Uninvited guests stink worse than bad fish

My mother invited herself and my new step-father to our house for Christmas week, on their honeymoon, of all things. As a thank you for letting them invade our home and not spend $1000+ on hotels/meals, they bought us tickets to a luau, and we got some interesting gifts from Grandma "crazy."

I got stained and oversized used clothing (I wear a 12--everything she gave me was @ least a 20W), and a whole 7 yds of ugly pailette/beads for "decorating purposes". Steve got flower seeds and shaving cream (he uses an electric shaver, BTW). The kids got some Nativity books and creepy muppet-like religious DVD's, and Sarah got a jr. costume jewelry set (the only nice gift of the bunch).

We had finally bought the kids a Wii, but couldn't let them play w/ it because Grandma Crazy insisted on constantly napping in the family room sofa (instead of her own bedroom w/ a door), and fussing @ the kids for being noisy. sheesh!

For Christmas, I got them really nice ($$) fresh leis, silk luau shirts($$), and hand-dyed silk muumuus ($$) for the luau, as well as embroidered hawaiian-quilted Christmas stockings ($$), a Macadamia Chocolate and CD gift set for her, and his favorite bottle of Rum.

I guess I shoulda seen it coming, this is the woman who would wrap up "rubbish" from the trash bin and send it to us when we lived in Japan.... yeah, still trying to figure that one out, ROFL!!!

I spent so much time and $$ fixing up the house, and buying new mattress suite, towels, etc. when I found out they were coming. Why did I even try? I knew it was going to be a nightmare, but I hoped she would behave herself in someone else's house.... since that is one of her damning points for my Father's side of the family. Mother complains that my Aunt comes in and takes over.... HA! she does the exact same thing in my house.

We ended up spending the majority of my husband's precious leave time as goddamn tour guides, entertainers, and "toddler" herders. I swear that handling two senior crackpots is more than my psyche can handle. I really can't handle her trying to bad mouth my Dad or trying to wheedle info out of me about him and his new wife. I was done having my "guests" here during the 2nd day of the week-long visit.

Wanna know the kicker? I showed my Mother the Zumba DVD (LOVE IT!!!) that I use when I can't get to live zumba class on any given week (since she had invaded my home and I couldn't get out for fitness class). She took one look at the latin style, hip-hop exercise set and turned to me w/ a horrified expression, "In MY mother's day, THAT would have been considered VULGAR!!!!!"

I angrily replied that this was an exercise class for women and we didn't dance like this in front of men. That we work on total fitness and strengthening our core muscles, and that I didn't think her attitude was appropriate, as a guest in my house! She just shook her head and pursed her lips and waddled upstairs to my son's room (they had displaced him so that they could have a whole room next to the bathroom at night).

This, and much more, happened @ Christmas 2009, and I am still talking about it 3 weeks later.... I can't seem to let it go, the insults go too deep, because she knows exactly how to hurt me! Imagine what she'd say if she knew my husband and I were learning how to dance Salsa and Bachata, both extremely sensual Latin dance styles.

hummphf! perhaps blogging about this will have a cathartic effect...? i dunno? this xact situation is why we moved to Alaska in 2002, and Japan in 2006. I shoulda known that she'd pull a fast one on me as soon as she found out that we were in Hawaii.