Let the Bitchin Begin!

****As you can see from the side bar button, this weekend is the betchfest and I have donated my blog space. If you want to know what this all about go check out the Basement at HBM's. In the meantime, here is Anissa with some bitchin she can't do on her own blog:***

I can’t tell you how good this is going to feel. I get to rant about something that I can’t even breathe a word of at my own site (link to www.hope4peyton.org), which you can go check out, but be discreet about my personal bitchfest…because I am not THAT big a bitch. HOWEVER, here?? Here I get to be all BITCH, all the time.

Ok.

Here goes, people.

My mother in law is a lovely person. She really truly is. Forget about the fact that she referred to my unexpected pregnancy 11 years ago as “that bastard”…I have forgiven for that moment of douchebaggery because she now worships my kids. She is an awesome grandmother and an above par mother in law. She has bent over backwards to help us through some of the most intensely emotional and painful times of our lives: my stroke, my daughter’s diagnosis of cancer. I love her.

Alrighty. There’s the reason I can’t EVER bitch about her to my husband (her son), or my friends (who have MILs that have etched their names in the Queen of Bitchdom crown).

Yet.

What the FUCK!?

How in the name of all that is holy has she managed to go 68 years on this planet and not learned how to do laundry? I would pay someone to break her wrists so she can no longer pick things up to put them in my washing machine. Now, you may be saying, “WHOA! Who complains because someone comes over to do laundry?” Me. That’s who. And if you ruin my rant, I will CUT you!

Because the woman cannot…I mean, CANNOT…do a load of laundry without ruining all my shit. To date there have been untold loads of whites ruined because they were thrown in with whatever else was dirty, like, let’s say, a RED towel. OH MY GOD, I can’t stand it! And I get to stand there while she mumbles and poo poo’s about her mistake because I’m supposed to be grateful that she came in and destroyed an entire fucking load of laundry.

IF…IF it were just once that this happened, I would suck it up. But it happens EVERY damn time she walks into my house. She heads for the laundry room and I feel a full-blown panic attack start. I’ve taken to running around and hiding all the laundry hampers in my closet when I hear a door slam in front of my house. JUST in case.

I don’t get to spend a lot of money on clothes very often, so when I do spend, I take the time to buy quality. I want classic pieces that will last forever. I also have a hard time buying clothes off the rack and a lot of them need to be altered. I have spent a lot of goddamn money on the clothes I do have.

I set aside all of my delicates and dry clean only items. All the undies, the bras, the shirts that should never see water, the silks and cashmere go in their own special piles to be hand washed or taken to the cleaners.

Do you see where this is going?

Last week I came home to find these things in the dryer. Together. All together. IN.THE.DRYER. Are you getting this? My clothes that have never seen the inside of a washing machine were in the motherfuckingdryer!

I tear up just thinking about it.

My daughter’s favorite Build-A-Bear now wears my luscious purple cashmere sweater. The black silk sweater that fit me beautifully and hid things that needed to be hidden and showcased the good stuff is languishing in a landfill somewhere. The tale of travesty goes on and on and on. I was pissed. I was beyond pissed. I was enraged. I was nearing a point of combustion that my children picked up immediately, forcing them to run for the safety of their bedrooms.

I called my husband that day at work and started to cry because I was so upset. He said to me, “Just remember that it’s my mom and she was trying to help.”

I know. I KNOW. I.KNOW.

Yet I get to stand in the middle of my living room, shaking like a crack whore who just found out that someone stole my stash.

We’ve had 3 conversations about clothing that was ruined. About how, maybe, if she feels the insatiable urge to launder something, she could stick to towels and sheets. She nods her head, we hug, I think she gets it. But she doesn’t!!! She does it again. And she makes a little piece of me dies inside.

** sigh **

After calculating the costs of damage…in just my clothing alone, not hubby’s or kids…she’s killed over $2500 in items.

She gave me $40. I thanked her. I plotted her death in my head. I thought about how I would spend my hubby’s inheritance to replace all the clothing.

I will burn in an everlasting hell. It’ll probably just be closets full of all the shriveled, shrunken, discolored and inadvertently tye-dyed clothing left in the wake of my MIL.