Category Archives: Mom in Law

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law

The End of the World has come! …again

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I just wrote few weeks ago about the awesome year of 2014. It was really an unbelievable good year even with my mother-in-law staying with us for three months during spring time. Now I hoped that 2015 might be an even better year but no, it won’t be better because for one simple reason: My crazy Chinese mother-in-law is coming AGAIN for three months to stay with us starting April.

 

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What happens with me?

How did it come to this? Currently I am working from early morning till late afternoon and my wife is in the morning in her German language class. Little Nathan is staying in the morning with my parents. Everything seems good and well however this will change in the beginning of May. My parents will go then to Finland to enjoy their cottage by the lake for 4 whole months. So what will happen with Nathancuty?

 

I tried to sign him up for two kindergartens already but he is on the waiting list there, place 270 or something like that. Germany has too few kindergartens resulting that there are huge waiting lists and often also requirements the child has to fulfil in order to get into one. As we were not really fond of leaving Nathan alone for 5 hours a day  (he is already a destructive demon with us there so who knows what he will do without us, unleashed…). The only solution we could come up with was to invite MIL once again to check on Nathan for three months till my wife’s language course is over.

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My fear is that the kitchen will look like the lower one after MIL is done…

 

Right now I am really terrified about the prospect of having her over once again for a quarter year. But it is not about me and how I might handle those three months, it is about all the crazy Chinese things she might do to Nathan, it is about destroying our new apartment and the fear she might cook my new pets. The question I am asking myself and also my wife now is how to prevent any damages to Nathan, apartment and my pets. The only thing we came up so far is to give her some food, a sleeping bag and drop her off at the outlet center but that is not a solution for everyday as she still has to take care of Nathan during the week.

As you can see, hard times are awaiting me and I only have three months to prepare myself mentally for this. I am just hoping that we will figure something out until then. But one thing eased my mind already a lot: Granny won’t be joining MIL for three months. Now that would have been utterly devastating for me. Three months of the combined craziness of MIL and Granny!!

 

Do you have any tips or solutions for my upcoming three month nightmare?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts.

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

 

Crazy Family, Mom in Law

Nothing is safe from my Mother-in-law

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The blog post by Jennifer on A Broad Abroad writing how her dear mother-in-law murdered the microwave inspired me to write about all the things my in-laws have successfully destroyed so far. At first I could only think of a couple of things however as I delved into my memories I came up with more and more sad stories.

I don’t know how my in-laws are doing this but somehow they are able to brake something on a weekly basis. They are not clumsy or something like that (Well, MIL is!) but disaster seems to follow them. FIL is still a novice compared to MIL though even though he has already a destruction value counter going into the few hundred Euros.

The problem in this whole thing is that there are so many little things which broke already that I will just focus on the situations which are basically burned into my memory and only done by MIL.

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My wife surrounded by pure evil: Aunty, Granny and her Mom

 

 

The time MIL broke our toaster. During her three months stay last spring she broke few things. First thing which gave up on us was our beloved toaster. No, the electronic parts didn’t break nor did MIL throw it down. It is a bit more weird than that. The toaster had this function to warm up bread on top of it so when you wanted to use it you had to push a button and a bread holder came up. Whatever MIL did to the toaster it ended up that there was no more warming up function has the button was hanging loosely around and the bread holder was suddenly missing!

 

The time MIL broke the towel holder in the bathroom. We had next to the sink two metal towel holders attached to the wall. They were pretty stable but I noticed when my in-laws were with us two years ago that they became more and more loose. Then when MIL was last year with us suddenly both arms detached themselves from the wall one by one within few days. My guess is that both of my in-laws were using the towel holders to lean on or they were putting some random heavy things on them.

 

The time MIL broke the seatbelt in our new car. Last Spring MIL somehow managed to entangle the seatbelt in the fond of the car where she was always sitting. Later the seatbelt gave up entirely and did not even roll into its normal position after using. Both my wife and I believe that MIL was actually rather happy about it as she hates to use seatbelts. Most of the times she did the “fake” buckling up by just holding the seatbelt around her body so it looked that she was using the belt the proper way…Really wonder why so many Chinese are kind of allergic to safety measurements in daily life and come up with all kinds of ways to not use them.

 

The time  MIL broke a decorative purse from a not so cheap brand. The purse thingy belonged to my wife and she got it from her work. When crazy mother-in-law was with us she tried to open it. Mind you, it was a decorative item, not meant to be used at all due to its delicate structure. As you can guess MIL had suddenly two parts of the purse in her hands and blamed the poor quality.

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Poor dogs have been corrupted already by MIL

 

You know what the best thing about this all is? MIL’s denial! Some time after she stayed with us last year my wife was asking her mother how she felt about breaking so many things. The answer was the standard MIL answer I had heard so often before “Something broke? I didn’t breake anything, ever”…

When my in-laws are alone at home and MIL is breaking something it is usually FILs fault. “Why was this vase standing there, why have you moved it there? No wonder I got against it and it fell down!”, the vase in question had been standing at the same spot for the past few years.

 

P.S. mom-in-law did not break the room from the featured image, at least that I did on my own…

 

Do you have a clumsy person in the family, or even a dear mother-in-law who brings sometimes disaster into the household?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts.

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

 

Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law

The Good and the Disturbing

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Today is the continuation of last weeks article. Back then something good and something bad happened. First of all the good thing was that I got a job and the bad thing was that the stupid Internet technician failed to arrive and thus delaying our moving date.

What else should I write about today other than the internet technician. This nice man finally managed to arrive yesterday to set up our internet connection and with it we should be able to move in Soon™. What we did not think about when it comes to our internet connection is that all around the phone line is not a single power outlet for the wi-fi router! Just who designs such things? Really, something like that is driving me crazy and forces me to doWP_20141119_13_52_57_Pro[1] stupid things like drilling a hole into a wall to pull a cable through just to realize when I am nearly through the wall that there is a metal support and the drill won’t go any further…indeed, now we have an ugly hole in the wall which is leading into nowhere.

As you can see I have some mixed feelings when it comes to my families internet luck but yesterday something good happened as well as I signed the job contract. However there is a little issue as every time someone asks me what I do in my job the stabdard answer is ‘I don’t know’. I really have no clue at all what I will do and furthermore the job title is not helping me any further as I am supposedly in the sales management even though I do nothing sales related, crazy & weird world.

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Off Topic: My wife assembled this little chairs

Missing the Crazy Chinese Family part in the article? Do not fear as my mother-in-law is so gracious in providing once again some odd and disturbing things. The odd part is about our TV. I fulfilled my dream and bought a nice 55″ TV which I got for nearly half price (I just search and search and search some more for products I am interested in until I find a real bargain). It is even not too big for a living room as we have plenty of space with about 3.5m between sofa and TV, it actually appears to be perhaps too small…BUT there is MIL. Of course my wife showed via Weixin/ WeChat our living room and MIL got a glimpse on that TV. ‘Too big’, ‘No good for you‘ and ‘It is too close to your sofa, your eyes will get bad’. Normally those would be reasonable concerns but in this case they are so, how to say it, so MIL. My in-laws have a 65″ TV hanging about 1.50m away from their sofa but that seems fine. Apparently MIL didn’t notice this until her daughter mentioned what monstrosity they have hanging on their own wall. What is MIL’s reaction to this? Of course, its FIL’s fault! Whenever something bad happens or something which might look bad on her it is always her husbands fault, even when he is not anywhere close by or even knows what is going on.

You just want to hear the disturbing thing, I know it. Well the thing is that MIL is kind of threatening us. Okay, not threatening us in a way you might imagine but it is dangerous enough for me. She is probably coming next year again to visit us but she does not want to eating8take her husband with, no no, she wants to take her mother with. Grandma might be a nice old lady but her with MIL combined is an explosive mixture, not to mention when my wife is coming into the battlefield. When those three are together it will be war and that war would be in our new apartment, no thanks. I just have to figure out how to escape this life threatening situation when those two people really do come to Germany to visit us! Perhaps I should just go to China and visit father-in-law, nothing crazy there at least except the cleaning.

p.s. Changed some parts as the TV’s were too huge with 55 and 65 feet. Hope it is correct now :p