OK. Vent time. I think I've made it clear in previous posts that my MIL (mother-in-law) frustrates me at times... and this past weekend was kinda the icing on the cake. There are certain things that she does that I really have no tolerance for. One them being, poor communication. As somebody who (I think) communicates well, and likes to have plans organized, this puts a big stress on anything we try to plan with her. Throw any sort of variable in there and it's sure to be a big ole train wreck. And so this past weekend was just that.
As you know, Zoe was in town and after Lucy's party she went home with Mike and Ingrid. She had pulled us aside several times saying that she wanted to come back to church with us next weekend, and that she didn't want Ingrid to know about it. So, Gaetan and I told her that we would make that happen. I thought that I had the perfect plan on how to make this work. So, I called the MIL and told her what the plan was to see if she thought that would work out. This was at the beginning of the week, in which she said she would let me know in a day or two. Well, the middle of the week rolled around and I hadn't heard boo from her so I got in touch with Zoe, because I thought that would maybe be a better idea. It wasn't. After about half a day of headache I just told her to forget the whole thing. That it wasn't worth the stress and we'd just have to see her the next time she was in town. And that was that. I thought that everything was figured out and that we were just going to have a lovely time on the east side of the state with some of our faves. I was disappointed that we couldn't make the weekend work because I really wanted Zoe to come to church with us again, because she seemed so positive about it, but I figured that if it wasn't in the cards then God already knew.
Well, Friday rolls around and I hear from Zoe. She still wants to try and get together and is still trying to work it out, but apparently at this point more variables have been thrown into the mix. NO GOOD. And then I get this text from MIL about how she's sorry things didn't work out, but next time maybe they could. I just had had enough at that point. I'm usually pretty good at not trying to make things worse, but I couldn't handle it. I sent her a pretty snarky text back. Meanwhile, I'm still talking with Zoe so I let her know that I did that, so that she would be ready for the drama that would ensue. Because, we all know that MIL wouldn't tell me to my face that I was being snarky and try to work things out. No, instead of acting like a rational adult, she would rather talk about me behind my back, and ask everybody else what they thought the problem was. Like, seriously?!
Here is a simple list of things that irritated me about the whole situation.
-We're adults. It shouldn't have taken this much headache to plan a simple rendezvous. Right?
-Nobody could make up their stupid frickin' minds! I had told them what we were going to be doing that weekend, and even gave them places that would work for us to see them and they couldn't even get it done that way.
-MIL is so worried that she's going to hurt somebody's feelings by doing something that they don't like that she won't pick something, or tell us what she wants to do. And then if we don't end up doing what she wants she gets pouty... how the heck are we supposed to know what you want to do unless you tell us?!
-They wanted us to rearrange our schedule last minute to try and see them... really?
-The fact that they already had specific plans on Saturday but didn't tell me. It would've been so easy just to say, "hey something came up and this is what we're going to be doing on Saturday from this time to this time." Right?
-Everybody is all talk. They say they want to meet up and do all this stuff, yet apparently it's not worth the effort (which shouldn't have been an effort at all) to try and make it work.
-Nobody told Mike that we were trying to get together on Saturday so he buys Tiger's tickets without asking them if they had plans, so they went and did that instead.
eventually I got fed up and told them never mind. Honestly, our weekend would be easier if we didn't meet up with them. And the horrible thing is, even if we had tried to meet up with them, they would've been late (because that woman can't be on time to save herself).
Everybody had an agenda, yet we were the only ones that were clear on what we were actually doing. The key to this whole thing is COMMUNICATION. She could've just said that they were working things out on their end and they had a couple of things they were trying to figure out, and that would've been great instead of being kept in the dark. And since everything is about her, she was incredulous that i was frustrated with her about it. She won't talk to me now because she thinks that I'm still mad about it (which, I guess I kinda am). It was just the last straw of so many botched plans and non-communicated things. And its not like I can really talk to her about it because we've tried. But part of communicating is listening, and I just don't think she has the attention span for that.
Right now we are just trying to work on not being bitter and resentful (which is another story). We can only try so hard to try and make things better and work, but when the other person is satisfied with how they are and act, it makes being around them difficult at best. She would just rather be shallow and ignorant, then maybe have to work and have real conversation. And that I just can't understand.
JVG
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