Why It’s Mother’s Day, and Not Mother-In-Law’s Day: The Disturbing Conclusion

May 1,2008

The final dinner went very appropriately, considering the whole mess of the last two months.

We decided we’d take MILfH to Montana Ale Works.  She has to drive separately because my car only fits two adults and the two carseats in back.  It must have been nice, back in the days before car seats, to actually fit everyone into one car.  Anyway, she followed us to the restaurant.  The problem was, the place was so packed that there wasn’t even a place to park.  We imagined it would be pretty loud inside and would take a long time to get service, two things that just don’t work with kiddos.  So Jesse said, “Let’s go somewhere else.”

I turned to leave the restaurant.  For whatever reason, MILfH turned the opposite direction.  “What is she doing?” I said. 

“Who knows.  Let’s just call her.”

It would have been a real mess to have to find a way to turn around and get her in this narrow parking lot, and chase her with two kids just to have to tell her that we were going somewhere else.  So we instead hit the road and called her.  She has been attached to her cell phone from the moment she arrived, so we didn’t think that tonight would be the one night that she didn’t have her phone.

But she didn’t.  We called three times and she didn’t answer.  We headed for Old Chicago and waited.  We waited for her to check her messages, surely she would do that, she wouldn’t wait around for us at the place we had originally gone? 

But she did.  She waited there for an hour.  And we were waiting at Old Chicago, hoping that she would check her cell phone.  She has been strapped to that phone the entire time she has been here.  Of course she didn’t have it this time. 

So finally after an hour, she figured out “hey, they must have gone somewhere else” and went back to the house for her cell phone.  She showed up at Old Chicago and we had already given up and ordered.  She was very upset and I’m certain she thought we did this on purpose.  Like I said, it was an appropriate ending to the whole ordeal.

Unfortunately, it was not the end.

May 2, 2008

Friday.  She is leaving tomorrow. 

Joy.  Elation.  Life.  Happy.  Alone with my family at last.  Montana to ourselves.  Our house to ourselves.  Joy.  Greatness. 

Jesse was going out to take some pictures.  I was taking the kids to Butte for the weekend and spending Saturday out on the land. 

“Just so you know,” she said, “I’m coming out to visit tomorrow to say goodbye.”

“To the land?”

“Yes,” she said.  Deflation.  Shrinkage.  Ulcer. 

“Okay,” I said.  “Well you won’t make very good time,” I pointed out.  “Long way back to Colorado.”

She shrugged. “I’m in no hurry to get back,” she said.  “I don’t want to go back to him.”

“Well, I guess I will see you tomorrow,” I said.  Smothering.  Suffocation.

May 3, 2008 9 AM

I arrived out at the land.  My dad was in the cabin making coffee.

“MILfH show up yet?” I asked.  “I’d really like to get the visit over with.”

He gave me an annoyed look.  “Not yet.  Want me to call her?”

I was surprised.  “You have her number?!”

He nodded.  “Yeah, I think it’s in my phone.  She’s been calling her every night.”

Shock.  Anger.  Butt out.  “For WHAT?!”

“I don’t know.  She keeps showing up here too.”

“What!?”

“We usually talk about grandkids,” he said.  “We had a couple of beers and some good talks.”

He explained that she has been showing up to his place, uninvited, for the past several weekends.  

“It’s getting strange,” my dad said.  “I think she likes me or something.”

“WHAT?  How did that…”

Too late.  The car pulls up.  MILfH enters, carrying a box of donuts and a small cactus plant with a bow on it.  She enters the cabin and sets it down like she owns the place.  Obviously she’s been here before.  I am pissed.  All those weekends, she told Jesse and I she had been visiting Yellowstone.  So not only has she been lying to us, but she’s been visiting my dad.  I am immediately suspicious.  (Not of my dad…the last woman that spent time with him like this did it for years, she was a lot prettier and nicer than MILfH, and he told even her he’d already been married and he’d never do it again, thanks much.  I wasn’t worried about this nutjob who’d been around a week or two.)  

She really seemed to love the place.  “Heaven on earth,” she called it.  I think so too.  “Can’t you just sell me an acre?” she asked me.  “All I need is an acre.  I could have a garden, and a cabin.”

What I said:  “No way,” I said.  “What about your house in Colorado?  Besides, half of this land is my brothers, and neither of us would ever sell.”

What I thought:  Not for a million dollars, you dolt.  I would rather squeeze my eyeballs with tweezers than to sell a teaspoon of this dirt to you, much less have land next to you, you crazy, crazy demon woman from the ninth circle of hell.

Since she couldn’t have the land, she started in on asking for what was on it.  She’d point to something, say a pair of antlers.  “Can I have that?” she would ask.  If it wasn’t tied down and could fit in her car, she wanted it. 

“Sure,” my dad would say.  “See something you want, take it.”  He says this to everyone.  He’d give away anything if someone asked for it.  He’s like that.  She thought it was because she is special. 

“I like this chair,” she said, referring to the wooden chair she was sitting on.

“Uh, so do I,” I chimed in.  She gave me a dirty look. 

Later on she asked for the chair overtly.  “Can I bring it back with me?” she asked.  “Do you mind?  I really like it.”

“Actually I’m pretty sentimental about that chair,” I said.  “My dad made that when I was four.”

“Is that a yes?”

“No.”

We’ve seen this odd behavior once before.  When Jesse and I bought new furniture for our house in Divide, she showed up to see it.  She came under the guise of a visit to AJ who was only a couple of months old, but really she was there to scam for things.  She asked if we “really needed that bookshelf.”  She wanted the armoire we had just spent a grand on. 

No.  We.  Just.  Bought. It.  God.  Who does that?

She was genuinely annoyed when we said no, too.  She is just so entitled.  And for what?  Her contributions to the world?  She of the “I’m too good to work” ethic?  Alas, perhaps I am too hard on her.  All of this could very well be behavior caused by mixing all those unprescribed drugs she carries around with her. 

I digress…

She spent the entire day out there on the land.  What happened to the nice day I was going to celebrate with my family…celebrate her leaving the state?  Sigh.  The evening came, and I had to take the kids back to Butte.  MILfH stayed for a while past that.  I know this because my dad called me later, and said she “was worried about finding the hotel in Whitehall,” so he drove in front of her so she could follow him there. 

Now color me crazy, but if she managed to find that piece of land in the middle of nowhere several times over, would she really have a problem finding the ONE hotel in the only nearby town?  The town with one road?  Perhaps she thought she’d be able to manipulate my unassuming dad into a room in said hotel?  Instead, he politely showed her the way to town, then said that he was going to meet some friends in town and get drunk. 

He called to tell me all this.  “I told her I was meeting some friends…but really I just turned around and went home.”  Way to go.  Sad that you have to find elaborate ways to ditch an adult, but I understand.  She’s been sucking the life out of my household for two months now.

Then she called me.  Ulcer.  Anxiety.  I was still on my way back to Butte.  “I’m worried about your dad,” she said.  “He’s going out to town to drink with some friends.  What do I do?”  This phrase in itself perfectly illustrates just how little she knows any of us.

“Uh, okay?” I said.  “And?” 

“Well, I tried to get him to stop,” she said, taking ownership.  “I really tried to stop him.  He just wouldn’t listen.” 

“Yeah.  He’s a grownup,” I said.  “And you wouldn’t be the first to try and get him to do anything.  No one can get him to do anything.” It’s funny that he really wasn’t at a bar this time.  He was trying to ditch the crazy woman.  If he would have told her he was going back to the land, she would have just followed him there. 

What happened next pretty much wrecked the wreckage of the wrecky relationship we all had with MILfH.  This is mostly translated from my dad, who is now mentally traumatized from ever having meeting her.  I can relate. 

It all started during one of their “friendly conversations” when she asked him if he “ever thought about getting back with <MY MOM’S NAME>”  Like most men, he didn’t hear what she was really asking him.  He said from that moment, everything changed.  He started getting endless phone calls.  She brought him gifts.   That’s right, my mother in law from HELL started chasing my father. 

“I’ve heard of crazy women like her,” he said.  “But holy &#%…this has never happened to me in my entire life.”  It’s so very embarrassing that my husband’s mother is the one who he is talking about. 

Instead of leaving even the next day, going back home to her house, her mom, her dog and oh yeah, her husband, she came back to the land.  She asked my dad if she could stay for the summer “to help out with the garden.” 

“No way,” he said.  “If I need help out here, I’ll find me a Mexican gal.”

“But the other night you were practically begging me to stay here,” she told him.

“Bullshit,” my dad called it.  “I told you that if you had one more beer, I wasn’t going to let you leave,” he said.  “I wasn’t going to let you go get killed on the highway so that my kids blame me for giving you beer and letting you drive.  And I said you could sleep in the cabin, and I’d stay out in my truck.”

“But you practically begged me to stay,” she insisted.  (Desperation apparently leads people to hear what is not there.)

“That’s not the same thing,” my dad said.  “I wasn’t going to let you leave and drive drunk.”

She whined and pandered.

“I think you better leave,” he said. 

And she did.

But fifteen minutes later, she called him.  He didn’t answer the phone.  He didn’t answer when she called fifteen minutes after that, either.  In fact, he had to turn his phone off.

The next day he turned his phone back on. 

You have eight messages, it told him.  He had to listen to every single message in order to delete them.  She had called him eight times.  I’ll shorten the messages because they were long and dramatic, but here is a summary for your entertainment.  I wish I could tell you that I was exaggerating or better yet, completely inventing it all.  I am not:

1. Hey, I’ve decided to go up to Glacier Park instead of going home.  Should I stop and visit on my way back?
2. Why aren’t you answering?  I thought we were friends.  I’d like to come up and stay for the summer.  Seriously.  I could stay until September or something.
3. I really don’t understand this.  Why aren’t you answering?  Call me back.
4. Look, I’ve never met anyone like you.  I thought we had something really special.
5. I love you!  I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.  Please call me back so we can talk about this.
6. Never mind that last message.  I’m just confused as to why you aren’t calling me back.  Call me right now! 
7. Why aren’t you calling me? What is wrong with you?  What kind of person are you?  Apparently you are evil, for doing this to me.
8. I’m really disappointed in you.  I thought you were better than this.  Stop being so evil to me.  Call me back right now please.  Please.

Of course he didn’t call her back.  The whole time, he thought they were two friends with grandchildren in common. 

Over the next part of the day, she called four more times.  Now my dad is drinking down at the bar for real, because he is scared she is going to show up with her dog and try to move in.  He said he watched this week’s ‘Desparate Housewives,’ and the voice at the end of the show said: “Be careful who you invite into your life, because they may never leave.”  He said he laughed, because that was really happening. 

In the meantime, she called her son (Jesse) and was crying.  “I’m so confused.  Should I go home, or should I live at <The Land> for the summer?”  WTF?  No one invited you to live there.  Where do you get off?  Who do you think you are?  Why aren’t you spending all this energy on your husband…use that energy it to fix it or get a divorce, already! But…

What the hell was she thinking?  My dad is one of the friendliest, give-the-shirt-off-his-back sort of guys that you will ever meet.  She interpreted it all wrong.  All wrong.  Besides acting like a socially retarded teenager with a crush on the lifeguard, was she not thinking about who he was? 

I mean, in no way was there ever a chance that my dad would be seriously in to her, but let’s say in another plane and another dimension…was she not at all concerned about what her son would think?  Did she think that maybe her oldest son, my husband, might resent her a little bit for attempting to make him a step-sibling to his wife?  Why do I suddenly feel like an Appalachian cliché? 

My husband left a message for her (she wouldn’t answer the phone…she was probably on the other line) telling her to please get help if she ever wanted to see any of us again.  I’m almost certain she will tell this story quite differently to everyone else she “vents” to.  She is one big bag of crazy.  I never want her around my children again. 

So that’s how it all went down.  I feel icky.

Oh, by the way.  When I got home from Butte that Sunday, I tried to make a pot of coffee.  But there wasn’t any. 

She stole my coffee. 

I asked Jesse if he had touched the coffee, and he had made a pot that Saturday morning, but the bag had been full.  Jesse had bought me a brand new bag of coffee on Friday.  The bag was now empty with a few consolation grounds dusting the bottom. 

She won’t be invited back. 

Happy Mother’s Day.

 

The Price of Rice (In China)

I’ve used that saying:  “What does that have to do with the price of rice in China?” a lot.  Interesting that the price of rice in China apparently has a lot to do with things.  According to the news, “the global price of rice has ’skyrocketed’ 75 percent in a couple of months.’  Some major rice producing countries are limiting the rice type and amount that they are exporting.   The news in America has picked up on these important topics and didn’t hesitate for a second to paint the headlines dire:  Food Rationing in America?  Sam’s Club to Limit Rice Purchases…etc.

Remember Y2K kids?  What happens when you tell people that a store is going to limit anything, whether it be rice, the latest Elmo doll, or tickets to the World Series?

You get a huge run on these items when everyone goes out and buys five or ten times as much as they would have normally.  Heck, I eat rice maybe once every two months and I was tempted to go out and buy an 80-lb bag.  It’s the survivalist in me, I suppose.  But I am going to resist this, because common sense tells me to sit tight.  If I can’t afford rice in a couple of months, then I guess I’ll eat bananas.  If the rice crisis drives up the price of bananas, I’ll eat potatoes.  If a potato famine arrives, I’ll go to the store and buy up all the Fritos.  There’s always plenty of Fritos.  And I bet they keep well with all those preservatives.

In all seriousness, countries are experiences major food shortages.  This isn’y anything new, though you would think so from watching the news.  The food shortages in many places are increasing due to the rising prices of the food.  But why are the prices of food going up?  Is it because suddenly these is no food?  Did a major storm wipe out all the rice? 

One major reason is simply that the cost of oil is becoming out of control.  It costs lots of oil to get that food all over the world to where it’s needed.  So when oil goes up, so does everything else.  This is a good reason to buy your food locally to send the message that we don’t need your stinkin’ rice anyway.  I don’t plan to go without coffee anytime soon.  Or bananas.  My son would lose his mind if I took away his bananas. 

I also don’t plan to give up my car.  I can’t.  Although I do get a kick out of reading the uber-greenie blogs about how much better they are than everyone else because they live in a loft apartment that’s illuminated by candles and how they ride their bike to the protests they attend.  Noble, perhaps.   Realistic?  Not for very many people.  I really get a hoot from the celeb-blogs…Leo bought a Prius, some one else remodeled their Aspen manse to use 34% less electricity…super, guys!  Now how about limiting the number of times you fly back and forth across the pond to your villa in France? 

When you have means, it’s pretty easy to tell other people the right way to do things.  People with money can easily purchase expensive, organic, locally grown lettuce and fluorescent light bulbs.  People like Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote the phenomenal Animal, Vegetable, Miracle can afford a 100 acre ranch in West Virginia to live off the land for a year.  Single people with jobs in the city can easily mock the surburbanites and commuters of the world, suggesting that they take their kids and their dog to the crime ridden neighborhoods and cram themselves into an apartment.  It just doesn’t help the problem, all the finger pointing.  Everyone has someone to blame.  I guess that means that everyone is guilty. 

Now what do we do about it?

Incase you aren’t convinced you can find anything on line:  Rice Online

 

Say My Name…

To answer the questions:

• No, I don’t have a new job lined up
• No, I am not going to stay home with the kids…nice, but can’t afford that
• We may be moving, but our house could take 6 months to sell in this market
• I didn’t slam the keys down and there was no storming.  I did envision it that way, but it was very easy and nice and I was invited back if I didn’t find anything new

But besides all that, I wanted to discuss the practice of Saying My Name.  After a farewell dinner with friends last night, we stopped at Safeway to pick up some milk.  The cashier glanced at the receipt and said, “Thanks, Ms. Speer.”  Now I really hate this.  Please stop pretending that you know who I am.  It’s fake, it’s lame, and it makes me want to shop somewhere else.  You’re a huge, national grocery store chain.  You aren’t a mom and pop shop in Pleasantville.  Stop trying to convince me that you are.  If you want me to think that, stop importing vegetables from outside of the United States and stop charging ridiculous prices for food, otherwise I’ll have to go grocery shopping at Wal-Mart because I won’t be able to afford you anymore.  Anyway… 

Starbucks and other places do this too.  They ask for your name and write it, or some bastardized form of it, on your cup.  It’s always spelled wrong.  Then the barista on the end of the line has to call out your name, but they can never read the writing of the other barista who wrote it on the cup in the first place.  They’ll yell out “A nonfat latte for…Ma…Ma…Malissssshaw?”  After enduring the glares from other patrons (they’re all looking up to see who has that awful name) you grab your coffee and say “Thanks.”  Even though you don’t mean thanks, because people who don’t know you at all should not pretend they do by reading your name off of a cup.

The WORST is when there is a little placard at the counter that says “If I don’t ask for your name when you order, the meal is on us!”  I don’t WANT you to know my name.  I’m really sorry that your boss will probably fire you if I don’t give you my name, but I just can’t help you.  There are over 300 million people in this country.  Let’s just finally admit we can’t know (or pronounce) everyone we meet.  And that’s okay.  I promise to come back, if you knock this pretentious garbage off. 

 

Flavia

If I bought one Grande Skim Latte ($3.22 in my location) each workday, plus coffee on the weekends, I figure I would spend somewhere between $800 - $1000 a year on fu-fu coffee drinks.  I figure I did this last year.  

So in an effort to cut back, I am avoiding coffee joints when I can and turning to the company coffee. 

Up until sometime during the summer last year, our coffee came in big silver carafes that sat on the countertops in the office kitchens.  Then the big switch happened.  The company switched to Flavia.

Flavia held great promise with each of its colorful, vaccuum-packed individually wrapped coffee pods.  The magic that came with the Flavia machine was undeniable…pop in a shiny pod, press a few buttons to customize your coffee experience, place a paper cup underneath the spout and in a mere 30 seconds, a hot cup of cappucino, Milky Way Latte, Choco, or one of several other varieties of coffee, sat steaming in front of your very eyes!

Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by the coffee joints of my recent memory, but Flavia coffee really loses something along the way.  Maybe it’s the vaccuum packing.  Maybe it’s the sitting in a warehouse.  Maybe the pod-eating machine needs to be cleaned often.  Either way, I don’t like it much.  But Flavia is my coffee future…at least until we hit the Powerball.