We have a beautiful old Victorian house with creaky floorboards and a badly fitted wooden front door. The door expands in wet and hot conditions, making it difficult to open and lock. In the winter, it provides very little protection from the windy conditions outside. Let’s just put it this way: when people come over, they rarely take off their coats.
After endless purchases of various sealants and draught excluders, I found a solution in a chat forum. It required very few changes, and it meant we could keep my lovely door. Canadian curtains. Then I saw the price! Fuck.
We had a trip planned to India and it was coming up. Surely, we could just buy the material and get them sewn there for cheaper? We were traveling for a family wedding (husband’s side), I thought I’d run the idea past my mother-in-law (MIL). When I approached her about it, she looked at me as if I had just asked her to finger me. She reminded me that we were only going out with her for five days. Curtain shopping wouldn’t be possible with all the wedding stuff going on. Fine. I mean, I didn’t know how curtain shops worked in India—maybe what I was suggesting really was impossible.
So, we went to India. The first two days were full of wedding fever—it was fun. There were loads of people staying at the house, so we got moved from room to room every night. One night, I was separated from my husband and paired up with my MIL. My son, who was six at the time, wanted to be with me, so he joined us. The days in India were mild, but the nights were freezing—this wedding was in December, in Punjab. My husband’s aunt gave us four blankets for the three of us. My MIL promptly jumped into bed, taking three of them. That left me with just one to share with my son.
As we lay there trying to warm up, I told her I was cold. Her response? I’m cold too! I doubled the blanket and covered my son. I rummaged through my suitcase and found a shawl to use as my cover. We were on a kingsize bed, she told my son he could come closer to her if he was cold. He told her he wanted to sleep next to his mummy. She slept. My son slept. Meanwhile, I rubbed my feet and hands together, trying to generate some heat. I even tried to steal some of my son’s body heat. In the morning, I told my husband exactly how I had slept. His response? We had loads of blankets in our room… Oh, thanks.
The next day, my MIL told me she was going shopping, and I was expected to go with her. We got to a market place, through som alleyways and came to a curtain shop. I am so dumb nothing clicked yet. she paused and started fumbling around in her bag, my SIL and her started muttering to each other. Then she pulled out a sheet of paper. On it she had the window measurement for for EVERY window in her house. She also had measurements for the front and back door. She was there to get all her curtains sewn.
I hadn’t even bothered measuring my front door.
We stayed there for seven hours. She selected material for every single room. For the first ten minutes, they pretended to care about my opinion. They even asked me to select some material too. I chose an earthy paisley design. Both my MIL and sister-in-law looked as though they had thrown up in their mouths a little. After that, they completely disregarded my existence. I just hid amongst the realms and realms of fabric, pretending I was in an Indian film. Running in and out of them and then eventually just lying down between the reels of fabric.
They never even acknowledged me, even when they were ordering in lunch. Instead, they were deeply engrossed in a discussion about pelmets, pleating, and tiebacks. I couldn’t even leave. I just had to suck it up. When we finally returned to the house, I asked my husband if he knew where I had been for the last eight hours. When I said “curtain shopping,” he didn’t even flinch. It’s like he was just wondering why i would expect anything else.
And the absolute bastard part of it all? Because of suitcase space and luggage allowances. My MIL insisted we take back HALF of her curtains. The curtain shop were kind enough to deliver the curtains to the house in time for our flight home.
So not only had she fucked me, but she also shit a little in my mouth.
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