Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My MIL has a second dining room table with chairs she never uses (it is a large open concept Texas-sized dining room).

On special occasions when it would make sense to put the two large dining tables together, she doesn’t. Instead she adds two card tables to the regular dining room table. One of the card tables is incredibly heavy and she stores it in the attic and brings it down and that is a whole dangerous production every time. The tables aren’t even heights or shapes, either.

And she won’t even use the other dining tables’ nice chairs, either—she brings out folding chairs. So there we sit, crammed around this makeshift stupid table on wobbly chairs, while this whole other never-used dining table just sits there. Madness!!

omg, that is insane!

Thank you for acknowledging how odd it is! Every year someone suggests pushing the two big tables together, and every year MIL pretends not to hear. Since nobody wants to make and host the big family meals, we pretend we don't care, either. At this point, we've all adapted to the Frankentable, although one year there was a memorable incident with a giant platter of deviled eggs that slid into the gap and went EVERYWHERE.

The "display-only" dining room table continues its vigil over the family's major holiday meal events, wishing and hoping that someday, it will be promoted to the big leagues.

Poor table. I think its only hope is to be traded to different team.

Why do I suspect that someday your MIL is going to be very upset that no one wants her old dining room table, especially when it's in pristine condition?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My entire family, if complimented on any sort of item, will proudly respond with how cheaply said item was obtained.
"I love this big salad bowl." "Thanks! Got it at a garage sale for 25 cents." All of us. Always.
My husband thought this was insane at first because his family doesn't talk about money and wouldn't be caught dead buying used items. Now he's all in.

My family does this too! Especially my mom.

My family too.

I'm East coast and love a deal. I had someone figure out if I just said 'thanks' after a compliment, I probably paid full price.

We have plenty of money but I love finding high quality used clothes in consignment shops. Buying a lightly used $750 blazer for $75 is a blast. My daughters now do the same thing and we all have great wardrobes for a fraction of the cost. My friends think I’m crazy but to me it’s a sport.

My sister and BIL own a very cute, but old, drafty farmhouse. They’ll grudgingly turn the thermostat up to 60 degrees when company comes. They make a decent income, but are very frugal, which is fine.

What is more head scratching is that they also have a number of house rules, which make sense to them, but generally not to anyone else, since they don’t tell you the rules until you have broken them. A few examples over the years:

1. They had a couch, more of a settee, which had recently developed a cracked leg. They either didn’t sit on that side or used other furniture. But they didn’t mention it to me. Didn’t stack books under it as a temporary solution. They weren’t in the room, I sat down on the “bad” side like I normally would and CRACK!, the leg snapped. My BIL basically accused me of throwing myself down on it. My sister said it wasn’t my fault, but her grumpy expression said otherwise.

2. In the winter, they tacked heavy blankets over a few of the interior doorways to conserve heat in the main part of the house. But they used very small nails, the kind you use to hang paintings (didn’t realize this until after the transgression). I pushed the blanket aside to enter the room and half of it ripped off the door frame. Heavy sighs and rolled eyes. Apparently, the “proper” way to enter was to gather up the blanket, pass it over my head, and let it drop behind me.

3. The last time my brother stayed with them, he got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, went down the darkened hallway, and accidentally kicked a large bowl of water they put out for their elderly, half-blind dog—right in the middle of the hallway, because said dog liked to roam the house at night and this way, he had easy access to a drink upstairs along his journeys. All well and good, but warn someone you are going to do that, or don’t be angry when a watery mess happens.

I’m happy to visit them, but stay overnight in a hotel. Hotel for brother now too after the Water Bowl Incident of 2017

We don't do this anymore/now what we have families and more people at dinner, but growing up my mom would always serve salad with dinner and the salad bowl would just be in the middle of the table and we'd all dig in from there. We put all other food directly on our plates, but all just ate out of one salad bowl.

My FIL insists on serving food/policing food/handling food. I bring my own food or engineer things where he’s not dealing with my food, and I know he takes offense, but oh well: he’s a finger-licker and his control issues are weird. Like he’ll “man the toaster” and ask what kind of toast people want, and do they want butter, etc.

I get around it by pretending like I only want coffee and eggs, and then later I’m like oh I’m going to get some fruit—and when I get up, I’ll “suddenly decide” I want toast and make my own.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My entire family, if complimented on any sort of item, will proudly respond with how cheaply said item was obtained.
"I love this big salad bowl." "Thanks! Got it at a garage sale for 25 cents." All of us. Always.
My husband thought this was insane at first because his family doesn't talk about money and wouldn't be caught dead buying used items. Now he's all in.

My family does this too! Especially my mom.

My family too.

I'm East coast and love a deal. I had someone figure out if I just said 'thanks' after a compliment, I probably paid full price.

This is hilarious and true! My mom complimented a dress and I said thank you and trailed off. There were a few awkward seconds and then she said "So ...I guess it cost too much."

Hahahahhaha!
This post is making my day. Keep 'em comin'!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My MIL has a second dining room table with chairs she never uses (it is a large open concept Texas-sized dining room).

On special occasions when it would make sense to put the two large dining tables together, she doesn’t. Instead she adds two card tables to the regular dining room table. One of the card tables is incredibly heavy and she stores it in the attic and brings it down and that is a whole dangerous production every time. The tables aren’t even heights or shapes, either.

And she won’t even use the other dining tables’ nice chairs, either—she brings out folding chairs. So there we sit, crammed around this makeshift stupid table on wobbly chairs, while this whole other never-used dining table just sits there. Madness!!

omg, that is insane!

Thank you for acknowledging how odd it is! Every year someone suggests pushing the two big tables together, and every year MIL pretends not to hear. Since nobody wants to make and host the big family meals, we pretend we don't care, either. At this point, we've all adapted to the Frankentable, although one year there was a memorable incident with a giant platter of deviled eggs that slid into the gap and went EVERYWHERE.

The "display-only" dining room table continues its vigil over the family's major holiday meal events, wishing and hoping that someday, it will be promoted to the big leagues.

Anonymous wrote:I'm thinking about small, Seinfeld-ish things, like George's parents getting bent out of shape when they are served coffee without cake, or in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when the dad thinks Windex is a cure-all for every ailment.

I'll start -

My mom collects dinnerware/plates and has them hanging all over the house (and in cabinets too), but when we visit, she only serves meals on paper plates and styrofoam cups. Even for Thanksgiving or a birthday! It's so weird to be surrounded by all this beautiful dinnerware but eat off of paper, haha!

When we visit DH's family, his entire family eats the same thing for breakfast every day, all at exactly the same time. It freaks me out! They all have a bowl of cereal, something like bran or Weetabix, then walk over to the sink, empty their bowls, and sit down again with a cup of coffee and toast with jam. It never varies - never a poached egg, a piece of fruit, cheese. For 35+ years.

Your turn. Hope we can keep this lighthearted.

When you saw entire family, who all is this? Just DH and his parents?

According to my siblings' significant others, my family does not allow complaining.

I am not sure how they got this idea, because I am always up for a good vent, but that and leaving the butter out (unless it would melt) are the distinctive traits of my family of origin.

My parents used to love a cocktail before dinner, but then they'd drink milk with their meal. I wonder if the late-arriving dairy was curdling in our stomachs.

My mother feels you must never say no to family. She will say yes and then have so much resentment that she ends up screaming at them and complaining about them to everyone she knows. She will hurl insult after insult once she explodes, but she feels she did the right thing and is a good person because she never says "no."

I have boundaries and will say "no." I also have the policy of never being disrespectful and not yelling at anyone or hurling insults and I don't believe in talking trash about people behind their backs. Because of this I am told I have no decency and no sense of family.

Whenever my in-laws order food when we're at their house, they insist on ordering it hours in advance, and then warming it up when we're ready to eat it. This stems from one time when they ordered dinner in with us, and it took slightly longer than expected (like 45 minutes instead of 30), so they over corrected to the extreme.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My dad is very quirky.

He makes himself oatmeal every morning for breakfast in the microwave in a giant Pyrex bowl because the oatmeal won’t splatter out of the giant bowl. And he eats out of the giant bowl.

He has a few limited topics of conversation. Mostly real estate and cars. He always asks me what the price of gas is where l live, and how my car is running, when l call every couple of weeks.

He has a good quality but massively heavy and cumbersome vacuum cleaner from the 80’s. He liked to brag about how good it was. I think my parents bought it from a door to door vacuum cleaner salesman back in the day. I gifted them a tiny and practical Dyson. He loves it so much and uses it daily. But he doesn’t brag about it.

Reminds me a little of my dad with the gas prices.

My dad has a ledger. Every time he fills his tank, he writes down the miles and cost and gallons so he can track gas prices and figure out his miles per gallon. He Will look at every gas price between his house and mine (an hour drive) so he knows the cheapest place to fill up on the way home. And he will discuss it with us at length. God bless him, my husband has taken an interest in the tracking of gas prices and now also pays attention so they can discuss.

I love this, so sweet of your DH.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do most people or kids lick the beaters as a treat after mixing something? Ok maybe like whip cream where you won't get salmonella and not front of company. DHs family never did this. I guess we were uncivilized.

100% even the raw batter

Absolutely! One kid gets the beaters, other kid gets the bowl to lick. I do my best to make sure there's an even amount on each. If no kids are around, I get them both .

Anonymous wrote:My dad is very quirky.

He makes himself oatmeal every morning for breakfast in the microwave in a giant Pyrex bowl because the oatmeal won’t splatter out of the giant bowl. And he eats out of the giant bowl.

He has a few limited topics of conversation. Mostly real estate and cars. He always asks me what the price of gas is where l live, and how my car is running, when l call every couple of weeks.

He has a good quality but massively heavy and cumbersome vacuum cleaner from the 80’s. He liked to brag about how good it was. I think my parents bought it from a door to door vacuum cleaner salesman back in the day. I gifted them a tiny and practical Dyson. He loves it so much and uses it daily. But he doesn’t brag about it.

Reminds me a little of my dad with the gas prices.

My dad has a ledger. Every time he fills his tank, he writes down the miles and cost and gallons so he can track gas prices and figure out his miles per gallon. He Will look at every gas price between his house and mine (an hour drive) so he knows the cheapest place to fill up on the way home. And he will discuss it with us at length. God bless him, my husband has taken an interest in the tracking of gas prices and now also pays attention so they can discuss.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do most people or kids lick the beaters as a treat after mixing something? Ok maybe like whip cream where you won't get salmonella and not front of company. DHs family never did this. I guess we were uncivilized.

100% even the raw batter

I turned 50 this year and have been eating raw cookie dough since the mid 70's. Zero cases of salmonella in me or anyone I know. I'm thinking that has to be some ultra paranoid hoax.