It remains cold here but the cold doesn't seem to bother Heidi much.  She likes to sit outside and roll in the snow.  Lucy on the other hand can't manage more than a minute or two once it get's below -10C.  She starts hopping from foot to foot, unwilling to put her feet down.  More than once I've had to put on shoes and go rescue her, especially once it hits -20C and lower.  The cat sits on the heat register on days like this, curled up in a ball, sleeping.

I'm working on another quilt already.  This one will be for my lap and I'll quilt it myself on my sewing machine because it will be much smaller than Katie's quilt.  This info is for Steve, longarming is the process by which a longarm sewing machine is used to sew together a quilt top, quilt batting and quilt backing into a finished quilt.  Katie's quilt was very large, 100" by 100" and there was no way I could quilt it on my machine at home.

It's really hard for me to just let go and stick fabrics together but I'm trying to let go, with some success.  This quilt will use up a lot of scrap fabric that's lying around.

I'm feeling really down this morning.  The drama with my mother in law continues.  I hate being in conflict with someone and I realized this morning that my mother in law doesn't actually like me;  I thought she did.  It's funny how patterns form.  The first time doesn't seem like much, the second time, a coincidence maybe, the third time a pattern starts to form.

When my father in law was still in hospital I bought him some Keurig cups for his room because he loves coffe and I thought it would be nice for him.  My mother in law got rid of all of them, gave them to the staff.  I don't have a problem with the nursing staff having the coffee but I bought them for my father in law, and she didn't even ask. I bought more coffee and she took it home for herself.  One day my father in law was upset (he has moderate dementia) because he had no money.  I gave him twenty bucks and it made him so happy to have some money in his pocket.  My mother in law took it away from him and did not return the money to me.

When he was moved to continuing care and she refused to bring in anything to make his room cozy, I brought in stuff from our home and bought a few things for him.  When they moved my father in law back to Wetaskiwin last week, a bunch of stuff was missing so we went and talked to her.  She told me that my father in law had thrown out the plant I gave him, which is fine.  The staff saved the pot (which was a beautiful pot of mine) and my mother in law told the staff to keep it, and yes she knew it was mine because I told her.

She had removed some models that my husband had made for his father and a couple of pieces of Delft blue pottery that I had brought in for him because they had windmills on them.  My mother in law said he would break them and couldn't have them.  Finally, after arguing with us, she gave us back the things she had taken out of his room.

We hung up more family photos in my father in law's room, old family photos from when he was a child.  I hung up a couple of landscape photos of mine.  When we were there, my father in law was happy and enjoyed having the photos hung up.  

The next day, my sister in law (she lives in BC and hasn't been here in awhile), texted my husband to let him know that my father in law was agitated because of the things we had hung up in his room.  I think what she meant to say is that my mother in law is agitated because she wants to control everything.  

My husband is hurt and angry, so is his brother.  Their mother has spent a lifetime of hurting them in a thousand small ways; now she is hurting a confused, vulnerable, old man who spent a lifetime working hard so that she could shop, and I think that has brought everything to a head for them.

I can feel the pain my husband is feeling and then this morning I realized that my mother in law doesn't like me.  It was kind of a wow, what the fuck have I ever done to you?  The answer to that would be, I was being myself.  I don't like to see vulnerable people hurt.  When my father in law was healthy and not confused, he could fight his own battles, and he did, but now he can't.  

I'll still continue to visit my father in law.  He's a sweet, funny old man with the mouth of a sailor, which I love.  He still has his sense of humour.  I won't be visiting my mother in law again.  I realize now how toxic she is and I don't need that in my life.