Thanksgiving
Dec. 2nd, 2004 09:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
melliciousOK, this may get a little complicated.Rob has 3 brothers and they're all married, so in the interests of simplicity I'm going to number them and their wives from oldest to youngest rather than using names. So Rob would be Son #3 of the 4, and I would be daughter-in-law #3 (even though I'm older than DIL #1 - we're going by the boys' ages), and I'm going to abbreviate daughter-in-law, too, even though I hate that abbreviation. (Mostly because I associate it with DH and DS and all that crap, I think.)
So, around noon on Thanksgiving, Rob's 2nd-oldest brother, hereafter known as Son #2, and his wife showed up. They got a motel room, which was smart of them because otherwise they wouldn've had to sleep on the hideabed. (Rob said last year he let them have the bedroom, but since I was already having back trouble I certainly wasn't going to volunteer to sleep on that damn hideabed. I've done it before and it's awful.)
I always thought that DIL #1 got along decently well with with Rob's mom - Son #1 and his family are the only ones that live in town, you see - but apparently if that was ever true, those days are over. The way I heard the story later, Mom tried to tell DIL-1 how to do things one time too many and DIL-1 finally let her have it. No wonder I've suddenly attained favorite daughter-in-law status.
Both of my in-laws are very strange people in a way. Both of them mean well, I'm absolutely convinced of that, but they're oddly oblivious to everything they don't want to see. It's hard to explain what I mean exactly. They see the world in absolute black-and-white, for one thing, and they don't seem to consider that anybody else might feel differently. I guess that's not unusual for people their age, but they seem to be worse about it than a lot of people I know that age. (They're in their mid 70s - about 10 years older than my parents.) I get along with them fine from 1000 miles away but I can't even imagine having to live here in town and try to do it.
Rob's mom had said dinner would be ready "about 2" and when 2:00 arrived we sat down to dinner even though Son #1 and family hadn't arrived yet. They didn't even seem to consider waiting on them. Oh, and another weird thing - you know how I said she bought the dinner pre-made? Well, somehow it was still necessary for her to spend the entire morning in the kitchen. I never did figure out what the heck she was doing in there. I can't imagine that it took six hours of constant preparation to warm up the dinner. (If so, she might about as well have cooked it from scratch!) And of course she wouldn't let me do anything more than set the table. "The kitchen is too small" she says.
Anyway, the Meijer dinner was actually quite good, even though the turkey turned coal black in the oven and I didn't think it was going to be edible. The inside still tasted fine, it turned out. The missing ones showed up about the time we were finishing up - they had been over at the other set of parents' house. I don't think they had eaten there, but they didn't seem to be all that worried about lunch, anyway.
The mudslides went over very well, although we didn't drink near all of it, so I'm glad we didn't buy the big bottle. DIL #1 said, "God, yes, I need a drink." Apparently the scene she had with Mom was VERY very nasty. She really didn't act like she wanted to be here at all, no big surprise, I guess. (And she said that Mom won't come over to their house at all except when DIL#1 is at work.)
They stayed a couple of hours, and before they left they invited us (and son & DIL #2) over to their house later. An escape from the parents, basically, which we needed by that time because we spent the afternoon with the Everybody Loves Raymond marathon on full-blast. Rob's dad is pretty deaf, but still, that's a lot to bear. So we went over there later and watched movies and played with the cats and the guys (and sometimes the wives, too) talked guns. Guns are very big in that family. Rob's mom and I are the only ones who are completely uninterested, although Rob is not as big a gun nut as his brothers. (And frankly, I probably wouldn't have married him if he was!) DIL #2 is something of a gun nut herself, but she still didn't talk guns as steadily as sons #1 and 2 did. Luckily we had lots of cats to occupy us, besides the movie. I only ever saw five cats, but apparently there was actually another cat that we never saw. One of the cats was only visiting - they were pet-sitting. The visiting cat and one of the resident ones are litter-mates, though, adorable gray tabbies about 4 months old, and the two kittens slept right through being passed all over the place the first couple of hours we were there (they'd wake up long enough to purr for a few minutes, then sack out again no matter who was holding them). Then eventually they woke up and spent the rest of the visit stalking one another all over the living room.
I forgot to say that Son #4, who is something of a prodigal son these days and is rarely heard from, actually called during the afternoon, to everybody's surprise. Rob's dad answered the phone, talked a while and then passed the phone to sons 1, 2 and 3 (in that order, as it happens) and by the time Rob, as son #3, got on the phone, Rob's mom was absolutely GLARING at him the whole time he was on the phone. Apparently she was unhappy at having to be the last person to get on the phone. All three daughters-in-law were sitting where we could see her and we were all cracking up (quietly, of course). Rob was completely oblivious.
On the way home from Rob's brother's house we stopped to say goodbye to Aunt Betty, and she was so happy we stopped by that I was really glad we did it. She is very sweet. She told us a couple more stories while we were there, including a very funny one about how Rob's mom got the nickname "Moses" as a child - and then she told me that I was the prettiest of all the four daughters-in-law, which continues to amuse me unduly.
(And wow, you made it through all this. That's all I got around to writing. Now I guess I'll have to go back later and catch up on the past week!)
So, around noon on Thanksgiving, Rob's 2nd-oldest brother, hereafter known as Son #2, and his wife showed up. They got a motel room, which was smart of them because otherwise they wouldn've had to sleep on the hideabed. (Rob said last year he let them have the bedroom, but since I was already having back trouble I certainly wasn't going to volunteer to sleep on that damn hideabed. I've done it before and it's awful.)
I always thought that DIL #1 got along decently well with with Rob's mom - Son #1 and his family are the only ones that live in town, you see - but apparently if that was ever true, those days are over. The way I heard the story later, Mom tried to tell DIL-1 how to do things one time too many and DIL-1 finally let her have it. No wonder I've suddenly attained favorite daughter-in-law status.
Both of my in-laws are very strange people in a way. Both of them mean well, I'm absolutely convinced of that, but they're oddly oblivious to everything they don't want to see. It's hard to explain what I mean exactly. They see the world in absolute black-and-white, for one thing, and they don't seem to consider that anybody else might feel differently. I guess that's not unusual for people their age, but they seem to be worse about it than a lot of people I know that age. (They're in their mid 70s - about 10 years older than my parents.) I get along with them fine from 1000 miles away but I can't even imagine having to live here in town and try to do it.
Rob's mom had said dinner would be ready "about 2" and when 2:00 arrived we sat down to dinner even though Son #1 and family hadn't arrived yet. They didn't even seem to consider waiting on them. Oh, and another weird thing - you know how I said she bought the dinner pre-made? Well, somehow it was still necessary for her to spend the entire morning in the kitchen. I never did figure out what the heck she was doing in there. I can't imagine that it took six hours of constant preparation to warm up the dinner. (If so, she might about as well have cooked it from scratch!) And of course she wouldn't let me do anything more than set the table. "The kitchen is too small" she says.
Anyway, the Meijer dinner was actually quite good, even though the turkey turned coal black in the oven and I didn't think it was going to be edible. The inside still tasted fine, it turned out. The missing ones showed up about the time we were finishing up - they had been over at the other set of parents' house. I don't think they had eaten there, but they didn't seem to be all that worried about lunch, anyway.
The mudslides went over very well, although we didn't drink near all of it, so I'm glad we didn't buy the big bottle. DIL #1 said, "God, yes, I need a drink." Apparently the scene she had with Mom was VERY very nasty. She really didn't act like she wanted to be here at all, no big surprise, I guess. (And she said that Mom won't come over to their house at all except when DIL#1 is at work.)
They stayed a couple of hours, and before they left they invited us (and son & DIL #2) over to their house later. An escape from the parents, basically, which we needed by that time because we spent the afternoon with the Everybody Loves Raymond marathon on full-blast. Rob's dad is pretty deaf, but still, that's a lot to bear. So we went over there later and watched movies and played with the cats and the guys (and sometimes the wives, too) talked guns. Guns are very big in that family. Rob's mom and I are the only ones who are completely uninterested, although Rob is not as big a gun nut as his brothers. (And frankly, I probably wouldn't have married him if he was!) DIL #2 is something of a gun nut herself, but she still didn't talk guns as steadily as sons #1 and 2 did. Luckily we had lots of cats to occupy us, besides the movie. I only ever saw five cats, but apparently there was actually another cat that we never saw. One of the cats was only visiting - they were pet-sitting. The visiting cat and one of the resident ones are litter-mates, though, adorable gray tabbies about 4 months old, and the two kittens slept right through being passed all over the place the first couple of hours we were there (they'd wake up long enough to purr for a few minutes, then sack out again no matter who was holding them). Then eventually they woke up and spent the rest of the visit stalking one another all over the living room.
I forgot to say that Son #4, who is something of a prodigal son these days and is rarely heard from, actually called during the afternoon, to everybody's surprise. Rob's dad answered the phone, talked a while and then passed the phone to sons 1, 2 and 3 (in that order, as it happens) and by the time Rob, as son #3, got on the phone, Rob's mom was absolutely GLARING at him the whole time he was on the phone. Apparently she was unhappy at having to be the last person to get on the phone. All three daughters-in-law were sitting where we could see her and we were all cracking up (quietly, of course). Rob was completely oblivious.
On the way home from Rob's brother's house we stopped to say goodbye to Aunt Betty, and she was so happy we stopped by that I was really glad we did it. She is very sweet. She told us a couple more stories while we were there, including a very funny one about how Rob's mom got the nickname "Moses" as a child - and then she told me that I was the prettiest of all the four daughters-in-law, which continues to amuse me unduly.
(And wow, you made it through all this. That's all I got around to writing. Now I guess I'll have to go back later and catch up on the past week!)
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