Bad Weather - Whew

So the whole East Coast from Florida to Canada is being drenched. DH is on a trip to the midwest right now.

The city where MIL lived has been under tornado and flood warnings. To my knowledge, nothing has actually happened where she lived.

One good thing that MIL did for me -- make me appreciate my own situation. While it is stressful to have to practically swim wherever I'm going (OK, I'm exaggerating). It's NICE to ONLY have to deal with how this affects me personally, to NO LONGER be expected to put all that aside to rescue MIL from whatever is going on.

If we happened to have a tree down on our house and water pouring in (which we don't) and if MIL had something to deal with also, MIL would have guilted DH into taking care of her instead, no matter how major or minor her situation was. Even if there was no situation other than the nasty weather, she'd find a way to manipulate him there. She'd even find a way to get him to leave his business trip, which is important. She might would even be working on that way to get him to bring her back to our house, for good. She never openly expressed that and DH being dense denied that she wanted that, but I could see what she was getting at through her actions.

So, when having to deal with extra traffic because of the combination of accidents and slowdowns, water in the basement, etc. I know that I have TIME to deal with those things. It's actually refreshing to be able to live my own life as it comes and NOT be EXPECTED to put whatever I am dealing with aside because MIL's situation is AUTOMATICALLY more important than our situation. The good thing that MIL gave me is that I am able to relax more and realize that no matter how bad things get, they will be OK. They are OUR things and they are not all that major.


All you wet gray clouds up there, you do have a silver lining this time.

Fake Breast Cancer

Several years ago, JB had a lump removed from her breast. Hubbie's sister called pretty soon after and told us that it was very tiny and it was not cancer.

The rest of her life, she presented herself to the world as a breast cancer survivor. I know breast cancer survivors and they have been through hell getting through it, not through getting one benign lump removed.

Now my sister may have breast cancer. They say probably not, but I am nervous for her. We won't know for a couple weeks. It brought me back to being angry at MIL for saying that she'd had it when she had not.

No More Telephone Games

This story goes across many years.

Hubbie knows that I don't like the ILs. The thing of that is, he accused me of acting on it when I didn't. He was caught between believing me and believing them.

One of the things that happened was a "telephone game". I did not know this was happening for quite a while.

They always called at dinner time. When, I was closest to the phone so I answered. When he was closest to the phone he answered. As we know, this is a time for many phone calls

Sometimes I would answer the phone and get a hangup call. This only happened every week or two, so I thought very little about it. Just assumed it was a tape that had not yet kicked in or a youngster or other rude person who had the wrong number.

Then during a fight about the IL's, Hubbie accused me of pretending that I didn't hear anybody on the phone whenever they called. At this point I had not added things up yet, I just accused him of lying because I really thought he was making it up. He went on to say, "I have been right in the room with you when you said "hello, hello", acted like you didn't hear anybody. Then my parents would call later in the evening and say "Oh, I see you got your phone fixed." Again, I just accused him of lying.

A few minutes later it occurred to me that the hangup calls must have been them. They hung up when they heard my voice (actually, they stayed on the line -- I did not get dial tones) then they said that I had done that to them.

I knew that telling hubbie what I figured out would do not good, so new stragegy.

Everytime I got a hangup/nobody saying anything call:
if he was home, I'd hand him the phone and say "whoever it is won't say anytying to me."
if he was not home, as soon as he got home I'd say "Call your Mother." He'd ask if she called. I'd say "somebody called and did not say anything." In neither of these cases, did he argue with me. I think maybe he figured it out.

Whenever I did *69, I got a message that they could not trace the call. (They were long distance...)

The next pivitol incident in this chain was the day his niece had a baby -- their great-grandchild. I believe it was their fourth? But this niece was their favorite grandchild. One afternoon, the phone rang at a time that he might have been home but he was working late. I think it rang multiple times that afternoon, I would not testify to being sure to that either way. Anyway, one time or multiple times, the caller said anything, so I told Hubbie when he got home to call his parents. When he asked why, I said because the phone had been ringing with nobody there. A few minutes later the phone rang and he was closest so he answered. I could tell he was talking to his parents. So I started screaming at the top of my lungs "Mighty Damn Funny, Mighty Damn Funny", something he often would say about things that he accused me of doing in relation to them. When he got off the phone, he told me about the baby. He told me what time the baby was born, which was before the first phone call, and he also said that they had been at the hospital at some time and had just gotten home. The "time" he gave of course was before I was called.

But, I do believe that after that he believed me and not them, but he did not tell me that. That was the last time that they called the house to my knowledge. After that (except for one time that I'll blog about later), they only called his Cell.

I also quit getting dinner time hangup calls.

Coincidental?


I have been hung up on the phone since that happened, though. I still suspected that they may be behind it for some stupid immature reason or another. FIL died in 2003. MIL died 2 months ago.

Here is the strange thing. Not one hang-up call, even the less frequent ones I got after the niece giving birth since MIL died?

Coincidence?