When we visited SpermLand a couple of weeks ago we spent most of our time with my ILs.  

BIL1 and his wife are in the process of adopting 9yo twin girls.  The girls have been in foster care for 2 years and have been in 9 homes in that period.  BIL1 and his family have been doing respite care for these girls when their foster parents need a break.  They had their permanency hearing recently and the permanency board voted unanimously to place the twins with my ILs permanently.  All of the officials involved commented that this is their first recollection of a unanimous recommendation. The adoption should be final in the Fall.

So, BIL1 and his family are doing well.  There is a little bit of tension though.  Their youngest BD (10) has decided that she does not want to share her room with the twins so .... the garage is being converted to a bedroom suite for their eldest (14) so that the twins can share a room and the other two can have their own rooms. Not anything horrible by any means.

BIL2, his wife and our 18mo old niece have finally moved out of MILs home into an apartment.  BIL2 has had some health issues.  Pancreatitis flare ups and mini strokes due to excessively high blood pressure. He is 38 and very young to be having these types of problems.  Unfortunately it is entirely his fault. He knows that he has to stay on his BP meds and comply with a specific diet to avoid these issues.... The claim is that the meds are too expensive and he just likes to eat what he likes to eat.  I am back in the mode of dreding caller ID showing a SpermLand area code when the phone rings.  I do not expect him to be with us for a whole lot longer.

Now for the real problem with BIL1.  For decades I have considered him to be a big good hearted teddy bear.  As it turns out... I was completely wrong.  In reality, apprarently he  is a manipulative asshole. While living with MIL he intimidated her in an effort to get her to move out of the master bedroom so he and his wife could have it.  He attempted to get her to turn her study into a babies room and he took FIL's ATV to his farm shop claiming he was going to fix it up and ended up tearing it apart and doing nothing with it.   I am struggling to reconcile my historical perspective on him with this new asshole persona.

Most shocking is that MIL was shocked when her friends and coworkers climbed her butt for considering complying with BIL2's manipulative bullshit.  For some reason she thinks that helping people includes giving up her own bedroom in her home for them to be comfortable.  Not no but hell no IMHO.  But... for now that is not an issue since BIL2 and his family have moved out.

Now for the criminal POS SIL.  She and her husband avoided the 4th close call foreclosure on their home about a 18mos ago when the bank accepted their 4th "Hale Mary" mortgage rescue plan.   FIL passed last June and gave my bride his list of who gets what of his personal effects.   The list included two valuable rifles that were to go to his two sons.  SIL and her DH had borrowed one of those rifles for a hunting trip before FIL passed and she is refusing to return the rifle until she sees the list.  My DW is hesitant to give her a copy of the list since she is not the recipient of any of FIL's personal effects.  I am campaigning to beat the shit out of SIL with a rolled copy of the list with a letter from our attorney threatening civil and criminal legal actin if she does not immediately return FIL's property and money she stole from him before he passed.

In various discussions while we were in SpermLand several family members told us of SIL's continued guilt inducing bullshit asking for money or people cosign loans for her for anything from their "dream truck" to a new roof.  Fortunately, so far, no one has fallen for her crap .... this time.    DW and I had a day with SIL while we were there.  I made sure to give them significant time for 1:1 discussions during that day but... as usual.... SIL did not have the balls to attempt to guilt my wife.  Since DW climbed her sister's ass for wanting to stop repaying their aunt for the ~$30K she and her husband have stolen or borrowed and not paid back a few years ago SIL has never brought up anything financial with my wife.  She gets close, beats around the bush, but has never actually asked.  We hope to keep it that way.

The current financial crisis for SIL and her husband is their roof.  The roof is trashed, leaks like a sieve, and will cost ~$6K for them to replace it if they do all of the work themselves.  They have put a week of vacation on their respective work calendars to do the work and that is rapidly approaching.  Not surprisingly SIL has failed to save the $6K needed to actually replace the roof and as usual she has not shared this fact with her husband.  She has ~$1000 saved and is on her usual whinging manipulative guilt quest to scam the money out of anyone she thinks there is even a remote chance of getting the money out of or getting to cosign a loan for her.

Have I ever mentioned that I detest this POS?  What irritates me the most is that she continues to break my DW's heart with her crook assed POS bullshit.  My wife won't even leave her purse anywhere SIL could access it anytime she is with that POS.  If I were one of my SIL's victims in the IL clan  I would have put her ass in jail long ago.  But no one will do it.  "Oh, we couldn't do that to her and her kids."  F that.  The only way she and her spawn will learn is if she is scrubbing toilets in the jail house and her kids see that her kind of crap is not a path they want to emulate.  Prison coveralls and rubber shower shoes are exactly what is needed to solve this problem.  IMHO of course.

Grrrrrr!

smh

End rant.... for now.