The Devil Wears Polyester

I must begin by apologizing profusely to my readers, especially to those who have submitted MIL stories for me to share. While I hadn't checked my email in months, I have finally started wading through it, and I promise to get your stories queued up, and post each and every one. I'm incredibly grateful for my faithful readers and my new followers. I have been enjoying catching up on all the comments I've missed! I had a busy summer, and now autumn has brought many changes to my life. A lame excuse, but that's my excuse, nonetheless. Fortunately, I am fine. Thank you, readers, for your loyalty and concern, but the Devil has NOT got the best of me. Now let's get back to business: bad-mouthing our mothers-in-law all over the Internet.

Kansas Girl submitted this hilarious post about her own polyester-clad Devil.



Now, don't get me wrong, I adore my children - but before I had them, I had some serious fun.

And then when I was 27, I got married and had my first of many (2) children. I had just turned 30 when my daughter was born; it was understood I would quit my job and become a stay-at-home mom. The world was calm and peaceful. I bought a jogging stroller and ran through the neighborhood everyday with baby Alli. Life at 30 wasn't the same as life at 22, but it was relatively nice.

Alas, there came a bump in the road... I was awakened one morning by the sound of the house shaking. The floor split open and flames shot up. I grabbed my baby girl and huddled in the corner as the devil rose from the pits of hell. I'd seen a lot of pictures of the devil - you know, dressed in red, horns, long tail, etc, etc, etc. But the devil that entered my house was wearing a double knit polyester pantsuit and bad wig. Baby Alli and I were informed that the devil was moving in. And we wept. OK, I wept. Oh, how I freakin' wept.

I know everyone has stories about how bad their mother-in-law is/was/can be, but my stories, I'm sure, are worse. The woman never stopped talking! Long, boring, pointless stories - well, I believe in total she had only 3 stories, so, she kept repeating them over and over until you wanted to rip the wig off her head and smack her with it. She liked to look out the window while she talked and one day I realized: I can leave the room while she's talking and she would never notice. And that's what I would do.

What was worse than having to listen to my mother-in-law? Actually having a conversation with her. Here's a sampling of a few:

Me: I'm making chicken for dinner tonight.
MIL: Stop using pepper when you cook, because I'm allergic to it.
Me: What? No, you aren't! How are you allergic to pepper?
MIL: It makes me sneeze.
Me: It seems the whole world is allergic to pepper then.
MIL: I don't like sarcasm - it's not funny.

(Driving out to eat.)
MIL: Did you see that huge dead dog in the middle of the road?
Me: No, that was just a flattened cardboard box.
MIL: I KNOW WHAT I SAW AND THAT WAS A DAMN DEAD DOG DON'T TELL ME I DON'T KNOW WHAT I SAW BECAUSE THAT WAS SO OBVIOUSLY A DAMN DEAD DOG YOU THINK I'M SO STUPID I DON'T KNOW WHAT A DAMN DEAD DOG IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD LOOKS LIKE?
Me: Obviously not, because that was a cardboard box.
(Husband turns car around and we freakin' drive back to the box in the road.)
MIL: Well, that's not what I was talking about. I saw a dead dog and it's gone now.
Me: I'm sure it magically got better and ran away.
MIL: I don't like sarcasm - it's not funny.

Me: I hate to tear myself away from your always entertaining story, but I have to feed the baby.
MIL: Why are you breast feeding my grandchild?
Me: Because I think I read somewhere that if you don't feed a baby it will die.
MIL: I don't like sarcasm - it's not funny.
Me: I didn't know that.
MIL: Baby formula is much better for a baby than breast milk.
Me: What? Where did you hear this?
MIL: When I had my babies the hospital nurse told me I should not breast feed, because it's not good for the baby.
Me: She probably only meant you, because you act like someone all whacked out on PCP.
MIL: What?
Me: That was sarcasm - and it was funny.

Should I Bring This Up In Couple's Therapy?

In a moment of weakness, I allowed myself to be convinced to visit The Devil.

I should explain that my husband (The Anti-Christ?) and I have had our share of issues, but in a recent attempt to promote marital harmony, I agreed to accompany him and our children to the house of The Devil. I hemmed and hawed and made excuses and placed conditions, but in the end, I relented.

Big. Fucking. Mistake.

I should have known the evening was destined to end disastrously when my husband (The Anti-Christ?) and I had the following conversation on the drive over:

A-C: Well, your mom probably hates me.

DDIL: No, my mom loves you like a son, even though you've done some shitty things. Because, you know, she's, like, normal and wants the best for us. Unlike some other mother I know who hates me even though I've never done a thing wrong to her, ever.*

A-C: My mom doesn't hate you, she thinks you hate her.

DDIL: No comment.

So, I sat, being eaten alive by demon mosquitoes in The Devil's backyard, and watched my children splash happily in The Devil's pool and listened to The Devil recount her week's activities of shopping, yoga, British television programming, new prescription medications and earlier that day, lunch with a friend of her's and the friend's daughters. Of course, my husband, being a dutiful and attentive minion son asked how she enjoyed her lunch, which she must have interpreted as "Hey, mom, can you tell us about your lunch and find a way to piss off DDIL while you're at it?"

So, she spends the next 15 minutes telling us how all she heard the entire time at lunch from the friend's daughters was how "hot" A-C was. How he's so good-looking, he could be a model. How nobody would believe he's married, with children. Of course, The Devil thought it necessary to add:

"I don't think DDIL knows how lucky she is, with such a hot-looking husband!"

Meaning what? I'm such a fucking ugly dog-face that I should be grateful she allowed her "hot" son to have sex with me multiple times? I'm really not a jealous person, but the fact that I know she said these things to get under my skin infuriates me. And it infuriates me because I know she said these things knowing that it could create discord for us, at a time when we're already struggling to keep our marriage and family together. And it infuriates me that I let her infuriate me.

I held my tongue and tried to not let on that she accomplished her goal. I bit my lip when she insisted we stay for dinner. I swallowed the bile that rose to my mouth when she licked her fingers after dinner while complaining about not being able to lose any weight. I resisted making any snide comments when The Devil lamented her daughter's poor choice in boyfriends. And I kept my thoughts to myself when my husband (The Anti-Christ?) mentioned that night that I seemed upset. All for the sake of marital harmony.

And because I'm afraid if I mention it, my husband (The Anti-Christ?) may, with good intentions, tell his mother that her comments were inappropriate. And I'd rather have every last ounce of blood in my body drained by those demon mosquitoes than give her that satisfaction.

Live and learn, I guess. Learn to avoid The Devil like the bloated, white-haired, drunken plague.



*Not counting creating this blog, of course, because as far as I know, The Devil and my husband (The Anti-Christ?) are none the wiser.

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.

Some Guy Felt Your Boob. Get Over It.

So, this one time about 3 years ago, my husband and I were at The Devil's house for dinner. I'm not sure if we were already on the subject, or if The Devil just admitted out of the blue:

"You know, I was molested as a child."

My husband and brother-in-law and I all exchanged a look and the implicit thought: Oh, Christ. Here we go... I had a moment of clarity when I thought maybe some horrific sexual torture had warped her personality. It all started making sense.

"When I was a teenager, a friend of my father's stopped over at the house. He'd been drinking and when I was alone in the room with him, he grabbed my breast." She broke down and sobbed.

We all tried not to laugh, and my father-in-law got up from the table, uncomfortable and embarrassed. We avoided looking at each other as my brother-in-law began "Mom..." but didn't finish his sentence.

All I could think was: Bitch, do you know how many men felt my boobs when I was a teenager? And you're crying about this 40 years later?