I have just read this thread. Oh sandyballs, you have my sympathy. We went on holiday with the IL's a couple of years ago. NEVER again.
It was their suggestion, that we share the hire of a holiday cottage, but
"It will have to be in Scotland as i'm not keen on England". The plan was that we would share the food and go our own seperate ways every day. HUH.
We didn't arrive till the follwing day, because we were at a wedding.
The house was non smoking - so that was a problem.
It was on the shores of Loch Linne - what if there's a tidal wave and we all get washed away!
They had gone shopping on the day we arrived, against my wishes cos i know what MIL is like, the two things she are obsessed with are cleaning and shopping. They spent - wait for this - £245 in Safeway in Fort William. On 6 of us for a week. The thing is we had to go out every day and get soemthing in for the evening meal. Amongst the things MIL bought were, clothes pegs, three bottles of bleach,two bottles of toilet cleaner, three bottles of flash liquid , a tin of polish, dusters, scouring pads, floor cloths, and dish washing brush. now the cloths, dusters etc were already provided, but she didn't like them cos the were Tesco own brand and not Vileda. There was also toilet roll provided, ditto Tesco own, so she bought Andrex. Same with kitchen roll, it wasn't bounty, so she didn't want it. i asked her to buy yogs, cartons of juice etc for DS for picninc - never got them.
So we had to cough up£123 pounds out of our holiday budget.
Every where we wnet they came too, along with the comments
"we've already been here, can't we go somewhere else"
My response was
"well go off on your own then". We couldn't go any where until she had cleaned the place form top to bottom - hoovering the whole cottage, washing the floor, cleaning the windows etc etc.
They wouldn't even babysit for one night for us to go and sample Ft Williams nightlife. She sat every night watching tv and not joining in walks along the shore.
The final straw for me ( and it sounds really petty i know) was when i opened a bottle of flavoured water, and was pouring myself a drink
"Hey, that's mine" she said
"Oh, i was under the impression that since i had given you over £100 in money for food, that i could drink or eat whatever i wanted in this house"
I promptly poured the whole lot over the floor and stormed off!
On the day we left, there was a lot of stuff left (no surprise she'd bought enough for an army). We were packing up and i was trying to share things out, and she was grabbing things saying
"that's mine, my half of the money bought that"