This guy has some strange obsessions and I feel bad that she takes the brunt of his frustrations when things aren’t perfect. Here are a few examples:

(1) Any time her husband wants to heat up some leftovers (which she made, of course) he demands she tell him the precise number of seconds to microwave it for. If she says anything like “I’m not entirely sure” or “just try 30 seconds and see how it is” he flies into a rage.

My wife & I were visiting them one weekend and he asked about how long to cook some leftovers we had the day before. When my sister nervously said she wasn’t sure, he flew off the handle and completely berated her: “What do you mean you don't know? You just took it out of the microwave a minute ago when I was in the other room and you obviously have some feedback to provide as to how long you put yours in for and if it was too long or too short! Now I have to heat my food up with no advantage of getting a perfectly heated plate of food. Thanks for nothing!”

The next day, we get home from Church and this guy goes straight to the fridge. He pulls out a chocolate chip cookie that my sister got while shopping with my wife during their Saturday Costco trip. My wife and I just looked at each other as he hurriedly takes a bite and says “Yuck! This is nasty when it’s cold. Why would anyone put these in the fridge to begin with?” He then throws it in the microwave and abruptly asks my sister how long to microwave it for. “Here we go again” I think to myself and look at my wife. The tension was palpable as my sister tries to think exactly how long to microwave the cookie for. He impatiently says “forget it”, puts it in for 11 seconds, stops it, touches the cookie, then puts it in for another 11 seconds. “Perfect!” he condescendingly sneers in the direction of my sister.

My sister then decides to heat up one of the cookies for herself. She hits the “Add 30 Seconds” button (which led to some incoherent grumbling by my BIL) and pulls the cookie out with a few seconds to spare, not wanting the timer to go off and wake up their baby she had just put down for a post-Church nap. Apparently, this was all wrong in BIL’s mind. He goes off again about how no one should ever use the “Add 30 Seconds” button and, even worse, she didn’t even clear out the remaining time on the microwave! As the baby started stirring, my wife and I apologetically told them that it was time to go and took off ASAP. That’s just one example of a pretty unnerving weekend.

(2) My sister has one of those names that sounds similar to another name and people often get them confused (think Laurie and Laura). Apparently this drives BIL bonkers as he is constantly calling my sister by the wrong name. Rather than figure it out (not sure why it’s that difficult for him) he just points and calls her “You” most of the time.

(3) Another odd quirk of this guy is his obsession with extremely tight Wrangler jeans. He has to have around 100 pairs of them – some that he’s never worn but just hangs up in random places around the house next to Brett Favre posters. I tried to ask him about it once and he just glared at my sister with a crazy look. She quickly changed the subject to something else and we moved on. Maybe the pants are cutting off some blood flow to his brain. Very bizarre.