I'll Be Late, I Have A Lawsuit

My in-laws are visiting us this weekend. That sentence makes me feel more adult than paying taxes and getting pap smears. They are staying at a hotel nearby because my MIL is allergic to cats and would slowly suffocate to death over the course of the weekend were she to sleep in our spare room, which, I may add, is perfectly comfortable and clean. In case anyone who gave birth to my husband was wondering.

Taking on a whole new group of people that can constantly remind you of what you're doing wrong is difficult, but I have it very very easy and not just because they live far away. I'm lucky in that my husband's parents are really nice to me, very generous and it's fairly easy to keep in touch between visits and I never have to guiltily pick up the phone, guzzle three shots of vodka, and dial their number. Like, I email them on purpose just to say hi sometimes.

There are a couple of barriers we have never really crossed, though. I've never cooked for them, or hosted on my own turf except for that one time a few years ago when they had to make rush travel plans for a holiday weekend because their son and I decided to get married. If only the Affordable Care Act had been in place in 2012, we might have been able to have a worry-free elopement in Bulgaria instead. . .

I'd better break out the fancy hotdogs this weekend.

In the beginning, I got really anxious any time we visited them or visited with them somewhere else (past tense, because clearly I don't anymore). For real, though, how bad could they be? They raised my favorite person and he's pretty ok and good at sports and Simpsons trivia. We used to always bring Truffles to their house with us when we visited, and she'd immediately take a crap on their floor or vomit on a rug somewhere. My husband's dad famously yelled "WHO DID THIS?" to a pile of feces once - like it was one of us or something. Truffles never really has accidents, and I bring her to people's houses all the time when I visit, but not to their house anymore. She just can't keep it together there.

She is going to daycare, not Grandma's

Not that they ever gave me any real signals, or maybe they are good at faking it and I'm not good at reading them - but I always worried they didn't like me. Realistically speaking, my husband could probably actually do a bit better. He has a fairly prestigious job, gets to meet interesting people who could some day get indicted in a juicy public scandal--and yet I still giggle if someone farts unexpectedly (especially if it's me).

So they will be here tomorrow and I'm cleaning and making some goodies while I try to squelch the fear that my goodies will give them diarrhea or e. coli.

One tough "elephant in the room" will be that I've gotten tangled up in my very first lawsuit, thus officially embracing my white trash heritage. I have so many relatives that think "I should sue" on a daily, if not hourly, basis and I'm finally one of them. I will be in court when they arrive to their nice hotel and settle in before coming to my house that I painstakingly (or my husband painstakingly) de-cat-haired and have a glass of peach sangria and eat dairy-free (Jews=lactose intolerant) strawberry chocolate creme pie that hopefully won't kill them or be full of animal dander. The cats like to play in the food processor. Something about the spinning. I should clean that out first. . .

Thanks for driving 14 hours, I'll be late, I have a lawsuit. . .

So yeah, I've got this lawsuit going and my husband's parents are coming and it's supposed to rain a lot, but they like me so it'll be fine that they're cooped up here in close quarters with me eating my cooking and not inhaling too deeply because I may have missed some tumbleweeds of animal hair. I'm not worried at all. They'd probably want to see that new Ted movie, right? I know one thing, this bitch better behave: