It's All About ME! Starring: The Devil Herself

Thank you, reader Katie, for sharing your experience. I can relate. Kind of. With my most recent pregnancy, I was six months pregnant before The Devil asked me when the baby was due.


You know, my husband and I have been married for almost 10 months now. I adore him. I adore his entire family, including all 7 of his brothers and sisters, his dad and s'mother (that's step-mother for those of you not extended-family-terminology savvy), even his insane drug-addict grandmother and over-bearing grandfather. But, the one that I cannot stand is The Devil Herself.

The MIL just has a knack for making everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) about her. My bridal shower? About her. My wedding? About her. The fucking tasting dinner for our caterer before the wedding was even about her! She politely arrived to the tasting to inform her son (my future husband at the time) that she was not going to stay because she was pretty sure she was having a heart attack. So, she left and drove herself to the hospital. I am sure you can only imagine the martyrdom. She thinks the world revolves around her and the sun fucking rises and sets on her ass.

Most recently, my husband and I found out that we are having a baby. The Devil was in the hospital at the time, which is another horrifying, story for another time. The short and sweet of it is that The Devil comes down with some life threatening illness or another about once every two months or so. Thus far, we've had brain tumors, MS, breast cancer, paralysis... you get the picture. Anyway, the crazy fuck was in the hospital again, and so she was next to the very last person to know that we are expecting a child. On the way to the hospital to tell her, my husband asked me if I really thought it was a good idea to tell her about our news at this time. When I asked him why he thought we should wait, he honestly said "Well, you know... because of the condition of her heart." I wanted to scream.

When we did finally tell her, the exchange went something like this:

Husband: "Mom, we wanted to tell you that we're having a baby."
Devil: "I'M going to be a grandma?!"
Husband: "Yep. We're having a baby, Mom."
Devil: "I'M so happy! I'M going to be a grandma!"
(Unsuspecting nurse enters.)
Devil: "Nurse! I'M going to be a grandma! Aren't you so happy for ME?!?"

No congratulations. No indication of the fact that this is something about my husband and myself and almost is in no way at all about HER. Nothing that signified her happiness or pleasure with the two of us. Simply celebration for her being launched into grandparenthood... by no real contribution of her own. Gosh, you have to love the self-centeredness of The Devil.
I'll just have to be sure that when she does finally kick it, I'm sure to let her know that that one really is all.about.her.

The Silver Lining On The Fucked-Up, Drug-Addicted Cloud

Thanks to a reader, Katie, for sending her story.



I married a great guy, who had primary responsibility for three young children. Love the kids. Hate their mom (a whole other blog I suppose.) His mom, well, I knew she talked about me behind my back but was super-great to my face. You know the type, right? Made me paranoid. For 7 or 8 years. Doesn't anymore.

Why not?

Well, my friends, it's because I found out she doesn't know what the hell she ever talks about and no one ever believes her because they all know she's a druggie. No, not coke and heroin drugs, but steal-'em-from-your-friends and shop-around-at-hospitals drugs. Found this out in the best possible way.

My oldest had his tonsils out at age 7 or 8. The hospital sent him home with liquid Tylenol-3, you know, the fun kind with Codeine in it. Was giving him a dose every morning and every night for about a week so about half the bottle was left. The last dose I gave him, he commented that it didn't taste so bad anymore. "It almost tastes like water now!" Hmmm. Water? Really? Dipped my finger in it and discovered we'd performed a miracle in our house. Backwards, though. We'd turned T-3 into water! Hallelujah! Actually, guess who'd come to babysit while I'd run to the grocery store? Yep! Druggie gramma! Seems like she'd downed half a bottle of T-3 while taking care of my four small children. Awesome!!! But since I didn't know it yet, our suspicions actually turned to my teenage sons. . . which is fabulous to contemplate. Your teens are not only taking drugs but have stooped to the level of stealing it from their young siblings. It was a shitty moment. Thankfully,we didn't confront them (since it turns out they didn't do it) we just put things away in, we thought, a safer place. About 6 months later, I had my gallbladder removed and things became much clearer. Since I had four young children, Drug-gramma (henceforth to be known as D-G) took my kids for a few nights because I couldn't lift the children and was in a LOT of pain. My vicodin was stashed in the upstairs bathroom cabinet. Strangely, when D-G brought the children over for a visit two days post op (actually to dump them on me because she suddenly had some mysterious errand) she did something very strange, had to use the upstairs bathroom about 15 minutes after using our downstairs bathroom. Oh, and she rummaged our kitchen cabinets 'looking for a glass' even though she'd hit the glasses in the first cupboard. So that night I got my drugs out (again -- two days post op and in a LOT of pain) and realized there weren't quite as many. So Hubby and I counted. She'd taken over HALF my prescription. Guess I should be thankful it wasn't ALL like she did to her grandson.

Anyway, over the years we've confronted, ignored, tried to deal with and get her to deal with her problems. But we've maintained the relationship because the grandkids love her (who wouldn't love a gramma who let you do whatever you wanted and fed you tons of junk food?), but the final straw happened last December when our oldest son, her oldest grandchild, got married. Oh, yeah. We have a D-G wedding story.

Instead of coming to first grandson's wedding, she was at the ER shopping for drugs. So I called her on the phone in her room at the ER, and upon getting her on the phone (here she's thinking I'm going to commiserate) I sweetly informed her that if she didn't get her fucking druggie ass to her grandsons fucking wedding she wouldn't see her grandchildren again. The loving words that flowed from my mouth would've made a sailor blush.

So now she's comparing me to my husband's psycho ex-wife (when I say psycho I mean it because the woman's spent over three years of the last 12 in the psych ward) and telling everyone that I'm a bitch. I guess the silver lining is that she no longer has any friends (because she's stolen drugs from all of them) or anyone to believe her, so the word that I'm a bitch isn't spreading far.

Cuz I'm a silver-lining type of gal.

But At Least She's Not A Nigger, Right, Ma?

Reader, Chatterbox Sara, shares more of her MIL with us. Read her other posts HERE.


Directly after meeting my future in-laws for the first time, as in, when they called to let us know they got home safely, N put MIL on speaker phone again and here's a snippet of the conversation, where MIL basically calls me a heifer.

N: I'm glad you guys made it home ok. Did you have a good time here?

MIL: It was nice. The food was soooo good that you two made. (Insert a long paragraph where she obsessed over my daughter and started crying about having to leave her.)

N interrupts the drama: I'm glad you see why I love them so much. I assume you guys like Sara and are ok with all this then?

MIL: Well, I didn't say that I particularly like Sara. I'm just so in love with her daughter. I guess if she makes you happy, I can overlook somethings.

N: Uhh, like what? I didn't see her do or say anything that should make you not like her.

MIL: It's just that she's so large. You always dated much smaller girls and I really liked that because that meant you would always have a wife who's thin and pretty.

N: Sara's not big, ma! I don't even think she's a size 8, plus she did just have a baby 5 months ago.

MIL: I'm just saying she could be smaller and prettier is all! I just don't think you'll be happy with a larger woman. I mean, fat people never get thinner, they just get fatter. I would know. What if in ten years, you don't find her attractive at all, then you'd have to get a divorce!

N: I happen to not have a problem with her size or looks, CLEARLY, since I'm dating her and would like to marry her eventually.

MIL: Well, I guess not everyone wants a thin or pretty wife. Just make sure that your choice really makes you happy.

N hung up on her then. They had several more fights over how inappropriate that was and then for a year straight she would make these smirking comments about how thiiiiiiiiiin I was and how greeeeeeeeeeeeeeat I looked. Ugh. Anytime we went out to eat, I would always order salads and water, and comment on how many calories or fat grams whatever she ate probably had. Mama didn't raise no coward! I guess, at least this time she wasn't being racist is a plus?

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Psycho Tree

"Agog" sent me this email. I hope sharing this helped a bit.



I made the mistake of marrying some woman's only child. I did not know at the time that he was a swirling cauldron of mother-hate. I innocently bred with him. I had three children with him before it became unavoidably obvious that his mother-hate therapy consisted in abusing ME.

Meanwhile, she helpfully called me from across town to inform me that my child "smelled yesterday and she needs to be put on the potty." Helpful advice like that. Or that my child needed to be taken outside to play. (When there was 4 inches of ice on the ground and it was 5 degrees out.) Eventually, life with Psycho got so bad I tried to confide in HatedMother. Her words: "I don't know, and I don't want to know. It's not my problem." When he left me, HatedMother moved in with him to clean his toilets and help him raise my children 48 percent of the time. He had ignored the kids for almost 10 years and maybe needed someone to tell him when to put them on the potty. I dunno. Seeing how he had the attention span of a goldfish when it came to anything that required actual work, HatedMother helped him keep my sweet precious children away from my love and discipline for 48 percent of the time for the past 10 years. In the past few years, she started to notice that Psycho is crazier than a betsy bug and mean as a snake. And that my previously-dear children have changed and now act and sound and treat her a lot like, well, Psycho. Go figure. Then she began to call ME and complain about how horrible Psycho and the Cherubs were. Look, woman! You don't get to help ruin my children and now tell me that they suck!

Sometimes, she kind of hints that she'd like to live with me when her son threatens to throw her out on the street. Like hell.

Oh, she still refers to me as her DIL.

Suck This!

Yikes! Reader, Carrie, shared a truly horrible labor/delivery/MIL experience.


When I was in labor, my MIL complained about waiting in the waiting area while I was pushing because she was "too good" for it. She threatened to sue my doctor and the nurses when they wouldn't let her in while I was pushing. She then said my husband was a selfish b*stard for asking her to wait an hour or so after the baby was born for us to have time alone with her. And she came in anyways. My cervix tore and I had to go to the operating room after the birth and when I was wheeled back in, she was there and when my husband asked me how I was she told me to "suck it up." My IL's, without telling us, sent out a mass email to THEIR friends inviting them to a party in my hospital room a few hours after the baby was born. When we said I wasn't up for it,they still did it. Then, a day later, my MIL said she wanted me to apologize for ruining her labor experience.

Shut The Door, Devil Woman

Reader, Miles, shares a few MIL memories with us. Thank you so much, Miles!


I should have known my MIL was trouble the day I met her and the first words out of her mouth were, “I’ve had bad haircuts before, too.” Then, a few moments later, she pointed to a wart on my hand that’s since been removed, and said, “You know, there are doctors that can remove those.” Not surprisingly, that meeting ended with my wife yelling, “Don’t talk to him anymore, please!” She later explained to me that she’d been nervous about meeting me so she’d taken down 1.5 bottles of cheap white wine, which is now kind of her calling card. My wife actually makes bets with me, and if I lose, I have to call my MIL and talk to her. This usually involves me saying, “Hello, [devil woman]” and then sitting back and listening to her drunkenly talk about whatever. The last bet I lost she was crying on the phone to me about her college alma mater’s football team for an hour before my wife finally had mercy and saved me. And I mean literally crying, while slurring her speech.

I wish there were some stories I could tell about her involvement in our wedding, like so many of your other commenters, but to be honest she didn’t contribute at all to the planning. I do remember my wife calling her stressed out about money though, and she actually encouraged us to run away and get married in Vegas. Luckily, my mom was there to settle us down and give us advice on how to cut back on some expenses. Oh, and she made it through maybe ¼ of the wedding before she was so drunk my wife had to escort her to her quarters. Now that I think about it, maybe that was her contribution!

Fast forward to her most recent trip during Easter Weekend. MIL and her boyfriend were planning to visit, and had arranged for my wife to host a dinner party for them and another couple that they are friends with who live in our area. I thought maybe this would be the first trip where she closed the bathroom door while doing her business, but alas that streak (no pun intended) is still alive and well. So after Jedi-mind-tricking my wife into throwing a dinner party for her, she proceeded to waddle around and spend the day drinking wine to work up the courage to talk to people. Her boyfriend parked himself on our couch in front of the TV and smoked more weed than I previously thought was humanly possible. Seriously, Dale and Saul from Pineapple Express would have been in awe.

As previously mentioned, white wine gives her the amazing ability to say the absolute worst possible things and this day was no different. While my wife spent the day slaving away in the kitchen, my MIL hovered over her shoulder generally henpecking and giving bad, drunken advice. There were a number of yelling episodes over things like pie crust, table setting and the like, but the grand finale came during dinner when she drunkenly fell while carrying au jus and spilled it all over our off-white carpet. Instead of apologizing, or even attempting to help clean up, she then yelled at us for having off-white carpet as if we deserved to have a stain for buying a house with off white-carpet.

Now, I should point out that the MIL’s boyfriend owns a carpet cleaning business, and they had, in fact. driven to our house in a carpet-cleaning van which, at that very moment, was parked in our driveway. The next morning, I figured we could use that to our advantage, but I was sorely mistaken. After getting up bright and early at 11:30 am, the boyfriend stretched out, smoked three joints and said he had to hit the road. Classic. Well the good news is, I don’t think my MIL will be back until next year, so I’ve got until then to try to erase the memory of her using the toilet with the bathroom door open.

Some Kind Of Sick Bitch

The Devil is a freak about ailments and illness. She loves them. She loves when someone is sick. She loves when she's sick herself. She loves having surgery. And she especially loves taking and administering medication, almost to the point of obsession (think Munchausen's Syndrome).

She hoards medications. She keeps both prescription and over-the-counter medications in this giant cardboard box in a cabinet. And she keeps them indefinitely. My husband had poison ivy last summer and she sent him home with some kind of ointment. That expired in 1997. I made the mistake once of mentioning that I had a headache at her house. She offered me some left-over antibiotic from her box o' drugs for the "sinus infection" that I "must be getting." If someone complains of a sore back, she gets out her box and offers vicodin or percocet. Toothache? Have some codeine. Can't sleep? The Devil's got a xanax for you.

Loose pills can often be found in The Devil's purse or scattered on her nightstand. She keeps her current prescription jars lined up on her kitchen counter. Like trophies. I once heard The Devil berate one of her grown children for cleaning her kitchen and putting the prescription bottles inside a kitchen cupboard, right above where they were normally kept on the counter. She shouted: "I need to be able to see them!"

Years ago, my husband and I were desperate to conceive and sought help from a fertility specialist, who prescribed a series of pills to be taken orally by me, detailed ultrasounds of follicles and such, and carefully-timed injections. One of these carefully-timed injections needed to occur at The Devil's house after we'd been invited for dinner one evening. This was no secret, and The Devil practically begged me to let her administer the injection. She did, and I carefully wrapped the needle and empty jar in paper towels and placed them inside a plastic grocery bag, which I tied tightly in a knot and threw away in the kitchen garbage can. Several days later, when I happened to stop at The Devil's house for one reason or another, I noticed the discarded, empty serum jar lined up on her counter with the rest of her trophies. What the freaky fuck?

I am generally a live-and-let-live, non-judgemental kind of person. It doesn't bother me a bit if The Devil wants to drug herself into incoherent oblivion or stare lovingly at used syringes. I'm not as casual, however, about medication myself, and in fact, I happen to be quite conservative when it comes to medicating my children. That is, I don't. I rarely give any medicines to my children that aren't specifically prescribed by their pediatrician, and even those, over the years have been few and far between.

When my oldest child was about 6 months old, and just starting to eat solid foods, she, consequently, was having a tough time moving her little bowels, as is common. We "treated" her with fruit juice and prunes, as was recommended by the pediatrician. I was pregnant again, but nearly 3 months into the pregnancy, began to miscarry at home. My husband and I rushed to the hospital, and dropped our oldest off at The Devil's house. A few miserable hours later, we picked her up and returned home. While preparing her for bedtime, I noticed something that looked, to my new-mother's eyes, like a choking-hazard-size piece of plastic in my baby's extremely messy diaper. Obviously, my husband and I were incredibly alarmed and he called The Devil to ask what the baby could have possibly swallowed while in her care. The Devil "reassured" us by telling us that she'd given a rectal suppository to the baby.

WHAT. THE. FUCK? Who, in their right mind, would think to administer a rectal suppository to an infant without thinking to ask the parents' permission, and at the very least, thinking to tell the (already traumatized by a proximate miscarriage!) parents after the fact so they wouldn't freak the fuck out when finding what was left of it in the infant's disgusting diaper?!?

Amazingly, my husband remained calm when he explained to his mother that this is not the way we dealt with the baby's constipation. And that it had been completely inappropriate for her to administer the suppository without asking us or telling us about it. And that, in the future, she must never give the baby any kind of medicine without our explicit permission.

Do you think The Devil apologized? No. The Devil sobbed. My husband got a stern lecture from his father for 'upsetting' her and expected him to apologize. We got the silent treatment for a week or more. I found out years later, that The Devil had called many family members and cried to them, saying how awful we were to her.

Just a few years ago, my two oldest - about ages 6 and 3 at the time - came home from a visit with The Devil and mentioned, out of the blue, the "orange medicine" that she'd given to my young son, the 3 year-old, when he fell and scraped his knee. I remained calm, but interrogated the older child for details. She got the medicine from her box. It was orange. She gave it to him on a spoon. She offered to let the older child have a taste. As young as they were, both kids told the same story and I knew they were telling the truth. My cure for a scraped knee is a band-aid and a kiss. I was livid. I explained the situation to my husband and demanded he call The Devil for an explanation. He was hesitant, but finally spoke to his father, who refused to even bring the subject up with The Devil, but offered a weak denial of any "orange medicine" incident. We got the silent treatment again. Which was fine with me.

Fucking crazy bitch.

Thanks For The Eating Disorder

Thanks to an anonymous reader for sharing a recent experience with us. Hope to hear more from you!



My mother-in-law was sitting in her kitchen, talking to my husband's grandmother with the windows open. I was sitting on the patio reading the paper. It was a glorious day and about 90 degrees. I heard my husband's grandmother say to my MIL about me: "Is Shelly going to put on her swimsuit and join you outside?" and my MIL replied "No, I don't think so, I think she realizes she is rather on the large size."

My mouth hit the floor! First of all, I am a size 10 (Isn't that average?) Secondly, she knew I could hear every damn word she said.

WTF?

And Speaking of Racists - Chapter Three

Thank you, Chatterbox Sara, for sharing! Enjoy Chapter Two below or HERE.


After we had dated for awhile, N and I moved in together. We invited his parents to our new house for a lunch. N was pretty nervous. When they first arrived, this is what my MIL said:

"Oh wow! This house is so nice! I mean, I just figured everything would be all trashy and such. You're not black! Wow! I brought you a present, hope you like it! It's a pig. N told me you think pigs are cute, so I got you a pig as a centerpiece for your table. I love animal centerpieces. Where's your daughter? Is she black? I guess I've never asked that. Where is she, I want to see her. You know I love babies, right?"

E woke up from her nap and we brought her out. MIL grabs her and starts sobbing hysterically. She then says:

"Oh my God! She's so precious! I always wanted a daughter, but we ended up having to adopt and got him. I so wish we could have adopted a girl instead. Honey, LOOK at E. She's just what I always wanted, blond curls and blue eyes, she looks like one of my little porcelain dolls I collect. When can we have her for a visit? I want to take her to live with us, I mean visit us. If you two are really going to get married, then E is ours now. I want to bring her home right away, I just need to be with her. God finally granted my wish, now I have a little girl!"

And Speaking of Racists - Chapter Two

Here is the second part of reader Chatterbox Sara's series. Read Chapter One below or HERE.


Two weeks after that phone call, I recieved a call out of the blue from my future-MIL. Apparently, she had realized I was not going away, so she decided to "make nice". She spent about three minutes asking about me, telling me about herself, and then launched into an hour- long monologue about what an awful human being my husband is. Some highlights included:

"You know he's a liar, right? When he was in 6th grade, he lied to me. I was heart broken for months. He said he got a good grade on a test, but I found out later that he DIDN'T. He got an 88% on that test! I just can't find it in my heart to forgive him. Everytime we speak, I find myself looking into his eyes, desperate to know if he's talling me the truth or if that's the liar devil in his eyes!"

"I just really hope he's still a virgin. Do you two have sex? What does he like? What's he like in bed. Did you steal his virginity from him? I always wonder whether he's actually secretly gay. I keep telling him that it's fine if he is gay, but he keeps denying it and getting mad at me. I wouldn't mind if he didn't get married. He's my only son you know, it would be nice if he moved home and just lived with us to take care of us when we get older. Well, you guys must be having sex if he wants to marry a woman with a kid."

"Are you a nigger? Do you drink or do drugs? How did you end up having a kid? Are you trying to get us to assume financial responsibility of that kid?"

Wedding Hells

Thank you, reader, J, for the story of ultimate mother-in-law misery: wedding planning!



Where to begin?

I suppose my mother-in-law behaved most like a wretched lunatic before she actually became my mother-in-law, when my husband and I were engaged and planning our wedding. She's not so bad now that she knows I'm not going anywhere, and she's really not a bad person. She can at times just be shockingly immature and childishly self-absorbed.

At first, when my husband and I moved in together a few months before our wedding, she started calling. And calling and calling and calling. She didn't live too far from us, so there was a constant imaginary need for him to come over and push the right button on the VCR so she could watch a movie, because she just "can't figure it out alone! You just have to come over right now and do it for me!" or "I am splitting up with your step dad (again) and I'm going to be out of town for the weekend, so I need you to stay in the house in case he breaks in!" Great, lady. Ask my husband to risk his safety to defend all your tacky knick-knacks. Super parenting. Fortunately he refused.

Then when it got closer to the wedding date, I tried to be nice and make her feel included. She'd already offered and then reneged on paying for the cake and the flowers, so I'd sort of left her out of the loop after that because I couldn't deal with her constant failure to keep her commitments (see above: "splitting up with your step dad (again)"), whether financial or marital. So one afternoon I called her up and asked her what she planned to wear to the wedding because my mom and friends and I were planning to make the corsages and boutonnieres ourselves, and I offered to make her one that would match her outfit. I commented, completely in passing, that we'd be hand-making corsages "for all the moms and grandmothers," so we figured why not see what people would like to wear. How nice of my mom to be willing to do that, right? She told me she'd be wearing a "sexy, gold suit with purple embroidered flowers" and thanked me for asking. (BTW - the suit was hilarious, especially because she neglected to cut the little stitch that holds the slit closed, so it was VERY tight, and consequently she waddled around like Morticia Addams through the whole reception!)

So after she spoke with me about the corsage, she immediately called my husband, not realizing we were in the car together. I was shocked to hear my very mild-mannered husband speak quite sharply to his mother. My favorite line was, "If my step-mother wearing a fucking flower on her fucking dress would keep you from attending my marriage then you don't deserve to be there at all. Call me back when you feel like being an adult." Click.

Ooh, daaaang!!! I thought with joy.

Apparently this woman had been shrieking in tearful hysterics that he just had to make sure that his step-mother (who had at that point been married to my husband's father for SEVENTEEN YEARS and was also the mother of my husband's little brother, our ring-bearer) did not get to wear a corsage. Thinking this was her just her usual childish attention-grab, he dismissively told her that sort of decision wasn't up to him and that if I and my mom were making his step-mom a corsage, she would be wearing a corsage. Period. That's when she began to wail and moan and scream and insist that because he's a man, he just "can't understand that corsages are for mothers and grandmothers only not for step-mothers!!!!" And when he again informed her that the decision had been made, and he would not try to stop the impending corsage-wearing, she informed him that if his step-mother were allowed to wear a corsage to our wedding, she would not attend. She actually threatened to skip our wedding over a flower! Thankfully, my husband does not negotiate with terrorists, so he left her with the choice words I've already provided above and hung up the phone. A little while later she left him a voicemail telling him of course she'd be there, and imploring him not to tell me about her behavior because she "doesn't want her and her mom to think I am a difficult person because I am not a difficult person. I get along with everybody. Everybody likes me."

Hah!

It gets better, too. My sweet but at times negligent husband had failed to write the specific names of some tenth cousins on their wedding invitation, and instead just wrote "The So-and-so Family." Well, about ONE WEEK before the wedding, they RSVP'd for ELEVEN PEOPLE. Because we'd already had to find space for various cousins that my husband didn't really know at his mother's insistence, these people were just going to be IMPOSSIBLE to seat. When I asked my husband why he hadn't written their names on the invitation (btw, it's a middle-aged married couple, and we'd thought they MIGHT bring their two adult daughters, so it should have been two people, or four if they were rude), he said, I kid you not, "Oh, I don't know their first names."

Why are we inviting people whose NAMES HE DOES NOT EVEN KNOW??????

Well. In that case, I decided we could just call them and explain that we just cannot seat 11 people and that we had meant to only address the invitation to the two occupants of the household and we are very, terribly sorry, etc. I mean, obviously this can't be THAT offensive since he really doesn't even know them, right????

So he called his mother to find out their names and explain the situation. Cue the wailing and crying and screaming. "Son, you cannot un-invite people from a wedding!" Now, ordinarily, I'd agree with that, but these people had behaved outrageously by RSVP-ing ELEVEN people one week before the wedding! Furthermore, they don't even know my husband personally, and the extra people they were bringing included their daughter's boyfriend and his cousin who happens to also live in our city and that guy's friend who was visiting from out of town.

Right.

So she screams and wails and insists that if we un-invite them, "THE FAMILY WILL BE RUINED! RUINED!!!! AND THEY ARE IN MOURNING! THEIR GRANDMOTHER JUST PASSED AWAY!!! IT WILL TEAR US APART!!!!"

THEN the crazy woman calls me and tells me she understands that my parents are having some trouble covering expenses, so she has decided that she will rent a tent and some tables and set them up outside the building where our reception would be, for her family to have dinner in. OH. HELL. NO. Over my dead body would my mother-in-law throw a PRIVATE PARTY at our wedding reception! I was livid. But because I was a tender twenty-one years of age, I simply said that wouldn't be necessary. When I informed my mother, she was outraged at my MIL's jab at her finances and the notion of the private party, so right then my mother decided we'd squeeze in two more tables and absorb 11 more people and if anyone complained about the cramped space, we'd just explain to them that THOSE TWO TABLES FULL OF PEOPLE OVER THERE just RSVP'd last Thursday, so we'd had to make do.

Well, the wedding went off really without a hitch. It was a little crowded, but a good time was had by all, and my new mother-in-law got good and drunk and maintained a placid demeanor the whole time. I must point out though, that one of the Belated Eleven came up to me and my husband's best man and congratulated us on our marriage. Twice. So I doubt it really would have RUINED THE FAMILY if we had un-invited them, but whatever. It's all good, and now that she knows I'm not going anywhere, she ranges from tolerable to downright pleasant the vast majority of the time.

She's still crazy though.