why is it always so damned complicated?

seriously...

any dealings i've ever had with the inlaws have always resulted in some clusterfuck because none of them can possibly sit back and let people do as they please without injecting their wisdom into the matter.

as mentioned earlier, we had asked the other sil if we could take her kids to the stampede for the day.  we never heard anything until yesterday when the other sil stopped in at the shop to see ch and told him that her mom told her that her brother said we're taking the kids.  (see?  it's already a clusterfuck in just the telling of the story, for fuckssake!!) 

so it's obvious there are a few issues going on here, the first being communication.  it's really not that hard for someone to return an email and say "yes", "no'', or "go fuck yourself".  i think it takes all of 2 minutes and instead of leaving ch and i hanging and angry she was perhaps being a passive aggressive twat, she could very well have emailed us and let us know the answer.  we're adults and big kids now: we can take a  no.  it's possible.

so then of course now the entire family is involved in this 5 hour day, despite it just being ch and i and the kids.  now the fil and mil are involved and to this hour, i think ch has talked to the mil at least 2 times today about this.  the other sil who isnt remotely involved in anything has talked to us at least 2 or three times now about this bullshit. 

it was all shit i was hoping to avoid.  if the stupid bil and his wife would have just talked to us instead of yammering to their mom and dad about it, i think this whole day would have been a little less complicated.

and now as it stands, ch wants his sil to look after our dogs so we can make this day possible.  i have this feeling that she will suddenly need to be in yyc tues/wed and wont be able to take the dogs, despite telling him earlier that she is returning to yxh monday. 

ch also thought that his mom might be around wed and "why dont we just bring her along with us to the stampede?"  well, FFS, if that is the case (which fortunately it isnt), i'd just stay home.  i have expressed to him more than once now that it would be nice to see the kids without someone else interfering, whether it's the mil, fil, or the other fucking sil...it would be nice to just go and do and be with them and spoil them rotten without someone there taking notes to suggest we're not doing it right.  because if there's anything the inlaws are good at, it's fucking taking notes and criticising and yammering about it endlessly.

really, the day should be a pleasant one.  ch, me, the kids...i think it could go well.  i'm excited.  but at this point, i really feel that i dont need the sil tagging along (which is a possibility, as she cant bear to not know all the details) or the mil or fil interfering in some manner.  and it wouldnt end there either: we'll never hear the end of how we took them there and how "next year" it will be the sil's turn to do that and since we did it this year, we've somehow started some invisible tradeoff of aunt/uncle time, despite not asking her to participate.

like i said, anything involving these assholes is completely complicated and it gives me a migrane thinking about it.