Five irritating things about staying with my inlaws

PIL don't believe in cleaning their bathroom - every time i stay there I scrub out the bathroom (think MIL got a bit po-faced about that last time, but hey). It was sooooo gross.
Don't wipe down benches or clean kitchen (live in a hot area so flies flock to sticky surfaces ugh)
Don't vacum and complain about DS2 being naughty and undisciplined (at the museum when he's 2 fgs).
MIL spends all day on facebook playing bejewelled blitz.
Going there for a long weekend soon and dreading it.

Top 5 PIL

1. Tag team chain smoking, literally constantly as one puts one out another starts and a very big deal is made of opening windows so we feel more comfortable. Their house their rules but we honestly need to keep bags in car and take clean underwear per day to limit exposure.

1. The constant passive aggressive digs looking to raise heckles and cause arguments between us and them.

1. No where to put anything (another reason for keeping in car) and single sofa bed for two.

1. The pre-requisite dribbly shower but you need to remove the show towels first so they stay dry, avoid stepping on the bathroom rug so it doesn't get wet and then dry shower completely even if someone going in directly after!

1. The food issues - cans in fridge, no fresh fruit and veg, beef dripping is not actually a vegetarian cooking oil, not being able to cook anything without constant supervision (am chef by trade)

Oh and the late night binge drinking and resulting hangovers mean cannot start the next day with any activity before lunchtime and must tiptoe around house to avoid waking! I do love them but just cannot spend much time with them as they are fundamentally very different from me.

5 things they would say about me

1. Very fussy being vegetarian, should eat what's given, even if meat in a restaurant!
2. That I have no sense of humour or national pride as I don't find racist jokes funny or agree with their stance on immigration
3. That I know nothing about the world as I don't read the mail or sun and I should accept there is no harm in passive smoking and suck it up - their house their rules
4. That I'm a slattern as I do not devote 5-6 cleaning per day
5. That they like me but they wish DH had chosen someone thinner and more attractive - actual quote!

We just let it flow right over heads now :)

These are excellent and absolutely fascinating.

Oh, I do love a good whinge about my lovely PILs!

1. They have no TV so every evening is filled with FIL giving a lecture about politics or history. He's a highly intelligent man but he has no interest in discussing anything, he just seems to feel the need to tell everyone everything anyone has ever discovered about some small rock... Unless BIL is also staying & then we're all ignored while they have a 'good-natured debate' which involves them talking loudly over each other because they'll always have different views on whatever they're debating. Even if it's known facts about the Roman civilisation. Somehow they'll both come up with different ways that the Romans could've 'done it better'.
   I regularly have to avoid giggling at his inability to pronounce various words though 'boogie woogie' who even says that anyway?! is apparently boo-jee woo-jee & just recently one of his evening lectures centred on his exciting discovery that if one doesn't start a YouTube video playing until the little bar at the bottom goes all the way across then it'll play more smoothly & doesn't have to keep stopping to catch up with itself... Buffering has only been around basically since the internet was invented but we're all expected to be amazed by his new discovery. DH did try to point out that this is common knowledge but he still went on about it all evening!

2. After FILs lecture he discusses with himself what time breakfast should be based on what time they want to be going out the following morning. It's always at 8.30.

3. Once that's settled he'll suddenly leap up saying, "Right, well it's X o'clock so we won't keep you up any longer." & everyone scurries up the stairs as quickly as possible. This is mostly annoying because I'll have spent the last 2 hours trying not to fall asleep & pretending to be fascinated by the origins of farming in Europe & then all of a sudden he decides we're allowed to go to bed & we must go that second. DH gets sent back down every night to make me a hot chocolate.

4. We must go out for a walk every day. Either to stately gardens or up some random hill where there's a fort or a view of something or we might won't get to see some endangered cricket. These walks consist of PILs marching off in front commenting on the origins of the Latin names for flowers they pass & me desperately trying to keep up & act like it's effortless.

5. They're so desperate to please me that it gets annoying. MIL gives the appearance of planning meals around what she know I like but invariably gets it wrong. We never stay for longer than a weekend but still she can't get her head around me not eating meat other than chicken/fish & not liking courgette or parsnip or cooked tomato/fruit. That's all I dislike & yet she seems to serve at least one of the above at every meal. It's always really fancy food too. She made macaroni & cheese once... Even that was fancy-ified.

Staying with them is just exhausting!

My family have their faults too though:

1. Their ridiculously enormous TV has to be turned on whenever we sit down. You must not talk while it's on, even if you're talking about the programme. Not exactly social!

2. They never plan anything when we visit, just carry on with their normal lives. When I was little I remember family coming to stay & we'd skip swimming/dance lessons on the Saturday & church on Sunday & go on walks or to the beach or to one of the numerous local tourist attractions. We just get asked what we're planning to do. I mentioned this to my DM once & apparently we don't get any special treatment because I used to live there. 6 years ago. She moans if we don't visit regularly enough but no-one actually spends any time with us when we are there.

3. Their house is dirty. DH cleans the kitchen every time we go. I had to resist the urge to get the hoover out last time I went - it must've been bad for me to even notice, let alone want to do something about it. DS1 kept bringing me bits off the carpet saying "fluff"!

4. 'D'F thinks it's funny to tease us constantly. He doesn't do it so much with me or DB since we moved out but regularly reduces DSis to tears with his 'humour'. I challenged him on it as a teenager & his response was, "If you can't learn to take it from me, how will you cope when the rest of the world does it?" Needless to say, I have a few self-esteem issues & have a bit of an 'everyone's out to get me' complex because of him. He genuinely seems to think it's his job to treat us badly so we'll be more resilient. The minute he upsets any of my DC like that is the moment we leave the house for good.

Sorry, got a bit serious there for a moment... The only time we're taken out anywhere with them is when DF has planned a hike through some wilderness or other with his mates. DH is encouraged to tag along. I'm left with the kids. Not really complaining about that though!

Here's my five:

1. Constant setting of the table. Cup of tea and biscuit? FIL gets up mumbling "I'll set the table"... They are incapable of ingesting anything without the accompaniment of tablecloth, cutlery, plates, placemats and condiments tray. The amount of time spent on this activity is insane.

1. They have a shower every morning and a bath last thing at night. Most days they do not leave the house. This is ablutions gone mad. Plus, it means we can never get near that dribbling shower!

1. Bizarre after shower/bath ritual of wiping down shower cubicle and bath tub with designated sponge to remove all drops of water. WTAF? DP had to teach me how to do it....

1. Constant moaning of how busy they are with all the jobs they have to do every week, like 'high' dusting and painting of weathered gnomes. They are retired. It is all self inflicted madness.

1. Inability to go anywhere without a cool box full of egg sandwiches, a bag full of rotting bananas and a massive thermos of tea. Please, for the love of god could we just go to a cafe?

They are well meaning though. Love em

On the birdwatching front...On being offered a copy of a bird identification book by MIL, I made the mistake of admitting that I wasn't actually that interested in birds. I mean, they look pretty and all, and I'm delighted to have them in my garden. But I am not so fussed about looking up the rare lesser spotted poodle or a double-crested lemming in a special book.

I may as well have admitted that I liked a little smoke of crack while looking after the children. I was informed that for my children's sake, I'd better start getting interested asap. And DH was later informed of my horrendous confession. Because clearly a life devoid of bird identification skills is, in essence, morally abhorrent. Who knew?

The Naughty Sausage, you made me laugh til I cried.
And onetiredmummy has inspired a name change.

These are all very amusing! I feel your pain OP, I've had my PILs with us for a couple of months. They've returned home now. I'm going to preface my 5 points with they are actually very lovely. But still when we're with them...

1. rabid portion control at meal times. So if there's 4 eating we only need 4 teeny tiny potatoes, or 4 slices of carrots and not much meat. After all they aren't as active as they used to be. Starving at end of meal. Grrrr

2. they always put a sheet under a duvet, like having sheet and blankets. I get totally knotted up in this sodding arrangement, ffs. This really pisses me off. I have Scandinavian DM and this is sooooo just, wrong.

3. that I am always made to feel incredibly extravagant. I mean, I wantonly threw away a pair of DH's boxers as the button had come away and ripped the fabric. Clearly I should have repaired. Ditto using shop bought receptacles to keep tea/biscuits/packed lunches when empty coffee jars/ice cream tubs are perfectly acceptable. Ditto baby wipes. Flannels in tuppaware in her day, y'know. And wanton sluttery that is me I have a cleaner...

4. they eat the very same thing every every every lunchtime. Sandwich with naice ham, banana and mug of green tea. If there's no bananas in the fruit bowl then, quite frankly, the four horseman of the apocalypse will be arriving shortly and we will all die.

5. the constant bloody napping. Not my kids. Them. Even when I was a shattered jet lagged with two young kiddies in tow..they never ever ever offered to have them for an hour while I slept. Bastards.

1. no tv or radio allowed when on visits. We must converse, even if there is nothing to talk about.
2. without a doubt, mil will always ask probing questions about my life/ childhood prior to dh. This was fine the first time, but after 5 years, the answers haven't changed, yet she still asks the same questions!
3. we are told to lie in, as we are on holiday. We are then criticised for making everyone wait for breakfast, despite being washed and dressed by 8am ourselves, and no plans for big sit down meal inthe first place.
4. mil doesn't do tea. Unfortunately, it's pretty much the only thing I drink. When I visit, I always make my own, bring my own tea etc. She has taken to hiding the kettle as she doesn't like me making it, as it makes her out to be a poor host.

She's not that bad really, these are mild annoyances, and lucky for me she has a lovely strong shower :-)

I only have a FIL. My DP is a scientist and my FIL is a scientist.
1 - droning on and on and on about fecking SCIENCE from the moment my DP gets up to the moment we go to bed. I am not a scientist and therefore not part of any conversation.
2 - banging on about his Humax box for at least the first ten minutes of any visit. I don't even know what a Humax box does.
3 - being obsessed with telly to the point he will drone on about how long it took him to get it up on his PC (before iPlayer) and yet...never watches it!
4 - spending one hour in the bathroom every morning...unclear why and apparently even MIL wondered wtf he was doing in there
5 - dribbly shower.

He's a nice man but so so so boring!

Oh the soaps! Who knew there were so many of them? And Coronation Street is on twice some nights, just when you think you've sat through enough it comes on again!

My PILs are so adorable (especially after reading this thread) that I can only do the list of annoying things they would say about me:

1. Sulks when that nice Mr Gove or that jolly Mr Farage is mentioned.

1. Used to breastfeed at the table, when anyone could see she didn't have enough milk.

1. Is quite grumpy and over strict to her child.

1. Has the housekeeping standards of Fungus the Bogeyman.

They are lovely- but I still quite fancy a PIL-swap next summer - we could do it like a key party...

I think that I may be on the way to be onetiredmummys parents

House hotter than Satan's arse crack

Pathetic dribbling shower

Telly on but so quiet no-one but DF can hear it. Also will be muted during ad breaks so DF can deliver his rant about ad breaks.

Three bedrooms, one of which is smaller than an ant's airing cupboard (was my room before I left home!). Me and dh shared it one Christmas. He was in the short narrow bed which is a steel frame nailed to the wall. I was on the floor with the other luggage, on an air bed. DB and SIL were in the next room. On our old bunk beds. I was jealous until I slept on one. You know that bit in The Return of The King when Frodo, Sam and Gollum climb the Stair to Cirith Ungol, and they have to sleep on a tiny ledge of rock about a thousand feet up? It was like that. The mattress was so hard I thought I would wobble off it in my sleep.

Random loud sighs from DM.

No-one is allowed to have a discussion that isn't serious. Dh keeps making the mistake of talking about history to my mum, who has just done a history degree with the OU which is great but now means that she is always right and takes no prisoners. I spend half our visits trying to keep things from turning into an edition of Panorama. As a consequence of this my father thinks I am appallingly shallow, an opinion he first formed back in 1994 when I said I enjoyed watching Friends.

Trivial Pursuit in their house is anything but.

UglyFuckling I bet she's playing candy crush on her ipad

I dare you. I fecking dare you! One entire night of Egyptian slideshows of sand & temples & you will never want to see a bloody statue again. You will want to drown yourself in smelly tea if you survive the shower

I want onetiredmummy's parents too.
Fight you for them.

And I wouldn't mind staying at onetiredmummy's parents. I quite like travel photos and fancy teas.

Viewofthehills - ewwwww. Do you take sleeping bags?

Lazyfaire - yeah I think you're right - I so have to say that to him.
We only go every three or four years though so talk about 'revenge is a dish best served cold' - mine'll be positively glacial !!!

I have 1) and 2) exactly the same at my SIL's. 5) also but for me it's milk - I love my milk and they never have any so I will always say I'm going to buy some and they will block my path and say "but we HAVE milk!" YES but you only have enough to make tea, not for me to drink pints of it! Let me go buy some goddamn milk ffs.

There are some in-laws here that I would quite like. Can I volunteer to be taken birdwatching? The smelly tea might be interesting too. (Only have very crumbly ancient father-in-law who is chauffeured over to our place for lunch, falls asleep, gets woken for a cup of tea and is then returned to sheltered flat.)

As far as showers go my PIL's is ok. However:

Dinner is served at 6.30. On the dot. If you arrive at 7 it will be on a plate in the microwave waiting for you to heat up.

Tea is the only day time drink. You get funny looks if you drink water or squash with your meal.

The dog is allowed to lick cups and plates (boak)

MIL is not allowed to drive the family car (that's a man's job)

They never have time to read or cook from scratch. But have plenty of time to watch all the soaps every evening.

I do love them though