MIL still doesn’t understand that her daughter and I are friends and tell each other the shit she says about us

I DO NOT WANT ANY ADVICE

She’s an old, southern, Baptist, pearl-clutching elder. Shes kind and smiles and does all the right things to your face, then runs to her daughters, her sisters, her cousins, etc and tells them allllll the offenses we’ve done.

Recently she was in my area as her oldest son was in the hospital with severe pneumonia, like on the brink of death, and was staying with him. He got better but she missed my nieces birthday party. She had to travel through my town to get to my SIL house an hour or so away from us.

Since she was in the area, I told DH to invite her out for an early dinner with us since she hasn’t seen our kids in a few months, but we told her it was totally optional since we were seeing her in a few weeks. This is relevant, but we come from a family of “respect your elders” nonsense but she gets truly angry if we offer to pay for her meal, so we’ve stopped doing it. I think she sees it as us thinking she needs handouts or something? Idk, but we don’t offer anymore since I’m sick of the argument for being kind, so we split the tickets and let her pay for herself

We get to our regular restaurant right by our house and my normal meal is out of stock, nbd, and so I order a very similar item but it comes in a larger portion. I order us two appetizers for us to munch on while we wait so the kids can devour one and we can eat another.

Towards the end of the meal, my child who is still learning how to potty has a small accident. I take him to get cleaned and my husband grabs the spare outfit in the car. While we’re gone, MIL pays for all of it. We say our thank-yous and tell her to have a safe trip to SILs house and thank her for meeting up and thank her for the meal

Well she drives straight to my SILs house and gossips about the AUDACITY of us making her go out of her way for a fancy meal (entrees here range from $10-$25), order a ton of extras, and then ME order the most expensive thing on the menu (it was not, but even if it was I was planning on paying for it) and then forcing her to pay for it. She tells her how I am the mooch and rude and using my husband for his money (we’re both middle school teachers with multiple kids in daycare…. And my stipend I get for coaching is more than his lol so what money does he have)

SIL obviously immediately shut that down, told her she’s the one that always offers to pay and throws a fit if anyone else does it, and how this is our normal place we go and so it’s probably my usual entree, and then SIL called me later to tell me everything 🙄🙄🙄

Before I knew she was talking shit she lost a bank envelope with $4k in it and I personally went into that restaurant after the kids were asleep to look for it and watch the cameras with the manager who is a friend because I was worried about her missing it (it ended up being in her purse)

Idk, I don’t need advice, I just want to share the AUDACITY