(yeah, yeah, yeah…)
Just got back from a fabulous weekend in Gene’s home town. Everytime I get back from a visit I think “Millions of people vacation HERE?” So anyway, I got home from work Friday at the usual time to find Gene on a conference call, half packed and not ready to leave. We finally leave at close to 7, which gets us to MIL’s around 9. And she held dinner for us. (oh, God). It’s Gene’s favorite meal, Chicken in Duck Sauce. Blehhh. I think that it would be really good except that she cooks the chicken until it dies a second death. After dinner, we all BS around awhile and then Gene and I take off for our hotel (which is a minor insult to my MIL as she apparently had very complex sleeping arrangement plans for all of us, with my stepson on the couch, MIL in the boy’s room, Gene and I in MIL’s room –eew– and BIL and SIL in the master bedroom. Not. On. Your. Life).
Saturday: Meet the family at IHOP. Mmmm. Get into a fist-fight with MIL over the check. Not really a fist fight, but it typically gets pretty ugly whenever MIL tries to pay. She won. Gene then reported to us all that he doesn’t really give a fig who pays, he just likes to PO his mother. Everyone recamps back to MIL’s, supposedly to work on moving some minor things. BIL and SIL (and in-utero nephew) take off to check out used furniture stores to sell MIL’s extra furniture to and are gone for 5 hours (sum total of their excursion: 1 business card and 1 tie-dyed onesie. More about this later). We all sit around and discuss what MIL wants to take with her. My BIL handles Blanche better than Gene, who tends to get upset when someone disagrees with his vision. I even manage to insult MIL, but I apologized a little while later and am still embarassed.
Apropos to nothing: Did you know that Sonic Drive-In has something called “Extreme Tots”? It’s tater-tots with cheese, chili and (I hope) onions on them. Mmmm.
Anyway. While BIL and SIL are furniture store shopping, Gene, the boy, Blanche and I go to Blockbuster, the grocery store and the pet food store. It was another triple figure day for us there. Oops. (For the record, 1/3 of it was flea and tick medicine and that’s just not cheap). After we returned to MIL’s and found BIL and SIL not back yet Gene announced he wanted to go car browsing. I excitedly volunteered to go along and we looked at the Acura RL. It’s gorgeous but horrifyingly expensive. I’d rather look more seriously at the TL, which is just wretchedly expensive. We also looked at (shocker) BMW and saw a $70,000 5 series with a MANUAL transmission. WTF? I told Gene it had better have a driver and backseat entertainment for that kind of bucks.
No, we’re not looking to buy a $70,000 car. Jesus. MIL’s house is a 3 bedroom house in the burbs of a craptown, not the frigging Taj Mahal!
Sunday, we had breakfast at MIL’s and then came home and picked up the dogs and unloaded everything and here we are. Yea, rah.
Baby related: So SIL bought the onesie. It’s the first baby related thing she’s purchased so far. She admits she’s in denial about the whole thing, has never baby sat or changed a diaper. She even feels clueless about registering. I feel helpless about what to tell her, other than “Copy off someone else’s registry” and “The only thing you need before your water breaks is a carseat.” I’m going to go plunder info from Erin’s blog and send it to SIL. Technically, Baby Bargains is a place to start. As I recall, it says “Buy X number of onesies, diapers, blah blah”. A friend of hers is throwing a shower for her in March so she has to register sooner or later. And I, my friends, cannot wait.