Very sweet. My husband calls us every night when he works out of town.

That is extremely UNcharacteristic of him, yet he’s always done this when he goes out of town. Even when he worked in Canada for four months, he found a way to call us almost every day (without spending a ton of money–I think I got an AT&T thing). He isn’t a stay-in-touch kind of guy. He has lots of old friends from other cities. They call him and leave messages. He likes his friends, but he never calls them. Then they call ME trying to see where he is and to leave messages. As you can probably imagine, it’s really irritating when they start leaving me messages about why my husband needs to call them back– as if I REALLY CARE.

He loves his mom, but he never calls her or emails her. Therefore she emails me trying to catch up on news. I’d be happy to fill her in if she could readjust her personality. But she ruined getting updates by being 1) way too mean, 2) way too bossy, and 3) way too unable to understand other people’s perspectives on things–not just mine, everyone’s. Sorry lady, you get no updates ever.  As a matter of fact, we correspond so infrequently that I am not 100% sure she’s still alive, but I assume if she weren’t, my husband would have mentioned it.

Oh, I shouldn’t have mentioned her. This could have turned into a neverending post! ANYWAY, point being, despite calling no one else, my husband calls us every day. Now THAT is sweet. He really treasures us.

I find it very odd that she insists on emailing me to ask how her son is doing. I have told her so many times that I am not their go-between. So, when she sends me an Instant Message asking how he’s doing, I ALWAYS answer the same way, “Have you asked him? Just email him” to which she always responds, “No, I am afraid of taking his time.” (Note: She treats her son like precious gold, everyone else on earth like crap.) Oh, but of course, I guess I have PLENTY of time on my hands, despite huge writing projects with strict deadlines, two young boys, and husband’s job which has been 6 days a week from 9 am till 2 or 3 am for the past month or two. Sure.

I totally ignore the emails asking about her son. Then one day, I got this email: “Holly, you do realize, of course, that I need to have contact with my family.” Hm. So, I said something to the effect that her son is family (though I am NOT), and so she should let him know all about this. Her response: “Thank you.” He he. She thinks she pulls at the heart strings. Actually she pulls at the crack-me-up strings.

I do send her updates on the grandchildren from time to time. Occasionally she sends sends sarcastic messages to show me that my updates aren’t sufficient: “Thank you so much, Holly, for that story you told me a month ago about my grandsons. That one story was so interesting. After all, I NEED to know what’s going on in my boys’ lives.” Yeah. Keep talking.

Yesterday at 1:00 am, she writes me asking how her son’s new project is going. As usual I asked, “Did ya email him?” She said, “No. I know he’s busy. I’m so afraid to take his time.” Mhm. I answered that I think he’s fine but I haven’t seen him for about a months as he has been working from about 9am till 2am, so she might get more info if she contacts him. You know what she answered? “You’re kind.” Hm.

No, she’s kind. Don’t you think? Well, that’s all fine because she makes me feel lucky. I am SO lucky that this lady lives thousands of miles from here. I’m also lucky that my husband is working his heart out at work because he’s nervous that people have been let go. He takes such good care of us. Also his outfit matched today and he looked REALLY handsome. See, when it’s 2:30 am, I start getting a little lovey dovey and really thankful for stuff. Also, my boys are the most irresistable kids ever. Why did I get all this good stuff? Have I begun to ramble?

Uh, it’s 2:30 am. I was supposed to be in bed by 11 pm. Why no self-discipline???? Good night.

My mother-in-law is from a different country. That country is very mountainous and therefore quite closed off from surrounding countries (and the surrounding world in many respects, which explains many stories on this blog.) In that country, the people are highly educated, but only the richest have enough money to travel abroad. This means, the people there do see foreign countries in the media, magazines, and tourists, but they trust their own customs and regard many foreign ways as “strange” or “incorrect” (rather than “different” or “interesting”).

SO, when my mother-in-law visited for the first time, I knew she’d never eaten fried shrimp. As a nice gesture, I fixed a grand dinner consisting of 2 pounds of fried and breaded shrimp for her, along with many other foods. It was great, not to toot my own horn.

Well, these shrimp had tails. My mom-in-law was popping the whole thing into her mouth, tail and all. For the sake of her stomach lining, I delicately tried to say, “Um…We don’t really…usually…eat the tails.” Trying to soften the comment, I added, “I think they might upset your stomach, probably that’s the reason.” (And not, for example, because it makes you look like a freak.)

At the time, I was just learning that my mother-in-law is extremely defensive and hated me as my husband’s non-native wife. So, I wasn’t aware that I would be attacked for trying to be helpful.

But I quickly learned. She gave me a VERY agitated look and replied: “My dear, I eat what I want how I want.” Then she very deliberately opened her mouth and dropped another entire shrimp into it tail and all. And proceeded to chomp on it and fake smile at me.

In her book, she really told me off. As you can imagine, I SURE FELT FOOLISH. (tee hee ha ha.)

My husband, the kind, handsome, wonderful man he is, definitely marches to the beat of a different drummer. A very different drummer. A drummer who can be annoying at times due to being so unaware of and forgetful of obvious things, yet still feel thoroughly convinced that he knows so much about everything. Especially health, driving laws, and child-rearing. About once every week or so, he shocks me with some bizarre question or statement. I thought I’d list the 10 examples that come to mind–ALL 100% TRUE.

1) Using a seatbelt is dangerous. Also carseats are dangerous for children. (We have children. He abides by the law, but that doesn’t make me feel much better about either of these statements.)

2) Driving the speed limit on the freeway can be dangerous. Sometimes you have to go faster to be safe.

3) What’s my mother’s area code? (As in, his mother’s area code.)

4) Do you spell our son’s name with a “c” or “k” at the end?

5) How old are you? (As in, how old am I. He has known me almost 11 years.)

6) How many years have we been married? (He would probably be at least two years off if he guessed.)

7) Who is Angelina Jolie? (He rattled off this question in 2005 when she’d been very famous for many years. Also he works in the movie industry and was about to begin working on “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” when he asked this question.)

8 ) You know the Airborne you gave me to stop my cold? I think it infected my kidneys.

9) I can’t apply for another job yet. I still haven’t gotten a response from the last one I applied for 2 weeks ago. (This helps explain why he was unemployed for a very long time during our early married years.)

10) It won’t be hard to have a 3rd child. You’ll be fine. (Of course, as he works 9am to 11pm-ish most days.)

PS. His jokes are even stranger than his quotes and questions. They also cause people to stop and do a double take. You can read about those here and here.)

1) My sons do not live in her country. My sons rarely visit her country. My sons do not speak the language in her country fluently. My sons are ages 6 and 3 and do not need to own a home. Also, when they do own a home, I will not encourage them to “split it up.”
2) She mentions rising property values. Yes, it could double or triple. Problem is, we can’t live in it or sell it. Though no one in the family wants to buy it either (this is all her), they would die if we bought it and later tried to sell it, as their ancestors built it. Not interested.
3) In a nutshell, buying this house would kind of be like living in a sort of prison, except it would cost $30K instead of being free, and you got there by doing a favor, rather than committing a crime.
4) We are getting ready to buy a house in California. If we get a loan for $30K now, we might have trouble (lots of it) getting a loan for $450K. You can’t get a 3 bedroom home here where we are for under $500K.
5) So, we considered doing this for her, not us, but it became too complex and would seriously impact our ability to give our children a home here. Sorry, no can do.

But this is a…how shall I put it…steadfast lady we’re talking about here. So we explain that we want to, but it’s impossible. SO she has an idea: “Oh, well, then, you could pay 75% and own that much of the house, and another family member can pay $25% and own that much!”

Hm. Not really sure where to begin. Perhaps when we said “we can’t afford to buy it,” she thought we meant something like “we have $25K in our pockets ready to spend, just not $30K.” Or maybe to her it would be a great idea to spend thousands of dollars on a home and SHARE it with someone…I am pretty sure this “someone” wouldn’t like it.