#in-law hell

meanwhile, my husband is apologizing to me because he offhandedly mentioned to his mother about how we found our hallway got hot during the summer, and now she's taken this up as a mission to fix. and like, I feel so awful because he should be able to casually mention things to his parents! he should be able to ask for advice even and not then have them attempt to bully us into doing whatever they think is best! I don't care if they think they're being caring, it just sucks.

and meanwhile I'm slinking around our own home trying to keep my head down because I know I'm constantly being watched and judged and it's so fucking exhausting. I know I shouldn't care but idk how to just not.

and, like, trying to set any kind of boundary is such a fight. this woman is obsessed with seeing baby boy right after he leaves childcare so she's been insisting on riding the bus back with me and baby boy. except I go workout after work before i get him so the pick-up time isn't the exact same every day. but now I can't focus on my workout because I have to watch the clock to leave and get there when she is. and yes, I have tried to redirect her to ride the bus with my husband because 1. he leaves at the same time every day and 2. he parks at the bus interchange so she can skip the walk in the cold to the house. she just...pretended she didn't get my text and announced that she was just showing up 15 minutes before she did. and what do I do then?? pick a fight outside my son's childcare??? but she's the center of the fucking universe so it doesn't matter what we say, she just does what she wants. and I know she would do it every single fucking day no matter what I do so it's too exhausting to even try to fight about it.

like, for the love of god, leave my son alone when he eats, he is fine! he just needs light supervision. stop commenting on what i feed him, 3 chicken nuggets once a week is fine! everything else he eats is either completely fresh or homemade. stop commenting on his clothes. just shut up!

I am trying very hard to be zen and just keep us moving through our normal routine, and she can fit into it or get over it

for the first, we will eventually have a study/guest bedroom but we're still unpacking all of our boxes and I am not going to rush out to get the daybed we want before we're ready. plus, we're not going to allow her to stay for two weeks (or worse, however long she's planning on manipulating us into letting her visit but we're holding firm to the two weeks timeline). in fact, we're never going to let anyone stay with us for longer than a week outside of emergencies. a week is more than long enough for guests, especially ones that drive me a bit crazy at the best of times.

and for the second, she won't accept that it's not good for baby boy to massively disrupt his routine. I've offered to keep him out two days a week so she can take care of him. I am also a little concerned that she won't be able to pick him up anymore. he's grown a lot and even though I carry him around every single day, he's heavy for me. so I am a bit concerned about her ability to take care of him but mostly, he just won't understand why things are suddenly very different. he's just not old enough yet

a totally normal response to seeing a video I sent showing baby boy laughing and crawling down the hallway

meanwhile, mother-in-law is convinced baby boy would like organic chicken better than non-organic chicken

they also fucked up the painting touch-ups because they used a brush and not a roller (even though we explained, TWICE, that it needed to be a roller to match the rest of the wall) so it looks different from the rest of the wall. might have also not done enough coats

plus they messed up something in the shower. luckily my husband was able to fix it. and there is now a light pink stain on the carpet from where father-in-law stamped (?) on a plum and I didn't have carpet cleaner when I found it so the stain was allowed to set (I know it was a plum or plum juice because I accidentally smeared some plum on our floors in our new house and it was the same color. I did clean up my mess immediately and amazingly, it left no stain)

all in all, a net fucking loss and two weeks of stress and we're a week behind our set timeline. totally helpful. not at all irritating