Monster-in-law needs to be dressed down
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $205*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/09/2018 (2930 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: If I could, I’d fire my mother-in-law across the room this Thanksgiving dinner. She’s a drunk and has a foul mouth. She also thinks she owns her son. She calls him day and night to wait on her — home repairs, yard work, fixing her car — when she has all the money in the world to get things fixed by a professional.
She’s so old he’s afraid not to answer her in case she’s dying, and then it would be on my husband’s conscience that he ignored her last cry for help. She refuses a personal monitoring service where she’d have to wear a pendant “like a cowbell around her neck.” And she uses the F-word around our teenage children too, who find her alarming and disgusting. They don’t know what a loving, sober grandmother who speaks nicely would be like.
I don’t want to divorce my wonderful husband to get rid of his mother, and I don’t like wishing she was dead, either. One of the reasons my husband married me is because I’m a nice person who speaks kindly to everyone. But now, I can’t stand that woman and she is bringing out the worst in me.
Thanksgiving is coming and I’m dreading it. What do you suggest I do? She has to be one of the invited guests and she will definitely come. She always does and arrives half cut. The kids roll their eyes and head for their computers. They call her “Dad’s mom,” not Grandma, and believe me I’m…
— Not Her “Daughter-in-Law,” Winnipeg
Dear Not: Make this her last chance at a family dinner and then count on her messing up. If she starts to spoil dinner with her drunkenness and vulgarity, it’s her last invitation. Your husband can take her out privately the day before for future dinners, if he wants.
Now here’s your part in this: a week before dinner, call your mother-in-law on the phone and warn her of your expectations. There’s a chance she’ll tell you where to stuff it — and that’s just great! Then you’ll even get out of hosting her for this last-chance dinner. Tell her if she starts to spoil one more family get-together, you’re sending her home in a taxi.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.