My mother-in-law's house

I started to write a post about how crazy Mr. EM's paternal side of the family is, since we were smacked in the proverbial face with that fact this weekend, but it just seemed more sad than funny and that is just not the Earth Muffin way, gentle readers.

Then I considered writing a post about what a complete asshole Macho Man was while we were dealing with Crazy Paternal Relatives ("CPR's" from henceforth), but even thinking about it made me so damn mad that I couldn't form a coherent thought. So, I abandoned that idea as well.

And then, I recalled something Mr. EM said about MIL's guest room on Saturday morning and I laughed out loud, by myself sitting at the computer. I thought to myself, "Now there's a post!"

My MIL and Macho Man live in a smallish, one-story house on a main road in Normal, IL. It is, fortunately, far enough away from Illinois State University's campus that they don't live anywhere near any student housing. It's a great house, really, the perfect size for the two of them. I would guess it was built in the 1940's (?) and has been updated, but still maintains some of it's original charm. It has a 2 car garage, with an attached shed-type room, a small fenced-in backyard and a brick patio, which is a lovely place to sit while my boys skateboard, scooter and ride bikes on the black top driveway. My MIL grows tomatoes, carrots, broccoli and cauliflower in her backyard and hundreds of different varieties of flowers. She wouldn't say she has a green thumb, but it's certainly greener than mine!

Near her driveway there is a huge tree...I'm not sure what kind. When they first moved in, she put a little corn stand on the tree to attract squirrels, and attract them she did. It would be safe to say that 90% of the squirrels in the Bloomington/Normal area spend their time feeding at MIL's tree. Some of them get so fat that they look like Jabba the Hut and they end up spending the remainder of their lives hanging out in the general vicinity of that tree because they would surely be run over if they tried to venture away from her house. I'd never seen an overweight squirrel until she started feeding them.

Of course, that was before the "Feral Cat Incident of 2008". MIL is an animal lover, but most of all she is a cat lover. She has two house cats and they are lovely. Well, one of them is lovely. The other one was rescued from an abusive home and when we come over, she hisses at us once and runs away. Anyway, if there's one thing MIL can't stand (besides cheap jewelry), it's a hungry cat. Last summer one showed up on her doorstep. Macho Man said, "No more cats in the house." Well, MIL stuck to that directive and fed the cat outside. We all know that stray cats have a "If you build it, they will come" attitude, so pretty soon she was infested, so to speak, with feral cats...of both genders. And we all know what the birth rate is for stray cats, don't we? Pretty soon after that, there were at least 7 adult cats, two of which had litters of kittens, living in and around her garage. To say she was overwhelmed is an understatement, but she couldn't bring herself not to care for these cats, so she hooked up with a local organization called Sterile Feral. They brought her humane traps for the cats, showed her how to use them and they spayed/neutered them for free...and then they returned them to her. They told her that often the cats get comfortable and end up staying forever, but she's been lucky. Only 2 have stuck it out with her. Mr. EM and I suspect that the others figured out what we already know about Macho Man and beat it the hell out of there as fast as they could.

When we stay with MIL, we sleep in the finished part of her basement. It has a TV, fold-out couch and there is a bathroom down there for us to use. It used to be the one room in the house that was smoke-free...until Macho Man decided he needed a "man cave". It now stinks of cigarettes just like the rest of the house, not to mention the lovely beer can collection and the gun racks on the wall. One of the gun racks is mounted deer legs...cool, huh? Yes, it's the perfect getaway for a vegetarian couple. Whatever, it is his house and he's free to do with it as he chooses, and believe me, he's not going to let us forget that. It is comfortable to sleep down there and even if we can't get away from the smoke and his NRA mentality, at least we can get away from him. It stays cool during warm weather and dark in the mornings. We've turned off the phone in that room, since she tends to start getting calls from her friends at roughtly 6:30 am, so it's pretty easy to sleep down there. Except...

It's directly under the kitchen, with the ceramic tile and their kitchen chairs that are on wheels. We'd swear that they get up and race each other around the kitchen in the mornings. The noise level of those chairs on that floor is beyond belief, I kid you not. In conjunction with her 6:30 am gossip calls and the kitchen TV blaring some inane Western, it makes for an early morning. So, we stumble up the stairs and pour ourselves a cup of coffee that Macho Man has lovingly prepared...or at least we used to. Now we bring our own coffee and our French press with us because Macho Man drinks the world's worst coffee. Sometimes...and I'm not exaggerating here, gentle readers...sometimes he just pours water over the previous day's grounds. Oh. my. god. It is the worst swill you'd ever swallow. It is a crime against coffee. Once, just for kicks, we poured him a cup of our coffee and watched as he made a "whiskey face" when trying to drink it. He ended up pouring half of it out and filling it with tap water.

(He drinks Hamms and Black Label beer too, but this is turning into a rip on Macho Man rather than a commentary on MIL's house, so I'll try to stay on topic now.)

In MIL's living room is the first ashtray ever made. It is a platinum and marble standing ashtray and the kids are not to touch it. There is also a fireplace with all of its dangerous accessories, a collection of antique crystal ashtrays, a large model Indian motorcycle, (also something the kids are not to touch) several beautiful quilts and a large collection of stunning pink Depression glass...again, that the kids can't touch. Here's the thing, I know it's their house and they're entitled to decorate it however they want and it's our job to keep our kids from touching, messing with and breaking their stuff. We do that to the best of our ability and as the boys have gotten older it has gotten much easier to do. MIL, Mr. EM and I share the philosophy that it's just easier to put breakable/valuable items up when the kids visit, so that's what we do. Macho Man, on the other hand, disagrees. Nothing should have to be altered whatsoever when we visit. Our kids should just know not to touch their stuff and they should be punished if they attempt to do so and by "punished" he means spanked. It makes him absolutely nuts that we choose not to spank our kids and it makes him absolutely nuts that all of that breakable stuff would be put up when the boys were smaller. Never mind that he doesn't help put it up, or put it back in place when we leave. Never mind that none of it is stuff he actually uses. "It's the principal of the matter," is what he likes to say. "You're an asshole," is what we'd like to say, but we're guests in his home, so we don't.

Moving right along...the bathroom seems to never be the same color when we visit. I believe that if given free reign and a blank check, she'd redecorate her house every season. As it is, frequently repainting the bathroom and buying a new shower curtain is cheap and seems to satisfy her decorating urges. It has been purple, yellow, pale pink, robin's egg blue and, if I remember correctly, it is currently a light brown. The shower curtain is currently striped with all of the above colors, so it must have been pretty expensive and she knows she shouldn't buy a new one for quite a while. There is a red light fixture in her bathroom that the M.'s are obsessed with, it's like a room-warmer or something like that. Of course, they're not supposed to turn that light on...but sometimes I let them for just a minute. Shhh...don't tell! MIL expects the boys to bathe every day when they visit and that's so not the way we do things in the Land of Earth Muffin that they get a little uptight about it, but what are you gonna do? She does keep fun bubble bath and a few toys for them in the cabinet, so it's not the end of their world.

In MIL and Macho Man's bedroom, there is a cabinet built into the wall above her closet...storage I would KILL for. In it are about 400 million purses. Every time we visit she tells me, "Earth Muffin, I want you to go through my purses while you're here." Unfortunately, we don't have the same taste in purses. I like cloth hobo-bag type of purses, or funky backpacks or vintage-y looking bags. She likes big, designer, leather bags. The only bag of hers I've actually kept was an old, small, brown leather Coach purse. It's pretty awesome. Anyway, their windows are covered with room-darkening shades and very dark colored curtains. It's cozy.

The guest room? Is not. Well, I take that back...the bed is very comfortable because MIL will only have the best of the best of everything. The mattress is firm, the sheets are 100% cotton of a very high thread count, the pillows are the fluffiest and the blankets are the warmest. There is a flat-screen TV in the cabinet above the closet and a gorgeous antique dresser and chest of drawers. Usually the M.'s sleep in there, but this last visit Mr. EM and I did because the boys were wound up beyond belief and needed to be in the basement where they could make as much noise as they wanted. It was restful night...until the sun came up. See, in the guest room the windows are covered with white blinds and see-through lace curtains. According to Mr. EM, it's like waking up in Quick Trip's parking lot and there is certainly not any chance of going back to sleep once you've been blinded by the sun that early in the morning. We've decided it best for the boys to continue sleeping up there in the future.

The computer room is nothing fancy...but, dammit, that computer belongs to Macho Man. In case you were wondering and even if you weren't. Sometimes we wonder why he doesn't just pee on it before we come over so his territory is properly marked. If either of us mentions needing to get on there for any reason, or if we just mention that we might check our email in a little while, within a few seconds he's on the computer playing Bejeweled. I'm not kidding. A few visits back, Mr. EM was expecting a somewhat important email and mentioned at dinner the night before that he'd want to check our email account sometime the next morning. He never got to...Macho Man made sure to play Bejeweled the ENTIRE MORNING, up until we left. This last visit, I wanted to order some concert tickets that went on sale at 10:00 am Saturday morning. At 9:55 that morning, he hopped on the computer and played Bejeweled for 20 minutes. I finally went down to MIL and asked what the kindest approach was to let him know that I'd like to use the computer. Tee-hee...she went stomping up the stairs and told him to "get off the damn computer". God. We never just get on their computer and troll the internet for hours on end. Most of the time we don't get on it at all. But I'll be damned if he doesn't make it as difficult as possible for us to use it on the rare occasions that we do.

Ok, so I guess this post should have been titled "My mother-in-law's husband". I really wasn't able to keep from ragging on him, was I? What can I say, the guy bugs me and this last visit really put me on edge with him because he was so over-the-top rude that even MIL asked him what his problem was. Funny, he had no answer. We know that he'd like nothing more than for us to just get a hotel room when we visit and he knows that nothing would upset his wife more than if we did. And so, we are at an impasse. This was a nice, easy way to get all this off my chest in preparation for our next visit which will be in another month or so.

What bugs you about your in-laws? Do tell...