Not Okay

The in-laws steal those smocks from the hospital and use them as aprons in the kitchen.

There’s been a lot of work-related stress on me lately due to way too much high-stakes shit going on and I don’t want to have to deal with the fucking in-laws. Yesterday morning I messaged Hubby and told him we were eating out tonight for dinner and I didn’t want to– I can’t– eat his mother’s cooking tonight. He said okay. He said he would call his mother and tell her not to cook for us, that we were eating out tonight. I have to assume he did as he said.

Nonetheless, when I came home from work, there’s FIL at the kitchen table, rolling out dough, and MIL by the stove, cooking dumplings. DUMPLINGS AGAIN OMIGOD I HATE THESE FUCKING DUMPLINGS.

Not only did she make dumplings, which I can’t stomach anymore, but the filling she used– undercooked crunchy carrots, scrambled eggs, and this vegetable called Buddha’s hand. What the… fuck…?

So we had to cancel our idea of eating out. We ate dumplings. Well, THEY ate dumplings. I ate two pieces to be polite, and then went upstairs and STARVED. I didn’t have lunch that day either, unfortunately. So I just went upstairs and waited until they were all out of the kitchen and in their dens and bedrooms. I waited and waited until 11:30 pm. (Because they had to watch their Chinese soap operas.) I was fuming when I came downstairs and as I made my own dinner, threw all their shit into the garbage. The smocks went into the garbage, their weird shit went into the garbage, everything– Hubby tried to stop me. We whisper-fought. I grabbed my food and stormed back upstairs to eat upstairs in my bedroom. Hubby fished out everything I threw in the garbage and frantically tried to wipe them clean and put them back where they were, hoping his parents wouldn’t notice.

Hubby and I don’t cook with any MSG and we don’t own any MSG in our house. Hubby is crazily antagonistic toward MSG for some reason, so emphasizes a complete ban on that stuff. Whatever. I don’t care one way or the other.

MIL lied to us and agreed not to use MSG but brought her own and just put it in a non-descript container in my spice cabinet. I’m not an idiot. I know MSG when I see it, you moron. I’m still debating whether to tell Hubby that his mother has been lying to his face about non-use of MSG and is in fact putting it in everything she cooks.

FIL threw out his back so now he can’t bend over. He was a clean freak and having him stay with us is usually a great thing because he cleans obsessively, and so everything in the house is cleaner than it’s ever been. Ever since he threw out his back, though, he can’t do much, and that’s fine.

The house still stays relatively clean IF and ONLY IF everyone cleaned up after themselves. The house doesn’t actually that that dirty even if you don’t clean regularly. You just have to be more careful and clean the personal space you’ve used.

Unfortunately, MIL is actually a hot mess. You don’t realize how messy she is, and I don’t think it’s intentional. Her eyes are bad and she can’t see anything anymore, so she drops crumbs EVERYWHERE. Like there is a trail of crumbs a la Hansel and Gretel wherever she’s been. There is always stray food that must have flown out of the cooking pot and landed around the stove and countertop. While she peels vegetables in the sink, stray peels go flying and stick to unseen nooks and crannies and I don’t find it until three days later when it’s dried up, shriveled, and rotting.

I make a pomegranate juice/tea that Hubby and I love. This weekend MIL bought pomegranates and made pomegranate juice. Seriously she always does this, copying what I just made when everyone praises that thing I had made. IT’S SO WEIRD. So she made pomegranate juice and while she was pressing the pomegranate seeds, she squirted red juice everywhere and didn’t clean up after herself. Sunday night I found dried red stains everywhere.

Someone spilled something in the microwave and left a mess in there. I have intentionally NOT cleaned it up because I didn’t do it and Hubby didn’t do it and so I am just waiting, waiting to see how long it takes for the culprits to clean up their mess in the microwave. Two weeks have passed now. I don’t think I can take it any longer. I’ll probably lose it and clean it up tonight. They win. THEY ALWAYS WIN.

Every corner of the house reminds you that someone sick as fuck lives here. There are pill bottles just everywhere. Empty pill bottles become dry spice jars, or hold stubs of ginger and garlic in the fridge. I mentioned the hospital smocks already. They throw them around everywhere in the kitchen area. Hospital wipes are also stolen and become dish rags. There is a pile of stolen hospital wipes on my kitchen counter. She steals tons and tons of hospital supplies. The other day I went into their den and every drawer of the desk is packed with stolen hospital supplies. WHAT THE HELL.