I would welcome any and all comments on this scenario. My wife recently had her 48th birthday and her favorite bakery was closed for vacation that weekend. The following weekend the bakery reopened and we bought a cake and blew out the candles. Last night we had dinner and I commented that it would be nice to have a piece of the cake from that bakery. Today my mother in law brought over a birthday cake from the same bakery (she was not there for the first one). I casually commented that we had a birthday cake the week before. My wife found the casual comment "stupid and insensitive" and it ruined our weekend. Am I crazy or is she? Thanks.

Probably not, but on first glance it seems like you appear to feel like your MIL was trying to "one up you" and your wife felt like her Mom was looking out for her - your wife probably snapped as if you had made the comment towards her. Women (I am one!) tend to apply emotions to just about everything and in this case it might be an easy fix. Is it possible to make nice with MIL - maybe a comment like, "I know I didn't mention it before, but when you brought that cake over, I had just been thinking that another one would have been great" or "I was just surprised that you knew about our conversation last night" or "Thanks for thinking of my wife - she loves that cake"

Maybe take the same approach with your wife - that you were surprised, etc. and that you didn't mean anything negative towards MIL or wife?

Sounds like a lot of assumptions happened in this "ladder of inference" - check that out online - I just started studying that one in my online college course....:)

Krista