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

911 replies

ledkr · 05/01/2013 11:04

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 Hmm
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.

OP posts:
OneWaySystemBlues · 06/01/2013 10:15

We have a cheese box. This is because if you don't cover the cheese up properly once you've opened the packet (looks at DH), then it goes dry and I hates dry cheese. Hence a cheese box.

I had no idea that other people's parents were like mine though. I thought it was just mine that washed up by hand everything before putting it into the dishwasher and turned all the sockets off at the wall over night or when going out - my parents first bought a video recorder so they could record Princess Diana's funeral and then got very upset when it didn't record because my dad had turned everything off before he went to bed the previous night!

Other things are, decanting food from one container into another, even if only a tiny bit has been used. So my mum will serve a bowl of stewed fruit for pudding and then afterwards will put what is left into a new bowl even if no one has had any from it.

The inordinate amount of time it takes to cook things. They get up at 6 and my mum will start the lunch prep around 9. It seems to take forever to prepare the vegetables and put the meat in. She also prepares her veg not on a chopping board, but on pieces of the Radio Times that have been carefully saved for the purpose. All the peelings go into the peely bin, which is fine, but she will not use a bloody chopping board! My dad even bought her one specially, but no, the old pages of the Radio Times are still in use. What is that about?!

The lack of any spontaneity - any trip into town requires a change into jogging bottoms first, plus a toilet trip, then coat, debate on whether it's cold enough for a scarf or not or whether it's going to rain. Then when we finally get outside, it's an lengthy discussion about which route we should take and whether it's best to go via Waterstones first and then M&S or if we go to M&S first, we could then perhaps go to Boots BEFORE Waterstones....

My dad also has pretty much every bill, payslip and official letter they've ever received since they married in 1960. It is all in a cupboard in the sitting room. But none of it is organised. They recently had a major panic because they couldn't find their birth and marriage certificates. He also collects trains, which he buys secretly and then hides in various places around the house in their original boxes, because "they'll be worth something one day", but he never actually gets them out and plays with them or sets them up, which is think is a bit sad. I could go on..!

SPBInDisguise · 06/01/2013 10:18

Is it a new page of the RT each time? Or the same ones reused?
Lol at keeping everything since 1960 - PILs are the same - to some extent by necessity as FIL had his own business. DH is in the mindset that you never throw anything out but I've brought him round to the idea that no you don't need those bank statements from when you were at school 20 years ago. I will bet the house that no enquiry would ever be made requiring you to dig them out and find out about a transaction you made in August 1995.

Maryz · 06/01/2013 10:19

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rechargemybatteries · 06/01/2013 10:20

Oh my goodness YES! Vegetables are peeled onto old newspaper pages.

SPBInDisguise · 06/01/2013 10:22

MaryZ I agree. It's a fond thread about people's quirks. My parents and ILs are lovely and I'm very lucky to have the ones I do - I wouldn't change them for parents who would jet off to the other side of th world at a moment's notice without letting us know the details, or in laws who cook enough vegetables to snk a battleship :o

Maryz · 06/01/2013 10:22

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GlaikitFizzog · 06/01/2013 10:23

Oh no, my fridge has an integrated cheese box. I'm on the slope already!

SPBInDisguise · 06/01/2013 10:24

Actually do you know what?If anything happened to my parents, where their wills or bank accounts are would be the last thing on my mind. Which is precisely why my dad has written me an idiot's guide to their finances, because this stuff does need to be done. I do know I am lucky.

rechargemybatteries · 06/01/2013 10:25

Maryz I agree - my parents are mid-70's and have both been retired since the age of 60 and I think they order their lives as they do because they both worked full time and are used to being busy and I do think some of what they do is a way to fill the large amount of time they have (which they never had before)

Maryz · 06/01/2013 10:27

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SPBInDisguise · 06/01/2013 10:27

Maryz you laugh but my Dad'd dad has just died. We knew he was a hoarder and not the tidiest of people but we actually had no idea. Pots of cash dotted around the house. Letters from credit card companies (balanace transfer crap he won't have wanted) and catalogue stataments from the 1950s. Piles and piles of stuff. Everything my grandma ever owned, and she died over 20 years ago. It was really quite stressful and upsetting, in addition to the 'normal' upset. If there's any chance they'll sort it out now, please encourage them - and then fingers crossed they have another 30 or 40 years to mess it all up again :o

Maryz · 06/01/2013 10:28

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SPBInDisguise · 06/01/2013 10:28

Sorry, just re-read and think your dad is actually much less serious :o
DH has folders in the filing cabinet called "SPB work" and "SPB wage slip". Where on earth do I put my P60s?? There's too much overlap in his system!

CambridgeBlue · 06/01/2013 10:30

This thread has made me laugh so much - I had no idea other people's parents and in-laws were as bonkers as mine!

SPBInDisguise · 06/01/2013 10:30

We have a load of cash (which was fun when going through the house with family who could get a little...erm...possessive about what my dad did with it - he had to document everything and account for it - which in fairness he would have done anyway but still) and old coins, some of which I've kept to show the DCs. Some of the old coins were pre whenever it was when they were solid precious metal (1948?)

Maryz · 06/01/2013 10:30

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SPBInDisguise · 06/01/2013 10:31

Go on Cambridge, share...

rechargemybatteries · 06/01/2013 10:31

OMG Maryz. You just made me remember something. My aunt (by marriage) was clearing her mother's house. You know, boxing everything up, skipping some stuff and getting it ready to be sold.

There was wads of cash stuck behind random paintings. A good few hundred pound in all IIRC

RebeccaTheHallsMumsnet · 06/01/2013 10:32

We've moved this thread to classics now Grin

OneWaySystemBlues · 06/01/2013 10:34

SPBInDisguise - it is a new piece each time. They cut the pages out of the old ones and save them specifically for the purpose! They also over buy stuff like toilet roll. They used to keep the spares under the spare room bed and once time I counted that they had 64 individual toilet rolls!

LindyHemming · 06/01/2013 10:35

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Maryz · 06/01/2013 10:37

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TheHappyCamper · 06/01/2013 10:38

I posted near the start of this thread and have just read the whole thing. I am chortling at the JeanandDave sketch (someone could really make money with that!) and also the sandwich "via the medium of ham" comment ROFL Grin.

I did actually say my own parents don't do these things, but the more I think about it, they do! My Dad (60) is the font of all knowledge on any given topic e.g when I was pg he knew more than the midwives etc, and he is definitley obsessed with the weather. I bought him a digital weather station for xmas though, so surely I'm just encouraging the madness. He is a champion packer and takes beating easyjet's packing restrictions on as a personal mission Grin

Also they do not 'believe' in best before dates. We had a buffet at New Year at theirs and DD asked for ketchup. I really tried not to inspect the date on it but you could tell by the label that it was oh at least 3? years old? It was a bit of a funny colour actually. She was fine though.

I think I might make it my mission in life to ban 30-something couples from owning gravy boats or milk jugs!

CailinDana · 06/01/2013 10:59

I just thought of something else. My Dad is extremely "faddish". Every couple of months he reads about some miracle anti-cancer/anti-ageing food or woo practice and gets obsessed. So far he has trained as a masseur and in accupressure, with no intention of actually practicing either. I dread being ill because he will harrangue me about the latest miracle cure. I had a cough recently and three times he told me to drink warm manuka honey and lemon. Thing is, my mum always had a healthy skepticism about his fads but now she's getting sucked in too - she mentioned the fucking bollocking manuka honey too. I don't see how on earth honey can do anything when the cough was so bad I had to be prescribed Ventolin in order to sleep. Anyway when he bangs on about these things I just agree and do nothing. He does question me on whether I've followed his advice, to which I say no. I'm not going to lie.

MIL is similar to an extent in that she is convinced homeopathy cures everything, despite the fact that it has never once helped her even a little bit. She has suffered with dry skin on her hands for years, which the homeopath has fleeced her for quite liberally. I gave her some Nivea cream (costs, oh, 2 quid or summat) recently and she used it out of desperation. Boom problem solved.

I presume this health obsession and the belief in cures that have no foundation is something to do with old age and a fear of getting ill?

RebeccaTheHallsMumsnet · 06/01/2013 11:02

@Maryz

Thank you Rebecca Smile

You are on duty early this morning.

Up with the lark me Xmas Wink

DD2 has a stinky cold, was up at 5.30

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