Normally husband spend Christmas and New Year at home with just the two of us. My parents are dead and his parents live about 300 miles away from us. They normally host the grandkids (husband's brother's children) at Christmas anyway and enjoy having them. However, grandkids are now young men with their own partners and will be doing their own thing this year.
Husband has suggested we spend the Christmas week (WEEK!!!) with his parents. His father has had cancer, and is currently having tests to see if it has come back. His mother is losing her sight. They are both very elderly, though still fit and active, apart from these two problem areas.
The problem is - guess what - the mother-in-law. She is very spoiled and entitled and has a strict set of 'rules' that the family has to live by, although when confronted about this, denies it. Just a few examples before I get to my question:
If we go out for lunch and have a hot meal, then only a sandwich will be served at dinner time. If we go out for lunch and have a sandwich, then we are allowed to have a hot meal at home for dinner. Husband is a very active man and has a healthy appetite. He went down last week to visit them and encountered the hot/cold meal thing. So in the evening after a day out walking, he saw they were making tiny wee sandwiches for dinner (because they had a hot lunch!) and he had to ask his mother if it was alright for him to make himself an omelette. On a special birthday visit we were out for the day, going round a small town looking for a suitable lunch place, none would do for the MIL, she kept vetoing everywhere. Eventually husband rebelled, picked a bistro and said 'this will do'. We got in found a table, she had the menu read to her and said 'I don't like this, I want to go.' So everyone trooped out and round the corner was a quaint 'ye olde worlde tea shoppe' tourist trap place where she said everyone could have tea and scones. Husband, by this time reeling from hunger, snapped 'I don't want a scone!' And she said, well we're having the hot birthday meal tonight, so no one should be having a hot lunch anyway'.
One final example: we (husband, me, FIL) wanted to see a particular programme on tv. Normally she controls the tv viewing. When it came on she started saying 'what is this? no one wants to see this, do they?'. FIL was about to cave in and we stepped in and said that we all wanted to see it. Cue much huffing and sighing from MIL, who threw her head back on her chair and shut her eyes, sighing heavily throughout the programme. FIL's only show he gets to see is Dr Who, but because she doesn't like it she makes a huge show about 'having to leave the room and sit upstairs alone in the bedroom' while it is on.
Still with me? So - how THE HELL am I going to put up with this sort of behaviour for the Christmas week? I am going because I feel sorry for FIL who might be due chemo (cue MIL when she heard this 'who's going to nurse him? I can't be around sick') and because husband wants to spend some time with his elderly parents. Advice?