Weekend at Mommy's

So, my parents have returned from their glorious 2-week vacation in Spain; my mother called this morning to let me know she would come to our house tomorrow bearing gifts and pizza to pick up their toilet-drinking cat. She also mentioned that she could tell we had been in the house. My three sisters, my niece Lulu, Booby and I camped out at my parents' house last weekend in order to lay our greasy mitts on their millions of family photos and scrapbook the hell out of them. I know there are some people out there who love scrapbooking, and I suppose I can see how it might be addictive, what with all the cute little baby shoe cut paper motifs, stickers in the shape of torn-paper hearts, et cetera. But when you spend NINE hours on your knees (on a carpeted floor, but still!), arranging and rearranging photos for maximum effect and tear production in the viewer -- well, you can imagine I'm not keen to scrapbook again any time soon. I was actually sore for two days after that activity. I guess I need more exercise to sooth my cracking knee joints.

My husband, meanwhile, quietly amassed a pile of truly hideous snaps of my formative years while pretending to scan family photos for a power point presentation. I think he's planning an evil photo essay on his blog which is sure to lead me to deny him physical affection for many weeks to come, should he decide to proceed. It started off well enough: recent photos elicited comments from my sisters like, "You look like a model in this one!" Wow, thanks! Then we devolved to responses like, "I really prefer your hair short. You have such a small face!" Um, thanks? From there we got to, "Hey, everyone, remember at [my brother's] wedding, when Mrs. Harridan drank everyone's champagne? Let's put this in the power point!" Let's not. Oh, to have braces, zits, a (pre-dye) mullet, baby pink Lee Press-ons, and be giggling hysterically while smashed at a family wedding! Good times. Ha, ha! Cough.

Anyway, we left the folks a card and a box of Ghirardelli chocolates, but only after getting snowed in overnight and having to dig our cars out of the visitors' parking lot (if left on the street, they were to be towed, but I don't see how that's possible, what with the 18" of snow on the ground. But you don't want to rock the boat when you're dealing with a neighborhood association. Especially if you don't even live in the neighborhood).

Apparently, my folks have their house layout memorized like an old blind couple, because my mother mentioned that "the chair was in the wrong place" (we didn't move the furniture, that I recall), the cats' dishes were in with her regular dishes (Fancy Feast, anyone?), and "someone's been sleeping in my bed!" This last she chortled - my mom is a card. But I will say, for someone who really should have privacy issues after dealing with a mother who opened her mail, my mother took the home invasion very gracefully. Perhaps, on a subconscious level, she noticed that we removed all the rotting vegetables and the cheese which had gone a very upsetting shade of green. We never did get the smell to leave the fridge, though ("Olive juice!" quoth Saurus, who then refused to open the fridge door again for the remainder of our time there). Perhaps it's time to change the box of baking soda.