Doing it My Way

I am in MB this weekend with Dr. Love, visiting his parents.  It is something I looked forward to and dreaded.  I’m here because Dr. Love wants me to be, and that is enough. 

I look forward to coming here because it is a great break — no cooking, cleaning, chores to do…I can just relax.  If I can get around the fact that his mother hates me.

Of course, Dr. Love has always said that she doesn’t.  “They like everyone!”  No one likes “everyone.”  Not anyone that I’ve ever met, and especially no mother that treats her 27 and 24 year old sons like 3 year olds. 

I have a hard time liking the Queen of Enmeshment from day one, seeing how she treats Dr. Love.  And I’ve had an especially hard time since their visit two times ago. 

Dr. Love is still out of work and his parents decided a little over a month ago to come visit and help Dr. Love get some work around the house done.  I was thinking — ‘Awesome!  Maybe they’ll finish the porch or put in that extra outlet in the bedroom.’

No.

They came into my house and ripped out my bathroom wall where the tiles were falling down.  Not what I had planned.  Huge mess, huge disaster.  Not only did it take two days and one over-night visit, it looks like shit.

Granted, it needed to be fixed at some point — the tiles on the shower wall had fallen — an itty-bitty two by two foot section.  By the time Matt’s dad, Mr. I-Can’t-Fix-It came around and was there for a couple hours, it turned into 3/4 of one wall of the shower.  Argh.  What a mess!

I still have to admit that it needed to be done, but why now?  Why not work on one of the things higher on my priority list?  Why not wait to re-tile the bathroom when the bathroom gets renovated like I want it?  Why fix something to tear it down six months later?  I’m sure there are reasons — mold, mildew, walls falling down. 

I think I am just pissed that it turned out looking like shit.  For one, they didn’t put the same tiles up that had come down.  The new ones are a good half-inch wider and taller.  They don’t match color-wise.  It just looks crappy.  I was always brought up that if you’re going to do something, do it the right way.  Don’t do anything half-assed.  And that’s what happened in my absence.  This all took place while I was at work.

Long story short, I came home after they had been there working on it all day the day before and all of the present day — and it still wasn’t close to being done.  My bathroom was a disaster, there was tile dust everywhere, Mr. I-Can’t-Fix-It had been back and forth to the hardware store over five times.  To make matters worse, Dr. Love’s parents had convinced him that he was ill and had him lying on the couch the whole time.

Argh.

So I come home, see the bathroom after a very long day’s work and no sleep the night before, freak out, and escape to QoB and Big Dog’s.  I said thank you before I left, that I was appreciative of all they were doing, I apologized for leaving, and then I high-tailed it out of there. 

And I felt bad about it, but damn.  There’s only so much I can tolerate and I’d had my fill.  Especially since Dr. Love’s mom had been nothing but critical of me the entire time they had been there — criticizing the food in the fridge and wondering how much money we spend on groceries (far too much in her opinion), too much pre-cooked, pre-prepared stuff in the freezer; oh MY how much did you spend on all of this expensive makeup? and your closet is SO FULL!  

So I felt like shit, needless to say.  I went to QoB and Big Dog’s to vent and then felt better.  I returned around 9:00 p.m. and his parents had left just 15 minutes before, thank God.  I  have never felt so relieved.  I simply couldn’t take another night of people in my house, sleeping on my floor, people that criticized me and drove me crazy and treated my MAN like a child. 

I felt bad, but Dr. Love assured me there were no hard feelings.  WRONG!  His parents haven’t acted the same way toward me since.  I knew something was up and it was confirmed last night. 

I told Dr. Love on the way up here that I needed some sort of confirmation as to his idea that his parents were not irritated with me.  I went to bed almost right after dinner last night because we didn’t get here until late and it was almost 10:00 p.m. when we ate.  Dr. Love came up later and was tossing and turning, almost crying.  I asked him what was wrong.  Dr. Love said that the Queen of Enmeshment had hurt his feelings by saying something bad about me.

Apparently, I am “very unappreciative and ungrateful.”  I am also “rude.”  Hmmm.  I told him not to worry about it, that I wasn’t worried about it, and really, I’m not.  It doesn’t surprise me that those words came from his mother’s mouth. 

I talked to his dad this morning, whom I find slightly less obnoxious, and explained my stress level.  I didn’t tell him that I was pissed that he fucked up my bathroom — I told him that I was appreciative of all the help he had given us and was very generic about it.  I mentioned what Queen of Enmeshment had said and he laughed and said “just let that go in one ear and out the other.” 

Which I am doing, especially after talking to my Dad, who gave me an excellent pep talk about letting other people violate my BOUNDARIES.  😀

The next hurdle is the kitchen renovation that Dr. Love and I are going to do.  It’s going to look awesome and I’m finally going to have a dishwasher and more electrical outlets.  However, Mr. I-Can’t-Fix-It has his mind set that he and Dr. Love will be installing the dishwasher and extra outlets themselves. 

Uh-uh.  Not going to happen.  Over my dead body.  Q0B agrees that a professional needs to do it, as I’m sure the Big Dog would.  Since they’re on the deed, that’s a 3-3 vote over Matt and his parents, with us winning since, um, wait, IT’S OUR HOUSE.  Grrr.

So now there is tension over that.  Let there be tension.  I don’t really fracking care at this point.  I’m just going to take Dad’s advice and lay low for this weekend and go on with our plan to renovate the kitchen MY way — with the assistance of professionals. 

I would put up a YouTube that screams bloody hell about pushy and intrusive parenting styles, but I am on a dial-up connection way the hell out in the middle of nowhere in MB.  That’s right.  Dial-up.  As if it couldn’t get any worse.  🙂