I will try to join her, although let's face it -- I'm a slacker. Mostly I'm a slacker because this is some Deep Shit over here at The Door In the Page, and sometimes I just can't get into it.
Also, I'll be away from a computer (and also away from a Starbucks) for the next three days, during which time I will be holding on to my temper with both hands and praying that someone will walk in and say "Hey, I've got a venti nonfat Pumpkin Spice Latte with three extra shots and no whipped cream, and I don't even DRINK these. Anybody want it?"
It should go without saying that I would knock over my frail, nearly blind father-in-law to get to that lukewarm prize. Which I would be sooooooo grateful for. But at this point, it is only hypothetical. Do we count hypotheticals?
As you've no doubt figured out by now, I'm spending the holiday
But I digress yet again. A thousand apologies. And now, in the spirit of the holiday, and recognizing that I would not survive this trip with my sanity and my relationships with my in-laws intact (and I only really care about maintaining one of those, but still) I give you five reasons I am grateful for the ways my husband tries to make these trips tolerable for me:
1. He checks the bed we sleep in for spiders for me. This is very important, because I am really afraid of spiders. Once, I went to bed before he did and there was a spider as big as my thumb under my pillow. I freaked out and sat on the floor and cried. And watched to make sure it wasn't coming for me. When Travis came in to bed, he killed it (and also its spouse) and removed all the covers to make sure they were all gone.
2. Speaking of bed, he encourages and enables me to bring my own bedding. I have a notoriously hard time sleeping anywhere but my bed. If I'm headed out to be a houseguest somewhere, I normally have to bring sleeping pills. Even if it's a hotel. The bedding in the guest room at my in-laws is a horrible synthetic that is supposed to look like silk but feels just gross and is hot as all hell. Travis and I sneak sheets and blankets and pillows in (we tell them I pack a lot) and remake the bed each night to sleep in it.
3. He takes me out for coffee every morning, under the guise that we need to check our email/call my mom to wish her a happy whatever-the-holiday-is/whoopsies I forgot my toothbrush so we're going to town to pick one up. And I get to go to the shell station, where the coffee is really good, and get a monster cup of java and some twizzlers, and the bathroom is gloriously clean and smells of pine-sol.
And speaking of food,
4. He manages to find a way that we can bring our own food. I know it seems weird to those who know me because I eat a lot, but I'm really picky. If it's gross, I won't eat it. After two visits in which I subsisted solely on driend fruit, granola bars, and pringles that I snuck, he hit on this idea and now we are a self-sustaining unit when we travel. (I'm drawing the line at a tent in the yard.) Every time we go we load up a cooler, and eat salads and sandwiches and homemade soup and fruit. They eat pork chops and the cheap version of velveeta. This time, I'm bringing Thanksgiving dinner, which we are looking forward to eating, and I suspect we'll all end up eating the same meal for once, instead of the awkward mealtimes that usually ensue. (Lest y'all try to report me to the Southern Council on Womanhood, I bring a gracious plenty of whatever it is I'm packing in the cooler -- enough for the entire family plus a few more. For reasons I don't understand, they opt for their own food. Whatever.)
5. He tries to keep me entertained. Here's what my in-laws do: 8 am breakfast. 8:30, TV. 11am, lunch. 11:30, tv. 4pm, dinner. 4:30pm, tv. 7:30pm, snack of dinner-like proportions. 8pm, tv.* Now, I'm not saying that I don't like to eat and watch tv as much as the next guy, but they prefer three kinds of programming, in order: Nancy Grace and her ilk, Game Show reruns, Country Music videos. Travis normally tries to find a way to get me out to go see a park or something around the time I get so restless I can't stand it.
*If my sister-in-law is there, we have to play a game of some sort that she has made up the rules to, and then have awkward conversations.
And that, my friends, is five reasons I am grateful for my husband. In the spirit of bird-killing that goes alongside Thanksgiving, I have successfully killed two birds with one stone -- I have made a list of five things about my husband for which I am grateful, and I have complained about my in-laws.
Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!
