The Crazies – Part 3 (and Hopefully the Finale)

I’ve blogged a few times about my less than respectful in-laws, BIL & SIL. (The In-Sanes and The Crazies (Part 2), and in Paybacks). And how my in-laws after so long still refuse to see our blended family as a whole. They continue to favour, spoil and single out my husband’s daughter. She lives a 6 hour drive from us, so when we do have time with her it is family time, and that’s how we come, as 5, not as one. We have re-iterated this to the in-laws so many times I’ve lost count. They not only have grandchildren from us, my BIL has 3 children as well.

MIL keeps trying to weasel her way back over here, but only when my stepdaughter is here. However, FIL loathes me so much, he is punishing our kids for it and hasn’t seen them in almost a year or more. He ignores my husband and is just a miserable person to deal with.

After a lot of therapy for the anxiety all of this has caused, my husband and I have reached the end of the line with this final blow.

My stepdaughter was supposed to come to our house for the summer. She spends 1.5 months here. The last stipulation we left for the in-laws was if they were so intent on seeing their favourite granddaughter “alone” as they want to, we told them to make arrangements to travel up to see her where she lives the other half of the summer themselves. It would not be fair to our other kids to have her go off with them and the others be left behind if they picked her up during her summer stay with us.

The arrived on a Thursday in her town for 5 days. On the following Tuesday they were instructed to drop her off at our house. They managed to get to her mother and have her tell me that my stepdaughter wanted to stay at their house for a “holiday”. When I told her I had made plans for all the kids for that week, she quoted something that my in-laws had said to me, that her daughter is their “blood” and they have a right to her and if my daughter (from my first marriage) wants grandparent time, to call my own parents and get it from them. No mention EVER of our son together (who happens to be their “blood”).

So they managed to back door us into having my stepdaughter for an extra week in their home 20 minutes away from my home. A friend of mine called to say that she saw my stepdaughter in our town just yesterday!!!!

Well, I think the message the in-laws are sending is clear, they only want to see their “blood” granddaughter, who is their obvious favourite. So hubby and I have decided that they can make whatever arrangements they want with her mother to see her on their terms, but it cannot impede on our vacation time with her. And our children (my daughter and our son together) that live in this house year round are off limits. They make no attempt to be grandparents unless they feel obligated to. Our children are not going to be pawns in their game. They can explain to their granddaughter later on in life why they chose her over all the others. This also means that we do not want gifts sent here anymore either. They continually mail gifts (even though they live 20 mins away) and never see or call the other kids. To me it’s a ploy to make them look good.

I know it seems like we are letting them win, and maybe to them we are, but in the grand scheme of things they are losing so much more than they will ever realize. Our children are precious and will not have them tainted by their negative and selfish behaviour.

Sand-of-a-Beach!

We live on a sandy bit of property. Sandy as in sandy, not sandy as in beachy (unfortunately).

The other day my husband’s BIL called and asked my husband if he could fill up a 5 – gallon bucket with some sand BIL wanted to use for a landscaping project, and that BIL would be right over to pick it up.

I’m sorry, but to me that’s being obscenely lazy, especially since BIL live less than a mile away and we sit on 10 acres of sand. It’s not like we would have noticed if he’d come over himself and filled up a bucket with sand!

Wrist Slap

If this was purely MY blog and MY stories about my in-laws, I would just suck it up when commenters didn’t necessary agree with my frustration with my in-laws.

However, this not just MY blog; it is all of the daughters-(or brothers)-in-law who deal with in-laws. They come here to share their stories because they need a place to vent. I make no judgements. I hope I have made this a safe haven. Part of this haven is having a very stringent comment policy. You can offer suggestions. You can offer advice. You can commiserate. However, criticism of the author will not be tolerated. If you’re not sure what I mean, here are three comments that I recently deleted from the blog:

1) Oh honey, the problem here is with you, not them.  Try reading what you wrote and pretending someone was talking about you.

2) me thinks that you are a twee bit selfish here mama.  You need to do some self analysis.

 3) The author of the post has failed to set boundaries and lay down expectations with HER own family; it’s her responsibility, not her husband’s, to speak up.  She knows that her family is driving her husband -and her!- nuts, so she needs to step up and say something.  Not just let things continue the way they are.  She just doesn’t want to be the “Bad Guy” in her family by telling them that things need to change, so she’s sitting back watching her family mnmembers [sic] push her family around schedule and time-wise, and torture her kid (as she puts it).  She needs to grow a spine and change the game.

I don’t want to alienate commenters, but my loyalty lies with the authors of these stories. Your attention to my commenting policy in the future will be greatly appreciated.

Divorcing the In-Laws

So… I am the one who blogged “Bad Dream Wedding, Nightmare Honeymoon” back in January. It has been 6 months since I got married and I sadly report that the In-Laws have struck again, so I have finally decided to divorce them.

Here is how everything unraveled…
 
Just to give you some background information, MIL has a housekeeper who has worked for her for over 10 years. That lady used to clean my house once a week. One day I asked her if she would please iron my husband’s shirts since she had not done so in over 3 weeks. She told me that I had no right to give her orders and asked me who do I think I am. I responded (very diplomatically since she was my MIL’s maid) that I was the lady of the house now and all I was asking for was respect. The housekeeper told me I was an intruder and a fake and when I asked her to leave my house she almost slapped me. Only after I asked my husband to tell her to leave is when she did. She would not leave unless my husband gave her the order.

After that incident the only one who offered support was FIL. MIL knew all about it but did nothing, she never spoke to me about it. I let it go, and continued as if nothing had happened.
 
SO….
 
Last week FIL and Hubbyasked me to go to the in laws home to fetch a document for them. When I got there only the housekeeper was there. She saw me and ignored me, but when I asked where the document FIL needed was she screamed “By the table!”. I responded that she need not yell and that she needed to show me respect. The housekeeper came up to me and “got in my face” telling me who do you think you are, telling me I play the good girl card to the family but she will expose me as a fake. I stopped her in her tracks and told her that she had to stop speaking to me that way and I demanded respect as a human being and as my husband’s wife; that she is being paid to clean not to attack me. I got so mad that I yelled to myself “who does this &%^$# maid think she is?!” (I recognize I did wrong here). I stormed downstairs to grab my things and leave, when she comes from behind and hits me in the back. This is while I’m walking downstairs, so I almost fell, then she passes me in the stairs slamming me against the wall, and she runs to the phone.
 
Although she hit me, I did not touch her ONLY because I knew that this woman is 2 months pregnant. I left and called my husband to let him know I had been physically attacked by this crazy woman. He assured me that he would take care of this situation. In the meantime my two SIL started calling me and my husband insulting us with the most vicious and vulgar language you could imagine. Apparently the housekeeper told them that I had gone to their home to insult and hit her. SILs swore on their mother’s grave that they would not stop until they destroyed me, they insulted my family and just let go of all their vile on me and my husband. I said nothing and just asked them to not call me again.
 
FIL supports us 100% but he has no control over what happens in his home. MIL has not said a word to me but takes the housekeeper’s and SIL’s side. I for one have decided not to go to their home again while that woman works there, for I feel I am in danger. It kind of feels good not to put up with all the hate so I might as well just keep away all together…
 
Please tell me what you think, I don’t know what to do… Thoughts?

In-Law Complaint By Proxy

I am going to complain about my family on my husband’s behalf. This complaint involves a SIL, a BIL, and a AIL (aunt).

First off, I have been wanting a break from my aunt for awhile. She is my (dead) dad’s childless older sister. She wants to visit my toddler every Sunday. My husband and I both work long hours and really cherish our weekends. It is kind of pain to have her come over for two hours every Sunday and interrupt our family time. We also don’t want her to take the kid for two hours because we want to spend time with the kid.

Anyway, my aunt got her kid time in on Saturday this weekend because I was having a garage sale, so I told her she could go with my husband to the kid’s swim lesson to help him out. She did and then she spent a considerable amount of time at the house afterwards. I was safe in the driveway, but my poor husband had his free time encroached upon.

My mom normally has family dinner on Sunday but it was canceled this week. I was a little bummed because I had been thinking that would be a good time to visit with my step-brother who is in town. So, my mom ended up inviting just us over. My sister and BIL were taking the aunt to dinner and a movie that night and my step-sister had been over the day before, so we were looking forward to a low-key evening with just my parents and my step-brother.

Since my sister had plans during family dinner time, she wanted to come over to our house earlier in the day to visit with the kid since they wouldn’t have seen her all week. I told my sister that we were pretty busy and I hadn’t firmed up times for a couple things, so I would have to let her know. She let me know that early morning and mid-afternoon would work well with her schedule. I laughed and told her we don’t want morning visitors. She got more specific and said, “Ok, we can come over from 3-4.” I told her I would let her know.

We ended up being busy until 3:50 on Sunday. I called my sister because I said I would, even though I knew she probably wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, and told her that we would be going over to my parents’ house shortly and if she wanted to visit the kid, she could do it there. She couldn’t, of course, because of the movie time.

We had the nice, enjoyable, low-key evening we were expecting at my parents’ house. After dinner, we were hanging out in the family room. The men were watching the Lakers game. My mom was in the kitchen making Amish friendship bread. I was looking through sales fliers and the kid was playing quietly on the floor. Then, my sister, BIL, and aunt showed up and everything went to shit.

There weren’t enough seats in the family room for everyone, so my sister brought in some folding chairs. It was instantly crowded and noisy. My BIL took the kid out in the backyard and got her all riled up and let her get into the pool toys and bring them in the house. My sister and aunt talked through the whole game, pissing off my step-dad and my step-brother (he went out front to make calls on his cell phone to get away). My aunt called my kid “unsociable” because the kid wanted to play with what she wanted to play with and wouldn’t come over to the aunt’s chair whenever the aunt wanted her to. Also, my aunt kept torturing my kid by trying to hold her when she didn’t want to be held, and make her give my aunt hugs and kisses when she didn’t want to, which totally pisses me off because she just keeps insisting long after it is apparent that the kid isn’t going to give in.

So, it was finally coming to an end, they were heading out to a restaurant for dinner. I heard the kid whining in the other room and my aunt saying, “Give me kiss.” I yelled, “Quit torturing her!” A minute later my aunt walked into the family room and said, “Well, that wasn’t any fun.” I assumed she was referring to stopping by uninvited* to visit the kid and the kid not obeying her every command, and I said, “She wasn’t put on this planet to entertain you.” Before I even got my sentence out, my husband said, “She’s not your plaything.” My aunt said, “I never said she was!” got mad and stormed out.

I don’t think she’s ever stormed out on me before or got mad at me like that, so I was a little shocked, but I was still more irritated by the whole visit than anything else, so I wasn’t really sorry about it. Now, I do feel a little guilty, but maybe I can get a break from her for awhile.

*After they left, I found out that my sister had called while my mom was in the kitchen after dinner to ask if we were still there and if they could come over. I told my mom that a little heads up would have been nice. I don’t like being forced to visit with people against my will.

-Irritated with My Husband’s In-Laws