[I don’t have the emotional bandwidth right now to explain what happened, so if we aren’t FB friends already and you don’t know what I’m talking about, then just skip reading this post.]

When we go downstairs I have to put on a smile and play ambivalent and pretend like what happened to Guai Guai is no big deal. Just, oh, you know, old cat, obese, so things happen. James went downstairs earlier to talk to his parents. After they came home from dialysis, realized cat not home. James explained that cat stayed at hospital overnight, but it’s no big deal and they are just monitoring to be safe and that it’s just something that could have happened at any time, but just happened to have happened now, due to cat’s age and weight.

The hardest part is keeping it all in. Pretending everything is OK when others are around and then having only the freedom to sob silently upstairs.

The in-laws are very upset and feel terrible this happened. (Translation: everyone can’t believe we just spent in vet bills what we spent for our entire Europe vacation and the vet bills at this point aren’t over yet.) Since they already feel so bad, we have to overcompensate and offset by being cheery and assuring them that there is nothing wrong and “this could have happened at any point, and it just happened to have happened now, so please don’t feel bad.”

Sincerely, though, I only blame myself, and that just adds to my pain. It’s like if you entrusted brain surgery on your loved one’s head in the hands of a three year old toddler and then the surgery went awry and now your loved one is in critical condition. Who do you blame? The three year old toddler or, more likely, YOU. So it’s really my own fault. I know, I know from the bottom of my heart no one did anything intentional. It’s just that they’re forgetful, old, senile, not all with it, and more than anything else, not empathetic toward animals. They don’t truly understand the intensity of bonds a person and an animal can form. I blame myself because I knew that and I still left the cat in their hands. What I should have done was sought out other arrangements, but I didn’t do that.

We are currently waiting on a couple more medical procedures being performed on him this morning and then to bring him home at 11 am once he’s stable, keep on monitoring him, and just take this one baby medical step at a time going forward. There’s nothing else anyone can do at this point. Every other hour is a surprise. And I’m trying to get myself mentally and emotionally at a place where I can be better at my acting while downstairs and be convincing that really, this is no big deal, nobody’s fault, and it “just happened.” Malnourishment and dehydration “just happened.” And assure everyone that everyone did their best and we’re so grateful and we’re not blaming anyone and this is just one of those tough, bad situations where nobody is at fault.

Also, the Pyrex and Rubbermaids

Last time they visited, we had a whole set of Pyrex glass containers and a whole set of Rubbermaid plastic ones. It’s a huge supply of containers and we never manage to get through use of them all. However, the last time the in-laws were here, we were always in short supply of these containers and every time I opened my pantry, fridge, or freezer, it would be stacked high with stuff packed away in my Pyrex and Rubbermaid containers, to the point where we didn’t have enough to bring our work lunches.

So we bought a whole NEW set of Pyrex glass containers. That way THEY have their own set and we have ours, and even if they use all of theirs, we still have some from our set to spare.

Nope.

This morning I couldn’t find any containers to pack my lunch in. Everywhere– fridge, freezer, everywhere stacked high with dumplings, mantou, salted pickled vegetables, all sorts of crap in my Pyrex and Rubbermaid containers.

Pissed, I grabbed any two Pyrex containers, dumped the contents into the garbage, washed them, and packed my lunch in those. I didn’t even try to hide the fact I threw their stuff away. When they look into the garbage, they’re just going to see mantou and dumplings, sitting there, in the garbage.

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.

Burping and Bodily Functions

Everyone burps and farts, I get it, but not the way MIL does. Christ.

I’m sitting here in the dining room working and she is all the way at the opposite end of this house, with her door only half open and I can hear her burps. In fact, at first I giggled, thinking either FIL or Hubby was around, burping, because it sounded like a deep, masculine, guttural man-burp. Then I realized both FIL and Hubby were both still asleep. It’s MIL. She’s burping. Her burps are deep, masculine, guttural man-burps.

Because she is a sickly woman (but immortal), her coughs are kind of scary. It starts off as heavy breathing that gets faster, into a wheezing sound, and then you hear it stumbling from the bottom of her throat, out, and it kind of makes you wince and get sick to your stomach because it sounds like someone is about to vomit. Every one of her coughs sounds like she is vomiting, and so anyone who hears it gets a little nauseous.

Her breaths are heavy. Normally I don’t hear it because I never get close enough to her for that. Only when we have to play mah jong and everybody at the table gets real quiet when they’re thinking about which tile to play do I hear that heavy, wheezy breathing, a masculine panting that sounds like a pedophile getting off on inappropriate images of children. That’s what it sounds like. Her breathing during mah jong reminds me of Lolita.

Jabba the Hutt is a Social Butterfly

She has more social calls than I do. We come home after work and there’s a woman I have never seen before sitting in my dining room with a cup of tea that is not on a coaster oh my god why are you not using a coaster when drinking hot tea on my dining room table do you know how much I love that table if anything happens to that table and I tried to sell you into servitude to a Chinatown dragonhead to recoup my loss I wouldn’t get the amount of money back that this table is worth what the hell are you doing anyway so this woman I have never met is there, yapping with MIL while FIL is in the family room watching Chinese TV.

I come in and fake a polite smile, nod, and say hello. The woman cries out, “Oh, so this is the daughter-in-law! She is lovely!” They continue to talk about me in the third person while I am present. She blah blah blah. Oh is she blah blah? Her blah blah. What is her blah? She is a blah blah. Does she blah? She is so blah blah! What is her blah? Her blah is blah. This conversation goes on while I am standing stupidly, three feet from where both are sitting. Basically, MIL is bragging about me and making me sound way cooler than I actually am, and the whole thing is completely humiliating because it isn’t entirely clear to me whether I am supposed to acknowledge or deny any of these boasts.

The woman finally addresses me. She tells me I have a lovely house, gives me like a dozen unsolicited recommendations for what I can do with my upstairs solarium, asks me how old my cat is, and notes that I have a pretty small garage for such a big house. Oh, also, she asks me how many fruit trees I have.

Christ, you’ve had a tour of my entire home. What the hell. I don’t even know you, lady. You could be a serial killer or master mind thief for all I know.

So. I think I’m fine with the fact that complete strangers are getting full tours of my house while I’m away. I mean, I don’t think I can be not fine with it, right? I don’t know if I’ve ever said, out of courtesy, to MIL to “make herself at home,” but either way, she’s taken these words straight to heart.

Finally I cannot tolerate looking at hot tea mugs on bare white wood anymore so while they’re still talking to me, I dash out of the room, grab the coasters from the kitchen, dash back, and slip them under each cup.

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” says the woman.

No, bitch, the correct response is “Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry.”

This morning as soon as I wake up at 7 am, MIL is on her telephone, yapping to her friends in China. She leaves her WeChat on all day and night on her laptop (or iPad or whatever) with the volume at max, so we hear Brrrrriiiiiiing! Brrriiiiiing! reverberating throughout the first floor basically around the clock. I thought social media was for young ones, but I am mistaken. This 70-year-old is more active than I am. She’s constantly asking Hubby to help her take some picture and post it to her WeChat (it’s like Facebook or something). She doesn’t like taking selfies because she doesn’t think she looks good in selfies, so she is always asking Hubby or FIL to take photos of her for her. No one ever says the truth, which is that at a certain point of ugly, it just doesn’t matter what angle you take the picture at. It’s all going to come out the same.

I’m so sick of this cohabitation. One month and about two weeks more of this before she leaves.

Hubby promises they won’t stay for this long ever again but he’s full of shit. Last time they stayed for 2 months almost not quite 3 and I lost my mind toward the end and he promised they would come for shorter periods in the future and so what happens? The very next time they visit, they stay for almost 4 months and the only reason they’re cutting the visit short is because we are effectively kicking them out with a lie that my sisters are visiting for Christmas. Otherwise they were planning on staying past the new year, into 2016. What. the. fuck.

And now she’s sick. Sharp education difference.

A week of refusing to turn the heat on even at night while they sleep has resulted in the MIL getting horribly sick. When she gets a common cold, it’s brutal on her due to her weakened immune system. She is bedridden and now the heater must be jacked up to 75 F day and night (since they never go out) and FIL must service and tend to her (which he already does, but now it’s what he normally does times 100).

This morning Hubby lectured her. He was kinda pissed. He berated her for her stupidity and lack of foresight. In trying to save a couple of dollars, now we have to spend a couple hundred. At one point FIL went off about some family friend who visited them for a week and always had the heater on and that month, their bill was $100. (Seriously? You’re complaining about that?) He just went on and on like it was the most loathsome thing for a house guest to do, use your heat. “They would leave the heat on.. all night!!” he cried, like this was a completely horrible thing to do.

Also, I hate myself for what I end up thinking with regard to the sharp educational gap between Hubby’s parents and us. The other day Hubby tried to explain fossil fuel to his dad and he guffawed so hard at the notion that it comes from organic matter. He believes it simply “comes out of the ground… like water… the earth has it, like water.”

I always thought FIL was a good gardener, but he’s not, not really. They talk about how certain things he grows will bear fruit while others die. He’s killing some of our trees and I had to report it to Hubby. It’s science. You have to read up on how some trees need phosphorous, others need whatever the hell they need; how to trim the branches– I’m not saying I know or that I am an expert, but at least I appreciate that it’s a science and needs to be researched if you want to do it right. FIL just goes on experiential knowledge– trial and error. He puts something near a tree or waters it a certain way, hacks off branches as he will, and then it dies. Boom. Knowledge. Don’t do the same again. That’s the only way he learns. WHY CAN’T YOU LOOK IT UP? OMIGOD WE HAVE THIS THING CALLED THE INTERNET NOW.

I think the most annoying thing right now is how MIL fishes for compliments when she cooks. After she presents dinner, she literally stares at each one of us to see what we eat and asks if it’s good. If she makes a squid dish and Hubby hasn’t touched a piece of squid for the first 5 minutes of dinner, she will call him out. “Why haven’t you eaten my squid yet? Do you not like it? Try the squid. It’s very good. Try it. Try it now.” [Her squid dish, as it is, is always overcooked, and not by a little, but by a lot. It’s always a lot overcooked. Christ. You cannot, cannot overcook squid. So we always have a ton of squid left over after every dinner because no one will eat that shit and then she insists that we pack it for our work lunches the next day and she won’t take no for an answer so Hubby and I both go to work with a Rubbermaid full of her shitty squid and both of us dump it out into our offices’ trash bins. It’s a horrible, horrible waste of food. I wonder if she realizes just how wasteful she actually is, all while priding herself in being spendthrift.]

It’s now habit. When we sit down for dinner, the first thing I do is in a very obvious, demonstrative way, take something from every plate and each time I pop a new item into my mouth, beam, nod, and declare, “Mmmmmm! This is so good!! This is perfect. Very well done.” Even when the squid tastes like shit. Because as Hubby and I have both learned, you should never, ever tell MIL that her food sucks, unless you want to spend the next five hours comforting her, wiping her tears, and telling her everyone loves her and appreciates her and we are so grateful for all that she has done for us…. you get the picture. So we just go on and on about how delicious everything is because that’s just easier.

Don’t Turn On the Heat

Yesterday morning the second floor was heated to a comfortable, toasty temperature, so I was wearing a T-shirt. I descended down the stairs to get coffee and immediately began to  freeze, but figured I’d make haste, grab the coffee, and go. MIL stopped me. She’s wearing a puffy winter jacket, gloves, and what appears to be several layers of pants.

“Ai yah, you will catch a cold. You know how weak you are. You catch a cold so easily. Why are you wearing only a T-shirt?”

“Because we have heat upstairs,” I say. “I just came to get my coffee. I’m going right back up to the heat right now.”

She proceeds to lecture me about how there is no need to use heat at such high temperatures that I am wearing a T-shirt in the middle of winter. She tells me to wear more clothes.

“Don’t use the heat,” she says.

I smile, nod, and ignore her. Up the stairs to 75 degrees F I go.

Later that same day, she and FIL go all out and lecture Hubby. I heard them from upstairs, didn’t know what they were talking about, and so ignored. Hubby comes back up frustrated that he just got yelled at by his parents.

“I just got lectured for the way we use heat,” he says.

I lose it. “HOW IS IT THEIR BUSINESS HOW WE USE OUR OWN HEAT? TELL THEM PEOPLE DON’T NEED ROOFS OVER THEIR HEADS EITHER, SO THEY SHOULD GO SLEEP OUTSIDE. WHAT THE FUCK. TELL THEM TO GO SLEEP ON THE STREETS. WHO NEEDS TO BE INDOORS ANYWAY.”

“Calm down,” he says. “Just ignore them. They’re old school. That’s all.”

Yesterday after dinner, Hubby and I were about to watch TV in the family room, so we went into the family room and turned on the lights. Then we both decided we wanted some snacks to go with TV watching, so we headed to the kitchen to prep our snacks. We did not turn the lights off before we left the family room (because we’re headed right back in 15!!), and turned the lights on in the kitchen. Also, I guess we forgot to turn the lights off in the hallway. Oh well.

FIL enters and freaks out. He quickly shuts off the family room lights, the hallway lights, and sits down at the kitchen table with us.

“Why are all the lights in this house on?”

I keep a smile frozen on my face. Hubby rolls his eyes at his father.

“Dad, we’re about to watch TV. That’s why the lights were on.”

“But you’re not in the TV room right now are you. You’re in the kitchen. And what about the hallway? Turn off the lights when they’re not in use. Don’t waste energy.”

This lecture came after they lectured Hubby (again, second time) about turning on the heat on the first floor. “Just wear more clothes. You don’t need to turn on the heat everywhere in this house.”

“Wear more clothes,” says MIL, who is wearing a winter jacket, god knows how many layers of shirts under the jacket, and gloves indoors.

Bad Day

Some days are good (maybe “good” is the wrong word; “tolerable”), and some days are bad. It’s been bad lately. This is such an awful, awful thing for me to say, to think, but honestly, they disgust me. The loud, open-mouthed chewing of food disgusts me. Their lack of attention to details so everything looks half-assed disgusts me. The utter omission of please, thank you, you’re welcome, good morning, good night disgusts me. Keeping half inch half-rotting stubs of ginger in the fridge, or a bowl of cornstarch water they didn’t finish… disgusts me. It’s okay to toss out the unused portion of cornstarch water. It’s okay. Using old plastic buckets that were once filled with soy sauce with the Chinaman soy sauce logos all over and just leaving them out around the living room… disgusts me. I mean, isn’t buying a generic bucket from Wal-mart equally budget-friendly?! We have to reuse and repurpose every single old container? Environmental activists, rejoice. You’d love my in-laws.

The fridge and freezer is packed, top down, with junk. Everything is in a plastic bag or a reused repurposed plastic container. You can open the tub of Land-o-Lakes butter and find chopped parsley, or a coffee grains tin filled with dried shrimp. There are plastic grocery bags just filled with homemade mantou like the apocalypse is coming and we need to stock up on carb-loaded mantou to survive. There is always minced meat. MIL will buy one pack of beef and mince it up so that one pack lasts four people all week long. They love buying cabbage and onions because cabbage and onions are dirt cheap. They can stir-fry two chopped onions and that’s a vegetable dish. Eaten with a defrosted homemade mantou coming out of an old grocery bag.

She was going to stay until well after the New Year, but we lied to her and said my sisters were coming for Christmas, so she had to leave before then. So she’s leaving December 22. That was the best we could do.

December 22. Either it’s going to be one very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, or I am going to die before then and never live to see 2016.

Sunday was a bad day. Monday was a bad day. Yesterday was a bad day. This morning also started off badly when I couldn’t get into my own kitchen to make coffee or cook myself breakfast because her fat ass was in the way.

Heat

Last night was the first really cold night. I woke up that morning quite chilly, but didn’t do anything about it. When I returned home from work, MIL was in the kitchen cooking, with a giant goose down parka on and those finger cut-out gloves where your fingertips are showing but the “glove” covers your palm.

“Are you cold?” I ask, sort of stupidly. Of course she’s cold. I’m cold. I’m freezing in fact. I’m about to run upstairs and grab a parka myself. Oh– wait– but there is this modern invention called HEAT.

“No, I’m fine,” she says.

I go and turn the heat on anyway. In no time the house is a warm, toasty temperature and everyone should be able to return to wearing normal clothes.

MIL toddles over to me. “Did you turn on the heat?”

“Yes, I did.” I presume she’s about to thank me…..

“Why did you do that? It’s a waste. No need to turn on the heat. You can turn it off.” Then she toddles away. But I don’t turn it off because guess what.. I’m cold.

FIL comes out of his den to MIL. I’m sitting on the family room couch, within close earshot of MIL and FIL.

“Why is it so warm in here?!” He asks.

“Kelter turned the heat on,” says MIL. “I told her not to, but she turned it on anyway.”

Again, I’m within earshot.

“Why would Kelter turn on the heat? It’s such a waste. It’s not that cold yet.”

“That’s what I told her, but she wouldn’t listen. You know, fragile health. She has such fragile health. [. . . ?!? Says the terminally ill woman that everyone needs to bend over backwards taking care of?!?!?] So she turns on the heat the second it’s just a little bit chilly.”

“What a waste of electricity,” says FIL.

“I wonder how much the electric bill will be this month, the way these kids use heat!” says MIL.

That’s when I turn off the downstairs heat, storm upstairs, and spin the upstairs heat to maximum. They can all go to hell.

Rude.

One reason she grates on me is her negativity. She is the big, ugly cousin of Jabba the Hutt who complains and complains and complains. It’s one complaint after another. I can’t do that. We can’t do that. That is not good. That is “too” this. There is not enough of that. Why do we have to wait so long for a table? Why are we driving so far just to eat dim sum? Why is it taking so long for our food to come?

We took her to Fremont today for dim sum.

Today at dim sum, she did something I have, in my entire lifetime of being around Asians, have never seen happen. I mean, ever. Like, ever.

When the tea came, she took the pot and poured tea for herself. That’s it. Nobody else, no offer, nothing. Just grabbed pot, poured for herself, put pot back, drank.

I have to say, I have never seen that among Asians.

Among Asians, it’s this big fuss over who pours tea for who and almost always, whoever ends up reaching for the pot, tops off the teacups for everyone within the vicinity. Then there’s a lot of head bobbing and “thank you, thank you, thank yous.”

I have never ever seen someone grab the pot, help herself, put the pot back, and not offer to pour tea for anyone else. Not her husband, not her son, let’s not even talk about me. Remember, I’m dirt.

She chews with her mouth open like a monkey. She reaches across the table and her arm dangles over everything and she’s slow so no one can do anything until she’s done with whatever she’s reaching for. She shovels food from the communal plates onto hers so messily that things fall everywhere and the table is left a mess. She is a messy eater. They are all messy eaters, I’ve realized, Hubby’s family.

When we were headed to the car this morning, Hubby already told her and FIL that I should sit in the front “to help navigate.” FIL agreed. I hung back just to see what MIL would do. She helped herself to the front seat again. Even after it’s been acknowledged that there is no health reason for her to sit in the front and that she’s perfectly fine with sitting in the back when FIL drives, when I will be present in the car, she helped herself to the front seat.

Each time we headed to the car, I intentionally hung back to see what she’d do, where’d she sit. She always went straight for the front.

While in the car, she got hot and took off her jacket. Without even looking backward–obviously knowing that FIL and I were sitting in the backseat–she just tossed her jacket backwards. My jaw nearly dropped. I had never seen anyone so rude, just tossing a jacket back like that, knowing there were people behind her.

I told Hubby about the car seating thing, and he said I should have said something. I told him that I did. I told him. He told FIL and MIL. Now it was on MIL to offer me the front seat. If she didn’t go out of her way to offer the front seat to me, there was no way in hell I was going to just sit there. Hubby says that makes no sense. I said if he grew up with any sense of Asian etiquette, then it’d make perfect sense to him. What the fuck is WRONG with this family. NO ONE HAS ANY MANNERS.

I know she doesn’t mean to be rude. She just is. That’s just “her being herself,” Hubby always says. “She doesn’t mean anything by it, and in fact, she loves you,” he says. “She lacks tact, I know,” he assures me. “But she doesn’t lack heart.”

I don’t believe a person can have heart and still be as rude as she is. I just don’t believe it. She’s beyond tactless. This isn’t just a matter of tact. This is a matter of complete and utter inconsideration for others. Anyone who is that inconsiderate, that oblivious to the interests of others does not have heart.

When we came home, I apparently had the shit face. Hubby kept asking me what was wrong. I said simply, “There’s just this chasm of a cultural gap between your parents and me, that’s all, and every single time we do anything together, we have to confront that gap. It’s jarring.”