I think she did it on purpose but Hubby says no.

Fine, if she didn’t do it intentionally, then she’s just rude.

Yesterday morning I prepped a stewed beef that has been stewing for a total of 8 hours. It was supposed to be part of last night’s dinner. Again, no communication, so we have no idea who is cooking when. Hubby had said to stew the beef so I did. She and I talked about the beef that morning, too, before I left for work.

That night for dinner, she made 5 dishes and they cluttered the entire kitchen table. Since there was no room for my beef, I didn’t even try. I just let it sit on the stove. Hubby comes into the kitchen for dinner and asks, “Where’s the beef?” His mom says, “There’s no room for it.”

Since she’s apparently head chef here, I don’t say anything. I just sit down and eat the shit she cooked while my stewed beef cools away on the stove.

Later, after dinner when we’re upstairs, I point out what she did to Hubby. He thinks it’s absurd that I think it could be intentional.

“You think she intentionally refused to serve your beef stew? Come on now! Don’t be unreasonable.”

Fine, if she didn’t intentionally opt not to serve the beef stew she knew I made then she’s just rude. Reverse the roles, and there is no way I would have ever done that. I would have graciously plated whatever the other person made and ensured it had a prominent place at the table. So if it wasn’t intentional, then that woman, simply put, has zero manners.

[Also, I totally didn’t even mention the times so far she’s copied my plating and presentation. Like, what’s up with that.]

Ugh.

I need to go back to my original plan of not stepping foot into the kitchen AT ALL until AFTER she leaves.

What was I thinking.

FUCK HER FUCK THAT WOMAN TO HELL I HOPE SHE DIES ALONE AND MISERABLE.

HOW THE FUCK DO YOU VISIT SOMEONE ELSE’S HOUSE AND TURN THEIR KITCHEN UPSIDE DOWN WHO THE FUCK DOES THAT HOW THE HELL DO YOU NOT ASK FIRST.

One of my biggest.. BIGGEST pet peeves and Hubby can vouch for this is when you use PLASTIC containers that still have the original LABELS on it and put something ELSE in it for storage. NEUROTIC OR NOT THAT’S NOT FOR YOU TO JUDGE IT’S JUST MY PET PEEVE AND I HAVE AN EXTREME AVERSION TO USE OF PLASTIC CONTAINERS THAT STILL HAVE ORIGINAL LABELS FOR OTHER ITEMS AND GUESS WHAT ALL MY KITCHEN CABINETS ARE FULL OF PLASTIC CONTAINERS. SHE BROUGHT HER OWN SPICES OR WHATEVER THE SHIT FROM HOME THAT ARE ALL IN LIKE OLD PILL AND VITAMIN BOTTLES WITH CHINESE LABELS SCRAWLED ON THEM AND THAT’S ALL CLUTTERING MY KITCHEN RIGHT NOW WHAT THE FUCKING HELL WHO DOES THAT SHIT.

The last straw was when she took a handful of last gummy vitamins from the Women’s Vitamins bottle and put it in the regular gummy vitamins bottle (I can tell the difference you fucking bitch) and used the Women’s Vitamins bottle TO FILL WITH KOSHER SALT. She didn’t even wash the plastic vitamins bottle now, and the gummy vitamins have a VERY strong sweet artificial-flavor smell. NOW THE SALT SMELLS LIKE GUMMY VITAMINS.

I opened my spice cabinet and it’s just filled with her own spices in other plastic containers. GOD DO YOU WANT TO GUARANTEE A PISSED OFF ME? ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS PUT SPICES IN OTHER SPICE CONTAINERS, ESPECIALLY PLASTIC ONES, AND KEEP THE OLD LABELS ON THEM.

The bubbling soup I was making spilled over because I was hunting for panko. Where the fuck is my panko. I reached for the cornstarch and thank the fucking gods I touched it before scooping because first of all, it was full to the brim and I’m like okay I know my cornstarch is at half-empty why is it full to the brim and then I realize THIS container of “cornstarch” is filled with flour. Okay. Flour is so similar to cornstarch. WHY WOULD YOU PUT FLOUR IN A CORNSTARCH CONTAINER THAT IS AN ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN. Thank the gods I just thought hey, that’s not cornstarch consistency what the heck is this? The real cornstarch is in… a cornstarch container next to the flour. I turned the first cornstarch container 90 degrees and then realized she had a sticker label on it and a  Sharpie marker scribble in Chinese. I presume the Chinese says “FLOUR.” BUT SHE KNOWS I DON’T READ CHINESE SO WHY WOULD YOU LABEL STUFF IN MY KITCHEN IN CHINESE WHAT THE FUCKING HELL. Other stuff in my dry spice cabinet has also been labeled in Chinese, with Mr. Sharpie markers, but thankfully I could figure out what each was. That looks like star anise. That looks like Chinese peppercorn. These must be cloves.

This all started when Hubby lost his shit this morning and ordered his Mom not to cook for us and told her he doesn’t want to eat her cooking anymore and wants me to make dinner tonight and then sweetly asked me if I’d make dinner tonight and I said sure that’s fine. He then ordered his Mom to make sure the kitchen is the way I left it so I don’t have any incidences. I think she tried, as in she did all the dishes so all the dishes were done when I returned home, but she fucked with all my spice and ingredients cabinets.

Then when I got home from work and attempted to prep dinner I lost my shit and now the kitchen is a mess. I opened all our cabinets and drawers and threw everything out onto the kitchen floor, especially every single spice container mislabeled or whatever the fuck. Anything that was not in my kitchen pre-MIL is now on the kitchen floor. Every mislabeled container is also on the kitchen floor. Every cabinet door is wide open. I stormed up the stairs and am leaving the mess for Hubby to clean. I texted him an all-caps incoherent text message, went into my room, shut the door, and this is where we’re at now.

I hope that woman dies. I hate her.

 

Fucking Mah Jong and How I Have No Backbone to Speak of

Saturday when we came back from Fisherman’s Wharf, FIL wanted to play mah jong but didn’t say so. I forget now how he hinted at it, but I knew he didn’t have a good time the whole day. The whole trip was for MIL, to be honest. He’s not a clam chowder sort of guy. He’s not a let’s-play-tourist-and-go-sight-seeing sort either. And he is most certainly, absolutely unequivocally not a let’s-stroll-through-the-Japanese-botanical-gardens kind of dude. And he had to sit in the backseat the whole time.

So when I knew he would want to play MJ, I said sure, let’s all play a couple of rounds of MJ. We ended up playing until 1 am, and I was sort of kind of okay with it because Hubby told them there was no way we could play MJ on Sunday. “Kelter has work to do,” which was true. I did. Not whole-day’s-worth-of-work work, but yes, I had work and since Saturday was shot, I definitely needed to get it all done on Sunday.

So Saturday night, the reasoning was, “We can play for a little longer because we’re definitely not playing on Sunday.”

Sunday during dinner, MIL asked if I finished what I needed to finish, and I stupidly told her yes, I did. I was going to follow that statement up immediately with, “And Hubby and I were thinking of watching a movie.” She and FIL had used the big TV the whole day. Hubby and I were hoping to get use of the big TV after dinner to watch something.

She lit up and said, “Let’s play mahjong then!!!!!”

She made mention of mahjong at least three more times from then until 8 pm. We kept putting it off. 9 pm, I relent and say to Hubby, fine, let’s play for one and a half hours ONLY. At 10:30 pm, I want to be done. He agreed.

Around 10:30 pm, MIL won mahjong 2x in a row while she was the dealer (or whatever the hell it’s called– the person who rolls the dice and counts first). So she’s earned a ton of chips… or whatever. No, I still don’t really know the rules. I really just fake along playing so they can have four people. When I win, it’s a total fluke. I mostly just lose because I don’t know what’s going on.

So it’s 10:30 and she’s won 2 hands, so she whines that it’s not fair to end right there when she has so many points… or whatever, I don’t know what the deal is, but apparently it would be royally unfair to stop right there. Hubby actually agrees. And says fine, one more round. She wins that hand, too. Now it’s 3 hands in a row she’s won so it’s a ton of points… or whatever. At one point Hubby even says, “Mom, let’s call it a night and next weekend I promise we will leave off with you as the dealer and you can keep all your points right from the start.” She frowns and says no one will remember that, just ONE more round. Just ONE more. Both of them look at me and ask if it’s okay to play just ONE more round.

“Is it okay with you if we play one more round?” She asks me, looking straight into my eyes.

I couldn’t say no because, you know, I have no backbone.

So we play “one” more round, which she wins. Before anyone knows it, it’s midnight. She just had a really lucky streak. The final round, Hubby wins. That’s when we stop.

Upstairs, Hubby knows I’m pissed. He explains: “It’s bad etiquette to stop playing mah jong when someone has won that many hands in a row as the dealer!” I don’t even know what that means.

I hate mahjong because it forces me to confront everything I can’t stand about them. Let’s forget the part where MIL looks like Jabba the Hut sitting at the table and I have to keep looking at Jabba the Hut, and hearing Jabba the Hut’s heavy, gaspy, hoarse breathing for a zillion straight hours.

I can’t stand how losers of a hand will still go on and on about how they almost won. They just won’t let it go that they didn’t win that round. My approach in life is a little different. Almost never counts. You either won or you lost. If you lost, you lost. It’s time to regroup, figure out why and how you lost, and improve for the future so you won’t lose again. You don’t sit there and dwell on how you almost won. You didn’t win so get over it. You lost. Game over. Shut up and move on. Nope. they just whine on and on after each game about how they almost won. I hate that life approach. No wonder Hubby’s family is a bunch of failures in life and none of them are notable in any way. No wonder my family’s full of overachievers. When I lose a hand, I fold the tiles and shove them back into the center quietly, without incident. I don’t whine on and on about how I got this straight, this triplet, how I almost could have won this many points, yada yada. I lost. I’m over it. I move on. They cannot do the same. At the end of the game, they love to show their cards and remark about how they almost won and how they almost had a fantastic hand. The life approach confounds me.

I tend to be rather stoic. You can’t tell whether I pulled a good tile or not from my facial expression. You can’t tell whether I’m close to winning or losing. I admit I do have a pretty good poker face when it comes to life.

Not them. I even joked lightly a couple of times, “Hope your parents don’t ever play poker…”

There is so much side commentary. And all this slang I don’t understand.

MIL will pull a tile and start waving her hands emphatically and screech, “Jian dao gui le! Jian dao gui le!” Literally translated, it means, “I just saw a ghost! I just saw a ghost!”

I hadn’t one fucking clue what the fuck that meant.

Hubby explained it means, “What the hell! What the hell! I just pulled such a bad card.”

They make tons of noises while they play. There’s a lot of shit talking. “I am going to beat all of you with this great hand of mine! You all get ready to be beat!” Yes, it’s kind of in good fun, I get it, but you can also hear an undertone of genuine competitiveness, too.

They say “Ta ma de” a lot. I’ve never heard any Chinese-Taiwanese folk in my family social circle say that phrase. I don’t know if it’s demonstrative of a particular social class or what, but I just know I’ve never heard it before living with my in-laws and now I hear it all the time. “Ta ma de, ta ma de.” I think it means literally “His mother,” but again, it’s slang meaning, “Dammit.” FIL says it a lot. He’ll pull a card, both his hands will go to his head, he’ll look upset, and he’ll exclaim, “Ta ma de!!!”

They laugh freakishly when they pull a good tile. They make melodramatic noises like the end of the world is coming when they’ve pulled a bad one. I’m the only one at the table who is quiet for 4 straight hours. Our personalities totally clash.

 

 

It’s so pathetic.

Not long ago after Hubby openly expressed mild dissatisfaction at his Mom for the meals she’s been cooking, I tried to make her feel better by reminding her how picky of an eater Hubby was and saying, “Oh, he’s like that with me, too. There are so many foods he won’t eat. He will only eat, like, five different dishes.”

Totally serious, she asks me which five dishes.

I had just said five arbitrarily. I hadn’t literally meant he liked only five dishes.

Anyway, I named off a couple of dishes he liked. Beef noodle soup, eggplant in garlic sauce, egg and tomato stir-fry, seafood fried rice…..

Thereafter for a week straight, she made eggplant and egg and tomato, but the way she makes it is… shall we say… quite different from my approach to those two dishes. Neither Hubby nor I were fans of her…approach.

Last weekend she bought 10+ eggplants and made eggplant every single night for five days in a row. Hubby said something to her I guess, and told her no more eggplant. He also told her no more egg and tomato. Seriously I didn’t know it was possible to mess up egg and tomato. It’s one of those easy peasant dishes that anyone can throw together.

She’s also been making beef noodle soup ad nauseum. I don’t even know if it can be properly referred to as beef noodle soup. I have no idea what it is, maybe it’s a mainland Chinese thing, but we Taiwanese folk first stew the beef separately for an entire day until it’s fork tender, until all the fat has melted away and turned the beef into succulent bites that melt in your mouth. It’s a little spicy. There should also be carrots and onions that have since melted into the broth. The noodles have to be what we call QQ, which I suppose also means el dente. I sauté the greens separately. The broth itself for the soup is its own art form.

MIL, bless her heart, makes the beef first, which is tough and fibrous, like jerky. It goes in the fridge and stays there the whole week. How she uses the beef is slice thin strips of it off the chunk and that’s the beef for the beef noodle soup. She boils a big pot of water and in goes some of the beef juice, if there’s any, soy sauce, and chicken bouillon cubes (oh Christ…). That’s the “broth.” She boils the green veggies with the noodles. The broth isn’t even a beef broth. It’s not spicy. No carrots, no onions melted into the backdrop of the broth’s flavor profile. Everything is haphazardly slapped together. It tastes like water with chicken bouillon dissolved in it, boiled veggies, beef jerky, and noodles. So Hubby is not a fan.

Okay Saturday night after we return from Fisherman’s Wharf, she wants to make beef noodle soup.

Hubby is exhausted from a shitty day out with his parents, so he scowls. He can’t even fake it anymore.

“No, Mom! No more of that beef noodle soup! It’s not good! It’s not even beef noodle soup. You can’t throw a bunch of ingredients together in a pot, boil it, and call it beef noodle soup!”

She is visibly upset. She looks out the window and from where I’m sitting, I can’t see her face, but by the way she’s stone silent and looking out the window, gripping the car door, everyone knows she’s sobbing quietly to herself. Oh. Fuck my life.

“Well, I love beef noodle soup!” I say, which independently as a statement is not false. “Plus, it was chilly today. Going home to some piping hot noodle soup would be fantastic!” Again, by itself not a false statement.

When we’re home, Hubby is talking quietly to me, sweetly, angel face on, seeing if he might convince me to make him fried rice. I said sure. His mom overhears the whole conversation, though, and she goes, “I’ll make you fried rice! Fried rice is easy!”

Hubby scowls and says, “No, Mom, I don’t want fried rice. I can make it myself.”

“Kelter doesn’t want to cook, she’s tired,” says MIL. “She’s tired from walking all day so let her rest. Let me make fried rice for you.”

Don’t know where she got that idea from but hey, I’m not going to complain about not having to cook.

The conversation ends with Hubby saying he will boil up a bag of frozen dumplings by himself and just eat that for dinner. She then insists on boiling the water for him and he fights back and says no, he can boil his own water. The rest of the night and throughout dinner, she repeats over and over, “He doesn’t like my beef noodle soup, the beef I worked so hard on making. It’s really good beef, too. I tried it myself. The beef is great.”

Let me put it this way. Had I stewed beef and it came out like that, I would have–first of all–stewed it for longer– but secondly, would have probably crumpled into a pile on the floor very disappointed in myself for having failed at the attempt and wasted a nice chunk of beef. I would have been really, really upset at myself for being such a big fat failure had my beef come out like that, let’s just say. I might have even tossed the whole pot out and started over.

Sunday morning MIL makes seafood egg fried rice. This is after Hubby and I both told her that he and I were going to go out for brunch by ourselves on Sunday. He wakes up and there’s seafood egg fried rice ready for him.

He doesn’t eat it actually. He scowls at his Mom and says, “Mom, I specifically told you that Kelter and I are going out for lunch today. Why would you still make fried rice?”

“I made it for your Dad, too,” she says.

“And why would you do that?” Hubby asks. Because FIL hates fried rice. “Dad hates fried rice. You know that.”

Later that night when we return home, we find out FIL hasn’t eaten anything AT ALL the whole day. MIL didn’t make him any food so he simply starved the whole day, snacking on crappy processed food.

Hubby yells at his Mom. “Why didn’t you cook for Dad?!?!”

“I did,” she says. “I made him fried rice. He didn’t want it.”

MIL ended up packing the fried rice for Hubby to take to work today. Hubby, who genuinely loves fried rice, took one look at the bento box of fried rice and looked said. He sighed.

Food in this house has become a means for survival. No one is excited about food anymore, which is extra bizarre coming from us because food is my passion. Hubby said to me this morning as we left the house, “I’m not excited about dinner anymore. Before, I was always so excited, like, ooh, what are we going to have tonight. Now I’m just like blah. More onions and cabbage.”

But I sincerely feel sorry for her. I feel sorry that she’s obviously trying so hard to please her son. I don’t entirely get her intentions, but I get that she’s trying really, really hard. Every dish I make, the next  day she will try making it herself. Like when I made pork belly for her friends and everyone raved about it and then the very next day, she tried making pork belly. If I make eggplant in garlic sauce, the next day she’ll make eggplant in garlic sauce. It’s painfully obvious, pathetic, and yet it makes me feel so bad for her.

Fisherman’s Wharf

MIL has never had New England style clam chowder before (let alone in a sourdough bread bowl) and has only talked incessantly about it for the last two weeks. Several of her random friends came and went visiting us and all of them went to Fisherman’s Wharf for the clam chowder in a bread bowl and raved about how awesome it was. That’s where the “I’ve never had clam chowder before oh I really wish I could go to Fisherman’s Wharf and try some I’ve never had clam chowder before ever in my whole entire life the many times I visited San Francisco not once has anyone taken me to get clam chowder when will I get to try clam chowder this lifetime Fisherman’s Wharf me, me, me, me is anyone paying attention to me right now?” started.

So this past Saturday we took her to Fisherman’s Wharf for clam chowder.

First of all, every outing with her is an ordeal. There’s the huge bag of medicine we need to pack because she needs to pop a small pharmacy worth of pills before she can eat anything but always manages to forget her pills so there’s driving back and forth until she’s gotten all the right pills into her bag. There’s getting her in and out of a car, there’s the packing away of her wheelchair, there’s the circling every destination we arrive at for handicap parking, and then there’s wheeling her around in circles while we look for handicap-accessible ramps or handicap-accessible elevators.

By the way, Fisherman’s Wharf is completely not handicap-accessible. You always think the wheelchair community must have it easy, especially the times you pass the row of empty handicap only parking spots while you drive to the back of the lot for a shitty spot. But no, it’s in fact quite a challenge to get around in a wheelchair. First, I can’t believe how many NON-handicap people have the audacity to park in the handicap spots. They put up the placard and out walks four perfectly mobile, able-bodied individuals– typically mainland Chinese people, I hesitate to add. Or maybe I didn’t hesitate too much to add that, but yes. Typically it’s a group of mainlanders hopping out of a car in the handicap space who are all obviously not handicapped.

Trying to wheel the stupid wheelchair through the throngs of people and getting it through the narrow aisles in any restaurant or at any store is next to impossible. Half the stores she wanted to “look around in” she couldn’t because the store was not wheelchair accessible. She wanted to be wheeled close to the bay to see Alcatraz and we had to wheel her around and her around looking for a goddamn ramp. Then she wanted to see the sea lions but no one would budge and let Hubby push the wheelchair up to the front to see.

Don’t even get me started on the Japanese botanical gardens.

What should have been a relaxing family outing turned into an obsessive hunt for handicap-accessible ramps or needing to use the handicap-accessible elevator but having it be locked and having to hunt down someone with a key to let us in.

On the drive to and from, she sat in the front, while FIL and I sat in the back, as usual. When we returned home and pulled into the driveway, we realized how difficult it was–given where the beam is in our garage–it was for her to get out of the car when she sat shotgun. FIL mentioned nonchalantly, “Oh, yeah… that’s why whenever I drive her to dialysis, she sits in the back.”

“Wait, Mom can sit in the backseat? I thought she couldn’t get in and out of the backseat.” says Hubby.

“No, she’s fine in the backseat. She always sits in the backseat.”

Hubby– on his own– blew up. “Then why is she always sitting in the front? Next time let Kelter sit in the front. That way she can navigate for me. If this whole time Mom always sits in the back, why doesn’t she let Kelter sit up front?”

Everyone is quiet. It’s awkward. No one says anything. Hubby breaks the silence.

“Next time Kelter sits in the front and just have Mom sit in the back. This whole time I thought she couldn’t get in and out back there.”

MIL points to the space in front of her and then dangles her two feet. “I like sitting in the front because there’s more space for my feet here.”

Intuitively, or maybe it’s just the skeptic in me, I don’t know, but I swear intuitively I get the strong feeling that she prefers to sit in the front when I’m with them in the car because it’s her way of asserting her dominance. But hey it could just be my skepticism.

Yesterday I cooked for Hubby and me while the in-laws went to dialysis. I open the fridge to see what we have, what I can make dinner with.

5 heads of napa cabbage and a bunch of yellow onions. Not even the nice sweet white onions, but the yellow onions. Oh, and of course, stacks of plastic containers full of buns.

The freezer is packed with frozen meats. MIL and I are different in our approach to shopping. I buy meat fresh when I’ve decided to cook a particular meat. If I’ve decided to make steak on Wednesday, then Tuesday night or Wednesday after work I’ll go and buy the steaks. MIL, on the other hand, bless her heart, waits for a sale, then buys five packs of steak and freezes them all. Oh, except she never actually buys steak cuts of beef. She only buys the big ass stewing beef because it’s cheaper.

It is absolutely insane to me how cheap they are. Everything gets reused. Everything. Every plastic bag has nine lives. First it’s used to store food in the fridge. Then it’s a garbage bag…over and over. They’ll dump the garbage contents from the plastic bag into a bigger trash bag… and keep the plastic bag to use again for more garbage, and pretty much do this over and over until the plastic bag stinks.

There are stacks of used paper towels and paper napkins everywhere. Every paper napkin used during meals to wipe our mouths IS SAVED so that it can be used to wipe the countertops later. FIL will actually WASH THE PAPER TOWELS, set them out to DRY, and USE the paper towels for mopping. Don’t even get me started about old underwear as dish rags.

Yes, okay, I save glass jars. If I buy jam, pickles, or kimchi and it comes in a glass jar, I’ll scrub off the paper labels, scrap off any excess glue, and save the glass jars.

But I don’t save plastic containers. The in-laws save every single plastic container, whether it’s a plastic tub of butter or a plastic bottle of garlic salt. It gets saved. And they don’t remove the labels. I have this pet peeve thing where I must remove the old labels of any jars I save. If the label cannot be removed in the entirety, I won’t save the jar.

Because of MIL, we have a plastic McCormick canister that says “Dried Parsley Flakes” full of star anise. There is an “Oregano” canister full of dried mung beans. This drives me up the wall.

Ultimately, it’s not that they do anything so wrong that warrants my objection. I’m just done with them being here. I’m so done. I miss coming home to a quite house. Now as I walk up the stairs from the garage, I can already hear the Chinese soap operas. I miss knowing where everything is in my own kitchen. I miss my refrigerator not stinking of obscure Chinese herbs. I miss my house looking like civil people from polite society live there– now there’s just ugly buckets everywhere, underwear-as-rags-for-floor-mopping, clutters of pill bottles, and old people eyeglasses at every turn.

Oh, and MIL gets mad at me when I put the stuff away. Well, passive-aggressive mad. She had five pill bottles cluttered on the kitchen table, and we already have a small kitchen table that only seats four– to give you a sense of how little surface area there is– so I put them in a basket and set them aside on the kitchen counter close to the kitchen table. MIL pulled this passive-aggressive thing when all of us were present about how she almost died because she didn’t take her medication on time because she couldn’t find it. I really can’t stand pill bottles cluttered out in the open in the family room, dining room, and kitchen, but this is just a fact of life right now.

It’s only October. It’s only been one month. Holy shit they’ve only been here one month. December is a million light years away. Shit.

Nag Nag Nag

Yesterday MIL, FIL, and I were at the kitchen table after work. Hubby wasn’t home yet. MIL and I were eating freshly made dumplings (again). FIL was rolling out dumpling wrapper dough at the kitchen table while we ate. He works while MIL eats.

MIL kept peering over at him. “Don’t do it that way. That’s too thick. That’s too thin. You need to do it this way. Do it this way. Don’t do it that way. Too thick. Too thin. What are you doing. You are terrible at this. You always do it wrong. Now it’s too thin. No that’s too thick. Why can’t you do anything right…” just on and on like that.

I can tell he’s trying really hard to keep his cool because I’m present and Hubby’s talked to them before about not arguing so much in front of me. The sharp, deliberate movements by FIL let me know that he is one nerve away from snapping at MIL, but he keeps his cool, keeping his cool…

Meanwhile I’m eating my dumplings. She is incessant. She repeats the same criticism over and over. “Don’t do it that way. You need to do it this way. Too thick. Too thick. Too thin, way too thin. It will break in the water. Well now no that’s too thick. Don’t do it that way. What are you doing. Don’t use so much filling. Too much filling. That’s too much filling. Now that’s too little….”

And all of her nagging is in this high-pitched nasal tone. It’s sharp, caustic to the ear drums, and then she doesn’t stop, just on and on, the same nag over and over.

I’m about to snap myself and she isn’t even directing the nagging at me. I can’t imagine what’s going on in FIL’s head.

“Why are you so slow. That wrapper is now too thin. It’s going to break as soon as it hits the water. It’s too thin. No, no what are you doing. It’s too thin. It’s going to break as soon as it hits the water. Why are you so slow. Too thin… water.. break.. thin.. slow.. thin.. slow.. break…” Just on and on. For an invalid with a terminal illness that woman has a ton of energy. I got exhausted just listening to her.

Then FOOM. FIL slams the dough onto the cutting board, mutters something at MIL in Chinese, and scuffles out of the kitchen.

MIL looks at me and shrugs. “Your father has such a bad temper, doesn’t he?”

*Her* Mason Jar

Over the weekend I asked FIL if we could make brandy-infused red dates for a friend of mine. Brandy-infused red dates is some sort of a village specialty for where FIL comes from in China. It’s a famous local treat in that rural province. This friend of mine happens to be from that same province in China, so I thought it’d bring her back memories of home by gifting her with a jar of these brandy-infused red dates.

FIL was more than happy to help me make the preserved fruit. Then it was time to find a glass mason jar. I went through the cupboards and found a nice, handsome, tall one. I was about to hand it to FIL when MIL stopped us.

“No!” She said gruffly. “I need that jar. I use it when I make pickled vegetables.” (She makes a ton of pickled napa cabbage. Basically, Chinese kimchi, but less flavorful than Korean kimchi.)

All the other jars I normally have were already in use by her, filled with lots of random junk. This woman doesn’t throw anything away. Anything. If she cuts up ginger and there is a quarter inch stub of it left, she will save that stub in a little ramekin and into our fridge it goes. Let’s say she chops up chives and there’s about a tablespoon left over. She’ll save that, too. So our fridge is filled with jars and containers full of leftover stuff.

“Mom,” I say gently. “We don’t have any other jars. This is the only one we have. Plus, we can get them so easily. Next time Hubby goes to Costco and we buy preserved artichokes, there’s two more of these same exact jars for you!”

She hobbles over to the cabinet, rummages, and pulls out a near empty plastic spice container, one of those McCormick ground spices that still has the label “Garlic Powder” still on it. She shoves it in my face. “Here. Use this.”

I’m speechless for a moment.

“It’s a gift for a friend,” I say in my broken Chinese. “I can’t give it to her in that.”

Awkward pause. FIL jumps in.

“Yes, of course!” He says to MIL. “What were you thinking?! Of course we can’t put a gift in that thing! We are using the glass jar.”

He takes the glass jar from my hands and walks off.

MIL doesn’t say anything at first, but after FIL is gone, she makes a noise. “He just took my best jar like that. Can you believe it? He just took it!”

Um, wow, no, you’re right. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe any part of this conversation.

HER “best” jar?!

I’m so sure I need therapy.

I don’t think I can do this anymore. I’ve been trying so hard to stay calm, stay happy, be pleasant, and immediately think of the positive side to every negative thing that happens. There are lots of big, ugly plastic buckets in my kitchen filled with dirty water. No!–We are saving water, saving the planet, we are Mother Earth’s heroes. All good. There are dish rags hanging out to dry in my FRONT LAWN. No!– Again, heroes. This is good. This is very good. Reducing carbon footprint or whatever the fuck. Being green and shit. Love it. Everything in my kitchen is misplaced and I can’t find and I am about to– No!!– I don’t have to cook anymore or do dishes. So this isn’t my kitchen. Don’t think of this as your kitchen. Think of yourself as a guest staying at someone’s house and they’ve asked you to make yourself at home so you feel free enough to go searching their kitchen on your own for a coffee mug…

But things have been bubbling and bubbling… MIL has literally made my kitchen hers and has done everything her way, this time with nobody to stop her or undermine what she’s been doing. I open my fridge and am punched in the face with the smell of garlic. WTF why? I look and see she has a plate out with a bunch of leftover chopped garlic. She didn’t finish the chopped garlic in the last cooking but is too cheap to throw it out, so she puts it on a plate and sticks it in the fridge. It’s uncovered because she DOESN’T WANT TO WASTE PLASTIC WRAP HOLY MOTHER FUCKING SHIT CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT SHIT. The other day she asked me to put away a bowl of cut melons. I went to get the plastic wrap but before I could pull off a sheet, she stops me. “NOOO! It doesn’t need plastic wrap. Save that plastic wrap. Don’t waste it. The melons do not need plastic wrap. You are so wasteful with that stuff. You don’t need a new napkin every time you wipe your mouth,” she says, I think trying to tell a joke at the end there, a passive-aggressive response on her part I think for the way I, um, you know, use dinner napkins?

Right now as I type this, the TV is on full blast on some Chinese soap opera. She watches some really crazy stuff, too, by the way. Every time I walk by, the music is super melodramatic and the actors all overact. Also, every third time I walk by, it’s a hospital scene. What’s with the constant shooting of these films in hospitals? It’s not a medical drama! Right now she’s watching some series about a poor but super hot chic who falls in love with an uber-wealthy hot dude but the uber-wealthy hot dude’s family is trying to keep these two lovers apart. And there’s like a love triangle, or quadrilateral… Shit, that stuff will melt your brain cells.

Also, now I need to figure out how to calm myself down and restore zen so I’m not neurotic during my interview later.

It’s only mid-October. One month down. At least two more to go. (Remember: they still haven’t bought their return flight ticket. They just said they’re staying until the end of December. They seriously better leave at the end of December.) I think I’m going to need therapy.