My Crazy Mother in Law

Marie lives about a 10 to 20 minute drive away from Allison and me. Somedays I think it is a curse to live that close to my in-laws, while other days it is a blessing. Marie also has a government job, which means that she gets off work around 3pm and a few times a week goes over to my house to be with Allison and the boys and usually leaves around dinner time or shortly there after. All in all, this is a good thing. Drives me nuts that she is at my house so much, but as much as Allison complains about her mother, I’m sure she appreciates the help.

What I get a kick out of is the routine that Marie has to go through when it is time to leave. The routine is always the same to the point where I made a joke about it to Danielle one day and as the routine unfolded before Danielle’s eyes, it was all she could do to keep from bursting out laughing at her poor mother.

The first part of the routine is deciding that she is ACTUALLY going to leave. Shortly after I get home, Marie will announce that she has to get home because she has sooo much stuff to do. However, I guess that doesn’t get enough of a reaction from Allison and I so she sticks around, only to announce it again fifteen minutes later. Marie is at our house multiple times a week. If she were there once a month or less, her leaving would be a big deal, but when she’s there that often, her leaving, just doesn’t warran a whole lot of hoopla. Allison and I don’t grab the kids and all go stand at the door to wish her a farewell, a safe drive, a pleasant evening or a thanks for helping out. Sure, we say that sometimes, but we just don’t make a big production out of it.

Once Marie has decided that she has announced her departure enough times that she really IS going to leave, the rest of the routine starts. First, she has to get a drink of water. Every time. Without fail. It’s as if she is about to go on a trek in the desert or something or the water at her house is awful and needs one last drink of the ‘good’ water before she leaves. So, into the kitchen she goes. Finds one of our glasses from the cupboard and turns on the tap (we don’t have a water dispenser or anything). Then she lets the water run for a good 30 to 45 seconds to get it good and cold. Sometimes she bypasses the running the water in favor of getting some ice cubes from the freezer. She then fills the glass completely full. I should also point out that for our main drinking glasses, we have 2 sizes. The short and the tall we’ll call them. She ALWAYS has to take a tall one if there is one available. She will use a short one, but prefers the tall ones. Once the glass is completely full. She takes a sip. And only a sip. Literally, one mouthful of water, and then puts the glass on the counter. It takes her longer to prepare the glass of water than it does to actually drink it, and even though she is done with it, she doesn’t pour the remainder down the sink and put the glass in the dishwasher. Nope! She leaves it full, on the counter, for somebody to knock over at a later time (remember…she chose the tall glass).

Next is the bathroom stop. She has to use the bathroom after that huge drink of water. It’s as if that one mouthful put her over the edge and she has to empty her bladder for that long drive home. Again, I can see the point here if she was stopping some place on the way home. Who wants to use public bathrooms when you don’t have to, but she does it every time.

Then, she puts on her coat and stands at the door. One final announcement to everyone that she is leaving. Sometimes she convinces the chipmunks into giving her a kiss and a hug goodbye. Sometimes they cooperate.

All in all, I think it takes a minimum of an hour for her to leave, if you start the timer from the first time she says I’m leaving now.

My wife and I are fairly reasonable people when it comes to our money. We buy what we want, but only if we have the money to do it. We don’t buy in to those ‘don’t pay for a year’ deals, and we rarely carry a balance on our credit cards. Because of that, we have always said to ourselves that we would buy new bedroom furniture when we could afford it. All good thoughts, but since we are the only ones who ever see our bedroom furniture (except of course when my mother in law goes in there for some reason…..a whole other article to be written on that!), it never seems to be the top priority and our money is spent elsewhere. We have just continued to use the furniture Allison brought from her parents house when we got married. It is a little girly and childish, but what do I care what the drawer that holds my underwear looks like?

Last week, this all changed. We painted our master bedroom and Allison’s parents offered to give us their furniture and they were going to go buy new stuff. Sweet! I thought. That will get Allison off my back about buying new furniture for awhile AND I get some ‘non-girly’ stuff in the process. Again, I really don’t care, but I’m not about to turn down a free upgrade either!

So this is now where things get dumb. You would think that the natural order of events would be:

1. Marie and Frank go buy their new furniture
2. Frank and I bring the old furniture from their house to mine
3. Allison and I move our old furniture out to the garage where we can then give it to a local charity or sell it.

Makes sense right? Well Apparently not to Marie and Frank. Nope! They insisted that we get rid of our furniture first. Wouldn’t be a big deal for me except that it seemed completely illogical! If I take all my clothes out of my dresser, where do I put them? Why would they insist on this? I had fears of having to live out of boxes or laundry baskets for weeks. Sure I could get rid of our furniture fairly fast. One quick phone call to a local charity would make it disappear, but my concern was that I would do that and then Frank would say that they didn’t have the money yet to buy their new furniture. Then what? Our furniture would be gone and I would have no place to put my clothes. I would be at the mercy of their spending habits! ARGH.

Here’s the other thing too. We weren’t allowed to give it away. Oh No. That would be too easy. The furniture wasn’t in terrible condition, but it was far from pristine and it was at least 25 years old. It wasn’t top quality stuff either. It was from Sears and it was made of press-wood with a fake finish. Allison and I thought we would just give it away to some less fortunate family for their little girl, but Marie insisted we sell it. All I heard for days was Can’t you just get $50 for it? So we posted it at the local grocery store bulletin board for $150, assuming we would just take the first offer that came along. It sold the next day. Perfect!

Since I now was in that state that I was dreading (nothing to put my clothes in), I phoned up Frank and asked if we could move the furniture right then. Suprisingly, he said SURE! So I was in my van and on my way to their house before they had a chance to change their minds. When I got there, they had already emptied most of their clothes into boxes. This was the first time I had gotten a really good look at what I was getting. I had been in Marie and Frank’s bedroom before, but usually just to put one of my kids down for a nap or something, so I had never gotten a good look. It was a dark wood faux finish (laminate top). It wasn’t bad. Probably not my first choice, but an upgrade from what we had. Then I noticed how shiny it was. I touched it and realized it was absolutely covered in oil or something. It was as if they had dipped the entire dresser in baby oil. It was so thick I started to write my name in it. I was beginning to wonder how were were going to carry it downstairs without the dresser flying out of our hands like a bar of soap or it staining my clothes. Frank then notices me looking at the mess now on my hands and pipes in and says Marie is just putting a wood preserver on it. We do that a few times a year. It keeps the real wood looking really nice. Real Wood? I thought. I’m not too sure about that, but whatever. I’m not about to argue with them over the construction of their furniture and burst their bubble. Yes the inside is all made of ‘real wood’, but the outside is definitely a fake finish.

How do I know it isn’t real wood? Well, for starters, real wood doesn’t have a pattern that repeats every 18 inches. Even if by absolute fluke it did, it wouldn’t repeat across multiple pieces of furniture. The larger knots on the outside of the furniture would carry through to the inside of the furniture. Also, real wood doesn’t chip the way countertop does. If it WAS real wood, the oil that Marie applied would have absorbed into the wood in a reasonable amount of time, instead of the week it took for Allison to wipe it off.

All in all, I’m grateful for the new (to me) furniture. My clothes are nicely folded in my drawers and I have more ‘adult’ furniture in my bedroom. Three weeks have gone by since and Frank and Marie are still living out of those boxes!