Rant VII: Now With 25% Less Drama
- Thread starter North_Ranger
- Start date
- Status
M
makare
i think that might have been the straw that broke the camel's back.
gb is now going to kill us ALL.
gb is now going to kill us ALL.
Hey, don't be so mad. ElJuski didn't realize the guy had already pooped when he told him to go to the bathroom, and didn't think to check the bathroom once he realized the guy really needed a shower.
M
makare
I always suspected.
figmentPez
Staff member
Dude, that sucks. Sorry to hear.
So, as noted in the Epic Win thread, my fiance and I are getting married the 23rd of this month. It's definitely an epic win, but it comes with more than its fair share of Rant-worthy stress.
It was supposed to be a quasi-elopement, wherein we were going to go to a very nice local lodge; have a nice, relaxing spa/massage day on the 22nd, get married on the 23rd, have a fabulous dinner at the Herb Farm, spend the 24th chilling by ourselves, and then do Christmas with her mothers and her father and stepmother on the 25th. This was supposed to be the "damnit, we just want to get married, and we're sick of waiting until we can afford a big wedding with all the fancy trimmings, which keeps getting pushed back further and further due to monetary issues," but of course, there was a nearly-last-minute wrench thrown in the works by her mother. (Therein lies the Rant VII.)
Sadly, her grandmother (who raised her mother) suffers from borderline personallity disorder, and her mother basically raised her uncles (and has at least borderline personallity disorder herself, if not fullblown bipolar disorder) and in the process picked up all of the incredibly manipulative tactics that her grandmother used to employ on her. Her grandmother is seriously screwed up - married and divorced several times, though at least 2 ex-husbands never lived long enough to become divorced and/or disappeared into thin air. She once burned her own house down, supposedly to collect insurance money but possibly to cover up the disappearance of one of said husbands. She also married a man on a terrorist watch-list after helping to smuggle him across the Canadian border into the US. All of this follows her original husband's death (I believe it was of natural causes) after years of being in the US Navy, and all of the constant moving around that being a Navy Brat entails. Needless to say, my soon-to-be mother-in-law's childhood was incredibly screwed up.
That's little excuse, however, because I've known people who've grown up with worse and gone on to live perfectly normal lives that don't involve running background checks on everyone who ever has anything to do with their children (she's a mental health provider who frequently works with law enforcement and has access to some really fascinating databases) and/or calling incessantly everytime they want to talk to someone on the phone (among many other really childish behaviors). This woman will literally call my fiance, leave a voice message, call back immediately, leave a voice message, call back again and if my fiance doesn't pick up call me and leave me a voice message if I don't pick up, usually something cryptic like "Chris this is <name>, I can't get <fiance> to pick up and I really need to talk to her, immediately," in a very sing-song tone of voice. Then when my fiance calls her back (usually within 20 minutes of the first call) the incredibly important situation is that she needs to cancel a hairdresser's appointment that the two of them had 3 weeks in the future, or she wants to know how my fiance's day was. Her grandmother is 90 and has been through some ugly health scares recently, which is the only reason we ever pick up when she's doing this; in case it really is an emergency, but each time she does it we get less and less likely to pick up the phone when she calls, which means we're going to feel like crap on that one time when she calls to tell us that something has gone wrong with her grandmother's health and we don't pick up the phone.
The woman is insane, she treats everyone like naughty children, she's royally pissed off my parents first by calling them incessantly over a question she had about a Thanksgiving dinner and then by attempting to shame me at said Thanksgiving dinner, because I served fresh whipped cream in a mixing bowl instead of first transferring it into a fine china bowl. I shit you not, the first time my parents were going to meet her was over Thanksgiving dinner a couple of years back - my parents were flying out to Seattle (from Wisconsin) for Thanksgiving to spend time with my fiance and I and to meet her parents. Her mother called my parents, on a work day, 7 times back to back until my mother finally excused herself from a work meeting and took her call, just so she could ask them what kind of meat they would prefer; roast beef or turkey. Luckily, my fiance inherited none of this bullshit behavior, and my parents love her.
Now, our original plan was to use the elopement package that the lodge offers, in which they provide a night's stay in a very nice suite, two witnesses, access to any part of their grounds that you want (you can decide day of, if it's nice enough to be outside in one of the gardens, or if you want to stay inside) for the ceremony, and a picture frame. What they didn't cover was an officiant, and the two officiants they usually work with each wanted $350 for a 30 minute ceremony, during which they were only willing to customize the vows and otherwise it would be a standard Christian-ish ceremony (we're both Pagan, so we wanted to do our own ceremony that had nothing to do with God telling us to go forth, be fruitful, and multiply). So, in a pinch, we called one of our good friends (who also happens to be Pagan) and asked him if he'd be willing to officiate (which he was).
Unfortunately, as soon as my fiance called her mom to inform her that our friend was doing the officiating, her mom broke out the "immediately break down sobbing and carrying on as though none of your children love you" card - one of her favorite manipulation techniques to get her children to do what she wants instead of what they want - which caused my fiance to realize we had four options, but only one good one. We could either go ahead with our original plans and suffer the wrath of her mother forever after (and know full well that even if she wasn't invited, she'd probably show up on the 23rd regardless), we could buy airline tickets to vegas and actually elope, we could continue waiting until we could afford the big fancy wedding, or we could cave in and invite her mom to the wedding. But of course, the only reason we were ok with none of our sets of parents being invited would be if they were all excluded, so inviting her mother meant we had to invite her father and his wife, and my parents; and if we invited her father and his wife we had to invite her little sister (recently adopted by her father and his wife); and if we invited her little sister we had to invite her older brother and his wife and her other sister and her boyfriend.
Those being our options, we're sick of waiting and the current estimate of when we'd be able to afford the big fancy wedding is 2013; we didn't really want to elope to Vegas, but would hold that in reserve just in case; and we were definitely NOT ok with her mom being there and my parents not being there. So in the period of 3 hours Friday afternoon our wedding plans went from a 5 person (including the bride and groom) quasi-elopement which would have been completely and totally stress free; to a 17 person wedding which involves flying 2 people in from Wisconsin, organizing a new wedding site, organizing a reception which we weren't originally going to have, and stressing the hell out, all because of her mother's bullshit. Luckily, we had a very nice bottle of white wine at home, which helped keep the stress of the sudden changes at bay until we could deal with them.
But we've managed to reserve one surprise for her mother, which we're not going to tell her no matter how many times she calls to interrogate us about it (7 so far since late Saturday afternoon). Since her mother has managed to completely complicate the hell out of what was supposed to be a nice, quiet, informal little wedding; we've decided to go extremely classic/classy where the wedding clothes are concerned - and we're plotting with family and friends to keep her mother in the dark until the wedding procession portion of the ceremony begins. My fiance managed to find an absolutely gorgeous wedding gown, complete with corsetted bust and jeweled embroidery, veil, tiara, earrings, and necklace (it's a strapless gown, so she needs something to fill in the blank space between her neck and the gown); and I will be wearing a classic tuxedo, complete with vest, bowtie, and tails.
It was supposed to be a quasi-elopement, wherein we were going to go to a very nice local lodge; have a nice, relaxing spa/massage day on the 22nd, get married on the 23rd, have a fabulous dinner at the Herb Farm, spend the 24th chilling by ourselves, and then do Christmas with her mothers and her father and stepmother on the 25th. This was supposed to be the "damnit, we just want to get married, and we're sick of waiting until we can afford a big wedding with all the fancy trimmings, which keeps getting pushed back further and further due to monetary issues," but of course, there was a nearly-last-minute wrench thrown in the works by her mother. (Therein lies the Rant VII.)
Sadly, her grandmother (who raised her mother) suffers from borderline personallity disorder, and her mother basically raised her uncles (and has at least borderline personallity disorder herself, if not fullblown bipolar disorder) and in the process picked up all of the incredibly manipulative tactics that her grandmother used to employ on her. Her grandmother is seriously screwed up - married and divorced several times, though at least 2 ex-husbands never lived long enough to become divorced and/or disappeared into thin air. She once burned her own house down, supposedly to collect insurance money but possibly to cover up the disappearance of one of said husbands. She also married a man on a terrorist watch-list after helping to smuggle him across the Canadian border into the US. All of this follows her original husband's death (I believe it was of natural causes) after years of being in the US Navy, and all of the constant moving around that being a Navy Brat entails. Needless to say, my soon-to-be mother-in-law's childhood was incredibly screwed up.
That's little excuse, however, because I've known people who've grown up with worse and gone on to live perfectly normal lives that don't involve running background checks on everyone who ever has anything to do with their children (she's a mental health provider who frequently works with law enforcement and has access to some really fascinating databases) and/or calling incessantly everytime they want to talk to someone on the phone (among many other really childish behaviors). This woman will literally call my fiance, leave a voice message, call back immediately, leave a voice message, call back again and if my fiance doesn't pick up call me and leave me a voice message if I don't pick up, usually something cryptic like "Chris this is <name>, I can't get <fiance> to pick up and I really need to talk to her, immediately," in a very sing-song tone of voice. Then when my fiance calls her back (usually within 20 minutes of the first call) the incredibly important situation is that she needs to cancel a hairdresser's appointment that the two of them had 3 weeks in the future, or she wants to know how my fiance's day was. Her grandmother is 90 and has been through some ugly health scares recently, which is the only reason we ever pick up when she's doing this; in case it really is an emergency, but each time she does it we get less and less likely to pick up the phone when she calls, which means we're going to feel like crap on that one time when she calls to tell us that something has gone wrong with her grandmother's health and we don't pick up the phone.
The woman is insane, she treats everyone like naughty children, she's royally pissed off my parents first by calling them incessantly over a question she had about a Thanksgiving dinner and then by attempting to shame me at said Thanksgiving dinner, because I served fresh whipped cream in a mixing bowl instead of first transferring it into a fine china bowl. I shit you not, the first time my parents were going to meet her was over Thanksgiving dinner a couple of years back - my parents were flying out to Seattle (from Wisconsin) for Thanksgiving to spend time with my fiance and I and to meet her parents. Her mother called my parents, on a work day, 7 times back to back until my mother finally excused herself from a work meeting and took her call, just so she could ask them what kind of meat they would prefer; roast beef or turkey. Luckily, my fiance inherited none of this bullshit behavior, and my parents love her.
Now, our original plan was to use the elopement package that the lodge offers, in which they provide a night's stay in a very nice suite, two witnesses, access to any part of their grounds that you want (you can decide day of, if it's nice enough to be outside in one of the gardens, or if you want to stay inside) for the ceremony, and a picture frame. What they didn't cover was an officiant, and the two officiants they usually work with each wanted $350 for a 30 minute ceremony, during which they were only willing to customize the vows and otherwise it would be a standard Christian-ish ceremony (we're both Pagan, so we wanted to do our own ceremony that had nothing to do with God telling us to go forth, be fruitful, and multiply). So, in a pinch, we called one of our good friends (who also happens to be Pagan) and asked him if he'd be willing to officiate (which he was).
Unfortunately, as soon as my fiance called her mom to inform her that our friend was doing the officiating, her mom broke out the "immediately break down sobbing and carrying on as though none of your children love you" card - one of her favorite manipulation techniques to get her children to do what she wants instead of what they want - which caused my fiance to realize we had four options, but only one good one. We could either go ahead with our original plans and suffer the wrath of her mother forever after (and know full well that even if she wasn't invited, she'd probably show up on the 23rd regardless), we could buy airline tickets to vegas and actually elope, we could continue waiting until we could afford the big fancy wedding, or we could cave in and invite her mom to the wedding. But of course, the only reason we were ok with none of our sets of parents being invited would be if they were all excluded, so inviting her mother meant we had to invite her father and his wife, and my parents; and if we invited her father and his wife we had to invite her little sister (recently adopted by her father and his wife); and if we invited her little sister we had to invite her older brother and his wife and her other sister and her boyfriend.
Those being our options, we're sick of waiting and the current estimate of when we'd be able to afford the big fancy wedding is 2013; we didn't really want to elope to Vegas, but would hold that in reserve just in case; and we were definitely NOT ok with her mom being there and my parents not being there. So in the period of 3 hours Friday afternoon our wedding plans went from a 5 person (including the bride and groom) quasi-elopement which would have been completely and totally stress free; to a 17 person wedding which involves flying 2 people in from Wisconsin, organizing a new wedding site, organizing a reception which we weren't originally going to have, and stressing the hell out, all because of her mother's bullshit. Luckily, we had a very nice bottle of white wine at home, which helped keep the stress of the sudden changes at bay until we could deal with them.
But we've managed to reserve one surprise for her mother, which we're not going to tell her no matter how many times she calls to interrogate us about it (7 so far since late Saturday afternoon). Since her mother has managed to completely complicate the hell out of what was supposed to be a nice, quiet, informal little wedding; we've decided to go extremely classic/classy where the wedding clothes are concerned - and we're plotting with family and friends to keep her mother in the dark until the wedding procession portion of the ceremony begins. My fiance managed to find an absolutely gorgeous wedding gown, complete with corsetted bust and jeweled embroidery, veil, tiara, earrings, and necklace (it's a strapless gown, so she needs something to fill in the blank space between her neck and the gown); and I will be wearing a classic tuxedo, complete with vest, bowtie, and tails.
G
Gared's mother in law
What what WHAAAAAAT?
Aw snap.
Dave
Staff member
Fuck everything about this. I'm so sorry, man.
Dave
Staff member
Well, it's nearly 100% official now, so I'll announce it. We're losing our house. With only one of us having an income it's just been too much to keep everything running and eventually when you build your finances on a house of cards you're sure to encounter a gust of wind. There's still a small chance we won't lose it, but we're seriously pondering walking away from it anyway as it's in such sorry disrepair that we can't afford to fix that it's not worth it for us to stay.
Now we may have to put my dad in a long-term care facility so we very well may be moving in with my mom to take care of her. She lives about 1 hour outside of Omaha so there would be some traveling involved, but it may be for the best. We have not yet spoken to my dad or mom about this, but my sister (who is the executor and power of attorney) and I have been discussing this and think it may be in everyone's best interests.
If that happens we'd have to get rid of my son's cat, Stitch, and my dog Dallas. My buddy.
So that's what's been going on in Dave-land lately.
tl;dr: Losing my house. Sale date is January 12. If I don't find a place by then I'm homeless. Merry Christmas.
Now we may have to put my dad in a long-term care facility so we very well may be moving in with my mom to take care of her. She lives about 1 hour outside of Omaha so there would be some traveling involved, but it may be for the best. We have not yet spoken to my dad or mom about this, but my sister (who is the executor and power of attorney) and I have been discussing this and think it may be in everyone's best interests.
If that happens we'd have to get rid of my son's cat, Stitch, and my dog Dallas. My buddy.
So that's what's been going on in Dave-land lately.
tl;dr: Losing my house. Sale date is January 12. If I don't find a place by then I'm homeless. Merry Christmas.
P
PotaDOS
That's rough. Sorry, Dave.
I hate to lob this at your fiancee, especially when your situation so much mirrors what my wife and I feared over our wedding earlier this year (eloping, no family, pagans with friend officiate), but why did she have to tell her mother about that? On my end, we were both silent on the subject until after the wedding and honeymoon, and then we told her parents, mine, everyone. No one knew but those who would be present. If something's gonna be a secret, it has to absolutely be a secret.
I guess there's nothing to be done now. Good luck with her being there; this won't be the end of your ranting on the subject.
Dave
Staff member
There's much, much worst things going on with other forumites, but I don't have confirmation to make any announcements yet.
The only reason she told her mom was that both of our respective sets of parents knew that we were going to be eloping, and that none of them were invited (which my parents were behind 100% and her dad and his wife were behind 100% and were paying for, her mom was the only person who had a problem with it), and to appease her mom at the time, we told her she could organize a party for us AFTER THE WEDDING, if she wanted to. She of course didn't follow directions (never does, the woman is incapable of such a thing. She once asked my fiance what she should get me for Christmas. My fiance told her I'd just gotten a kitchenaid stand mixer, with an ice cream attachment, and that if she wanted to get me any attachment other than an ice cream maker, that would be great. She bought me a stand-alone Cuisinart ice cream maker for Christmas.), and made reservations for herself, my fiance, and 10 other ladies - the names of which she refuses to divulge and the list of which she refuses to add to in case my fiance wants to invite some of her female friends that her mother doesn't know - the weekend before the wedding. The two witnesses that we were planning on using (we'd decided against the elopement package from the lodge because we could do things cheaper and still be at the lodge, and all we'd be out was a commemorative picture frame) will be attending that party, and my fiance knew they wouldn't be able to keep from telling her mother that they were attending, and that her mother would then have thrown a huge tantrum.
So, in retrospect, this is all our fault for not just fucking off to Vegas in the first place; and no, this is NOT the only time I'm going to be ranting about this subject. I thoroughly expect her to ruin the wedding entirely, though I hold out some glimmer of hope that my soon-to-be brother-in-law's wife, who we're putting in charge of organizing things at the ceremony and reception (she's a corporate events planner for the likes of Microsoft) and who takes no shit off of my fiance's mother, will be able to minimize the damages somewhat. I also expect, if she does manage to ruin the wedding, that I'll be free of dealing with her for at least a couple of years.
Jeeze Dave. That sucks. 
Nothing like what other people are dealing with but my assistant manger just texted me that the Health Inspector is there. Usually they are super cool people, laid back, we are a coffee shop so they know there's not raw meat or anything so they find a couple minor things and go on their merry way.
Noooooot this time! Apparently she's being a super hard-ass, barely speaks English and is just being an overall bitch to my poor assistant manager, who is just the sweetest, nicest girl. Man that pisses me off.
Nothing like what other people are dealing with but my assistant manger just texted me that the Health Inspector is there. Usually they are super cool people, laid back, we are a coffee shop so they know there's not raw meat or anything so they find a couple minor things and go on their merry way.
Noooooot this time! Apparently she's being a super hard-ass, barely speaks English and is just being an overall bitch to my poor assistant manager, who is just the sweetest, nicest girl. Man that pisses me off.
Fucking Hell... it never rains but it pours....
I'm sorry guys...
I'm sorry guys...
M
makare
I hope you did some first aid before posting here.. or i might think you have a problem (good luck btw twisted ankles are a bitch)
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
I need a new job. Now. At the morning meeting today my boss used the phrase "coon tunes" to describe hip-hop music. And he thought he was being politically correct by doing so!!
WOW. I don't know why you posted this anonymously but thanks for sharing that. You do need a new job.
- Status