This could be alternately titled "Shit Old People Say".
My MIL cannot say Buy Buy Baby (the BB&B affiliated baby store). It is always Buy, Baby, Buy. Always. No amount of correcting her will change it. She also adds "the" to every store name. The WalMart, The Costco, The Aldi.
My father has started mispronouncing words. I can't decide if he's doing it to be funny, or in an attempt to sound more cultured, or if he's just losing his mind. He reads Llama, Llama books to my son and pronounces it with a Spanish Ll. "Yamma, yamma, red pahama". He says Infiniti wrong. "My son-in-law drives and In-fin-EE-tee".
My FIL, a retired CPA, has too much time on his hands. They recently bought a townhouse and now need to sell their condo. They refuse to use a realtor because they have "always" sold themselves. We tried and failed to sell our home FSBO a few years ago, and are now experts in the "modern for-sale-by-owner online marketing environment", according to him. He sent us an extensive spreadsheet detailing every online marketing tool in the area, complete with cost, what it includes, formulas that break down cost per day and cost per... I don't even know, it's ridiculous. Since sending it, he has called every day to follow up and see if we've had a chance to "review my spreadhseet". OMG, people, please call an agent and stop bothering us.
Post by UnderProtest on Oct 29, 2014 10:27:54 GMT -5
Yeah, my mom does the pronunciation and name thing. She calls the store White House Black Market by "Black and White" instead of the actual name. My MIL's existence annoys me right now, but she kept saying stupid words....slippy instead of slippery and all sorts of made up words that I've tried to black out. She also encourages really poor manners in my kids....like putting their napkins on their heads at the dinner table, drinking the rest of their ice cream out of the bowls, putting their feet up on things that they shouldn't. It drives me nuts.
Also, my FIL can't seem to lay off my DH and when he'll come see them. He walked inthe door Tuesday morning, JUST having gotten off a 2 week hitch, and tells me his dad already texted him asking when he was coming down.
My FIL always talks badly about me working for the federal government. Apparently we're all horrible people who do bad things and are overpaid.
My MIL always talks about her step-daughter and all the things they did for her 2 kids. She also will like every.single.picture I post on FB of E. Which is why I only really post on IG now.
My mom will talk for 40 minutes without taking breath about what she had for breakfast, and then totally forget to tell me something important/interesting. I found out my great aunt died by reading the obit in the paper, but had talked to my mom for an hour the day before about some random vacation a random person I'd never met had taken 5 years ago.
My mom also has a habit of interrupting me to finish my sentences. Like, she'd rather guess what I was going to say than just... let me say it.
Theme of these annoyances: My mom really, really likes the sound of her own voice.
My mom has a tendency to make things up. We went on vacation and were walking around the hotel lobby: "This hotel looks like it used to be a bank!" "Well, Mom, it says on this historical plaque here that it was always a hotel." "Oh." Then we picked up a local friend of hers to take him to dinner and she said, "The hotel we're staying in used to be a bank before they converted it!"
She also calls my brother's girlfriend a "concubine" because she doesn't like her. Not because my brother has multiple ladies in his life. She also blames my brother's pissy attitudes on the girlfriend, when I don't even think he's with the girlfriend anymore. No, Mom, your son is just a dick sometimes.
My FIL likes to give very long-winded advice, full of cliched sayings, even when he has no experience whatsoever with the topic. And that's generally the case, because he literally does nothing except and watch TV all day. And when he watches news stories and wants to discuss them, it usually starts off with something along the lines of, "Did you hear about that guy with the thing?"
Post by WinterWine on Oct 29, 2014 10:39:42 GMT -5
Your FIL spreadsheet cracks me up!! This is exactly something my Dad would do.
MIL always wants to have us over for dinner. But she is a hoarder and being at her house stresses both of us out. She still tries to make it happen by buying food in advance so we will feel obligated to come. "I bought 10 pounds of mussels- how about you two come over for dinner tomorrow". Despite us rarely taking the invitation, she does it all the time!! We have busy careers and obligations, ask first before buying food!!
My family also acts like it's a huge bother to come visit us at our house. We live 20 miles away (20-30 minute drive). It's always, "Oh, I have work tomorrow, I don't want to be out so late, I have to get up early, blah blah blah." We don't in the Himalayas, for Pete's sake.
But of course, we can always go over there. I think people just assume that since we don't have children, or dogs, we're just sitting around and twiddling our thumbs and then pissing ourselves with delight when they offer us an invitation. I have shit to do, too, or sometimes I just feel like relaxing at home. If you're stressed out because of your own life choices and obligations, it ain't my problem.
And extended family members and our friends are the same way ... we are always welcome to drop what we're doing and drive to see them whenever they're having something, but when the tables are turned we're just "too far." It's like pulling teeth to get anyone to do anything with us ... we've gone weeks and months without seeing some of our closest friends
My mom said over the weekend that since I've moved from my hometown, my accent sounds like it's changed. MH laughed right at her.
My MIL has the worst grammar on the planet. I cringe every time I hear her speak to DS. She says he has "the most prettiest eyes." She says Nostroms for Nordstrom and adds an "S" to every store. It always Targets, Lord & Taylors, and Costcos.
She also mixes everything up. My mom had laparoscopic surgery and she wanted to know if it was "microscopic."
Post by adeliepenguin on Oct 29, 2014 11:11:37 GMT -5
I could complain about my IL's forever, but there are two things that come to mind.
They have some real issues with what they can eat: allergies and a gastric bypass. They are also super picky. Fine. But when we ask them what they want to eat, where they want to eat, they are always like "Oh, we eat anything!" That is NOT TRUE!! Argh. After having them stare at a menu at a Chinese restaurant for about 15 minutes, they admitted that they don't really eat Chinese. Why, oh why, wouldn't you just say that!!!
Also, my MIL takes dramatic pauses whenever she speaks. Really long, oddly placed, inappropriate dramatic pauses. "I went . . . . . . . .to Target . . . . .and bought . .. . . . . ketchup" Drives me nuts.
My mom does this thing, when she is talking about my dad, she'll she his name, then say, your dad. Like, "I was telling Bob, your dad, that we should sell the house." I always want to day, "Yeah Mom, I know who Bob is." LOL.
My family also acts like it's a huge bother to come visit us at our house. We live 20 miles away (20-30 minute drive). It's always, "Oh, I have work tomorrow, I don't want to be out so late, I have to get up early, blah blah blah." We don't in the Himalayas, for Pete's sake.
But of course, we can always go over there. I think people just assume that since we don't have children, or dogs, we're just sitting around and twiddling our thumbs and then pissing ourselves with delight when they offer us an invitation. I have shit to do, too, or sometimes I just feel like relaxing at home. If you're stressed out because of your own life choices and obligations, it ain't my problem.
Ugh, we have this exact same problem (down to the mileage). We really wanted to host Thanksgiving this year and my mother/sister made such a fuss over the LOOOOONG drive that I said forget it. It's like I asked them to fly cross country. In the 5 years we've owned our house they've been up maybe 5 times, combined.
My mom and sister got lost the last time they drove to my house.
To be fair, they're crappy navigators to start with, but I was pretty mad when they told me that.
EVERY photo or status update HAS to have a 5+ sentence word vomit, that is systematically and carefully crafted. "Cute photo!" IS NOT AN OPTION.
"ZOMG, HOW WONDERFUL IS THAT? I JUST LOVE SHMOOPY PPOOOPY BLAH BLAH BLAHBITY....."
WHYYYYYYYYYYYY can she not just 'like' a photo or say something SHORT and to the POINT?!?! She is a writer so everyone needs to read her brilliance in EACH AND EVERY POSTING.
:::siiiiiiiiiiiigh::: It is insanity and everyone will comment to me, IRL, like "what is UP with your mom???" I know... I KNOWWWWWWWW.
My MIL has the worst grammar on the planet. I cringe every time I hear her speak to DS. She says he has "the most prettiest eyes." She says Nostroms for Nordstrom and adds an "S" to every store. It always Targets, Lord & Taylors, and Costcos.
My MIL does this too. She also says "warsh" instead of wash and "cay-esh" instead of cash.
My mom is also a mispronouncer. Hyundai is Hy-oon-dy-ai.
Also, she insists she does not need a hearing aid, even though her mom had one and both of her brothers do. Instead, you have to SPEAK LOUDLY and she still doesn't understand what you're saying. Examples: -My brother said, "Hey, check out my plantar wart!" and I said, "Ew, gross, I don't want to see your plantar wart." My mom was like, "You get in there and check out his Spain report RIGHT NOW! He probably worked really hard on it!" -She had been shopping for curtains for weeks and had brought 5 or 8 different ones home to try. My dad was starting to get tired of this shopping for curtains. He was looking for a snack one night and rummaging through the fridge and said, "Hey, do we have any purple grapes?" and she said, "I haven't bought any purple drapes! I hate purple! Would you just be PATIENT about the DRAPES?"
and so on and so forth. And she's only 58, not 70+.
Oh, and my mom and I went to visit my sister in Milwaukee. We stopped at the IEKA in Schaumburg on the way there. I have been to Milwaukee no less than 20 times, so all I needed the GPS for was to direct us back to 294 from IKEA.
Instead, she turned on the GPS on both her phone, and my phone, and proceeded to repeat the directions. The whole entire way from Schaumburg to Milwaukee. Which, during rush hour, is a long damn time. GPS 1: Merge left onto Golf Road. GPS 2: Merge left onto Golf Road: My mom: I THINK YOU ARE GOING TO BE MERGING LEFT ONTO GOLF ROAD RIGHT AHEAD HERE.
And my ILs are also the most unadventurous eaters ever. Someone gave them a gift card to Chili's and they complained that it was all too spicy (even though they ordered a hamburger) and could not remember the name of the restaurant. "Peppers? I think we went to a place called Peppers the other day. Way too greasy!!!!"
My mother is HOURS late everywhere she goes. Literally, hours. She routinely shows up to events five minutes before their end times. She showed up to my SIL's baby shower that I hosted 10 minutes before we had to be out of the venue and made herself a plate. They showed up to my younger son's first birthday party at 4:55. The party was from 3-5. We were packing up the food. They got there and unpacked everything so she could have a hot dog. Our family experienced the tragic loss of a young child two summers ago. My mother did not show up to the funeral until the graveside service was OVER. As in, people were pulling out of the cemetery and here she comes. It has gone way far beyond driving people crazy and is a serious point of conflict in all of her relationships.
MIL posts on Facebook like it's Twitter. She also posts on Twitter, she just has a larger audience on FB.
My mother apparently goes through my FB timeline and photos years back. She comments on photos I took three years ago or status updates from four years ago. At 4am. She also talks about things she sees on FB like I should know what is going on. I get on FB maybe once a week or so, so I never have a clue what she is talking about.
I forgot about Facebook. My mom has, like, 80 friends, so it pops up in her feed when we like/comment on things. Cue, "Who's Casey? I don't know her. What's her maiden name? How do you know her?" I am just waiting for my GBCN cover to be blown.
And, my Dad gets his news from The Yahoo. Two words. "So, I was reading on the yahoo the other day..." He was all belligerent one day, "Who changed my homepage? It was on the yahoo, and now it's not. I read a lot of good stories on the yahoo!"
This is the same man who runs a multi-million dollar business, yet did not master text messaging until sometime in 2010. He has had a blackberry pretty much since they existed. For years, he would be like, "Yeah, I don't text. Waste of time. Too many keystrokes. Send me an email. I check it on my phone all the time!" He got an iPhone and then did not sync his email to it for many, many months, because he likes to check emails with spreadsheets at his desk so that he can print them. He also can't figure out why anyone would listen to music on their phone. What a waste of time.
I need to stop. My blood pressure can't handle it.
Instead, she turned on the GPS on both her phone, and my phone, and proceeded to repeat the directions. The whole entire way from Schaumburg to Milwaukee. Which, during rush hour, is a long damn time. GPS 1: Merge left onto Golf Road. GPS 2: Merge left onto Golf Road: My mom: I THINK YOU ARE GOING TO BE MERGING LEFT ONTO GOLF ROAD RIGHT AHEAD HERE.
My mom is also a mispronouncer. Hyundai is Hy-oon-dy-ai.
Oh God, my dad does both of these things. My mom drives a Hy-oon-dy-ai. And the GPS thing, I can't handle it.
"Dad, it's cool, the GPS is telling me where to go".
"Yes, yes, but you'll just be turning - *IN .5 MILES, TURN RIGHT ON MAIN STREET* - right on Main Street, it's in about a half a mile".
Post by CrazyLucky on Oct 29, 2014 12:02:26 GMT -5
My mom really knows how to push buttons. I love her, but talking to her is such a chore. She's almost completely deaf and hearing aids are not helping. But I really hate that she has to one-up everything. When DS was 6 months old and had the flu, she said, "Oh, I had the flu too. It was terrible. I was so hot and then cold. It was such a bad flu." When DH's grandmother fell and broke her hip, my mom says, "Oh, my leg has been hurting really bad the past couple of days. I can barely walk on it." No matter what you have done or have had done to you, she's done it better, worse, just more of everything.
Post by dragonfly08 on Oct 29, 2014 12:19:48 GMT -5
My mother discovered Facebook. Now she spends hours having entire conversations with long-lost high school "friends" every day. This is what email and the telephone are for, people...the rest of us aren't interested! Everything needs to be about her. My SIL got married last summer and posted some things during the trip (destination wedding). Of course my mom can't just say "congratulations" and leave it alone. She's got to mention my kids in every post, b/c heaven forbid her friends see her activity and not know that she's connected, and her granddaughters were flower girls in this wedding, and she's not just some "random" friend who didn't get invited (which she didn't, and wouldn't have been even for a local wedding!). Plus she's incredibly opinionated and her politics are pretty much the polar opposite of mine so a good bit of what she posts makes me cringe.
That said, the upside is that I at least know what's going on in my parents' lives b/c she posts every damn thing she does/sees/eats. And since she never calls me anymore (a topic for a completely different vent on my part), I wouldn't otherwise know that both she and dad need minor surgeries in the next few months.
Post by hopenotlost on Oct 29, 2014 12:28:06 GMT -5
My mother mispronounces words: -Cambridge is pronounced camm-bridge -Potpourri is pronounced pot (rhymes with hot) pour ee -Afghan is pronounced aff-uh-gan -Chicken is pronounced cheeee ken.
I seriously want to tear my ear drums out and stomp on them.
My FIL is normal. My SMIL is normal. My MIL is a crazy bitch, and we don't talk to her, so I choose to not remember the nonsense.
My mom's FI is a horrible smoker. He gets up at least 3 times a night to outside and smoke. And he slams the door every time he goes out, so it wakes me up, and the last time we were there it woke up my youngest. I wanted to punch him.
Post by Willis Jackson on Oct 29, 2014 12:28:53 GMT -5
These are cracking me up, you guys.
I think my dad spends about 10 hours a day on the internet reading about genealogy, chess, and border collies. He emails my mom, brothers and me all sorts of fascinating info (not) about these topics. The most recent one was a detailed schedule of events for the World Chess Championship, which is happening over the course of 3 weeks next month in Sochi, Russia. Then my mom gives him shit by replying all, "Did you guys clear your calenders? Since it's in Russia it'll be in the middle of the night so you'll have to adjust your biorhythms if you want to catch the live feed."
for reasons we don't understand, MIL reads celebrity gossip sites and insists on asking us what are opinions are on this or that celebrity controversey. We could not give fewer shits.
I cannot mention anything health related to my mom without it turning into a MAJOR CONVERSATION. She used to be a nurse and did phone triage, so she's really good at asking the right questions to assess what's going on. But most of the time, NOTHING is going on, or it's something really minor I want to ask about and she ends up giving me a 20 minute questioning/recommendations session. I've mostly stopped mentioning things like that to her at all, which is too bad because she IS quite knowledgeable.
She also tends to get stuck on unimportant details in conversations that totally derail what she's saying. Like she'll say "I talked to Susan on Tuesday. Or wait, maybe it was Monday. No, it was Tuesday. Or was it Monday? Hmm, on Tuesday I went to the doctor so it must have been Monday. Unless I talked to her before I went to the doctor? But I was talking to your sister before she called, and I don't think I've talked to your sister since Monday...". I'm like MOM. I don't care when you talked to Susan. What did she say WHENEVER it was you talked to her?
She also tends to get stuck on unimportant details in conversations that totally derail what she's saying. Like she'll say "I talked to Susan on Tuesday. Or wait, maybe it was Monday. No, it was Tuesday. Or was it Monday? Hmm, on Tuesday I went to the doctor so it must have been Monday. Unless I talked to her before I went to the doctor? But I was talking to your sister before she called, and I don't think I've talked to your sister since Monday...". I'm like MOM. I don't care when you talked to Susan. What did she say WHENEVER it was you talked to her?
My mom does this too! Get to the point!
She gave me a 10-minute synopsis of a movie she saw with my sister the other day. "Okay, AND THEN, wait, did I tell you that the man's son had already traveled to Paris? And the man was dead? Okay, well then, the man's son is in Paris..."
And she kept telling me that they had seen the movie in an oriental building. I said, "Asian? Was it something Asian?" and she insisted that no, the building was oriental. Okay, Mom. Whatever. I re-told this to my sister. They were at THE ORIENTAL THEATER.
My mom: is the oldest 49 year old woman I know. Her response to my 59 year old aunt getting FB: I don't have time for that! Which she doesn't but what she really means is "another new tech thing I have to learn".
My dad: always starts rambling on about stuff without a subject or reference so I just nod and smile now. The 20 question game to understand what he's saying is very tiring.
MIL: is nuts. We have bigger issues with her.
FIL: always talks about the cost of things. "Do you know how much so and so spent on such and such?" "No, FIL, I don't really care to talk about how other people choose to spend their money." "OMG this burger is $20! and the fries cost another $5." "So don't go out to eat." "Guess how much I got this wheel barrel for?" "Why do you need 5 wheel barrels?"
ETA: My mom discovered blue tooth this weekend. H showed her how to use her smart phone (that she just got a year ago) to play music in her car, but she couldn't figure out why the music was so quiet so this weekend we have to go show her how to turn it up on her phone.
Your FIL spreadsheet cracks me up!! This is exactly something my Dad would do.
MIL always wants to have us over for dinner. But she is a hoarder and being at her house stresses both of us out. She still tries to make it happen by buying food in advance so we will feel obligated to come. "I bought 10 pounds of mussels- how about you two come over for dinner tomorrow". Despite us rarely taking the invitation, she does it all the time!! We have busy careers and obligations, ask first before buying food!!
My MI I'll uses the wrong pronouns when talking about the dog, and it makes me crazy. Example: "hers a good girl" rather then "she's a good girl"
My parents are endlessly polite about inconsequential things, which makes spending time with them challenging. Example: "do you want Subway for lunch?" "whatever you want."