I MPSIMS Myself for Family Drama (or How the Heck Did I Get Into This One?)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, we’re the poor relations. Usually, it doesn’t bother me, except when it does. About a year and a half ago, my brother in law (who’s not at all a poor relation) told my husband (his brother) that he wanted to get rid of the television they have in the basement and did we want it? Did we, heck! Of course! So it’s been a year and a half of “next week” or “next month” or “yeah, whenever you want, come and get it” only it doesn’t ever work out with his schedule to actually go get it. Not that we’re constantly badgering them or anything - this comes up about every three months when we’re over there for some family dinner or something.

At Christmastime, we were half expecting the television to morph into our Christmas gift, which would have been great. Instead we got a check - a substantial one by our standards, and not much by the brother’s. But enough for a decent LCD flatscreen at Clearance prices. So my husband and I decided just to get our own television like grown-ups. As part of this process, he asked his brother some technical question about LCD vs. plasma, and his brother figures out we’re planning on buying a TV with the check. Don’t do that, he says, just come get the one in the basement. Any time we want it, it’s ours. Except next week won’t work, he’s going to be out of town. :rolleyes: But next Tuesday’s great.

Today, husband tries to confirm that tomorrow (which is now next Tuesday) will work, and his brother tells him that the wife might want it for a Superbowl party, but after that would be fine.

I’m so *done *with this whole nonsense, and I tell husband forget it, let’s just get one ourselves already! But this isn’t even the drama of which I speak…

Apparently the brother’s wife is mad at me because when we went to their home for Christmas and her sisters weren’t there at the same time we were, I brought their (the sister’s) intended gifts home with me instead of leaving them there where they could open them later. In effect, I did a “take-back”, although I have no idea if the sisters knew there was something there for them at one point or not. If they did know, it was because she (my sister-in-law) told them, not me.

There are a few reasons I did that. One, only one of the sisters and I have ever exchanged gifts in the past, but I felt weird giving one of them a gift and not the other two, so I planned enough for everybody. But when none of them were there, it felt weird to leave gifts for people I don’t normally exchange gifts with, you know? But the deeper reason is that they were homemade necklaces. Cute, and I worked hard on them, but they’re, objectively speaking, cheap little crappy things made mostly of glass and plastic by a beginning beader (me). The kind of thing you might like if you were touched by the creativity and thoughtfulness of the person handing it to you, but absent any emotional connection, kind of crappy shit. I was embarrassed to leave them to be opened without me there to explain the homemadeness of them.

So here I am, definitely feeling like the poor relation in an Austen novel. I don’t know how to fix this. Her immediate anger seems to be around this gift thing, but I strongly suspect it’s part of a larger issue which the television craziness may be a symptom of. Any advice?

2

No advice–but a touch of sympathy. I knit a bunch of “Christmas Lights” in sparkly red and glow-in-the-dark white (really! they glow in the dark). I wrapped up four of them and gave them to my brother, his wife and their girls. I wrapped up another set for my parents and uncle but ended up deciding to give them to my sister-in-law’s parents–except that due to a minor miscommunication, my sister-in-law thought they were for her rather than her parents. So I ended up feeling silly and resentful, and needing to knit up a few more ornaments so that I’d have some to share with my folks.

Well, maybe I lied about the no advice thing–call the person you upset by your “takeback” and tell her what you told us, mostly. Apologize for upsetting her, and tell her that you were uncertain over whether to give a gift or not and frightened that your enthusiasm for your beadwork would not by shared by the intended recipients. And promise yourself not to let yourself end up in this position again.

And buy your own tv like a grown-up.

3

Thanks, Eureka, you’re right. I called and left a message apologizing for “putting her in a hard position” and “not communicating about this better” and explained that they were just some silly little necklaces that I made, but which were objectively junk and I felt weird leaving them there to be opened in my absence. I asked her to call me back so we could talk about it because I really care about her and I’m really sorry… We’ll see how it goes.

And I suspect this tv thing is either because brother-in-law offered it to us without asking her first and she doesn’t want to get rid of it or because she feels really conflicted and embarrassed about the disparity of our income levels and is uncomfortable whenever he helps us out financially or gives expensive gifts. So we’re just going to get our own television, and if he still gets rid of his, he can find someone else to take it.