My father-in-law Richard has lived with us for years, and if there\u2019s one thing he\u2019s never lacked, it\u2019s opinions. He likes things his way and rarely asks before acting. Lately, he\u2019d become obsessed with the idea of having a swimming pool. He complained that he was bored while my husband and I were at work and insisted a pool would give him something to do and a reason to invite friends over. I told him, calmly and repeatedly, that our backyard was too small and that I had spent years caring for my lawn and flower garden. That garden wasn\u2019t just decoration \u2014 it was my escape, my pride, and something I\u2019d built with patience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One weekend, my husband and I went to visit my parents. When we came back, I genuinely thought I was in the wrong house. Where my flowers once bloomed, there was a massive pit in the ground. Piles of dirt were everywhere, and the garden I loved was completely gone. Richard stood there, smiling like a child showing off a new toy. \u201cI started the pool for you,\u201d he said smugly. \u201cYou\u2019re welcome.\u201d I was shaking with anger, but I swallowed it. I didn\u2019t want to start a family war, even though my heart was breaking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My father-in-law Richard has lived with us for years, and if there\u2019s one thing he\u2019s never lacked, it\u2019s opinions. He likes things his way and rarely asks… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":179,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23932,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23929\/revisions\/23932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}