There's No Place Like MY Home For The Holidays (Really!)

Many times, we have heard the saying “When you marry someone, you marry their family.”  Since Chief and I have gotten engaged, I have taken a good look at the gene pool that my future children will be sharing.  I’m finding out slowly that the pool is slimy and green with envy, and if you aren’t careful, you’ll stab yourself doing the backstroke.  The worst part of it all is that he wants me to go for a big swim on Christmas Day.

Now mind you, I wouldn’t have balked at all at spending Thanksgiving with these people.  But Christmas!  I was really counting on spending Christmas with my family—the family that I talk to every day.  Instead, I will be with the family that he talks to once a month, IF he decides to return their crazy phone calls that are usually to borrow money, to inform him of a new terminal disease that one of them really doesn’t have, or just to make him miserable in general.  

The Future Monster-In-Law (FMIL) is the one that scares me the most.  I really believe she haunts our closet in the night, cursing the Chief with lack of sexual desire.  FMIL and I have never met.  She has never called me, written me, or included me on a Christmas card in two years of living with her son. 

She has, however, been in touch via the occasional email forward when she wants to let me in on how Bill Gates is giving away his fortune if I forward this to 15 people – Microsoft is really keeping track, ya know!  She has also been in touch through the occasional stab in the back via the grapevine.  She has NOT been in touch about the wedding shower she was arranging for her son (and me by proxy no less, if I must be included), that made him go to his favorite hardware store and register for all his wants and needs, only to check it almost on a daily basis only to see “0” in the purchase column.