.

Furious, we decided we wouldn’t subject our son to a couple of hours of being shushed (he was 3 at the time), and not being played with, so my husband stayed home and I went to the meeting.

When SIL found out, she actually had a shit-fit and called my husband at work the next day. He explained to her that she was the one who let us down and that it wasn’t fair to our son (or to us since it wasn’t like we were trying to go out for dinner and drinks, but for a meeting), she said, “Fine! Don’t ever ask me to watch him again!” and hung up on her brother.

It’s been over two years since that happened. She recently asked why we don’t let her watch our son instead of paying a baby-sitter when my husband and I go out.

She’s got to be joking.

Something Stinks and It Ends in “In Law”

Husband and I and underwent 8 years of painful, emotionally exhausting, pocket emptying infertility. I won’t even go into some of the comments that were spewed at that time but I will move right on to what they said when we told them (excitedly on our part) that were were going to pursue adopting. They both wrinkled up their noses like somebody farted after eating bad cheese and asked, with ALL seriousness, “but you don’t know what you will get”..no they weren’t talking boy or girl, they were talking a baby that wasn’t in the PERFECT FAMILY GENE POOL…this comment was followed by another nose wrinkling asking “what if there is something wrong with IT?” This questioning went on for almost a year while they kept asking why we were adopting….I wanted to scream because your son isn’t able to do the deed assholes, just to see their faces. (Actually he wasn’t the source of our infertility but I wanted to say it anyway:)

This is just the tip of the iceberg..actually it may be the same one that took down the Titanic.

Holy Moley

Dear Future Mother-in-Law:

My fiance and I are planning a small, non-religious ceremony. It is not a reflection on your son’s poor upbringing that we are not religious. It is just what we both believe and are comfortable with. So please, PLEASE, stop crossing yourself every time you see me, before you eat in my presence, and just generally whenever I’m around. I know you’re not Catholic. I’VE BEEN TO YOUR CHURCH. Also? I have noticed the recent insistence in “saying grace” before we eat any meals at your home. This kind of passive-aggressive “disappointment” does not a convert make. It only serves to further solidify my opinion that you don’t consider me a human being, but as a potential host for your future grandchilden–grandchildren that you hope will be raised in your religion. You’ve raised your son, he’s wonderful, we love each other, your work is done. Stop trying to raise me, too. My parents did a great job.

Sincerely,

Your Future Daughter-in-Law

you have got to have buns, hun

Ok. I have given this little morsel of inlaw fodder a few days to steep. I did not want to automatically run to the computer and post this story because … well … I just didn’t think it would be prudent. Ok. Want is not the appropriate verb here. Crap, I don’t know what I am trying to say so I better say it.

Sunday, we went to Bob Evans for lunch with the inlaws. I was at one end of the table with the Man and the Monkey, and my MIL. Ace was down by his Dad and Queen.

Whenever we order ANYthing at Bob’s, the rolls and biscuits are split up and shared.

I order the Chicken and Noodles, and it came with two dinner rolls. I knew that I would be sharing with the Man and the Monkey. Biscuits were delivered to the other end of the table. I think they were my MIL’s, but my FIL received them for some unknown reason. As soon as Queen saw the biscuits, she immediately asked him if she could have some.

He said no.

Yes. You read that right. He said no. But wait … it gets MUCH better.

The Monkey sees my rolls, and I was about ready to start buttering it. Ace then asks me if I could pass the TWO dinner rolls that were in my basket.

I thought “hey … if the selfishness worked for my FIL, it will work for me, right?”

Wrong. Dead wrong.

No you may not have them. They are mine, I replied.

Ace got a little salty. Ok. More than a little. A LOT salty.

Fine. Never mind. I just thought that we could ask for more rolls. Never mind.

All this time, the Monkey is dipping her hand in my salad, pulling out her selection of lettuce and croutons. So I was a little mad that it was assumed that I would be the one who would share my bread with everyone.

Ok. More than a little mad … a lot mad.

I looked at him and told him that I had people at my end of the table who wanted part of a roll, and that I also had one of them dipping their hand in my salad at that very moment.

So my MIL decided to take things into her own hands and offer her solution to Dinner Roll Smackdown 2006, the very last one of the year.

Her solution?

Passing MY basket of rolls down the table to her son, she stated matter-of-factly “we will BUY more rolls. Just have some.”

Oh yes she did. Yes. She did.

Cured

Dear FIL,

Adoption does not cure infertility.  Adoption cures childlessness.  I do not know how to make it any simpler for you.

I will not be getting pregnant after we adopt.  I am on the pill.  I have shitty ovaries.

Yes. Yes.  Your wife was told she’d never have children too.  Yes.  Yes.  Your wife went on to have two biologial children after you adopted.  But! But!  Your wife didn’t have any tests, wasn’t subjected to “treatment”, didn’t have to take any medication…  The diagnosis your wife received 40 years ago is not equal to the diagnosis and decsions I am dealing with now.

I know you don’t believe me (because you went on and on about it) – but not being able to get pregnant doesn’t make me feel less of a woman.  However, being told you love me even though I can’t make babies does make me feel like less of a human.

So, thanks for that.

JJ

p.s.  To say that I can’t get pregnant because I want to get pregnant, is not only insulting, offensive and dismissive – it’s also ignorant.