MiL has been here 60mins...

[whatatod0]

Oh god. parents-in-law have been here 1 hour into a 7 day visit. They are already annoying me.
MIL likes to help/take over my kitchen and she doesn't listen when I tell her to go and sit down (nicely). If I give her a job to do she just gets in my way and takes forever to do it.
I want to run away for the week.

Feel your pain. I am getting a 10 day visit. If she is willing get plenty wine in and let her crack on.

Have cancelled some of my Easter leave and will be much more available for trips to the cinema or meet up with friends.

Babysitting and money are not issues here. They can't look after dd without it going wrong, and we give them money and holidays.
There is a difference between someone being horrible and someone who is annoying. My MIL is the latter.

Us mums or mils cannot win

So you're a saint who never finds anyone they care about irritating in large doses?

Oh God, my MIL is just the same. DH doesn't bother responding so I get all the chat about people I don't even know. Then she ignores DC to watch telly. And then she offers to help .... and gets all huffy if I try and explain how something works that she's not used to.

My MIL moved away when my DC was 6 months old, we've seen her basically once a year since.

She stayed with us in our house once for a week, we have her our bedroom, I shared with the DC (2 bed house), DH slept on the sofa.

Most days she went out at lunchtime, and came back late....Drunk.
Story of DH life really.

One memorable evening we'd kept spag bol for her dinner , as she wasnt back for dinner, again, and she screamed she couldn't eat worms, so DH actually dug something out if the freezer and cooked her a whole fresh meal at stupid o'clock at night.

The stress of her being here made me ill, to the point I was nearly hospitalised.

Surprisingly she's never been invited to stay again, when she comes down now, we have her for dinner then take her back to where she's staying.

Oh yes, we also booked a two week holiday near where she lives, and she went away those two weeks...Haven't done that either since!

She's never babysat or given us money........

this is actually cheering me up a bit hearing about everyones MIL stories!

We once asked my mother in law to look after our son for a day when he was 7. She had plenty of notice so it wasn't like it was sprung on her at the last minute and we did honestly think she'd do something fun with him.
When we went to pick him up at 5pm he was fast asleep which was most unusual. I was worried that he was ill but he said he was bored so went to sleep. She'd taken him to Tesco to do her weekly shop in the morning and then in the afternoon he'd watched her paint her garden fences. Surely she could've done those things on other days and enjoyed a day with her youngest grandchild instead. It just about sums up her disinterest in them though.

When she's not sat on the sofa she sometimes follows me round the house talking at me.

Ah, you've got the female version of FIL, who follows me from room to room monologuing at me, because I am too polite to totally ignore him, unlike his wife and children.

He is in the 'means well, but small doses is enough' category. They are another fabulous with the children, but unfortunately will only ever see the children on absolutely their own terms. Their response to a desperate plea for help with childcare for half a day for DS1 when everything went tits up was firmly rebuffed. SIL gets lots of help as she still lives locally....

Threads like this always give the impression that everyone hates their MIL - but that is because people aren't really going to come onto a thread like this to post their 'wonderful MIL' stories - there is a self-selecting bias in favour of terrible MIL stories.

To balance the scales a little - my MIL was wonderful. She was supportive of both dh and me - willing to offer advice, but perfectly happy if we decided not to follow it. She was a positive pleasure as a house guest - helpful without taking over, fun to be with, and a great conversationalist. She passed away just before Christmas 2015, and I miss her so, so much.

My MIL doesn't babysit or give us money

I do love her I just don't want to co-prep dinner with her…. ever it can make the most simple meal stressful. The way she does things makes no sense.

Once, she was insisting on helping, so I said okay do you mind peeling some potatoes?.
She says "how many" and I say "enough for the 5 of us^
She peels 2 very small ones.
Might need a few more MIL
"but I've never cooked potatos in a steamer so I don't know how many to do"
at this point DH says "mum, it's the same amount per person no matter how you cook them.. however many you're going to put on each person's plate, times 5 of us, that's how many we need to peel"
MIL starts to get annoyed with him "well I don't know how many that is in that thing, I always boil mine!"
DH: "well, however many you'ld peel if you were boiling enough for 5 people, that's how many you peel to steam them for 5 people"
MIL now very annoyed at DH "LOVE" ("love" in an angry way ) "I DON'T HAVE ONE OF THOSE THINGS" (she can't even SAY the word steamer now it's just too exotic and scary and strange) "I HAVEN'T USED ONE BEFORE SO HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT"
DH: "MUM, YOU DON'T HAVE TO US IT, I'll turn it on, we just need 5 PEOPLE worth of potatoes"
MIL " well, I don't know how much that is, I can't do it"

so. that was helpful

I love my MIL! My own mum died when I was 8 so maybe that makes it easier. We nip each other (we have little arguments!) but we love each other and we both want what's best for our family. She helped make my DH the lovely man he is today and I respect her for that. It tends to be me (not DH) who invites her to stay I even add nights on!
I know we annoy each other sometimes, but that's life. No one is perfect.
She loves/adores the children and makes so much of an effort to see them.
When DH proposed she sent me a lovely letter (which I still have, sent 15 years ago!).
She can be quick to judge and stubborn but is lovely, caring and wonderful. I'd call her Mum if I could. I can't haven't used that word since I was eight. I do write it down in cards and texts. I'm very lucky.
Good luck getting through the next 7 days OP I hope you can find some reserves of patience and tolerance! Try and find some good things and repeat those as a mantra.

7 days is far too long a visit! Two days is enough for just about any houseguest, let alone the in-laws. We now always extend an invitation with a start and end date, always saying that we have somewhere to be the next day so that they cannot extend. This is particularly necessary over Christmas otherwise they would ensconce themselves for the entirety of Xmas.

TinselTwins - yes yes yes yes yes. exactly. I let mil cook tea once - we were having jacket potatoes with cheese and a salad. For 3 adults.
1 and 1/2 hours later we got a microwaved spud, blocks of cheese and some lettuce and tomatoes. I honestly have no idea what she did to take that long!!

1 and 1/2 hours later we got a microwaved spud, blocks of cheese and some lettuce and tomatoes. I honestly have no idea what she did to take that long!!

LOL, that reminds me of MIL's "summer salad"
It was bigged up at the time, this nice "summer salad" we were going to have.. was quite looking forward to it actually, she did a special trip to the shops.

There was a whole onion (not pickled, just peeled). A whole tomato, a slice of ham and a whole lettuice leaf

I didn't know what to do, I had to eat it to be polite but HOW? there wasn't even any dressing or salad cream to help it slide down!

I'm sure many of my meals miss the mark with her and she thinks I'm just as odd. I don't know why these threads get attacked as "MIL bashing" , everybody has their oddities and no matter how much you love someone, nobody is the perfect guest and most people will do something that annoys you when they stay in your house

Tinsel, that's hilarious.

love the Summer Salad!

Tinsel - are we related??!!!

I once braved a MIL post on here & got the barrage of 'you'll be a mil eventually' blah blah blah.

I feel for you OP had mine here for 45 mins yesterday & that was enough!! Luckily she'll go off the radar again now until DH's birthday in July!!

For the record never had an offer of babysitting, a house deposit or a kiss my arse from her & even if she had as a pp suggested I'd still rather have satan round for a brew any day!!

Oh God, my MIL is just the same. DH doesn't bother responding so I get all the chat this is my MIL but she just rants on about all sorts of crap that she believes and everyone else is wrong and if you try and have a 2 way conversation she just shouts over you, buts in or changes the subject.... hence why OH can't be bothered with her neither can i.

I miss my MIL, lovely woman, used to see her at least twice a week, emigrated 4ish years ago and we've seen them twice since.

Frozen pizza is all my mother in law ever cooks for us when we visit. If she doesn't fancy 'cooking' then she'll give us cheese rolls, with loads of butter and a thick tasteless slab of mild cheese.

The worst thing about the summer salad was I think it was her way of making me my kind of food.. which was even more pressure to eat it all (she didn't eat hers)

Because we don't have meat & 2 veg every night and some of our meals are vegetarian I think she must have thought I'ld just love a plate of whole vegetables.. it was a nice gesture, but a whole onion -oof! I had to ask for a sharper knife and all

Bit like when we tried to make her food she'ld like: meat and potato, and it backfired with the whole steamer situation…

Don't have my mother or mother in law..sadly both passed away when I was 40.....make the most of them......

I'm quite a decent cook and always make sure there's a nice meal when she's here but she's so hard to please. One time I made a beef stew. We'd had it the week before and my husband said I should make it when his mother came as she'd love it, so I did.
She picked through her dish and just ate the beef, and when my husband asked if she liked it she said "I can take it or leave it". A really nice pasta dish I once made got exactly the same reaction.

My MIL's speciality was Boef borgenion or however you spell it or chicken chasseur. She even used to serve them up for the kids when toddlers. Yes they ate a variety of proper food at that age but I would imagine most toddlers would turn their nose up at these. They both tried to make an effort with the veg even though it had all been well over cooked by a good 20 minutes but neither DC's liked her sauces hardly surprising but she called them faddy eaters like their mum!!!

Mil's specialty is dolmio...