Mommy Dearest is back at her tricks.

My mother in law is back at her old tricks.

This year Jim and I want to host Christmas at our place. I've been thinking about it for a long time and really wanted to get to have the family over at our apartment. I've discussed it with my Mom and we both thought it would be really nice to do something different this year. It's going to be hard enough without Dad and with Russell in Iraq we just thought that a totally different tradition would make things a bit easier.

I've been asking Jim and his father to discuss it with Edna for weeks. Al is all for the change but we've been afraid of how Edna would take it. I knew she would either say "oh yeah, what a great idea" or "Um, no honey, Christmas is MY holiday." No ifs and or buts about it.

On Saturday I stopped by their house on my way home from work since I knew Jim was going to be there. He was supposed to have talked to her but when I'd gotten there they hadn't brought it up, so I waited for a moment alone with Edna and then asked her. I told her I really needed something different this year and my Mom as well. I asked her if she would consider letting us host and that I would love it if she would be willing to help us. She seemed to hesitate a moment, so I told her to take some time and think about it.

Instead of actually taking some time she turned around when Jim and Al walked back into the room and asked Al what he thought about Jim and I having Christmas at our house. Al had been in on it from the start so he basically started jumping up and down, grinning and turned around and hugged me, saying "Thank you! That sounds great to me!"

So after that Edna went on to say how she wanted to give us her Christmas-y china set and that they have a card table we can use to seat people. She also started listing off religious decorations she wanted us to have. And how on Thanksgiving we'll announce to the family that Christmas will be at Winter Street this year.

I left the house ecstatic, feeling that things had gone amazingly well.

If only I'd known about the drama that started that night after Jim left and then kept up when Jim went back by the house on Sunday.

As soon as Jim walked in the door Edna started on him about how she was insulted that we are taking Christmas from her. We ganged up on her and stole her favorite holiday. We don't understand how she's had a tough year too and she's always compromising on the things that she wants. She's always expected to give things up to make us happy. It would be fine if we took any other holiday except Christmas because it's her favorite. No one has been there for her this year when she was sick and we didn't visit her when she had her surgery. My Mom has never even seen her house and that insults her. And from there she basically devolved into a screaming maniac and locker herself in her bedroom in the dark and wouldn't speak to anyone. She's just going to sit home on Christmas and we can do whatever we want. Her family is already small and now we're going to destroy everything.


Yeah.

After calming down when I heard all of this from Jim my basic thought is that I am now daughter in law to the worlds most selfish woman.

She never compromises. Unless you consider her starting dinner at 1pm instead of 1:30 as a compromise because I have to be at work at 3pm. She has never been okay with the fact that I occasionally want to have a holiday with MY family and that Jim wants to go with me. That I moved two and half hours away from my family and never get to see them means nothing.

The fact that it would be all the same people that go to her Christmas dinner with the single addition of my Mom makes me confused as to how we're destroying her family.

The fact that my mom has spent all of 12 hours in Connecticut since I moved her over a year ago means that she should be personally insulted that Mom hasn't visited her house. And half of that time was when my Mom came to my house was with my brother a week after Dad had passed away to pick up her old couch. And both times she visited we've asked if they wanted to get together and Edna has had other plans.

We never compromise. Yes well I guess you could say that's true in a way because she will never budge an inch to LET US reach a compromise. We either do whatever she wants to do or we don't get to go. If we want a holiday dinner it's always at her house at 1:30pm, rain or shine, no budging that time or working with anyone else's lives. She wont TELL me that she didn't want to give up Christmas, she just agrees to my face and then talks trash when I'm not around.

And the fact that 'no one' was there for her when she was sick. She got sick at the same time that my Dad was dying. Jim left me the night that Dad died to go home and be with her for her surgery. So yeah, I personally was not there for her when she was sick, I was at home helping my Mom plan my father's funeral. I'm a horrible person and I should suffer forever.

The fact that I asked her ALONE without Jim or Al around is ganging up on her. That I asked her for something that I need, something for me. I need a year that radically different from every other year. I need to not be at home looking at Dads empty chair or thinking about Russell in Iraq or seeing my grandfather weakened from radiation. I don't really see where a post menopausal woman needing a hysterectomy is the devastatingly horrible event that outstrips losing your father at 25. But I'm a selfish bitch, so what do I know?

This kind of bullshit just makes me want to tell her NOT to come to my house. Don't come near me or my house or try and have anything to do with me. I'm going to have a Christmas dinner and she can come or not come as she likes. I will sit home with my Mom if she wants to have her very own dinner with HER family, I don't even want to go to Thanksgiving. I'm done inviting them out for dinner (which I do at LEAST once a month because I feel guilty that we don't see them enough.) I'm sick of accepting her stupid gifts and NO I don't want your fucking nativity scene; take the hint that I'm NOT religious and don't want your damned Bible thumping stuff. So stop shoving your shit on me every time I see you.