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.

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.

Maybe Take a Sharpie and Draw Some Horns and a Tail on That Family Photo

Many thanks to reader, Carly, for sharing this anecdote.


My MIL has passed away, and in the spirit of not speaking poorly of the dead, I'll refrain from the many stories I could tell, except for her parting gift.

She had three children, but both of the daughters were single and had no children. In fact, both of them pretty much cut all ties with their folks. It was the MIL's heart's desire, however, to have a family photo taken, and as neither sister would be present, the family portrait would be with just the parents, my husband and I and our children. Fine. As we prepared to make an appointment with the photographer, my MIL pulled me aside and let me know that she'd "like to have the picture taken, you know, with just the family"... I looked at her rather blankly and slowly caught on that she'd like my husband and children in the photo, but not me. I wasn't "family." I was afraid for a moment that we were going to have to cut the kids in half so that no one would be able to see that portion of genetic material that I had contributed. Apparently, there were concessions she'd be willing to make, so the children were spared...

She died shortly after that due to diabetic complications. My heart still sinks whenever I see a short, rotund, white haired woman. The legacy she left is (hopefully) not the one she intended.

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?