The grout in my shower has been scrubbed with a stiff-bristled tooth brush.
Pretty little soaps in nauseatingly-sweet little shapes have been purchased.
My naughty drawer has been cleaned out of all things naughty. They've been locked in a safebox and buried deep, deep in the bowels of storage, underneath a box labeled "wedding presents so ugly I can only hope they spontaneously combust."
This can only mean one thing: my mother-in-law is coming.
When a mother-in-law comes to dinner, one can only assume that she will be checking under the VCR for dust, and judging my worthiness based on whether all the labels in my wine rack point in the same direction (east). But my mother-in-law is not coming to dinner. She's coming to stay - for 5 WHOLE DAYS!
So I, of course, am acting like a crazy person. I bought better toothpaste. Not that our old stuff was bad, but the regular $1.57-a-tube-Crest-stuff just doesn't shout "Jason is in good hands!" the way I'd like it to. So I bought the good stuff in the remote hope that one morning she will be brushing her teeth and think that I take good care of her son.
Fat chance, eh?
I also bought new sheets. She'll get our bed obviously, the best bed, but not the best sheets, between which I've done nasty, dirty things to her son. Not to worry, I also bought new jammies; the kind that are not see-through in the nipple-area (or anywhere else). And I planned a menu that's impressive but not intimidating: no seafood, no mushrooms, no bleu cheese (these things have been learned by trial and error, emphasis on ERROR, thanks to Jason never remembering what his Mom will or will not eat).Then I panicked that the menu was a little chicken-heavy, but I'm currently chewing through copious amounts of Zoloft to get over that little hump. Plus, I've got just the right amount of booze on hand to smoothen out all the bumps without confirming her suspicions that in fact, I am nothing but a no good lush sponging off her baby boy.
*** Meanwhile, Jorge's post today reminds me that I also need to take my magnetic poetry off the fridge. The poems we make tend to use "pork" as a verb a little too often.
She's not a bad person, actually. It's just an ancient law that the mother/daughter-in-law relationship must be impossibly difficult.
The first time I met my mother-in-law, she told me how much she loved Jason's girlfriend Danielle, and how she hoped they would be together forever.
The second time I met my mother-in-law, Danielle had been deposed, I had taken her place, and I was acutely aware of how utterly unlike Danielle I was.
The problem is not that I don't like my mother-in-law. Oh, she has her moments, those times that I just want to pull out all of my hair and then hide under my bed until the day I pick out her coffin, but I try to remember that being raised by his mother made Jason into the good and interesting man he is today.
The problem is that she does not like me.
What?!? How could this be?!?! Are you not outraged and astounded that anyone could possibly be so stupid as to not like me? Despicable, I know. Bordering on unbelievable, I'd say, except that I have 7 looooong years of proof. Apparently my wonderfulness doesn't translate well into momspeak.
Admittedly, I am a little eccentric. Unconventional. Nontraditional. Anti-religion, anti-making grandbabies, pro- moving far, far away. Every mother's dream for her son, right?
Yeah, well, I'm buying his undies now, so tough!
And so the game continues: I bend over backwards to show her that I'm not "the worst thing ever to happen to her precious baby boy" while she keeps her wary eye on me, since we both know that the ugliest truth is yet unspoken - that Jason is her only child, and someday soonish, I will be the one deciding in which home to put her away.
Life is kinda funny that like that.
No comments:
Post a Comment