My FIL is filthy. He showers once a week. Once a WEEK. He eats like a pig - leftovers are eaten out of the container, gnawing on turkey legs at 7am the day after thanksgiving etc. Carries around a back scratcher. Just vile.

MIL is a lovely, beautifully clean and conscientious person.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tonight, my supposedly Christian FIL started talking about how he got into a debate with his Jewish friend about the Old Testament, and how he found Jews "arrogant" for considering themselves the chosen people. Due to their arrogance, he could "kinda see where Hitler was coming from". I about strangled him at the dining room table.

If you didn't immediately challenge his words, ask him to leave your home (or leave the premesis of wherever you were yourself), you are complicit to his xenophobic and harmful comment. If you would stay silent through that comment, what WOUDL make you speak up?

Not PP but I have an elderly mother who says some cringeworthy things, never about Hiltler, but she is clearly not a fan of illegal immigrants/undocumented citizens. Throwing people out because of what they say is not always an answer. Let me educate you on the human brain, the frontal lob which is where reasoning and a person’s ‘filter’ is, starts to weaken as they age. Take that into consideration when you throw people out. Instead of matching their intolerance, share why killing people based on their beliefs is heinous and inhuman. If they do not want to hear words of sensibility then change the discussion. Psychological and sociological studies show we all base ideals and generalizations on sex, race, religion, etc... It is a wide spectrum of how each of us view others ranging from strong affinity to strong disdain for each other. I am not trying to oversimplify or justify anyone’s words or behavior but humans are flawed and will always have judgements on people, places or things that do not align with others.

My OCD MIL has spent every meal we've eaten in her house running around the table moving people's cups, utencils and food back onto their tiny placemats and yelling at us about how we must hate her because we are ruining her $10,000 wood table by having a cup rest on it. Jeez, woman! Let us use a tablecloth! But no, she wants us all to see the wood on this ridiculously expensive table, so we must use her tiny placemats, despite the fact that there are kids between the ages of 4 and 9 at every meal. So we've gone out for lunch and dinner after Thursday to avoid this craziness. The only reason we can't leave for breakfast, though, is that due to the OCD, it takes her 3 hours to get ready in the morning and she would not turn off the alarm to let us out before she was ready. So we're basically captives until she is ready.

Here's the kicker - I try to have compassion for her since OCD is an illness. She used to see a therapist, but this weekend she told me that she doesn't view herself as having any issues anymore. She's just "clean" and the rest of us are "dirty." Looks like it's only going to get worse from here.

Anonymous wrote:These bitches HOVER in my kitchen as I am trying to finish dinner prep. And yes, I provide plenty and serve apps. You would think they were raised in a barn.

Mine do this too. It drives me crazy!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Proof of pasta.

https://imgur.com/a/nytKIFy

The pasta is not even the scariest part of that fridge.

Maybe to prevent moths. My parents had an infestation in thier pantry one year and those things were everywhere. Cue moth ball smell for years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t have much to complain about, but my ILs don’t seem to like my cooking or the local cuisine. They’ve barely eaten anything and apparently my MIL cried because she didn’t like her meal. Tomorrow should be interesting because everything I’m cooking is inspired by indigenous peoples’ food, so it’s definitely not the standard turkey/mashed potatoes/stuffing.

I never say that, but team MIL if that's what you're cooking tomorrow. It's fine to have that IN ADDITION TO the traditional turkey dinner, but if there aren't some of the standards, you suck.

NP here. I totally disagree. You cook, you get to decide what to serve. The standards are boring anyway.

Don't host Thanksgiving if you don't want to host Thanksgiving. Especially if you know that people will be disappointed, as surely OP knows her MIL will be.

I really had no idea this would be an issue. I even asked ahead of time for requests and no one gave me any. And it’s not just thanksgiving dinner, everything else I’ve made has been an issue. The restaurants we go to have been an issue.

I don’t think they are intentionally trying to start drama, they’ve been very polite. I feel terrible because my MIL *cried* after dinner tonight. I feel terrible that they are hungry and don’t like my food or the restaurants we recommended. We just have very different tastes.

You sound clueless. You didn’t get requests when you asked for special requests because they likely assumed you’d serve the basics. If you didn’t roast a turkey and serve potatoes and stuffing you owed it to your guests to let them know in advance what you would be serving, if it was untraditional. You were a bad host.

+1. I notice how OP never came back to report how it went. A room full of disappointed guests is how it went.

Anonymous wrote:Tonight, my supposedly Christian FIL started talking about how he got into a debate with his Jewish friend about the Old Testament, and how he found Jews "arrogant" for considering themselves the chosen people. Due to their arrogance, he could "kinda see where Hitler was coming from". I about strangled him at the dining room table.

If you didn't immediately challenge his words, ask him to leave your home (or leave the premesis of wherever you were yourself), you are complicit to his xenophobic and harmful comment. If you would stay silent through that comment, what WOUDL make you speak up?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t have much to complain about, but my ILs don’t seem to like my cooking or the local cuisine. They’ve barely eaten anything and apparently my MIL cried because she didn’t like her meal. Tomorrow should be interesting because everything I’m cooking is inspired by indigenous peoples’ food, so it’s definitely not the standard turkey/mashed potatoes/stuffing.

I never say that, but team MIL if that's what you're cooking tomorrow. It's fine to have that IN ADDITION TO the traditional turkey dinner, but if there aren't some of the standards, you suck.

NP here. I totally disagree. You cook, you get to decide what to serve. The standards are boring anyway.

Don't host Thanksgiving if you don't want to host Thanksgiving. Especially if you know that people will be disappointed, as surely OP knows her MIL will be.

I really had no idea this would be an issue. I even asked ahead of time for requests and no one gave me any. And it’s not just thanksgiving dinner, everything else I’ve made has been an issue. The restaurants we go to have been an issue.

I don’t think they are intentionally trying to start drama, they’ve been very polite. I feel terrible because my MIL *cried* after dinner tonight. I feel terrible that they are hungry and don’t like my food or the restaurants we recommended. We just have very different tastes.

You sound clueless. You didn’t get requests when you asked for special requests because they likely assumed you’d serve the basics. If you didn’t roast a turkey and serve potatoes and stuffing you owed it to your guests to let them know in advance what you would be serving, if it was untraditional. You were a bad host.

Tonight, my supposedly Christian FIL started talking about how he got into a debate with his Jewish friend about the Old Testament, and how he found Jews "arrogant" for considering themselves the chosen people. Due to their arrogance, he could "kinda see where Hitler was coming from". I about strangled him at the dining room table.

Anonymous wrote:Mine is sulking like a child because she just asked me about an amazon card she bought me for my birthday that I never received and she thinks I intentionally threw out her card without opening it.

Doesn’t she realize that gift cards sometimes get stolen from the mail?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t have much to complain about, but my ILs don’t seem to like my cooking or the local cuisine. They’ve barely eaten anything and apparently my MIL cried because she didn’t like her meal. Tomorrow should be interesting because everything I’m cooking is inspired by indigenous peoples’ food, so it’s definitely not the standard turkey/mashed potatoes/stuffing.

how is this possible people are so weird

THANK YOU! I've been hung up on that since I started reading this thread. Grown people crying over a meal they didn't like? I mean I have issues when my blood sugar gets low but it's never resulted in crying.

These bitches HOVER in my kitchen as I am trying to finish dinner prep. And yes, I provide plenty and serve apps. You would think they were raised in a barn.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I came on to start a petty vent thread. WHY OH WHY does my mother in law keep boxed pasta in the fridge? Even the unopened boxes. We're talking Mueller, Barilla

DH’s exwife does too. Is your MIL from a tropical country? They may be trying to protect it from humidity

If by tropical you mean rural Georgia... then yes.

I bet it's bugs - to keep bugs out.

Mine is sulking like a child because she just asked me about an amazon card she bought me for my birthday that I never received and she thinks I intentionally threw out her card without opening it.

Anonymous wrote:I still want to know what indigenous people’s food is.

+1. I'm envisioning stone ground maize mush and venison jerky.