Just need some help calming down more than anything.
Been with my DH for nearly two decades, we're happy together but his mum is another kettle of fish.
She's extremely toxic in her way of thinking & behaving.
She believes the world evolves around her and can get extremely jealous & create drama out of a empty room when it suits her. (Once created drama with a neighbour because they looked at her the wrong way, think a old version of Vicki pollard!)
Near all DHs family have disowned her, only two of her children left (the other hasn't spoken to her in years.)
Dhs sibling lives far away and has slowly distanced themselves more & more with the visits going from 5-6 times a year to maybe once a year at best.
The problem we have is that she lives near us, we fell out last year and we stopped speaking to us including dc for nearly a year over me stopping her using something of mine as she did not respect it and did thousands of pounds of damages and never offered to pay for them.
She also bad mouthed me to anyone who would listen also calling my friend out in the street and listing things I've apparently done in the past to her and calling me evil etc. I know this is true as I've never told my friend about any of that. Trying to turn my own friend against me!
She started to speak to us again at the end of last year and it's been very strained. I try and keep my distance as much as possible as she just says things to be hurtful.
I.e one of my grandparents passed away and she told me the other one will die in a few months (despite them being a very fit & healthy 80 year old!)
Now my issue is her birthday is coming up and she expects us to make a big song and dance out of it.
She ruined my birthday last year with the start of her kicking off and was really rude & nasty to me in front of my dc.
She ignored DC birthdays as she wasn't speaking to us.
DH sibling isn't coming and she said that they would have hell to pay for not making an effort.
We're skint, just moved over to Universal credit and it's half term my money is going on dc (and rightly so!) and I just know she's expecting us to take her to dinner & get her a big present and we just can't afford it and also me and DH don't really want to reward her bad behaviour.
Would it be wrong to just get her a card and explain we're skint? She always makes me nervous and anxious with the way she talks & behaves saying there will be hell to pay makes me believe she'll stop talking to us again (which isn't a bad thing!) but it got to the point my dc thought she had died last time (and now keep their distance from her themselves as they don't know if she's coming or going)