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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To ask why you think MIL bought

42 replies

Fantail · 27/04/2014 08:38

us (as me, DH and DD) a Papa Smurf Gnome for our garden as a present.

Even DD (3.2) can't work out why.

Weighs about 5kg and DH had to bring it back in his suitcase on the plane.

OP posts:

crazyspaniel · 27/04/2014 10:32

What a shame that those baggage handlers literally throw passengers' suitcases around and Papa Smurf got broken.

OurMiracle1106 · 27/04/2014 10:43

Maybe she thought dd would be into the smurfs? Or maybe she's trying to say "im blue dabadedabadi"
And is hoping you buy her their CD.

TheWhispersOfTheGods · 27/04/2014 10:47

She is going to keep buying you Smurf garden ornaments for the next 10 years - then when you snap and mention to her that you actually hate both the Smurfs and garden ornaments she will look at you like this and say, no you don't, your garden is full of them! you've had them for years!

Have fun.

HuglessDouglas · 27/04/2014 10:50

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

FrancesNiadova · 27/04/2014 10:53

Fantail, it's so that every time you look at it, you'll think of her. Sweet -x-

mrstigs · 27/04/2014 10:58

I think papa smurf is a drugs mule. Have you stuck your hand up his bum for a suspicious package?

CiderwithBuda · 27/04/2014 11:12

Aside from the taste issue of a smurf gnome, some people just don't think about the practicalities of transporting presents when you travel home by plane. My mum gave me a dinner service for Xmas one year. We were living in Vietnam at the time. My sister has is now. The following year she gave me a set of 6 lovely wine glasses. I managed to get five of them home. MIL gave me a huge mirror one year. And huge vase another year. They are both still at her house I think.

JennyCalendar · 27/04/2014 11:38

"...and it all started when I was given a 5kg Papa Smurf garden gnome."

I'm afraid that you'll have to accept that this is your future now, OP.

Ohbyethen · 27/04/2014 11:46

Is Papa Smurf perpetually stuck miming going for a wee?
The pissing gnome was quite the popular chap around here for a while, maybe the fashion has just reached overseas?

My first thought too was he was packed to his eyeballs with cocaine and he will mysteriously disappear from your shed sometime soon.
But if not then...I'm struggling really! Whimsy? Wistful nostalgia? Does she hate you?

DisgraceToTheYChromosome · 27/04/2014 11:57

Sell it to these people. Or you could swap it for some of their other stuff, like the miniature camel stuck to a chunk of amethyst apparently standing in a pool of green diarrhoea.

peppinagiro · 27/04/2014 13:08

5kg?! In your luggage? On Ryanair that would have been a THIRD of your allowance! I'd have definitely tossed it in the bin at the airport. In fact, my flatmates did the same bloody inconsiderate thing when I was moving back from Italy, with Ryanair. I had to move my entire life back in one suitcase and a rucksack, and they decided to present me with a huuuuge box of a full dinner set. It weighed a ton and was the size of my suitcase. The morning of my flight. It didn't even make it as far as the airport - straight in a big skip on the street corner. Hopefully they saw and learned a valuable lesson about luggage allowances and not being dicks.

meditrina · 27/04/2014 13:19

The real reason is that your MIL knows more about DH than he will readily admit to you.

You need to consider buying this for the bedroom.

nochips · 27/04/2014 13:24

Okay, if you decide to get rid of it, at least keep it somewhere you can retrieve it easily.

At Christmas my mother's cousin, who I have met once or twice when a young teenager- so 25 odd years ago (we live not only in another country, but on another continent) gave us one of those vistaprint calendars featuring 12 months of photos from her GS's first year. A GS I have never met and am unlikely to,considering all the factors mentioned above.

DM e-mailed yesterday saying that her DCousin is coming to the Uk for a walking holiday in September. And said she wanted to come stay with us.And DM mentioned that I had better have the bloody calendar up n the fridge because her DCousin had already mentioned looking forward to seeing it in situ.

of course i have thrown the bloody thing out. In my defence,DS knocked my coffee over onto it. But the point is, i chucked it, thinking no-one would ever know, and within one mere bin collection day the damned thing was mentioned.

please learn from me. Don't free the Papa Smurf One.

peppinagiro · 27/04/2014 15:50

nochips I live in constant fear of that happening. DH and I are virulent chucker-outers, and resent anything we don't like clogging up space in our house. My family are total hoarders and always offloading stuff on us. The whole 'oh remember that (insert random guff here) we gave you five years ago? Where is it?' problem has happened a few times - we usually lie and say it's in the attic, irretrievably buried right at the back in a box or something. Or the baby destroyed it. Or moths. Could you claim your DS got jealous of the baby in the calendar and it had to be tucked away in the loft for safekeeping? ;)

nochips · 27/04/2014 15:59

I have already been running excuses through my mind. One is that my DH works away during the week (true). So took it with him to the firm's flat as he had no calendar of his own. Oh what a shame.Do you mean, you cannot visit the firm's bolthole in Shepherd's bush? Pity.

Seriously, no-one in my extended family has ever wanted to visit me. AND my DM's DCousin barely knows my name. She calls me Natalie FFS. (Not my name. Not even close).

peppinagiro · 27/04/2014 16:01

Oooo that's a brilliant excuse! Definitely go with that one. Even if she suspects you're lying, does it really matter if you offend someone so distantly related she doesn't even know your name?! Naaaah. Might just put her off sending you any more random crap or coming to visit :)

emotionsecho · 27/04/2014 18:27

That smurfette outfit is seriously disturbing!

Fantail your tale has reminded me of a certain item my DH had that was beyond hideous and became the stuff of family and friends comedy. Basically it was a figure about the size of a garden gnome that we nicknamed the Conquistador. It was in sort of doublet and hose with a fetching hat thing that someone had drilled a hole in to use as a lamp stand. DH lovingly filled in the hole in the head and painted said item. A friend who walked into the shed and saw it uttered the immortal words "What the fuck is that?". I wouldn't allow the thing in the house and when we moved the removers had it going up and down on the hoist of the lorry with me ever hopeful it would fall off and break, alas it didn't, and when I arrived at the new house said item was looking at me longingly through the kitchen window. It did finally meet it's demise though and it certainly wasn't me guv!

My in-laws also gift us weird stuff my favourite to date was the tape of wurlitzer organ music.

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