Out of the blue, a few months ago, the in-laws announced that they would be visiting for the weekend in October. Thankfully unlike last time, this weekend didn’t encompass an entire WEEK, merely arriving on Friday and leaving on Monday morning. We shall see.
As usual, it was like pulling teeth with rusty pliers to get them to give us their itinerary. First it was: arriving at the airport at 4pm. No flight information. Airports are big with lots of exits, so we requested a bit more information like flight # and exact arrival time. That morning we got the information and girded our loins for the arrival.
The dilemma was that M’s birthday was the 9th of October and we had neglected to get her anything. She’s impossible to shop for because she never tells you what she wants, she never discloses any hobbies, she just expects you to know what she’s expecting from you, so generally I go on the Flower sites, put in a dollar range and pick the first thing of flowers or plants on there and “sign” a card and hope that appeases her. Since she’s thousands of miles away, its not too important whether it does or not, she’s not here, so whatever... but now she’s going to be HERE and we even neglected to send flowers.
We discussed the gift card idea. What could go wrong there, give her a gift card of money and she can get whatever she wants, except hubby points out that she would be miffed at that because its the easy way out and doesn’t show a lot of love and caring. My point is that at least its something and if she’s so ungrateful not to accept SOMETHING, then... well, I won’t go into the “then” part.
We didn’t know if she was still sewing with the expensive machine that does embroidery because we hadn’t received any intricate prisonware shirts with huskies on them that she then goes on and on about how much blood, sweat, and tears it took to create (when all she does is load a shirt and hit a button and the machine whips something out). We decide to let them arrive and try to decipher what she wants and get her that. Impossible at best, since with most visits, they never let us know what they really want to do (we just get “we just want to spend time with you both”) until they’re entering the security line of the airport and then they mention how they are really disappointed that they didn’t get to: insert elaborate sightseeing plan here.
The whole weekend is scheduled to be nothing but a humungous rain fest with cold. This means we’re trapped in the house with them unless we drag them to a mall. We do plan to eat out the whole weekend because that will at least get us out of the house, give them the opportunity to talk (which they won’t do, at least nothing substantial like: why they are coming here, because there has to be a reason other than B’s heart about to explode, which he’s mentioned every time they’re here and how this will be the last chance they have to visit prior to the exploding heart thing), and get us away from the house. This also saves us from the “what do you want to eat” game where they say “whatever you want to eat” and then they complain that they can’t eat whatever we’ve fixed.
Hubby was cursing the fact that he should have shaved before we went to the airport. He’s growing a scruffy beard and it wasn’t until we were driving that he realized that his mother would grab his beard and invade his space and make snide comments about it. Sure enough, the moment they get to us at the security exit (they were the LAST off the plane of course) she turns to me and makes a snide comment about his beard and how old he looks. They can’t just say anything nice about anything, always with the snide back-sided comments.
We drag them to Ruby Tuesdays for dinner. While at the salad bar, B sidles up to me as I’m dishing up lettuce and says “maybe you’ll tell me, because he always avoids answering me, so is his buying a motorcycle a mid-life crisis thing?”. Um, no. Vehicles paid off, he’s always wanted another motorcycle since his last one (years and years ago) died, and we’re now in the position to get one. Ya know, instead of saying how great it was that even in this craptastic economy his son was still in a financial position to be able to afford a motorcycle, and how that is a testament of his success or anything, oh no, he chalks it up to a mid-life crisis thing. How quaint. Apparently my answer (which is the same as the one hubby gave him a while ago) wasn’t sufficient and he gave a grunt as if to say that we were in cahoots and prepared our response together to hid something more insidious or something.
We ate, and got to hear ALL about the horrible golf software (see this post for a reminder) the flight (with its crowded seats) and was asked over and over again about the mid-shipmen from the Naval Academy that we saw at the airport. If you recall, they ask us strange questions that there is just no reason for us to know the answers.
“Where do you think that mid-shipman was going at the airport?”
Um, I don’t know
“Do you think he was going to visit his parents?”
Um, I don’t know
“Could he have been going to his new duty station?”
Um, I don’t know
“When do they graduate? Maybe it was some kind of break”
Um, I don’t know
Now how the frick are we suppose to know where some guy is going?
Its Saturday morning and I’m hiding downstairs with one of our dogs, who is recovering from knee surgery and blissfully unaware of the conversation going on upstairs. I just know that early this morning, hubby (who refuses to take pills) has already asked where the major painkillers were hidden and no doubt took too many of them to prepare for the day. When I go up to shower, I’ll be popping some myself. Thankfully I kept some good ones from a surgery a while back, but I’ll save those in case.
