Breast Cancer (not)

I don't remember what year this was, but it was before evil EJ passed away.

There are two parts to this. The first was another "phone game". Hubbie and I had been out somewhere. I don't remember where. The phone was ringing off the hook when we got home.

It was Evil EJ, the Father in Law. Hubbie got off the phone. First he said "Mama has cancer." Then he accused me of already knowing about it and not telling him.

Several days later -- maybe a couple weeks, Sister in Law calls the house. Hubbie was gone somewhere -- out of town maybe, I don't remember. She called to tell that Evil JB's surgery was over. The place was "very tiny" and not cancer.


The rest of her life, she claimed that she "has breast cancer." She didn't even say she was a breast cancer survivor.

She bought candles in honor of herself in Relay for Life. Wore pink breast cancer shirts. Things like that.

It made me angry. Even more when seeing my next door neighbor get a mastectomy and go through chemo and radiation and be sick as a dog and lose her hair. Even more than that when a good friend of mine's wife died from breast cancer AFTER having a mastectomy because they didn't get it all (partially due to malpractice). And later when the women's Olympic basketball coach Kay Yow died from breast cancer, after she had kept her career going until the last possible minute, being put in the hospital for her final hospitalization after a road trip with her team.

Evil JB had no idea what suffering was. She dishonored those people and all other people who have had this disease. The only bright spot from this was that perhaps she got a few donations for causes made in her name.

Note: Having had a questionable mammogram result checked out myself and biopsied negative, I know the emotion and discomfort associated. Some worry, some discomfort, followed by relief. I have not had reason to share it with many people, it was almost a non-event. Many women have experienced the same thing.

Please Drive me to School

I was with hubbie this morning and we were trading stories about the old "I used to have to walk to school bothways uphill barefoot in the snow". We were talking with a lady our age about how we did remember walking to school very young and how that wouldn't be done now.

DH told his version of it. I've been with him for 24 years and never heard this story before. He said that his Mother used to send him to the neighbor's houses to ask for a ride to school because his mother did not have gas or money to buy any.

She doth protest too much

Well, not exactly, but makes too big a deal about something to be telling the truth. This had to be one where evil-JB and her counterpart evil-EJ together were trying to discredit me. Though I didn't really think about it until later.

They usually visited for hubbie's birthday. This year, they did not, because hubbie had a confict, so a few weeks later, he wanted to go visit them.

They went on and on and on about the birthday card that they sent hubbie. About where they bought it, about when they sent it, about how they had to chase down the mail carrier to get it in the mail in time, about putting extra postage on it to make sure it arrived, you get the drift.

They also were complaining about their mail carrier. (Boils down to that they didn't like him because he wasn't white.)

Finally after about the 15th time they mentioned the card, hubbie said that he didn't receive one. Then when the mail came, Father in law, evil EJ made a big deal about going out to accuse the mail carrier of throwing it away instead of sending it off.

At that point, it had not kicked in what they were REALLY doing. I saw it as them going after the mail carrier because he wasn't white. I took what they said as the truth. I had no idea if hubbie had gotten a card or not until he said so in the conversation. So I popped up and mentioned how the mail on our end is also bad... that we always get mail in our box that isn't ours and the neighbors get ours, and that it was probably at one of the neighbor's houses. That was what it was in my mind at the time.

Then I realized. There was likely never any card. They kept bringing it back up to try to get me in trouble, just like they lied about me withholding phone calls in my "big phone game" post. They part about going after the wrong-race mail carrier was cover. If they weren't trying to make trouble, why did they keep on and keep on bringing up, like 100 times, until hubbie finally said he didn't get the card.

If they were normal people, I'd say that the truth was it got put in the wrong box on our end. However, given the pattern of other things that they did, I think that they were just trying to make trouble. It was probably as revenge for not getting to visit on hubbie's birthday. But hubbie was involved in something of his own that day, he was taking a class that he could only go to on that day or had to wait about three months for.

The Big Phone Game

I thought I had posted this one, but I don't see it anywhere.

It's about the big lie that JB got hubbie to believe.

Hubbie and I were fighting one night. He accused me of answering the phone when his parents called and pretended that I did not hear anyone. I just figured he was lying and said so. He said, "I have been right in the kitchen with you and you acted like you couldn't hear anyone. I would call them later when you were in the shower and they would say 'I see you got your phone fixed.'"

It was so ridiculous that I just called him a liar and dismissed it. Then I went into the shower. Then I realized what happened. Occasionally, I would answer the phone while fixing dinner and nobody would be there. I assumed it was a wrong number. It was only occasional, not often enough for me to realize it was a pattern.

After that, I put an end to it. If I got a call that nobody said anything, I'd hand hubbie the phone and say "whoever it is won't say anything to me." Since she wouldn't admit what she did, she hung up on him too. If he wasn't home and I got a call, I'd tell him when I got home "Call your parents. " He'd ask if they called, and I would say "Somebody called at 5pm and wouldn't talk to me." He'd get mad and wrinkle his face.

It culminated when the golden grandchild had her first child. Phone rang about 5:30 that day when he wasn't home yet. I told him as usual and he disputed me as usual. About an hour later they called and told him all about the baby. All the time he was talking, I was in the living room, yelling "mighty damn funny!!!" When he got off the phone he told me that they had been at the hospital and just gotten home.

After that incident, they started calling him on his cell. Most of the time.

Memories of Interrupted Christmas's

I will post about a couple Christmas's past here. I don't remember the exact dates of these, but I think that they were around 2000.

Before I realized that I never had to see MIL-JB and her almost as evil FIL-EJ again, tradition was that I we went to the ILs for Christmas Eve, left and spent the night at my Mom's, spent Christmas morning at my sister's then came home after lunch to have our Christmas together at home.

OK so one year, we got home and after we got home, we got a freezing rain. The phone rang in the middle of the night. It was FIL-EJ saying that MIL-JB was puking and could not stop so he was calling an ambulance. OK, so an adult is puking on Christmas night. This is a 300+ pound adult woman who thinks that you diet by eating vegetables, so she slices vegtables and deep fries them. So hubbie gets up and takes the three hour drive to meet them at the ER. Then goes to clean up the puke from the bathroom and bedroom before they come home, then he stayed there a few more days. In the Nasty House posting, I detail how unsanitary the place was, so it is possible that it was food poisoning, which I feel is probably what eventually killed both of them. But part of me says that they were PO'd that hubbie was at home with me and not with them at the holidays.

The following year was even more strange. It was a couple days after Christmas -- between Christmas and New Years. Hubbie was out hiking (not me, I'm not a hiker, so I was hanging around home). He got a cell phone call from his Mother. She said that Evil FIL EJ was throwing up and wouldn't go to the hospital. His sister was out of town and EJ did not know how to get in touch with her. So hubbie cuts his hike short and the two of us drive the three hours down there. FIL seems OK by the time we get there, but hubbie want him to go get checked out. Evil JB kept saying how she did not know how to get in touch with sister-in-law who happened to be spending her Christmas time with her husband's family. So I ask what the name of the person who she is staying with is. She tells me. So I get my cell phone out and call my Dad to look up the phone number on the Internet. Suddenly, Evil JB realizes that her (adult) grandson in town probably knows the number because he always knows where his mother is. Of course, the daughter in law cannot get the credit for finding the number, can she. So she calls her grandson and gets the number and calls sister in law. Somehow, I do not find any of this to be conincidence -- that she calls her son into town saying that FIL is sick on the exact day that her daughter is out of town with her husband's family. The fact that she cannot get in touch with her daughter until I almost get her in touch with her, some 7 or 8 hours after she initially called her son to town.

And there have been other incidents, too. These were two years in a row and stick out the most.

JB's Sisters -- They did it on purpose

This one is about JB's sisters. This is a strange story that just re-occurred to me.

MIL's sister#1 had gotten a temporary job in an adjoining city to us. She had asked hubbie to help her find an apartment to stay in while here. She was coming to town on a particular day. Hubbie never heard anything else from her -- confirmation, when/where, etc until midmorning that Saturday, so he did not set his whole day aside for them. So mid-morning that Saturday, hubbie and I were on the counter-service restaurant to meet a friend for brunch.

While we were on the way there, MIL's sister #2 called hubbie's cell. He invited his dufus Aunts to meet us at the restaurant. We had already ordered and paid when they arrived, so he was at least off the hook for having to buy for them. (Everyone in his family, not just JB and her evil hubbie considered my hubbie to be rich and expected him to pay for things.)

Not long after they got there, one of the sisters poured her coffee into my lap. It soaked my clothes, but fortunately did not burn me. (Very fortunate as I usually ice to the coffee at this place to make it drinkable.) So I had to go home to get out of the wet clothes. Wearing soaked blue jeans is not fun.

This happened many years ago and I now realize that this was probably done on purpose to get rid of me -- to get my hubbie to themselves.

So I drove home and DH rode with them to look at apartments. (I took DH's car, so he had to ride with him. I was not about to get the friend to take me home -- she's a dangerous driver, but that's not really related to this story.)



Then later, they all came back to our house. When they got here, the two sisters started going all over the ground floor or the house, looking and peeking into every room. Just like MIL and SIL used to do. This was bad enough, then Sister #2 (not the one looking for an apartment) looked into the spare bedroom and said "This is where I stayed when I was here."
I DO NOT RECALL HER EVER EVEN BEING AT MY HOUSE BEFORE, MUCH LESS SPENDING THE NIGHT. So if she had been, I was out of town. This is not the kind of thing that I would forget. I quizzed DH about it. He claimed to now know what she was talking about.

DH would not have lied about it to cover his tracks. Even if I had gotten mad about it, he would not have gotten defensive about being able to have whoever over he wants, but it did not get to that point. So either she was lying or he does not remember. HE's kind of goofy and does forget things like that sometime. I'll often say "remember when...." and he does not. Yes, I worry that it could be a problem, but that's another thing as well.

Still, it's creepy that JB's sister claims to have spent the night in my house and neither me nor hubbie remembers anything about it. There is no way she would have gotten access without us knowing. If JB ever had a key, I did not know it and there was no evidence. I don't think JB did. Hubbie is funny about keys, no matter how well he knows somebody. He might forget something having someone over but I COULD NOT IF I WANTED TO.

Just her claim wierds me out. Even more than having JB in my house since the aunt is almost a total stranger to me.

I now know she spilled the coffee to get rid of me. But why did she claim that she slept in my house? That was just strange.