Finally I found some time again to write a quick blog post. This is actually one I had planned for the last weekend but the whole family was ill thanks to the flu Nathan had brough from kindergarten. Due to this I was more concerned in somehow surviving and taking care of the family (as I was still the healthiest here!).
I do not know why and how but my dear mother-in-law is a constant provider of weird stories to share here. Sometimes I actually think that she is doing this all on purpose but in the end she is just so messed up somehow. Over the years I have shared so many confusing moments about her here in the blog and then I think “It can’t get any worse, she must have reached her limit” and then few days later she comes yet again with another even crazier story. I wrote before that she lives in some “own world” as she bends the truth/ reality to her own liking. She has never done anything wrong and in case something happens it was first of all her husband doing something wrong or some random person on the street!
This here is now another story about her not doing anything wrong at all as it was all done my another person. When the whole flu thing started for us she contacted us with a very disturbing message:
20.000 RMB (~3200USD) had vanished from our account!
That is certainly no small sum to just vanish from an account so my wife forced her mother to go the bank and get some information. The bank couldn’t help at all as the only information they had was that the money had been transferred around 1pm and went to some account in Guangzhou. Immediately MIL believed that something went wrong when she wanted to book a hotel room for her friend on her phone. She thought so as she had no clue how to book a room and pay so she just hit random buttons on the app till something somehow happened. However my wife checked upon it and said “No way, your apps are all linked to my Alipay and nothing has been transferred” and “Why on earth would you try to book a room for your friend??”. Thing is that her friend had no clue herself how to book online so she asked less competent MIL to manage it somehow.
Anyhow by now MIL even went to police station but they couldn’t help her either as it had to be clear that someone else transferred the money and MIL was still sure that she had done something wrong on that booking app. By now my wife suspected even that MIL ended up in some scam as she often used that credit card in small furniture stores for buying stuff for the new apartment. You know the kind of swiping the card and copying all information on it…happened to several of our friends in the past years. Of course MIL denied that and said that she never ever used that card for furniture (though we have proof…).
Hours passed by with MIL and my wife getting more and more concerned about the money till Uncle called MIL and said that the money had arrived. Wait…what? Oh yes, MIL remembered then that she had transferred 20.000RMB to her brother around 1pm and she was even at the bank to do that transaction but then totally forgot about it. We had 6 hours of pure madness because that crazy woman had forgotten that she went herself to the bank and transferred exactly 20.000RMB. I mean that is so easy to forget right? In the end she blamed FIL for talking to her after her being at the bank and because of that she forgot about it so the only one to blame would be him! (Even though he was at work and didn’t call her the whole day, my wife confirmed that later the same day).
No, my dear Chinese mother-in-law has no dementia or anything similar, we had her actually tested. Father-in-law said that she was that way from the beginning ever since he knew her from school. This makes me wonder how she could even graduate back in the day.
Have you ever forgotten something like that or know somebody who tends to forget important things non-stop?
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Yes, you’re right — just when you think MIL can’t top herself, she does. And then you have even more manufactured stress! So frustrating.
Sometimes I really do believe she is doing it on purpose when she sees that we don’t have enough stress 😅
You had me cracking up reading this blog. Your MIL is quite a character. Indeed there are some people like that which is not a bad thing. Such a fun character. Ha…ha…ha.. 🙂 🙂 🙂
I have no issue usually with such people as it does happen from time to time…but MIL is just such an extreme case that it is absurd at times
She certainly has a flare for the dramatic. Her first response is that the money has “vanished.” It must be hard to solve her problems from a distance… and when everyone is sick with the flu.
The problems she causes are always very annoying as it is most times just so absurd. The other day we had another discussion with her but that is for another blog post, nothing as dramatic as with the money but it shows just that she lives really in her own world
I seriously thought she might have dementia or something until I read the end.. she is seriously mind-boggling. Makes me wonder how your FIL and your wife while she was living in China dealt with her?
Well FIL tries to be away the whole day busy at work or playing table tennis and my wife was still a student when living there so she left early morn8ng and came back at night. However she always told me what a nightmare it was with her mother, especially as she played tons of mahjong back then and always lost – really always, never won a single game in a timeframe of at least ten years
You know… what I find the most surprising is that no one (i.e. FIL, your wife or you) has killed her yet in a fit of rage after discovering another one of her “situations”… xD
I am myself surprised that she is still alive. My wife always fears that an angry waiter will pour boiling oil on her after shouting at her …
LOL that is a big sum of money and it seems only MIL can forget that she dealt with it. Obviously you would get some kind of receipt for that transaction but nooo goes your MIL XD
I’m not the kind to forget about things like money, or even forgetting about anything. I always check and double-check and people around me know I am planner – I will have it. Until the other day I realised at work misplaced my wallet and completely freaked out…turns out it was in my room on the carpet at home near the rubbish bin… Thankfully I keep my bank ATM card separate and public transport card separate from my wallet so I was able to go about my day as per usual – just with no ID and I could have been anyone.
Sometimes I make arrangements with friends to catch up and on the day they say they forgot to bring themselves. Sometimes this is true…other times you just don’t really know lol 😛
MIL is really a hopeless case as the money thing showed.
I also have certain cards at other places on me than the wallet such as the car papers and one credit card.
Thus far I barely had any problems when planning something with friends and them not showing up at all or being late. Happened perhaps a couple of time. BUT with my wife’s friends (all being Chinese) This is just too common. These days I joke already that we actually don’t have to prepare at all as they won’t show up 😂
LOL don’t even have to prepare as they won’t show up 😂 It makes me wonder why organise in the first place because it is a waste of time and who cares.
Yeah it is sometimes really ridiculous and in case they do show up it several hours later
That’s hilarious! I actually have a similar story with my mom (who I’m guessing is pretty similar to your MIL in a lot of ways). My dad is the on who handles all of the finances in the family. She’s pretty clueless about all that stuff. She went to the back to cash a check, and the bank teller was telling her that they didn’t have a savings account and that she should open one. My dad has his money in many different banks and investments and has everything handled in that regard. So my mom opens a savings account, only under her own name, and agrees to transfer $20,000 into it. She doesn’t realize what exactly she has agreed to do. My dad goes into his account, sees the money missing, and has no idea what has happened. My mom doesn’t really know what happened either. My dad called me to ask if I might know anything. In the end, he was able to figure it out, and my mom felt pretty bad about getting him so worried. Chinese moms are always keeping us on our toes.
Yeah they are a bit similar but I have the feeling that my mother in law is times ten worse in everything! Both my in laws manage their money on their own/ father in law tries to hide money from his wife as she just spends it all on useless junk and expensive clothes ( each time she buys expensive clothes like nearly 1000 dollar dress or something like that she says that she only buys that like once every ten years – thus far I heard that 8 times and I know her for 8 years…come to think about that they only have few thousand dollar each year with income and pension you can see how she wastes money!)
I have been waiting for another MIL story – this one is great – painful for you/your wife but funny to read.
There is just so much happening with my mother in law that I should have tons to write all the time. However it happens too often that something happens and I think about writing the story but just days later I have forgotten about it. Reason for this is that many things happening these days are just normal behavior of her so it does not stick well enough in my memories whileas those happenings would be extraordinary for other people