A little over a week since they left and we are still feeling the after-effects. We’ve since cleaned out all the shit frozen stuff they left in our fridge and we have possession of all our Pyrex and Rubbermaid containers again.

Tonight we are hosting my cousins from Taiwan for dinner and I wanted to use this particular dinnerware set of (what used to be) four, perfect with the main course plate, the bread and butter platters, soup bowls, and dessert dishes. Now there are only three bread and butter platters and three soup bowls. One of the dessert dishes is chipped. This DRIVES ME CRAZY. I just don’t get how we can manage to keep the set a full set for five years and they come along and each time they visit, BREAK SOMETHING.

We had to haul out several new pots and pans (we have a bunch in reserve) because MIL ruined some of my best Calaphon pans. She uses metal spatulas to stir-fry IN NON-STICK PANS. I remember several months ago when I witnessed it. My eyes nearly fell out of their sockets bulging out so hard and Hubby had to grab me, pull me up the stairs, and say a bunch of sweet nothings to me like don’t worry, I’ll get an entire brand new set, any brand you like, any set you like, full retail, we won’t even wait for a discount.

The den is stuffed with stolen hospital supplies. If it wasn’t so ludicrous and under my roof, this would be funny actually. Every time she visits the hospital or dialysis clinic, MIL and FIL stuff their handbags with hospital supplies. They use the disposable gloves for gardening, hospital smocks as cooking aprons and leave out the padding things everywhere, to wipe the countertops, wipe the floors (along with the scrap pieces of underwear), and I don’t even know what else. Oh– we now have rolls and rolls of gauze in our medicine cabinet. That’s kind of a bonus, I think. I believe there are even head caps that they use as shower caps, because I found a bunch of disposable head caps in their bathroom.

Perhaps the part that bothers me the most is how I’m so sure she leaves thinking she was super helpful to us, having cooked for us every single day so that I didn’t have to lift a finger in the kitchen during the whole three and a half months they were here. She must believe she was doing us a favor.

In reality, I couldn’t have hated it more. The only reason we let her take over the kitchen is because we didn’t have any other choice. When she and I tried to share a kitchen, the rate of onsetting insanity was just too fast to keep up with how long they’d be staying. I had more outbursts. I’d tolerate, tolerate, and then every few days, something would snap and I’d throw open both fridge and freezer door and just start dumping out all their man tou, noodles, buns, dumplings, and everything else that they’d been keeping in our containers. I’d just start throwing out her spices and hiding her pill bottles and then Hubby would have to think frantically for excuses or “explanations” to give his parents to explain all the missing shit. About a month in of the outbursts, when I started leaving out slippery towels all over the floor and removing the non-slip pad underneath all throw rugs so they were slippy so MAYBE that fucking MIL would slip and fall to her demise, Hubby said enough was enough. I agreed.

So the solution, if you can even call it that, was for me to stay out of the kitchen. Completely. The only time I stepped foot in the kitchen area was to make coffee in the morning, grab my coffee, and bolt back up the stairs. And I made sure to do that at 6 in the morning before anyone was up.

The ant problem. Christ. I saw it coming. When Hubs and I first moved in, we had a very minor ant problem and realized quickly, as new homeowners, that the kitchen really needed to be wiped down clean, with no trace of food or crumbs, and if at any time you wanted to leave food out, they had to be covered. Plainly speaking, we rarely left food out that wasn’t fully sealed. MIL and FIL like to leave out cut fruit in bowls and these cut fruit in bowls just stay on the kitchen counter for days. DAYS, yes. It’s so odd. They let a bunch of persimmons and figs rot to hell on the kitchen counter and you could see sweet juices oozing out. They cook food and then leave out all the cooked food on the table and counter, uncovered, because they don’t want to waste plastic wrap. The result? After that bout of rain, a horrific army of ants raided the kitchen and FIL and Hubby had to scramble to deal with it. And MIL, so fake-innocently, was all like, “Oh, you think the food we left out attracted them in?”

I still get beyond emotional when I think about Kitty. They had already been here for two months by the time we were getting ready to leave for Europe, and had worn me down so thin I didn’t have the mind to think about what a STUPID idea it would be to leave my precious little baby under their care. Whatever they did or didn’t do, the end result is my cat starved to death, was dehydrated, constipated, and the starvation and pre-existing obesity caused many of his organs to shut down and we caught the thrombosis in his legs way, WAY too late. Had the in-laws BOTHERED TO MENTION TO US that they started noticing that Kitty WASN’T WALKING ANYMORE and therefore also NOT EATING ANYMORE because he wasn’t visiting his food station, we might have been able to do something, like get a friend to rush over, sweep in and save Kitty, take him to the vet, and maybe catch the thrombosis in time. Do I blame his parents? Hell fucking yes. But yes, as much as I blame myself. There is plenty of blame to go all around. But they are certainly in the loop of guilt. And it boils my blood EVERY time Hubby has the audacity to say it wasn’t his parents’ fault or try to imply that I’m being unreasonable for blaming them because “there is no way they could have known better.”

Hubby has promised that his parents won’t visit in 2016 and I intend to see him keep his word.