MIL Stories and Other Such Nonesense

First of all it snowed over the weekend and has been bitterly cold here. I love it! Unfortunately the snow didn't stick in town, but the mountains are all covered and it is so pretty. We might even get a white Christmas!

Ok, now that I got that out of my system, let us move on to more interesting topics. My MIL. I'm sure that I have mentioned my feelings for my MIL once or twice on this here blog of mine. However, if I haven't made it too clear in the past, I will detail it out right this very moment. I know you all are sitting on the edge of your seats, waiting with baited breath to hear about the evilness (or stupidity as I like to call it) that is my mother-in-law.

Mr. Sparky's graduation was the second most important day for him in his entire life. Of course marrying me was the most important day of his life as I changed his world upside down, but that is neither here nor there. Ahh, there could not be two people on this planet that are more different than he and I. It's weird how that works out. But I digress (as you can tell I get side tracked really easily. You have no idea how many projects I have at home waiting to be finished because something caught my attention. More than likely it was shiny or smelled good or involved a nap.) and must get on with the story of my MIL.

Like I said, his graduation from the police academy, which is the hardest thing he will ever have to go through, was really important for him. It was an epic struggle of mental, physical and emotional crap I have never seen the likes of, nor do I ever want to again. And that was just the stuff I went through! We made sure all week that she had the correct directions, she could get lost on a cul-de-sac people, and double checked to make sure she new what time, yadda yadda yadda. My parents drove up Thursday night so they wouldn't have to drive up from Phoenix really early on Friday (cuz my parents are smart). My MIL had to work late - like 9:30 late and the grandparents will not drive/ride on a road at night- so they (her, her fiance(whole other story sometime, I don't think the internets can handle Mr. Cowboy) and her parents who drove up from Tucson Thursday) were going to leave Phoenix at 7:00 am to get to the graduation by 10:00. She lives on the South East side of town and to get to us you have to get to the North West side of town. Normally it takes us and hour and a half max to get from us to her, with traffic(95 miles from us to them). They didn't want to wait in rush hour traffic so they decided to go up the East side of the state and cut over. Which adds an EXTRA hour and a half to the drive( and like and extra 100 miles).

Lets do a word problem (hate, hate, hate word problems. If this train left at this time and this train left at this time, BOOM!! they would smack into each other at what time?hate, hate, hate). A car carrying a load of intellectually challenged people left point A at 7:00 am to reach point B at 10:00 am. It is very IMPORTANT to be at point B ON TIME. It usually takes 1.5-2 hours to reach point B from point A. Now, the driver of the car carrying the intellectually challenged people (Mr. Cowboy to be exact) decided that they shouldn't drive through town to get to point B. He decided (and MIL agreed) that they should go up the East side of the state (which is a two-lane highway the whole frickin' way up so if a car as much as puts on a turn signal traffic backs up nine bajillionty miles) and cut ACROSS the state to make it to point B. Supposedly on time.

Ok, my patience with the word problem has ended and I will just continue this sad sad story on my own without the help of visual aids. At 7:15 am my MIL calls the house to say they are leaving. Late. Of course. Mr. Sparky has already gotten dressed and left for command inspection by this time. So I say ok we'll see you a little before ten. Remember, it is only an 1.5-2(max) hour drive from her house to ours. My parents and I left our house at 8:15 to get coffee and so I could be there by nine to take pictures of the formations and yadda yadda yadda. I call MIL on my way there to see where she is and she says,

"Hwy 87, does that sound right?"
and I'm all,
"Yeah, you're funny cuz that's on the other side of the state!"
and she says,
"Where just outside of Payson and the traffic is horrible. We'll see you when we get there"
and I'm all,
"WTF????(of course this is in my head, I do not swear in front of my mother, except if I've been drinking) Woman are you kidding?"
and she's all,
"No, Mr. Cowboy and I thought it would be better to go site seeing all the way on the other side of the state on the second most important day of my only son's life to beat the traffic we would have to go through to get to you the normal way which would have been about 1/2 hour shorter than the route we've decided to take" (the site seeing part is totally made up of course, but the idea of what she said is true)
and I'm all,
CLICK.

So in between the yelling at the phone and trying not to cry because I am so mad, my level headed mom says we should pray. And I do. It went a little something like this:

"Dear Lord, please strike that woman down dead."

And my dad laughed and my mom kind of scolded me, but I think He got the picture and I thought it was VERY appropriate for the situation. And really, in the back of her head that is EXACTLY what my mom was thinking too. Cuz she rocks and doesn't get anything that MIL does.

Now, I should preface that this day was the worst weather day the state had seen in like 150 years. It was raining so hard all over that I could barely see out the car window. It was snowing where the car full of intellectually challenged people were, and there was construction too. Hmm, don't you think it would have been a smart idea to check the road conditions before you decided to take a short cut that added an extra hour (on a two lane hwy the whole time)!

My parents dropped me off at the college(where the ceremony was being held) and went to breakfast while I took pictures of my amazing husband and his crew. I wasn't going to tell Mr. Sparky about the stupidness that is his family, but decided I better if he looked out and didn't see them. I didn't want him worrying they had been delayed or worse because of the weather. It was much better to let him know they are complete morons (which he already knows, it wasn't something new I was pointing out, so no gasps at how mean I am). He took it well and said, F*^% it, that is my mom for you. My parents got there and we got some great shots of our family before the ceremony (by family I mean us and my parents - the normal family).

The ceremony was about to start and still no sign of them. I called her cell and asked where she was and this is how that conversation went:

me - "Where are you now? It's about to start."
her - "We're in a cloud somewhere."
and her call is dropped.

So that could have been anywhere in the whole DAMN STATE! I need a break, writing this out is making my blood pressure rise. Plus I should be doing some work. I'll be back.

Ok, I'm back. Lunch was good, pizza and breadsticks. Yummmmm. But where were we? Ah yes.. the cloud conversation.

We all headed into the performance hall and sat down waiting for the ceremony to start. It was scheduled to be a 2 hour ceremony what with awards and the swearing in of 29 officers and the handing out of certifications and whatnot. The whole time I kept thinking she was going to miss everything and then I was going to have to hurt her. I don't think I have ever been so mad at anyone in my life. And I wasn't mad at her for me, I was mad at her for Mr. Sparky which I think makes it 100 times worse, no? They started the class video which was kick butt good and half way through my dad said he would go wait outside for them so they would know where we were sitting. This is why I love my parents. They sacrifice something they so truly wanted to see so that the idiots would know where we were sitting because he knows how much I wanted to be there to see it. Love, love, love my parents.

at 10:45 I finally see them walk into the auditorium. I couldn't even look at them I was so mad. In fact I sat there for the rest of the time grateful my parents were in between us because I would have hit her. When we got ready to pin (where you put the badge on the uniform) Mr. Sparky instead of walking the short 5 spaces past my in-laws to get to the right place, I walked ALL THE WAY AROUND THE AUDITORIUM (hmmm, I just realized that this is exactly what they did. Perhaps I wanted to site see a little, hmp) just so I wouldn't have to see them. By the time they got out we were done with the pinning and I only had the opportunity to take one, ONE picture with Mr. Sparky and his family after his swearing in. And it was a crappy picture too. Oh well. I'm sure I'll hear about it later, but if you could get there on time you would have better pictures of you and your son on his second most important day, moron. Then his grandmother (whom I love dearly but is a little batty) said and I quote, "We need to go eat now because your mom has to get back to work right away!"

Oh how the blood does boil. Needless to say, Mr. Sparky graduated and the people he cares about most were there to see it (thank goodness she didn't miss his swearing in, there would definitely have been murder afoot then) and that is the most important thing.

Can I just say, I'm very glad that Mr. Sparky is adopted and there is absolutely no chance that we will ever pass any of that crap on to our kids? Praise the Lord. And that concludes the latest story of my MIL. I hope you enjoyed it, but stay tuned, I'm sure there will be many more to come.