Hello, normal* people!

[resonant]

I am so happy to be home again, where I can see my cats, and go to the gym, and read in a quiet room, and go where I like without accounting for my time to anyone, and decide for myself how clean things need to be, and eat normal food, and converse with people who have some imagination!

There were some pretty nice days on our trip. We went to Daiso and bought a bunch of cute little bento things, though I already wish I'd gotten more. We took the kidlet to the aquarium, where they petted skates and rays and sea cucumbers and leopard sharks while the spouse and I talked to an adorable book-quoting deep-thinking xkcd-reading naturalist about animal intelligence and crows that collect loose change. We saw the Frida Kahlo exhibit at sfmoma. I ate dim sum for the first time.

But there was this heat wave that closed off many of our usual means of escape. (It was unpleasant to take walks, and we get glared at if we plan too many day trips). So we spent a lot of time cooped up in a very small house with the in-laws. Who were probably doing their best, but it wasn't a very good best.

Man. Every year the spouse forgets what this is like. Next year I'll say, "Maybe a week? Ten days at the most? Because we get on each other's nerves so much?" and he'll say, "Oh, let's give it two weeks. Why not?"



Things I no longer have to do:

Listen to the spouse obsess about whether the wet part of the basement is caving in while we're gone. (If he wants to know now, he can just go downstairs and look.)

Eat fat-free cheez, yogurt with artificial sweeteners, perfectly good sourdough bread desecrated with fat-free butter substitute, fat-free salad dressing on iceberg lettuce, overcooked meat, and meals almost completely devoid of vegetables.

Watch fourteen hours of television a day, including Lou Dobbs, every game the Giants play, some soap opera I can never remember the name of, and Olympic qualifying trials. Or try to read while these shows drone on on the background. I tell you, I actually looked forward to Wheel of Fortune because it actually entertains me.

Respond only to the content of what's said to me, carefully tuning out mocking tone of voice, sighs, and eye-rolls.

Note any unexpected change in the kidlet's behavior (e.g. hiding BooYamb in a drawer, not asking for a goodbye kiss before I leave) so that I can get them off alone and say, "So. Did anybody give you trouble about something you were doing?"

Try to read my mother-in-law's mind, because she won't ask for help, but she'll be pissed off if she doesn't get it.

Cope with a spouse who's wound even tighter than usual due to having all his buttons pushed all the time.

edited 2020 to retroactively correct the kidlet's gender pronouns

Comments

[wolfshark]

That sounds unpleasant at best :(

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Usually every year before we go I can say to myself, "Well, the weather will be terrific, at least." But this year even the weather betrayed me! [sobs]

[moonpupy.livejournal.com]

Next year, maybe, you can:

1. Show spouse this post.

2. Come down with a minor contagious disease, like, say, ebola.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

I endorse this plan, because otherwise you'd have to follow the advice in hir icon. Two *weeks*?!? Without a *lot* of day trips to Napa, I'd end up a serial killer.

[skuf.livejournal.com]

:o/

(But in other news, I'm tickled to be sharing a fandom with you again, even if it's an ex-fandom of yours by now, *points to Rodney icon*!)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Ooh, you're in SGA now? How cool!

I'm not out of SGA, I'm just in a fannish fallow period, I think. Not writing, watching, or even reading much that's fannish. But still enjoying hanging out.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

PS the combination of fat-free everything and no vegetables to speak of (in SF!) makes me weep in sympathy. At least when we'd visit my MiL I got to ensure we had real food by the expedient of "volunteering to do the cooking for her".

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

gorgeous icon!

[sage]

oh god. How about next year you develop an allergy to some food additive, so you have to stock their fridge with food you enjoy?

(The first thing we do when we visit Grandma is go to the local grocery and load up on fresh fruit & veggies...and also so that I'll have something to eat that isn't steeped in pork fat or chicken broth. :P)

Glad to have you back online! :)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

We always buy fruit, but me cooking in my mother-in-law's kitchen is, like everything else, fraught.

[carta.livejournal.com]

I can't get my mind around fat-free butter but no vegetables. That's like the definition of fad-eating. Veggies with REAL butter have to be better for you in the long run.

Vacations should be restful. this does not sound restful :|

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

It's appalling, isn't it? They seem to get all their fiber from baby carrots and high-fiber cereal. And I think they genuinely think it's healthier for the kidlet to eat four popsicles with artificial sweetener than to eat one with sugar. [sighs]

[anatsuno.livejournal.com]

poor you! i third the suggestion to show spouse this post next year. or if spouse does not want to read lj, perhaps send him the text of this in an email, and forward the same email to him next year highlighting the timestamp of the original to make your point. *offers veggies*

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

[grabs veggies and eats them, eats them up!] Since we came home, we've been gorging ourselves on asparagus and wonderful salads. The sad thing is that most of the vegetables we get here in the Midwest come from California -- while we were there, we saw artichokes just growing in people's yards, which is very weird to me -- but they don't eat any of them there.

[cathalin.livejournal.com]

Ouch. *winces in sympathy*

And I'm sure it's like this for you, too - I figure as an adult I can deal with most anything for a short time, though it's very unpleasant, but when someone starts messing with my *kids*, I get really, really pissed off.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Yes! It's very lucky, actually, that they live so far away, because if they got to see the kidlet more often, I wouldn't be able to cope with the current strategy of countering bad talk with good talk. But I have no faith that laying down ground rules would work, because my in-laws are legendarily bad at communication, and particularly at listening.

[reginagiraffe]

Welcome back to the land of normality*!

My family's not quite that bad but you have all of my empathy anyway.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Thanks! My own family is not without quirks, but they are miles less annoying than his -- even he agrees.

[panisdead.livejournal.com]

SO MUCH SYMPATHY. I have been both the spouse gritting her teeth while the Hubster's buttons get pushed and the one with all my buttons mashed.

Glad you're back!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

If people in love ever really looked seriously at their beloved's family and thought, "This will be part of my family for the rest of my life," nobody would ever get married, I swear.

[mzcalypso.livejournal.com]

"Oh, let's give it two weeks. Why not?"

"Because it may be vacation to you, but it's two weeks in hell for me and too much to ask that every summer be ruined."

What the hell--if he wants to go visit his parents for 2 whole weeks, let him. Bring the kids in on the last Wednesday and go home en famille.

I like my in-laws well enough, but they aren't a deep and happy part of my childhood memories. I'm happier when my wife goes on her own, or I drive her to the train then come by, stay a day or two and bring her home.

There's no reason your husband should be denied quality time with his parents. But there's no reason you and the kids should be put through the ordeal of adapting altogether to their cramped, TV-centric, unhealthy lifestyle, is there? Fair's fair.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

It's even worse for him than it is for me, actually. (To me it's like having an irritating temporary roommate; to him it's like being six years old again.) But he's a masochist. Or more heavily invested with guilt and a sense of duty than is really good for him, anyway.

[blacksquirrel.livejournal.com]

Oh goodness. Welcome back!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And thanks for the all-natural icon, too!

[miss-pryss.livejournal.com]

HOMG FAMILY. FOR SERIOUS.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I know it. They're all insane. (But my in-laws are more so than most.)

[giglet.livejournal.com]

*gloms on to you*

Welcome back!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm so happy to see my friends again.

[florahart]

Good grief.

I know it is bad of me, but I was sort of not all that sorry when my in-laws needed to be put in care facilities (which actually needed to happen long before it did), which meant there WAS no way to go stay with them for a period of time, and therefore let me out of a number of similar unpleasantnesses. >.>

*sends vegetables*

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Oh, me too -- I've been in Bad Thought Land since about two days after we arrived.

Fortunately, they would never consider leaving San Francisco Bay to live in Cowtown, Illinois (because who in their right mind would?) so the specter of them in my house isn't there. Thank God.

[sanj.livejournal.com]

Wait a minute -- are we related?? Your hhusband's house sounds *exactly* like mine when I was growing up. ;P

Which is to say: *hug*, and welcome back to Planet Real.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear! I should be sending you hugs! If it's this bad for me to spend two weeks with them, I can only imagine what it was like to grow up with them. (They have three children. The spouse is the only one who isn't addicted to anything.)

[raqs.livejournal.com]

You need to videotape him going "OMG that sucked" at the appropriate time so you can play it back to him next year when you're planning the vacation.

Also: Ooo, bento! post photos?

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Oh, I should post photos. But everything's all scattered, and I may be too lazy to bring it all together again. Highlights include egg molds (star and heart), picks shaped like sea creatures, mayo cases shaped like little monkeys with banana-handled spreaders, and a little salad dressing bottle shaped like a house.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds so much like my two visits to my own mother this month. Repetitive, dull food? Check. Non-stop TV (mine was all-day golf, BTW)? Check. Listening to passive-aggressive comments about my son? Check.

Except rather than the joy of SF, I was in suburban Detroit.

I soooo sympathize with you. Two weeks is just beyond the pale!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

We had golf too. Yes. I had forgotten with my numbed brain.

I don't really blame my mother-in-law for not pulling out all the stops cooking for us -- my own mother doesn't like to cook any more, either. The difference is that my own mother says when I arrive, "So. Which three days will you be cooking dinner?" and then helps me in the kitchen and is very free with the compliments.

Whereas the mother-in-law sniffs and shakes her head and while everyone else is eating, she goes back into the kitchen to make a separate meal for her and the father-in-law because they don't like my food, seriously. And then she makes passive-aggressive comments for days about me not leaving the counters spotlessly clean.

My sympathies about metro Detroit, though. That's just adding insult to injury.

[thisisbone.livejournal.com]

Respond only to the content of what's said to me, carefully tuning out mocking tone of voice, sighs, and eye-rolls.

OMG. This is exactly the advice Mr. Bone gave me to deal with my sister-in-law. He said just to respond to what's said, not the multiple layers of passive-aggressive meaning we all know lurk beneath the surface. His other advice? Not to let her into my head. Keep it on the surface! Skate along it!

Two weeks is ten days too long.

My father-in-law is arriving on Tuesday for a week, but that's in my house, with my food, and my kid with her room and toys intact. It's MUCH harder at their house, where food is a degree away from salmonella poisoning and the carpet is so dirty that A knew instinctively, at age 4, to bring a blanket to spread out before she sat down. *shudder*

You have my sympathy. And welcome home!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I really think that's what the passive-aggressive people deserve: if you say it's fine, then fine! It's fine! I'm happy to comply with nearly any polite request, but if no requests are made, I'm going to do what I like.

It's actually kind of a good thing she's so hard to please; if she were just a little bit less picky, I'd probably try really hard to please her, but since this has proven to be impossible, I don't even try.

[looks at own dirty carpet and is grateful that on the internet no one knows you're a slob]

[geneli4.livejournal.com]

ugh, in-laws. iwe have a five day max rule that the mister tries to violate every time, because: it costs so much to fly, we never see them, etc, BUT FIVE DAYS IS PLENTY, OKAY?

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Yes, we get all those same arguments, plus that they only have two grandchildren and the other one is pushing forty.

But after this trip (and the great uproar that erupted the morning we left over whether the shower door was clean enough), I think the spouse will be more sympathetic to my argument that a distant relationship is better than a bad one.

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

Eeh, that sounds a bit much.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

It was 125% much!

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

this happens to me at my sister's house: dreadful food, constant noise / TV, plus sister's stream of consciousness (proving that sentience is wasted on some). Last time I gave up and sat reading fic on my PDA, despite her efforts to engage me in 'conversation', discuss what I was reading (gay porn with added tentacles, kthx). Have unaccountably failed to arrange the next visit. But then it's just me: I truly sympathise with the spousal responsibility thing.

Glad you're back!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Oh, the constant meaningless noise. [takes a moment to appreciate her quiet house]

[reedfem.livejournal.com]

You survived! And no one got murdered! *cheers*

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Not even a little bit murdered! Amazing, isn't it!

[arallara.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I feel exhausted just reading about your family "vacation." Congrats on surviving with sanity intact. :)

But what I really wanted to say was how happy your subject line made me. Because I am so accustomed to thinking or talking about how much "normal" people drive me crazy, and how alienated I feel from "normal" people sometimes, and how I love all my fannish and otherwise freaky friends. And somehow today it struck me just right--oh, hey, why the fuck can't we be the normal ones?? So, yeah, not a huge insight, but I had a frustrating day, and thank you for reframing that for me. *g*

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Just because there are more of them doesn't mean they get to set the standards, I say. (well, I say it here. If I say it to ordinary people, I just get a look of blank bafflement.)

[celli]

*hugs*

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Aww. Thanks! Back atcha!