Have to Vent

Been a tough year for me in a few ways - the icing on the cake being that the significant bonus I was expecting early next year has been turned into "It will be a VERY good year if you DON'T get a pay cut" due to the significant financial impact this subprime crap is having on our company.

But that wasn't what I have to vent about ... I get that news yesterday as I'm leaving the office. I get home 2 hours later to discover that my dumb-as-a-nail mother-in-law has taken it upon herself to give my two year-old son all of his Christmas presents while the wife and I were at work yesterday. Keep in mind, she was told exactly 12 hours earlier that all those toys in his crib (which we now use as storage) are for Christmas. She not only gives him his toys, she gives him everyone else's toys as well. Now the wife and I have got to go Christmas shopping all over again, during the busiest time of the year. I want to rip this woman's head from her body

She's Budist, doesn't understand the whole "Christmas" thing, and has a long history (that I just found out about) of spoiling surprises for everyone because she doesn't understand the big deal. I'm so livid right now I can't put it into words. F*cking c*nt. I'm Irish/Italian and she doesn't speak a word of English, so I couldn't yell at her till my wife came home and took care of it for me, but I'm still just so f'in pissed.

The worst part about it was the fact that the big gift (the one bigger than him) was opened and he was already loving the hell out of it by the time I got home. I would have given a testicle to watch the excitement on his face when he opened that gift. As I got older, Christmas got less and less meaningful, that all changed when my son was born. Last year he was too young to understand the concept of gifts and his attention span was too short to really enjoy anything .... my wife and I were discussing last week how much more special this season feels to us and how we can't wait to see him rip open his presents on Christmas morning.

She doesn't even feel bad for what she's done. Not that she ever feels bad for screwing anything up. She one of those people who will lie through her teeth defending herself and never takes responsibility for anything. It would be one thing if she said, "I'm sorry, I screwed up bad.", but no. First she said that she didn't know they were for Christmas and my wife called bullsh*t on that one, then she said that she misunderstood my wife which was also bullsh*t. Argh, I can't even structure this post in a coherent manner because I just type what comes to my head.

I'm not getting any better either, the more time passes the worse it gets. Let me end this now.

Bill

 

They were hidden, they were in his crib under a blanket (he doesn't sleep in his crib, we use it as a giant storage bin). She put him in the crib for no reason other than to let him see the boxes, get inquisitive, so she could open them up and let him play with them. She had the f*cking audacity to try to tell me that the big one is too big and that I should return it to the store. She doesn't want to trip over it. She actually put all the big parts of it back in the box (which she tore open, didn't even open nicely).

Unfortunately, I can't throw her out. She's my son's nanny while the wife and I are at work. Child-care in my area is around $1200 a week per child for 8 hours/5 days ... extra if you need extended hours (which we do, I'm gone from 5:15AM to 7PM, the wife is gone from 7AM to 7PM ... that's if neither of us get caught up at work). She's a god send in many ways. I pay her $100 a week and she does all of our laundry, cooks all of our meals, gives me about 14 hours of daily child-care, and she even makes my bed on a daily basis. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to choke her to death with fishing line right now.

I apologize for not responding to this thread more often, but it enrages me to read it. It's not I can't afford to buy him new gifts, it's that I put a lot of time into picking out ones that I knew he would like and I just don't have the time to do the kind of research I'd done for the first round of presents. The second round is going to be rushed and its just not going to feel as good. It also sucks that I have to re-buy presents for 2 nieces and 1 nephew because the dumb-ass opened those presents as well. She gave my son an outfit for an American Girl doll that we bought my niece .... WTF!?!? She also opened up a Dora-The-Explorer DVD we bought the other niece ... my son isnt' 2 yet, he can't operate the f'in DVD player ... what was she thinking?

F*ck.

Bill

 

It wasn't intentional in that she wanted to hurt either of us, she's just very very very set in her ways and she doesn't understand the idea of Christmas. In her culture, if you give a gift you give a gift. You don't wait, you don't wrap it. Every year she buys boxes of crackers or a bottle of wine for gifts to give people for Christmas and tells everyone what she got them weeks ahead of time.

But she's so f'in dumb. She was told the DAY BEFORE what those were and was told NOT TO TOUCH THEM. She doesn't think about ANYTHING before she does it. About two years ago she's walking down the street in Chinatown and sees a stand that is giving away free keychains - she wants one. All she has to do is put down her SSN, fill out her information, and sign on the dotted line. She gets a keychain.

Fast forward a year. She has diabetes (which she refuses to acknowledge or do anything about). She stubs her toe on something or other and although its not healing and turning black, she says nothing until one day my wife sees her putting Neosporin and a bandaid on a black, rotting, pussing-from-the-wounds foot. We rush her to the best podiatrist we know. She whips out her Medicare card and she goes in for emergency surgery. Doctor's waiting for the anesthesia to settle when the desk clerk comes in to speak to the doc. Doc pulls my wife aside.

"Medicare says that your mother no longer has coverage, she switched for some HMO."
"Mom, did you get different healthcare?"
"No, no, Medicare"

<phone call to Medicare>

"Mom, they say they got confirmation forms from a company called WellHealth" (names changed to protect the vile and despicable)
"Ooooh, they were giving out these great yellow keychains."

<mom whips out yellow keychain>
<ask doctor to hold on 5 minutes - phone call to WellHealth>

"My mother is having an emergency with her foot, she needs surgery, what do you cover?"
"After you speak to one of the 6 doctors on earth who we have qualified to assess your mother's condition, we will make you jump through 3 years of referrals, hoops, legal nightmares, and a stack of forms that will make reading "War and Peace" seem like the Sunday comics - then we may or may not send you a check for 60% of what our doctor in Indonesia would charge to do the same thing .... so you'll get about $12 from us"

<hang up on WellHealth or whatever it was their name was>

"Doc, they aint covering anything ... how screwed am I?"
"I can try to repair the damage, but there's a 50/50 chance she lose two or more of her toes anyway. If I try to repair it, you're looking at $5K - $15K depending on the depth of the wound, how many toenails will need to be removed, how many visits it takes to heal, etc. Your other option is to amputate the first three toes, it will stop the infection and will cost you about $2K. If you do nothing, the infection will spread up her leg and kill her in a few weeks - she's a stones throw away from gangreen as it is right now."

I dont' even bat an eye (can't say the same for my wife though).... I tell him to go to work, do whatever needs to be done (That said, $15K is a lot of money to me). $11K out of my pocket later, she's still got 10 toes and all are fully healed. Did I once receive a Thank-You? Did she even apologize and promise to take better care of her feet? When I bought her a pair of diabetic shoes designed to protect the foot and promote blood circulation has she worn them once? No - she doesn't like the way they look. So I took her to a store that sells different styles of diabetic shoes and she picks out a set of boots that she likes and will use in the winter - has she worn them once? No - they're not warm enough. How much do diabetic shoes cost you ask? About $300 a pair. Are they returnable you ask? No, they are not.

Unf*ckingbelievable.

Bill

 

Update:

My son has been sick for about a week (one of the reasons she gave him his toys according to her) - a small cough and an on-again off-again fever. Well, it was on-again yesterday afternoon so my MIL packed him up, got on the train, and brought him into the city where she met up with my wife and the two of them brought him to see the pediatrician.

My wife has a solid two hours with her and explains, this time in a rational voice, what she did and why we are both so pissed at her.

Little more background. This is an extremely bitter woman who is generally treated like shat by her whole family (most of the reason she is bitter). I could write a book on the dysfunction that is my wife's family, but its a bit OT and when I say that I married the only sane one .. believe that. My wife's parents worked 7 days a week their entire lives, they've never taken a single vacation, in their best year ever they made a combined $19K (I looked at old tax returns), and because they spent so much time at work, they do not know their kids. Their kids treat them like absolute crap. I have a thousand and one stories about this, but that's for another time.

When mom screws up, her kids (and husband) instantly scream at her in a rather belittling way ... not unlike what happened Monday when my wife got home. I've sat down with my wife before and told her that she needs to talk with her mother and explain to her what she did. This is inherently difficult as mom and dad do not speak a word of English but all 5 kids can barely speak Chinese.

So anyway, my wife tries talking to her and explaining to her what she did wrong and apparently, while at the pediatrician, my MIL actually teared up (which amazed my wife). When I got out of work last night I drove over to them in Chinatown (where our pediatric group is) and met them for dinner before driving home. As soon as my MIL saw me she said "Sorry", in English to me twice which was not my wife's doing.

I feel better. I'm still upset, but at least she apologized (this is a BIG step for her from what I've seen in the past 6 years).

Bill