Omg such anality from pil. Come and share your anal behaviour stories (lighthearted)

[ledkr]

We are with pil at present and they are very sweet but so bloody uptight about everything.
Bil has been away for a week so he left car with pil so that it "wasn't left in the street" it has a steering lock on and fil takes it for a drive each day! The car is an old banger worth about two hundred quid.
Kids can't even eat a banana without a table cloth,mat and plate
Leaving the house to walk to shops is a major ordeal. Costs hats gloves change of shoes everything switched off at the wall last minute run upstairs for wallets. I could have been there and back.
So I'm asking you to entertain me with similar stories to help me through the day.

sparklingbrook yes that is the clip

I dont like children eating stuff ,especially bananas,away from the table,but then I dont have wipeable plastic/leather sofas .Don't like ornamental Tampon baskets in bathrooms either.DH and I each have our own remote for same TV. Quite disconcerting when a program skips from sport to Midsummer murders ...can take a while to clock on.We are very anal.

Oh yes to weather forecast. My mum is also obsessed with the temperature. She doesn't like travelling in my car as it doesn't have a temperature gauge so she can't comment.

Sparklingbrook - duvet? What is this new-fangled bedding that you speak of. No, parents have bottom sheet, top sheet, various number of blankets and then a throw thing on top. When changing beds, the bottom sheet is taken off for washing and last week's top sheet becomes this week's bottom sheet.

zapotek - so do you mean the rest of the family are welcome to get bacteria while you will be the healthy one looking after them if there's any Norovirus going round ?

NetworkGuy - my Grandma-in-law went on holiday recently, leaving Grandad-in-law at home. He is "man who cannot cook". She arranged a rota of friends to feed him daily. In his defence he reckons 90 is too late to start learning!

Some of these seem so familiar, from my dads overly details holiday itineraries and travel arrangements you're going to the Lake District which always sadly end with details of where I should find their wills, to the pils insistence on wearing slippers wherever they are and frugality with vegetables. Six people - bucket of meat etc but probably two carrots, eight sprouts and ten roast potatoes. I don't understand it, I think maybe to them veg are 'trimmings' not actual food. My parents who set the breakfast table the night before with the instant coffee measured into the mugs. My mum, who if one of the children has lost a cheap plastic toy at their house will insist on turning it upside down, emptying the bins, kids not bothered in the slightest and then will call me three hours later to say she's found it. Hmm there must be more. Oh the tv. Neither of the pils is deaf but the tv must been LOUD SO AS TO STIFLE ANY NORMAL CONVERSATION or indeed thinking.

Almost had coffee coming down my nose with some of these observations.

I really do hope none of my sisters are seen as having such strange 'quirks' or preferences when they are hosts...

When changing beds, the bottom sheet is taken off for washing and last week's top sheet becomes this week's bottom sheet

oooh, ER, my mum (born 1922) used to do that. (she used to sides-to-middle the worn ones too)

But that was when there were only flat sheets...

zapotek - so do you mean the rest of the family are welcome to get bacteria while you will be the healthy one looking after them if there's any Norovirus going round ?

Ah so I'm right it is gross- DP thinks I'm nuts.

I get the DC to use the 2nd towel and make sure they handwash regularly.

Fingers crossed we haven't come down with anything yet.

And yes I think I'm probably paranoid ( I'm not sure the towel is really that close to the loo to get affected- isn't it me anal or do you really think I'm being rational about this?)

zapotek, as TC said, just close the lid before flushing

your toothbrush is much more of a risk than your towel anyway (just sayin...)

My MIL is unlike many on here - she cooks a lot of food. And then gives it to DH and I.

She turned up at ours a couple of days after Christmas with Xmas pudding, brandy sauce, a melon and various sundry foodstuffs. Most of which were binned as I had norovirus and couldn't eat a damn thing.

DH has just reminded me that he has a dishwasher loading protocol. Oh arse.

Necessitating a further hour of shocked, stilted conversation, standing in the hall, wearing our coats with the front door wide open...

Poor you, LaQueen. As for the towel to bite on....

At least it seems to have reduced a smidgen, or has it (?)

curry-eater makes a very good point:

but it is a very strange companion piece to the "lax parenting of the 60s and 70s" one, isn't it? How can those crazy, drink-driving, chain-smoking, bar-fly hell-raisers have turned into these people?

It's age, isn't it. It's going to happen to us all.

My mil has to leave the microwave door open when not in use. No idea.

And they'd rather have a kitchen freezing because the back doors open than have FOOD SMELLS

Are we all related? Surely there can't be thousands of elderly couples like this? Or was I wrong to find my PiLs' behaviour odd?

They tick lots of the boxes: stinginess with vegetables, obsession with routine, inability to leave anything unwashed-up for five seconds, ability to make the simplest decision (what to eat, where to go) into an hour-long conversation...

Luckily my parents do very little of this, so I'm hoping I'll escape.

Slippers how could forget the slippers which they now bring every time they come (even if its just for the day). Just because I once said my dad was rather heavy on his foot...

And there was something else... The tones on their mobile phones. Every time they send a text, DH or I suggest they turn them off but they are not keen, they need to know they've pressed the button. Apparently seeing a letter appearing isn't enough

"zapotek, as TC said, just close the lid before flushing"

That would mean touching the lid (I'm joking- I think).

I don't really know if I'm that worried about it I've just got into a habit.

DP wipes his hands on tea towels and I hate that. I have to have a towel in the kitchen. MInd you he uses that for wiping the floor and if I catch him it goes in the wash- that's not unreasonable is it?

Consider this, laydeez! 3 years ago, 30 years after I first left home, DH, DS and I moved back in with my Aged Mama. Yup, it's my childhood home as well, complete with my dollies and 1960s schoolbooks books in the attic.

DM and lovely DF (who died nearly 20 years ago) were both born in the 1920s and from the wartime/rationing generation. When we moved in, nothing had been thrown out for 20 years and nothing had been renovated/decorated or repaired for 30 years. It's a v.v. large house with masses of storage space. I can relate to EVERY ONE of the above posts!

It still drives me dotty - the saving of crisp packets, the mouldy shite in the fridge, the hoarding of, well, everything that can possibly be hoarded - and the obstinate absolute refusal to engage with any post-1960s technology, (such as cassette players and VCRs anyone?) far less 21st century witchcraft such as mobile phones and DVDs .

Sadly, Mum is becoming v. frail and forgetful, so the balance of power has shifted. She can't remember what she's put in the fridge so I can swoop and discard without too much grief. We can also insist that houshold stuff gets repaired/replaced now on Elf and Safety grounds because DH does a good line in Pseudo-Authoritative 1950s Bloke-Talk which generates a sort of Pavlovian-Submissive response. (She won't listen to me because I am, apparently, still only about 15 and hormonal. I am really 51 and menopausal, but whatever.)

Who was it who had in laws who demanded soup as a starter every time they came?
Made me laugh

Ponders, in my mum's world there are only flat sheets.

My grandad used to be convinced we would lose anything not surgically attached to us. He used to enter lots of competitions and he once won a hold-all type bag from Kit Kat, which he gave to me - after he had written my full name across it in three inch high letters, in black marker. My mum has inherited this though, when she goes on holiday she has her name on her suitcase in huge letters.

This thread is hysterical and has stopped me doing exam revision which I really need to do as the brain doesn't seem to work as well as it once did (I'm a very old student!)
My 75 year old DPs have some funny little ways:-
Dishwasher and washing machine must be turned off at the mains and the water turned off every time, just in case there is a flood.
A record must be kept of the cost of petrol, how many litres etc so that a running average of the mpg can be calculated. My DF recently asked the mpg of my car and I thought he would have apoplexy when I said I didn't know and what's more I didn't care!
Old rubber gloves must be cut up to make rubber bands, large ones from the hand parts and tiny ones from fingers.
Every household purchase eg kettle, toaster, mattress must have date bought written on it so when a replacement is needed detailed explanations can be given to all and sundry about how good/useless it was, all of these things would have only been bought after lengthy consultations of the bible Which magazine.
A couple of weeks ago I was moaning to my DM about how I hated that you can't buy normal tungsten lightbulbs anymore, she then produced a bag of bulbs which she had taken out and replaced with energy savers, god knows why she kept them if she was never going to use them again, and EVERY bulb had the date it was first used written on it, some from 1999. Still work fine though!
The funny old things