Our lovely hostess this week is Mommy Wizdom and she gives us the following:
The assignment:
Themes to choose from:
- A visit by your mother in law
- Bedtime Stories
- Raising a Teenager
The words: Ostrich, goosebumps, magazines, soup, cats, lethargic, noodles, tequila, doorknob, biscuit
Wild card words: prehistoric, Jedi Knight, cactus, periscope, humor
Your job is to write a story (true or made-up), poem, song, letter... whatever strikes you ABOUT one of the three themes. You must INCLUDE all 10 words. Wild cards words may be used in addition to or in place of the main 10 words
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I'm one of the lucky ones. Most women I know have a hate-hate relationship with their mothers-in-law. A friend of mine once said that she was sure that her mother-in-law must be a dinosaur because every idea she ever had was prehistoric. I was blessed because my mother-in-law was also my best friend. However, I didn't know that in the beginning. I had no idea what to expect.
RJ's mother comes from a pretty famous Southern family. Practically everything in their hometown is named after her family, so I expected that she might be a little bit uppity. She was also the type of woman who got up and dressed every day as if she had someplace to go even if she didn't. I'm talking about dressed to the nines. And the woman never wore a pair of pants in her life. She belonged to the Junior League, too, for goodness sakes. Not only that, the woman could cook! Can you tell that I was a little intimidated? And this was all based on what I'd heard - I'd never even met the woman.
How was I supposed to measure up to this woman? I came from a middle class family that had nothing named after it. If I'm wasn't going anywhere, you can bet that you would catch me in my blue jeans and a t-shirt, and back then I could barely heat up soup with noodles, let alone bake a biscuit.
So you can imagine that I was more than a little nervous when I heard that RJ's parents were coming to visit. In fact, I wanted to turn into an ostrich and bury my head until the weekend was over! First of all, RJ and I weren't married. He had moved in only a couple of weeks before this and he was sick with mono. His parents wanted to visit to check on him. I was sure that they also wanted to check out this girl that was corrupting him, convincing him to live in sin. They probably had this vision of wild parties with the Jedi Knight serving tequila shots. Ok, that might be pushing it - she might not have known who the Jedi Knight was, but she probably imagined the wild parties, or so I thought anyway!
We lived in an old rental home, that I could only do so much with. No matter how hard I tried to clean it, it still had the lingering odor of the previous owner's cats, who must have used the carpet as their litter box at some point. But I cleaned and cleaned for days for this visit. Poor RJ couldn't help because the mono made him so lethargic, but he tried by straightening up the magazines and a few things in the living room. By the time they were due to arrive, I didn't think the house had ever been cleaner.
When they pulled up out front, RJ, turning the doorknob as he looked out, said, "Oh my God, she's broken both her arms!"
As she walked up the walkway and got closer, we saw that it wasn't casts on her arms, but she was wearing formal white gloves that came above her elbows! When she reached the door, without cracking a smile, she said, "I'm hear for your white glove inspection. Step aside, please."
She walked in and proceeded to run her fingertip along my mantel! The rest of us were cracking up. She turned around, hugged me, and said, "Never worry about the shape of your house, dear. We are coming to visit YOU, not your house. Now, do you have any ice tea?"
That was when I discovered that my mother-in-law had the very best sense of humor, and that she was to become my very best friend in the world.
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