WARNING! Rant ahead...get out while you can...

For those of you that DO have children, did you wonder what kind of parent you would turn out to be? Do you think you succeeded? Do you think your children reflect the values that you wanted to and continue to teach them? Did you want to raise your children like your parents raised you?

And for those of you that do NOT have children, do you ever wonder what kind of parent you'll be? Do you have a plan? Do you know certain things that you absolutely want to instill in your children and things that are not as important? Do you think you'll be successful? Do you want to raise your children the way your parents raised you?

I'm not asking these questions because I'm planning to have children. Well, not yet, in the future perhaps but not yet. I'm asking these questions for a couple of reasons. One is an "incident" that happened with my MIL last week, well, more like reoccurring behavior of my mother in law, and the other is kind of an inspiration from reading this week's Mother's Day themed Post Secrets.

I will preface the next paragraph by saying that I don't in any way think that my parents or my upbringing was perfect and of course anything different than the way we know them is considered "wrong". I also want to say that I truly love my mother in law. I think she is a wonderful woman and I don't know if I could have picked a better MIL or family to marry into.

With that said, she is a very calculated, manipulative woman. But in a very sweet, smile in your face, stab you in the back kind of way...(I'm sure the hubby's gonna love this post). Anyway, the MIL is the mother of 3 boys. She has always been the matriarch. She has always been the ONLY woman in the house, and she's used to her boys doing whatever she wants, whenever she wants. And when she doesn't, she'll make you feel guilt you almost didn't think you were capable of feeling and often she'll throw in a "punishment" to go along with it. As you can imagine this must have made it almost impossible to say no to her growing up.

Well, as adults her children STILL don't say no to her and when they do the consequences are so childish and fucked up that you almost want to puke. Now, I won't say I didn't grow up with some guilt. First of all I'm Catholic, that should speak for itself. Second, I come from a divorced family and I feel bad when I don't spend time with or do things for my parents/families. I also put this guilt on myself, they don't try to make me feel bad as punishment.

Now ALL THIS just to get to the bottom line...My MIL decided to go away for Mother's Day. The thing is, she just expected everyone to drop everything with no warning and come with her. Well, hubby and I had a wedding to go to on Saturday night so traveling last weekend was not an option. This was unacceptable to her. She was not only pissed, making my husband guilty and in turn so pleasant to be around, but she threw in a couple of "punishments" for him. Things like taking a half day off work to drive to another town and help his family load things in their car and driving an hour away at 9 o'clock on Sunday evening to pick someone up for her. And believe me, I'm sure there's more to come and the hubby can not say no to any of it.

The problem is, this is how this woman operates. I don't know if I'll be able to handle incidents like this for years to come without one day losing it, confronting her and causing world war 3. She tends to not realize that her boys are grown up now and they have WIVES that unfortunately come first now. For as generous and loving as this woman is, she is also childish and vindictive.

Does anyone else have anyone like this in their lives? Are you like this? God, I hope I'm not coming off as a spoiled bitch. I can say it a million times but I really do love this woman as if she were my own blood relative - I think that's why I can see the good and the bad in her....There are a lot of things that I want to repeat when it comes to raising my own children like my husband and I were raised and with some very important values that our parents have taught us. But I know for sure that I will never make my children feel guilty for not doing things with me, having a different opinion than mine or punish them for having a life of their own as they become adults.