If you hear a story on the news about a mother in law being beaten to death with an X-box...

 It's Christmas Eve and I'm having to take a break today. I'll get into the reasons in just a minute. One thing I've never wanted to do on this blog is talk about dramatic events like those that happened Saturday and just casually move past it.  I was able to nap most of the day Sunday which made me feel so much better on its own. I was also able to find the therapist's website that Peyton recommended and fill out her new patient form. Peyton had recommended to be as specific as possible about my goals, past therapy and therapists, why I was reaching out, etc.  The therapist emailed me back about an hour later with a very positive note saying that she would be happy to try to set up remote sessions with after the new year. She also said that she attended a PD conference  with the marriage counselor Bubs and I have been going to and heard her speak and said that she has very similar philosophies about therapy, game plans and feedback.  Even though I haven't started anything, simply getting that email and realizing that there are steps I can take and people who are able to help made me feel so much better. 

Now on to today. On Friday, we are filling our two cars with two adults, two kids, 3 dogs and literally everything we have had in our possession since the movers came. Knowing this, we told our family that Christmas had to be small this year. It's not that we don't want our kids to be happy and get presents, its that we don't have the physical space to transport a lot of new stuff.  We even said that if that there was something they really wanted to get the kids, please have it shipped to our new address and it will probably be a nice boost for the kids to get presents a couple of days after Christmas in their unfamiliar new house. 

My dear mother in law showed up this morning with so many presents that it literally filled the bed of my father in law's truck.  Bubs heard them pull up as we were sitting at our little camp table playing Wordle and getting the day started. He ran out to say hello and before he even got the chance he  came back and begged me to please not look outside, just go out the side door and head to my little sister's place as it was my best chance to not see the truck. He said he would handle it. I couldn't help myself and I looked out our front window and shrieked "are you fucking kidding me!!??!?" That got the kids attention and they looked out their front windows saw the wonderment of overspending Oma and her truckload of presents. Bubs got mad at me and told me he said he would handle this and now I'd sworn in front of the kids. So yeah, I took his advice because otherwise I would be the cussing, fat Grinch who was about to scream at the sweet old lady and steal all the presents. I grabbed my laptop and took off out the side door and am sitting in my sister's bedroom trying to let off some steam instead of marching back and asking her "what the fuck are you doing!" 

I love my mother in law, I really do. She has done some very sweet things for me over the years and I like to think that she always has my back. But now that she's retired she has far too much time, far too much money and far to much desire to spread the cheer around to her grandbabies. And since my sister in law won't help me out in this regard by getting knocked up, all that generosity is aimed directly at my children. I think the most frustrating about it is that I have tried to be nice, I have tried to get mad, I have tried everything I can think of to get her to stop but she always finds ways to circumvent me and spoil the kids rotten. As an example of this last January my son asked for a PlayStation for his birthday. She felt bad for my daughter (even though her birthday is less than a week apart from his) and got her her own PlayStation. I tried to be nice and tell her that I get the sentiment, our family doesn't need two PlayStations and we don't allow the kids to have TVs in their room anyways. She said she understood and promised to take the other one back. I made the absolute mistake of believing her because her solution was to buy the kids both handheld Nintendo consoles that didn't need TV's and she kept the other PlayStation and set up a gaming room for the kids at her house. My desire to not have my kids plugged in all the time got answered by having four gaming consoles instead of just one. And we still had my daughter's birthday the following weekend where I hoped and prayed that she would realize she'd already gone over the top in just a week and she would back off and maybe get something small. Nope, Disney Cruise with the absolute best amenities and activities she could afford. We'd already made tentative plans to take the kids to New Mexico over spring break to go skiing, no kid is going to chose skiing over Mickey so those plans were blown out of the water. 

I think one of the things that drives me the most crazy about her is that she has these insane ideas about what roles moms and dads should take in the raising of kids. And this kind of blows me away even more because I've known my father in law as long as I've known her and he was always a very attentive and loving father to both Bubs and his sister and he's always treated me like his own daughter. But like happened on Saturday, Bubs was actually at her house and he texted me 20 times to ask me things like "TJ says he wants BBQ lays, is ok if I sent someone out to get some?" So not only are those questions kind of insulting as I think she's backhandedly saying I'm overly strict, but her son is literally in the room with her...fucking ask him. Jesus Christ, I'm not a monster who is going to scream at everyone because they ate flavored potato chips without asking me.  

When covid first hit our school tried to keep our students engaged by moving classes online but with all the challenges we already had, we were a sinking ship. Me and the other first grade teacher decided that our best bet was for both of us to be at her house and try to plan curriculum together, share each others classes, really anything that we could do to try and make it work. Bubs was working from home so we enlisted both grandmas to help us watch the kids. On days where my mom would have the kids I had no worries. My daughter got logged into her very short class, my son was entertained, they would get fed and even get some exercise and play time with their cousins. On days when my mother in law would come over I would get texts like "Abby says she uses zoom. I don't know know what zoom is." I would text back "Mom, I'm really busy can  you see if Craig can help you?" two seconds later she'd reply with "honey, it's not right to disturb a man while he's working." I would be in the middle of trying to keep first graders entertained enough to learn addition and would be utterly dumfounded by words that would appear before me on my phone. One day she asked me if the kids could eat baloney. I  replied with "sure but we don't really have baloney around the house"  her reply was "you know your husband's favorite lunch was baloney and mayo sandwiches. Stop and get some on your way home." I entered the text in my phone "FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK LADY, IF HE WANTS BALONEY AND MAYO HE CAN GET IT FOR HIM FUCKING SELF." Thank god I showed it to my co-teacher before sending it because she deleted it and told me to go outside and get some fresh air. After I got back inside I asked her to write a text for me and it said "I'll text him to see if he can go to the grocery store when he gets a break. Can you make him a list of things you think you'll need?"  I sent it and instantly came back with "we can't ask him to go to the store, he's really busy and that's not his job." I needed fresh air again. 

When Bubs and I were much younger, and I mean like 13 years old and on, she loved to makes sure I wasn't pregnant. It would be these awkward quizzes disguised as advice and grown up talk where she ask these insane probing questions. Bubs had an uncle that had gotten a girl pregnant when he was a teenager so his mom always that teen pregnancy was in the family blood--even though it was a one off. And then when I actually did get pregnant after being married for a few years her response was "I've always wondered why it took you so long and that maybe you didn't want kids?"  I was 24. I was dumbfounded. 

I know I have to take the good with the bad with her, she gave up about $100,000 when she gifted Bubs her share of our house after he mom died. Whenever there have been family heirlooms or jewelry that she no longer wants, she has always included me along with Bub's sister to make sure the stuff gets divided fairly. I call her mom and she called me her "daughter to be" when I was about 16 and then her daughter when we actually did get married.

As I've been typing this out, I'm realizing that she's probably sad and afraid about the fact that we are moving too. Her over the top display of Christmas cheer to the kids is a way for her to express that she's going to miss her grandchildren and won't have near daily access to them like she's had for most of their lives. Now that I think of it, it makes me sad too. She's frustrating but she's never once told me no when I needed to drop the kids off to get things done or to have them spend the night. 

I know Bubs is probably sweating in his boots at how I'm going to react when I head back home. As soon as I publish this, I'm going to walk back over and give her a huge hug and thank her for being so generous with the kids. I'm going to tell her that we are going to miss her and that we all love her and that she really has been a second mom to me. Then slowly, throughout the day we are going to have a calm and friendly discussion about how we are going to get all the stuff to the kids since we won't be able to fit most of it in our cars. I think my solution is I'm going to offer to buy her a plane ticket to come see us with all the checked baggage she needs to get everything to the kids. That way she gets to see them, they get to see her and they get the joy of her delivering the presents twice. If she has another plan, that's fine too.