Basically apologies for a huge rant, but it's either this or DH's mother is kicked out of the house in the middle of the night.
MIL and FIL have always made it clear they despise me and my family, but somehow because they want to "protect," DH and my children from me, and they nomally live a ( healthy,) distance away, it has become a tradition that starting xmas eve, they will stay a week to ten days with the family to spend the "christmas season," with us. They never ask if it is a problem,just phone DH, to tell him what time he will need to pick them up from the statio. However it is problem for me, and issues arising today have particuarly wound me up. In no particular order:
- DH and i have no problem with smokers, however ask people to smoke in the garden if they are staying in the house. MIL is used to smoking inside, and will always try and light up when i'm not looking, ( e.g. in another room cooking xmas dinner.) Today arguement started when i found out she asked dd (9,) to stand guard outside the living room to stop me coming in and interupting her fag. I feel asking children to keep secrets, totally undermines me as a parent, but she thinks it is funny and DH thinks it is annoying, but not a serious problem. I am furious. I have explained to her that my sister who is having xmas dinner here has asthma, but she assures me that shes sure it's, "made up."
- Expects a cooked breakfast everyday of her stay, and was very grumpy with me when i told her i did not want to cook a full english on xmas day as we'd be eating a big meal i a few hours. Cooked scrambled eggs with DD and she refused to eat these out of spite, even though DD had been really excited about cooking nanny a special breakfast on Xmas morning. ( And shes already told me she likes scrambled eggs.) Moaned all morning about being starving despite alternatives of toast/ cereal being offered. Generally weird attitude to food, refuses any fruit or vegetables, also has an addiction to coke and dh has been made to stock up whilst she's here. Ignores any requests of mine not to offer glasses of coke on a daily basis to children. Also expresses astonishment that i'm not feeding DH properly, ( he is normal BMI, her and FIL are unsuprisingly very obese.) Again DD is also given "secret," glasses of coke each day on previous visits without my knowledge, looks set to continue this year.
- Mil must watch what she wants to watch on telly at all times, especially on xmas day. My parents like to buy a family DVD and watch it together as a family each year, this year they brought Hairspray. DD was happily watching it with my parents, MIL asked to watch corrie at about half 7, I said she could watch the repeat with me later, ( I'm also an avid soap watcher, practically only thing we have in common,) but response was not good enough and she then had a large loud convo with FIL to ruin the rest of the film, asking every 10 minutes if we could stop watching this crap and put corrie on. This is why she gets the remote to herself for whole stay normally.
- is just so rude and vulgar all the time. Pretended to vomit up my xmas dinner back on to her plate as an illustration of how "disgusting dinner was." ( I'd accidently given her a plate with veg on.) Also encouraged kids to do the same. FIL also talks about their sex life non stop in front of my whole extended family. I think this is gross.
I am crying about spending another 10 days like this, DH whilst not impressed with this still seems to feel the kids benifit from the visit.
AIBU to make this the last visit? Just want some support from DH :(