Now don’t get me wrong, a good portion of the time I see her, I want to kill my mother-in-law, but my husband is quick to point out that our relationship is more than just those times. We do share a lot in common and often appreciate that she can make me laugh. The ways she makes me laugh is usually because (1) she’s either completely misinterpreted something an average person would not, or (2)because she is doing something I cannot imagine most people would do in open public, or admit to doing in open public.
So there we were, sitting on the couch during one of her visits watching one of her all-time favorite shows, the Bachelorette. It was the finale and she was digging Reid, who was dropped the prior week, but she was convinced he would make it back to propose and win the girl. She had been at our house for about a week, figured out our DVR and managed to ‘catch up’ on all of her favorite shows during her visit. You see, I will date myself, but this was the summer that all TVs switched to digital. My mother-in-law was prepared (or at least she thought she was). No one was going to make her purchase regular TV if she had anything to do with it. Hell, she’d boycott watching TV (one of her few personal pleasures that she would not readily admit to) before she’d front some money for it.
I will digress and give some additional perspective: My mother-in-law will not pay for call waiting because it is 35 cents extra a month. She has the cheapest phone plan where you have a limited number of outgoing calls (check it out, you too can get a land line for about $15/month, you just have to beg for it) and does not have long distance on her phone because she purchases phone cards from 7-eleven that she gets for 3 cents a minute. She also tracks, in a notebook, the number of minutes she spends on each phone call, so she knows who she’s spending that long distance money on at a whopping 3 cents a minute (I can get into the 'Even Stevens' at another point in time). She has an answering machine to screen calls (why pay $1.15/month extra for the caller id?) and she will only accept an answering machine that uses tapes, so she can keep them (the hording is another matter saved for another time). She won’t get internet at home, because she can drive to the library and access her account for free for up to 30 minutes and then has even ‘borrowed’ (really stolen) library cards of other unbeknownst citizens to use their computer minutes while she is there if she needs more (‘They all have computers at home and shouldn’t have left their cards. Anyway, they’re free cards, they can get another one!’). So asking her to take advantage of a $99/month combo package is akin to asking her to slit her wrists and give up. Further, she won’t even pay for a stamp to mail in her bills, she takes them in, in person, to pay them. So here you are looking at going from a $15-20/month cost to $99(plus tax). Hey, if they want to sit in the dark all night so they can one day pay for one of their grandson’s pizza habit in college, go for it I say.
So the switch to digital TV arrives. Yes, they do have a TV that was manufactured after my husband’s birth, but I am not sure that it was a purchase made this decade. Further, she has thoroughly researched (by way of borrowing Consumer Reports from the library) all the digital boxes and has sent away for her coupons. Because they will only allow two per household, she determines the cheapest and most effective way to make the purchase and they have 2 boxes ready to go for the switch. Well the switch comes and goes, she can’t seem to instruct my father-in-law well enough to be able for him to get these boxes to work, so they are forgoing TV for the time being. Why doesn’t she return the boxes? Because she can’t get the money back for the coupon (just any additional costs she paid) and that’s blasphemy to essentially ‘give’ back the box to the store. Remember this is the same woman who sends her 70 year old husband to the roof to fix the Antenna when they don't get certain channels well enough with the rabit ears.
Anyway, I digress. We are sitting on the couch, and she has made a ‘bet’ with me that it’s Reid, and I have my money on Ed. When my mother-in-law thinks she has a sure thing, she is willing to put her money where her mouth is, BUT IS STILL CHEAP, so she usually puts a ‘burger’ on it (her version of a beer, I presume). I also presume that this burger, if she is buying, is from a McDonald’s Dollar menu. If she isn’t the one buying, she might be willing to take an upgrade. Well Oliver, our 90 pound 5 year old Weimaraner who thinks that he is a cat, snuggles up between us on the couch. My mother-in-law doesn’t really like dogs in the house and believes they are ‘for mousing,’(an Indiana term for 'what purpose a pet serves') so she is already not so happy he’s resting his back and hind quarters against her thigh, but he is a sweet dog and curled into a ball, so the accepts it. About an hour into the show he starts licking himself pretty good in the nether regions. He is a male, although he’s a eunuch and doesn’t have as much need or space to clean down there, he was managing quite fine. All of a sudden a potent odor comes from the space he was licking. He then climbs down and starts ‘cleaning’ a little better, even taking whatever he left behind on the leather couch (thank god we got the leather couch too as it is actually clean-able!). My mother-in-law, who is ‘smell sensitive’ and has a very difficult time managing to change her grandchildren’s diapers because she cannot stand the smell starts roaring with disgust, rolling back and forth on her seat on the couch(imagine, if you will a waddle whilst seated), trying to determine how important it is for her to get away from the dog verses having to give up her spot for her show. I simply explained to her that Oliver had probably chosen that time to depress is anal sacks and the smell (which was both potent and equally disgusting) was the result. She then decides to take my pillows to create a barricade between her and former ‘dog spot’ so she doesn’t have to move off the couch. I was quick to point out that the couch is clean-able; the pillows, not so much. So she gets up and what is revealed is Oliver had been using her as leverage for his anal sack depression onto the couch (which he did not leave, but cleaned up afterwards), but due to the night lighting and warm dog, it was difficult to see (or feel) until we were all off the couch. So she asks me again about the ‘anal sacks’ and what I was talking about. She had owned a dog on and off for most of her married life, and I assumed at one point it would’ve come up so I started explaining it to her: that sometimes vets do it them, some dogs do it to themselves or the owners will do it. During this time, while explaining to her the process, I had been busily finding cleansers and Febreeze to dull the stench. My mother-in-law is still on the couch with a hanky in one hand, covering her nose, and the other hand is waving in the air, attempting to move the smell away from her.
And she responds in her loud and ratchety voice, ‘What? Anal Sex? Who would do that to the dog?’ At this point, the chuckles I had over having to clean the stench has progressed to tears, laughing so hard I am about to wet my pants, hardly able to come up with a way to respond. She is staring at me, attempting the kind of laugh you have when you realize someone else thinks something is funny and you aren’t sure you got the joke. She continues that she still doesn’t understand what anal sex has to do with the smell. I almost have a scream it out, explaining I had said ‘anal SACKS,’ not ‘anal SEX.’ Realizing her own misintepretation, she joined me in my fit of hilarity, tears and all.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Unnecessary Objects
We arrived in Long Beach, California, thankfully by way of Oakland, to find that my in-laws were not yet at the airport. Carolee has not worked, ‘outside of the home,’ since my husband was born, approximately 32 years after our arrival that day. And despite having all that time on her hands, cannot manage to get anything done, or be on time. It was a typical sunny, Southern California day and they knew our arrival was impending, planned for a few months, and here we were, standing on the curb of what was once a small, private airport, with 4 pieces of luggage, a stroller, an infant seat and a three-month-old. This time was not the time I would have picked to be late, or to be late because I had been at a Thrift Store picking up unnecessary objects.
They arrived in the 1992 Olds, riding low, not because they had purposefully created it, but because they took ‘just enough’ care of the car to justify keeping it. I knew their caravan of car selections, and I guess I was relieved that this was the newest of the lot, but I don’t think I was completely prepared for the fact that there would probably not be enough room. Further, that afternoon we were set to visit with one of my husband’s friends from High School and his family that lived nearby in Long Beach. They were our friends who didn’t have parents that shopped at the Thrift Store or parents who drove cars that should have been sold for scrap 75,000 miles earlier.
As always, we were happy to see them, but between the stress of travelling with an infant, the waiting curbside for a solid 30 minutes and the concern that we would not fit in the car, I was peeved, or possibly and more appropriately, pissed off. I have never really, in my relationship with my husband, ever held my tongue with his mother. Perhaps part of it is that I know she gives me the same respect; perhaps part of me is the fact I can't often see her as my mother, or that I actually do.
Once they pull up, my mother-in-law waddles from her constant seat as the navigator and instructor in the car, and my father-in-law springs from the driver’s side, immediately offering his outstretched, bony arms for a warm hug, followed by a long look at our luggage. My mother-in-law is wearing elastic waist K-mart polyester pants, in her staple color of either khaki or black, circa 1980s time frame when she went from caring what she wore to caring what it cost to wear it. For what she doesn’t care about in her personal hygiene or clothing selections, she makes up for with the amount of jewelry she is wearing. No less than 6 gold bangles on each arm, several gold chains, rings on at least two fingers on each hand, and a delicate, 24 carat gold watch which could only be read by 20/15 vision, and if she wasn’t clearly white, she could easily have earned her way as an extra in a Bollywood movie.
We were travelling from Virginia, out to San Francisco, and then to Los Angeles, with a three-month-old and expecting the normal, mid-March weather changes. For a first time mom, there was no ‘packing light.’ After popping their trunk on the Olds, revealing the less than spacious trunk, despite what one might think, we cannot fit all four pieces of our luggage, the baby gear and the people necessary in the car. Did I mention they live 70 miles from the airport?
Again, I thanked God we were coming off a one hour flight and not a 5 hour one. After watching my mother-in-law instruct and reprimand my father-in-law for his inability to properly pack the close-to-if-not-over-the-50-lb-limit luggage pieces, we were able to get most of them in the back, but the trunk would still not close. So my mother-in-law waddles into the airport for some string. Well she starts to, and then realizes that she has a perfectly capable husband who she can tell to do that for her. She spends no less than 5 minutes explaining what the string should look like, how long it should be and how much he will need. So in the time that it could have taken for her to go in and do it herself, she spends telling him how to do it.
I am only a little less embarrassed because they are not my blood relatives. I know that despite their inability to purchase cars made in the any decade close to the one they are in does not reflect on their financial status. I don’t think my mother-in-law owns or would purchase any clothing that was new. She thinks paying more than $5 for an article of clothing is ridiculous and often even thinks something more than $2 is not worthy of her money. But she will buy and wear a $3000 watch with her $2 outfit.
Once my father-in-law comes out of the airport, string in hand, we spend about another 20 minutes attempting to secure the trunk down, with the luggage showing through about a foot of space between the hood and the closure. The baby is thankfully not too concerned with the mess, but I am, given at his age, babies are ticking time bombs and want to feed when they want to feed (especially my boob-only and boob-now little man). So we pile into the car: my in-laws riding in the front, with the snap-n-go stroller between them and a baby bath tub (the thrift store purchase that morning for 75 cents) on my mother-in-law’s lap. Henry is secured in between my husband and I, who are both travelling with various pieces of baby gear on our laps in the back. We looked like the Clampets, heading on the 5 up to Beverly Hills. . .just in about 5 decades later.
I can hear the banjo play in my head as we roll the (now) low rider through Long Beach, capturing some of this on video, at least what I can see through the myriad of unnecessary objects atop me.
They arrived in the 1992 Olds, riding low, not because they had purposefully created it, but because they took ‘just enough’ care of the car to justify keeping it. I knew their caravan of car selections, and I guess I was relieved that this was the newest of the lot, but I don’t think I was completely prepared for the fact that there would probably not be enough room. Further, that afternoon we were set to visit with one of my husband’s friends from High School and his family that lived nearby in Long Beach. They were our friends who didn’t have parents that shopped at the Thrift Store or parents who drove cars that should have been sold for scrap 75,000 miles earlier.
As always, we were happy to see them, but between the stress of travelling with an infant, the waiting curbside for a solid 30 minutes and the concern that we would not fit in the car, I was peeved, or possibly and more appropriately, pissed off. I have never really, in my relationship with my husband, ever held my tongue with his mother. Perhaps part of it is that I know she gives me the same respect; perhaps part of me is the fact I can't often see her as my mother, or that I actually do.
Once they pull up, my mother-in-law waddles from her constant seat as the navigator and instructor in the car, and my father-in-law springs from the driver’s side, immediately offering his outstretched, bony arms for a warm hug, followed by a long look at our luggage. My mother-in-law is wearing elastic waist K-mart polyester pants, in her staple color of either khaki or black, circa 1980s time frame when she went from caring what she wore to caring what it cost to wear it. For what she doesn’t care about in her personal hygiene or clothing selections, she makes up for with the amount of jewelry she is wearing. No less than 6 gold bangles on each arm, several gold chains, rings on at least two fingers on each hand, and a delicate, 24 carat gold watch which could only be read by 20/15 vision, and if she wasn’t clearly white, she could easily have earned her way as an extra in a Bollywood movie.
We were travelling from Virginia, out to San Francisco, and then to Los Angeles, with a three-month-old and expecting the normal, mid-March weather changes. For a first time mom, there was no ‘packing light.’ After popping their trunk on the Olds, revealing the less than spacious trunk, despite what one might think, we cannot fit all four pieces of our luggage, the baby gear and the people necessary in the car. Did I mention they live 70 miles from the airport?
Again, I thanked God we were coming off a one hour flight and not a 5 hour one. After watching my mother-in-law instruct and reprimand my father-in-law for his inability to properly pack the close-to-if-not-over-the-50-lb-limit luggage pieces, we were able to get most of them in the back, but the trunk would still not close. So my mother-in-law waddles into the airport for some string. Well she starts to, and then realizes that she has a perfectly capable husband who she can tell to do that for her. She spends no less than 5 minutes explaining what the string should look like, how long it should be and how much he will need. So in the time that it could have taken for her to go in and do it herself, she spends telling him how to do it.
I am only a little less embarrassed because they are not my blood relatives. I know that despite their inability to purchase cars made in the any decade close to the one they are in does not reflect on their financial status. I don’t think my mother-in-law owns or would purchase any clothing that was new. She thinks paying more than $5 for an article of clothing is ridiculous and often even thinks something more than $2 is not worthy of her money. But she will buy and wear a $3000 watch with her $2 outfit.
Once my father-in-law comes out of the airport, string in hand, we spend about another 20 minutes attempting to secure the trunk down, with the luggage showing through about a foot of space between the hood and the closure. The baby is thankfully not too concerned with the mess, but I am, given at his age, babies are ticking time bombs and want to feed when they want to feed (especially my boob-only and boob-now little man). So we pile into the car: my in-laws riding in the front, with the snap-n-go stroller between them and a baby bath tub (the thrift store purchase that morning for 75 cents) on my mother-in-law’s lap. Henry is secured in between my husband and I, who are both travelling with various pieces of baby gear on our laps in the back. We looked like the Clampets, heading on the 5 up to Beverly Hills. . .just in about 5 decades later.
I can hear the banjo play in my head as we roll the (now) low rider through Long Beach, capturing some of this on video, at least what I can see through the myriad of unnecessary objects atop me.
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