Ah Christmas. That great family holiday that draws families closer together so they can be driven further apart.
The Story:
My two sister-in-laws (Who for this story shall be refered to as The Bitch and The Wacko, and this is KIND by any measuring stick) and my wife are currently not seeing eye to eye. The Bitch and The Wacko have decided that the way to get back at my wife is to refuse to accept (and therefore give) the Christmas presents that we purchased for their children. To my wife and me, this is just inexcusable. They have both told their children that we did not get them anything. Now these kids, who have received very nice presents from us in the past, are now under the impression that we are mad at them. WTF is that?
I’ve met some assholes in my day, but I never thought I’d see this… using children to get back at a sibling. We obviously don’t see each other now in a social setting, and we decided to drop the presents off at the grandparent’s home (my wife, The Bitch and The Wacko’s parents), and asked them to give the presents to their grandchildren. The Bitch and The Wacko both refused.
To be clear. I hate both of these women with a passion. The Bitch is a leech who expects others to pay her way through life. The Wacko is a misfit whose own father believes she’s nuts. However, the mother (who if mentioned in this story again will be referred to as the Psycho Witch Puppetmaster), accepts this behavior in her two daughers. My father-in-law (The Spineless Jellyfish) is just scared to death of the Psycho Witch Puppetmaster and does nothing, even though he agrees with my wife’s position.
<whew>
Now, I won’t go into the complete details of why we are where we are. But I will give some background. The Bitch has lived off of her parents for 35 years (this includes her husband, and two kids) to this day. This includes a purchased home when they were married, two new cars, and a list far too long to list. The Bitch was also receiving a nice sum from my wife (a cash contribution of about $500 a month is the estimate). The Bitch is the messiah to Psycho Witch Puppetmaster, and when my wife stopped donating to The Bitch Fund ™, the wheels began to come off of the happy family train. Now before you all start feeling badly for The Bitch, she has a master’s degree and chooses not to work. Her husband has a PhD., but has the motivation of a hibernating bear. These are highly educated people, both in their 30’s, who have all of their bills paid by my in-laws. Just a sanity check… does this sound NORMAL to ANYONE out there?
The Wacko has been upset for a year. Last year, her and her husband (who live in a million dollar plus mansion) gave us used Christmas gifts last year. That’s right, used. This was confirmed on the receipt we got from them when we pushed to take them back. We haven’t heard from her since, even though we gave all four of her children birthday gifts throughout the year.
She now has jumped on the bandwagon because for 40 years she has been the misfit, and is now finally getting attention from the Psycho Witch Puppetmaster because she (the PWP) supports this boycott.
So here we are. I need some advice. How do we get the message to the children that we are not upset with them and the reason they didn’t receive the gifts were because of sick, twisted mothers?
If you got this far, thank you for reading this long diatribe.
SFP