MIL... the first few days...
Again, I post here mostly because I can't say this on FB without her somehow finding out. So, feel free to ignore my whining.
It hasn't been horrible per se, but certainly awkward. The woman was always pretentious, but now she's adding crazy old lady to the mix. I mean, I have noticed changes in my mother in the last few years too. And my mom was always a bit of a lovable nut. But my husband's mother is becoming the kind of old lady who is judgmental and wants you to bend to her every crazy whim. Here are some of the other things she has done since her arrival...
1. The woman won't eat anything I make and insists that she cook everything. I don't care a whole lot about this (except that my poor husband told me on the phone today that all he really wants is this bean soup we like and I know she will not let me make it for him :\ or if I do she will refuse to try it). But what makes me really angry is she cooks for 10 people when there are only 3 of us here. And, honestly, I wouldn't even mind that too much, except that she keeps making MORE.
Everyday, regardless of whether we actually finished the food from the previous day, she wants us to take her to the store to buy more ingredients so she can make something new. It has gotten to the point where when she asks me what I want to eat, I tell her I don't want anything. She probably thinks I'm crazy, but I snack when she's not around on things that need to be eaten. She also never helps us eat the left overs... I do not understand this. I DO NOT LIKE to throw away food. But she won't freeze any of her concoctions either... in fact she doesn't even put them away half the time, which brings me to #2.
2. She leaves food out. She does this a lot. Now, I understand her forgetting to put things away sometimes. Occasionally, the food is hot and she doesn't want to put it away until it cools. But, she also leaves random foods laying around like, half sliced tomatoes. I found one yesterday morning that had like... purple spots on it. She wanted us to keep it. My husband insisted on throwing it away. If she had covered it with a bit of plastic and put it in the fridge it would have been FINE. She also left baked goods out and the cat got into them. I have told her at least 3 times already, the cat WILL eat any kind of bread product/baked goods. You cannot leave them uncovered. This is just a waste...
3. She cleans about as well as my husband did when I first married him 9_9 This is mostly regarding the kitchen. I trained my husband early on regarding my standards for cleaning dishes. He still occasionally misses something, but I'm not constantly rewashing things because they have dried food stuck to them anymore. My MIL does not look at the dish once she is done washing it. So, I am constantly rewashing things. She also gets mad when I put things away because she says she is going to do it (I ignore her and do it anyhow).
I have my routines too, and I put away the dishes in the morning before I relax. It's what I do, because otherwise they will never be put away. She also never wipes down the counters when she's done cooking. I'm always finding crumbs and dried tomato sauce on everything. That kind of stuff grosses me out when I think that she's going to prepare something new on that same surface...
4. She does not know how to properly unplug an appliance, apparently... This is something I learned when I was 5. The first time my dad saw me whip a vacuum cord out of the wall by the cord, instead of gripping the plug, he explained to me why this is a BAD thing and a potential fire hazard. Apparently, no one has told MIL that you should remove plugs by gripping the plug and not the cord. She yanked the plug to the electric tea kettle out of the wall by the cord ><; Yeah... we'll see if she breaks all our appliances before she leaves.
5. Measurements are not standard in her mind. She constantly complains about how our "American" rice isn't good enough (we usually buy an Indian variety btw). Now, I can understand needing specialty rices for things like sushi. I know there are long grains and short grains, wild, brown and bleached, jasmine etc. I'm not so ignorant as to say all rice is the same. But I find it REALLY hard to believe that of all the varieties they carry in stores, she can't find something to her liking, especially when she's not even using the rice in the dish but serving it on the side 9_9 See, at that point, to me, rice is rice.
I think part of the problem is HER. The other day she was making rice to serve on the side. My husband pointed her to our very nice rice cooker, but she refused to use it. She insisted she could make it in a pot her own way. She then proceeds to add chicken broth and then water to the rice, ultimately twice as much fluid as she should have added. My husband tried to stop her, even pointing out to her the measurements on the measuring cup, telling her that instead of "one cup" she was adding two. She then tells him in Turkish, "To me THIS is a cup!" ... What the hell? A cup is a cup, there is no "my cup" and "your cup" when you are measuring! As a result, the rice came out over cooked and really soft and she blamed the American rice.
6. She likes to make assumptions... about everything including what company we want to keep. I particularly was amused when she informed me that her friend is coming for the 4th of July from Memphis. There was no, "Oh, hey would you mind if my friend came for a visit?" No, it was "[so-and-so] is coming on the 4th."
...
I'm about to have a freakin' baby here! Like literally ANY DAY. I could go into labor on the 3rd :p aaaaand you didn't even think to ask us if we were ok with company from out of town??? I just let it go and asked my husband in private, "Did she ask you or just TELL YOU like she did me?" apparently he was told too 9_9 I then said, "So... are we expected to put this person up for the night?" I mean Memphis is about 4 hours away, it's not exactly a day trip like Atlanta... He said it was HIS understanding that we are not expected to let this person stay overnight, she will drive to Atlanta for the evening and stay with another friend...
We shall see if this really happens, because I know how his mother entertains, she has had parties that go on til 4am. She had better not pull that crap on the 4th, because I fully intend to kick her friend out at 10pm. My husband has work on Friday morning. ;p
7. The woman does not manage money well... like... at all... I mean for those who have read all my other drama ramblings about her, I can hear you saying, "duh..." But I mean, it's so much more apparent when you watch her shop. Never mind all the food she has been wasting (I just had to break up an entire hardened loaf of French bread and feed it to the birds because she wouldn't eat it when I bought it. It wasn't good enough she wanted some other bread). She constantly is buying junk for people.
But not just any junk, she wants to shop EVERYWHERE and has been to the store nearly every day since she came. She wants to buy people things like Polo brand shirts and shit. She insists they are more expensive in Turkey. I find this hard to believe when they are like $60+ here. She keeps making us circle around to Marshall's, TJ Maxx, Bed Bath and Beyond, Pier 1, the mall... she continuously tells us she wants to go to the pet store so she can buy some fancy pants as seen on TV doggie electric nail grinding product instead of normal nail clippers :p She also mentions Walmart every time we pass it. I'm not sure what her obsession is with Walmart.
Basically, the lady has been to a store everyday since she arrived. Now, I know she is on "vacation" and all, but... she's going to be here a month... she needs to pace herself and curb her spending a bit. But then, she also owes like $100,000+ to creditors in the US and even had to check with her lawyer to see if they'd arrest her at the airport for her debts before she entered the country :P So... money? What's that? (She also has spent over 2,000TL on her dog's medical bills recently because it got hit by a car and she let the vet put the dog in a kennel for like 2 months. It's STILL not better. Which makes me wonder if her "wonderful" vet is milking her because she's dumb enough to let him-- oh and the polo shirt is for him).
8. Lottery! :D This is another argument I have had with her before. She wants to play the lottery, at like, every store that sells tickets. I just don't say anything about it anymore. She once made my husband drive from Dothan, AL to the FL border (about 45min away) just so she could play the lottery. She thinks God will magically rain money down on her and solve all her problems. Yeah... good luck with that lottery thing. I only play when the payout is HUGE, then I figure "Why the hell not?" but I never go in with any expectations...
9. She keeps telling us we need this or that... She tells me in the store today what we need some kind of serving dish. I have no idea what she called it or what she was talking about (for all I know she used the Turkish name for the thing -- she said she asked my husband if we had one and he already told her we didn't). I tried to explain to her we have a TON of dishes already. I mean I have daily dishes, sushi plates, a pasta set my uncle gave us for our wedding, and an entire set of dishes I bought in Korea of all shapes and sizes. But nope... apparently I need some other specialty dish and we can't make do with all the other dishes I have 9_9
I'm willing to bet this has something to do with her friend who is coming on the 4th. I'm not the kind of person who shows off for guests. None of my friends give a damn about the plate the food is on, they just want the food XD I just see another serving dish as a waste of money and space given that I have a buffet table full of fancy dishes I almost never have the occasion to use 9_9 She didn't see one in the store today, thankfully. So hopefully, it won't come up again. I don't want her buying us a ton of useless shit that we're going to end up taking to Goodwill as soon as she leaves.
That's enough whining for now. I pretended to go take a nap so I could write this. :p I suppose I feel particularly bad for my husband. I only hear half of her criticisms because she can't articulate herself as well in English. The poor guy hears EVERYTHING. The other day while she was in the pharmacy buying even more crap, he said to me in the car, "Thank you for saving my life." :\ I can see why his dad got lost in a bottle. It's always about her. I'm kinda glad I only have to put up with her every so many years :p I think her living 2 continents away is a good thing ;p
It hasn't been horrible per se, but certainly awkward. The woman was always pretentious, but now she's adding crazy old lady to the mix. I mean, I have noticed changes in my mother in the last few years too. And my mom was always a bit of a lovable nut. But my husband's mother is becoming the kind of old lady who is judgmental and wants you to bend to her every crazy whim. Here are some of the other things she has done since her arrival...
1. The woman won't eat anything I make and insists that she cook everything. I don't care a whole lot about this (except that my poor husband told me on the phone today that all he really wants is this bean soup we like and I know she will not let me make it for him :\ or if I do she will refuse to try it). But what makes me really angry is she cooks for 10 people when there are only 3 of us here. And, honestly, I wouldn't even mind that too much, except that she keeps making MORE.
Everyday, regardless of whether we actually finished the food from the previous day, she wants us to take her to the store to buy more ingredients so she can make something new. It has gotten to the point where when she asks me what I want to eat, I tell her I don't want anything. She probably thinks I'm crazy, but I snack when she's not around on things that need to be eaten. She also never helps us eat the left overs... I do not understand this. I DO NOT LIKE to throw away food. But she won't freeze any of her concoctions either... in fact she doesn't even put them away half the time, which brings me to #2.
2. She leaves food out. She does this a lot. Now, I understand her forgetting to put things away sometimes. Occasionally, the food is hot and she doesn't want to put it away until it cools. But, she also leaves random foods laying around like, half sliced tomatoes. I found one yesterday morning that had like... purple spots on it. She wanted us to keep it. My husband insisted on throwing it away. If she had covered it with a bit of plastic and put it in the fridge it would have been FINE. She also left baked goods out and the cat got into them. I have told her at least 3 times already, the cat WILL eat any kind of bread product/baked goods. You cannot leave them uncovered. This is just a waste...
3. She cleans about as well as my husband did when I first married him 9_9 This is mostly regarding the kitchen. I trained my husband early on regarding my standards for cleaning dishes. He still occasionally misses something, but I'm not constantly rewashing things because they have dried food stuck to them anymore. My MIL does not look at the dish once she is done washing it. So, I am constantly rewashing things. She also gets mad when I put things away because she says she is going to do it (I ignore her and do it anyhow).
I have my routines too, and I put away the dishes in the morning before I relax. It's what I do, because otherwise they will never be put away. She also never wipes down the counters when she's done cooking. I'm always finding crumbs and dried tomato sauce on everything. That kind of stuff grosses me out when I think that she's going to prepare something new on that same surface...
4. She does not know how to properly unplug an appliance, apparently... This is something I learned when I was 5. The first time my dad saw me whip a vacuum cord out of the wall by the cord, instead of gripping the plug, he explained to me why this is a BAD thing and a potential fire hazard. Apparently, no one has told MIL that you should remove plugs by gripping the plug and not the cord. She yanked the plug to the electric tea kettle out of the wall by the cord ><; Yeah... we'll see if she breaks all our appliances before she leaves.
5. Measurements are not standard in her mind. She constantly complains about how our "American" rice isn't good enough (we usually buy an Indian variety btw). Now, I can understand needing specialty rices for things like sushi. I know there are long grains and short grains, wild, brown and bleached, jasmine etc. I'm not so ignorant as to say all rice is the same. But I find it REALLY hard to believe that of all the varieties they carry in stores, she can't find something to her liking, especially when she's not even using the rice in the dish but serving it on the side 9_9 See, at that point, to me, rice is rice.
I think part of the problem is HER. The other day she was making rice to serve on the side. My husband pointed her to our very nice rice cooker, but she refused to use it. She insisted she could make it in a pot her own way. She then proceeds to add chicken broth and then water to the rice, ultimately twice as much fluid as she should have added. My husband tried to stop her, even pointing out to her the measurements on the measuring cup, telling her that instead of "one cup" she was adding two. She then tells him in Turkish, "To me THIS is a cup!" ... What the hell? A cup is a cup, there is no "my cup" and "your cup" when you are measuring! As a result, the rice came out over cooked and really soft and she blamed the American rice.
6. She likes to make assumptions... about everything including what company we want to keep. I particularly was amused when she informed me that her friend is coming for the 4th of July from Memphis. There was no, "Oh, hey would you mind if my friend came for a visit?" No, it was "[so-and-so] is coming on the 4th."
...
I'm about to have a freakin' baby here! Like literally ANY DAY. I could go into labor on the 3rd :p aaaaand you didn't even think to ask us if we were ok with company from out of town??? I just let it go and asked my husband in private, "Did she ask you or just TELL YOU like she did me?" apparently he was told too 9_9 I then said, "So... are we expected to put this person up for the night?" I mean Memphis is about 4 hours away, it's not exactly a day trip like Atlanta... He said it was HIS understanding that we are not expected to let this person stay overnight, she will drive to Atlanta for the evening and stay with another friend...
We shall see if this really happens, because I know how his mother entertains, she has had parties that go on til 4am. She had better not pull that crap on the 4th, because I fully intend to kick her friend out at 10pm. My husband has work on Friday morning. ;p
7. The woman does not manage money well... like... at all... I mean for those who have read all my other drama ramblings about her, I can hear you saying, "duh..." But I mean, it's so much more apparent when you watch her shop. Never mind all the food she has been wasting (I just had to break up an entire hardened loaf of French bread and feed it to the birds because she wouldn't eat it when I bought it. It wasn't good enough she wanted some other bread). She constantly is buying junk for people.
But not just any junk, she wants to shop EVERYWHERE and has been to the store nearly every day since she came. She wants to buy people things like Polo brand shirts and shit. She insists they are more expensive in Turkey. I find this hard to believe when they are like $60+ here. She keeps making us circle around to Marshall's, TJ Maxx, Bed Bath and Beyond, Pier 1, the mall... she continuously tells us she wants to go to the pet store so she can buy some fancy pants as seen on TV doggie electric nail grinding product instead of normal nail clippers :p She also mentions Walmart every time we pass it. I'm not sure what her obsession is with Walmart.
Basically, the lady has been to a store everyday since she arrived. Now, I know she is on "vacation" and all, but... she's going to be here a month... she needs to pace herself and curb her spending a bit. But then, she also owes like $100,000+ to creditors in the US and even had to check with her lawyer to see if they'd arrest her at the airport for her debts before she entered the country :P So... money? What's that? (She also has spent over 2,000TL on her dog's medical bills recently because it got hit by a car and she let the vet put the dog in a kennel for like 2 months. It's STILL not better. Which makes me wonder if her "wonderful" vet is milking her because she's dumb enough to let him-- oh and the polo shirt is for him).
8. Lottery! :D This is another argument I have had with her before. She wants to play the lottery, at like, every store that sells tickets. I just don't say anything about it anymore. She once made my husband drive from Dothan, AL to the FL border (about 45min away) just so she could play the lottery. She thinks God will magically rain money down on her and solve all her problems. Yeah... good luck with that lottery thing. I only play when the payout is HUGE, then I figure "Why the hell not?" but I never go in with any expectations...
9. She keeps telling us we need this or that... She tells me in the store today what we need some kind of serving dish. I have no idea what she called it or what she was talking about (for all I know she used the Turkish name for the thing -- she said she asked my husband if we had one and he already told her we didn't). I tried to explain to her we have a TON of dishes already. I mean I have daily dishes, sushi plates, a pasta set my uncle gave us for our wedding, and an entire set of dishes I bought in Korea of all shapes and sizes. But nope... apparently I need some other specialty dish and we can't make do with all the other dishes I have 9_9
I'm willing to bet this has something to do with her friend who is coming on the 4th. I'm not the kind of person who shows off for guests. None of my friends give a damn about the plate the food is on, they just want the food XD I just see another serving dish as a waste of money and space given that I have a buffet table full of fancy dishes I almost never have the occasion to use 9_9 She didn't see one in the store today, thankfully. So hopefully, it won't come up again. I don't want her buying us a ton of useless shit that we're going to end up taking to Goodwill as soon as she leaves.
That's enough whining for now. I pretended to go take a nap so I could write this. :p I suppose I feel particularly bad for my husband. I only hear half of her criticisms because she can't articulate herself as well in English. The poor guy hears EVERYTHING. The other day while she was in the pharmacy buying even more crap, he said to me in the car, "Thank you for saving my life." :\ I can see why his dad got lost in a bottle. It's always about her. I'm kinda glad I only have to put up with her every so many years :p I think her living 2 continents away is a good thing ;p