80 - Now Let's See

So, the week-end just gone.


Neither she nor our son is very well.


Wake up Saturday morning, get breakfast together, take him to his violin lesson. Do the shopping for lunch and dinner, pick him up, get his hair cut.


Do lunch, spend the afternoon with homework and then dinner.


Sunday. Clean toilets and bathrooms - as usual - but she has made a miraculous recovery and wishes to drop our son off at a birthday party at a mall.


Relationship friendly and so I am asked whether I want to go as well - I say 'yes'.


We drop him off, have a very nice lunch at a restaurant, pick him up, come back home.


She is ill again.


More homework and dinner.


Next morning she is ok again - though I accompany them to school so I drive.


Will I get a 'thank you' at any stage? Don't want one, don't need one - but where is this great 'appreciation' that I so sorely lack?


Mother's Day next week. I will get a card but nothing more. Will she expect more?


Situation stable. Even pleasant. How long will this last.

79 - The Arrogance Never Ends

We are invited out to dinner by a couple we met some few months ago.






The lady appears to be a housewife - though it turns out she runs some sort of business. For some reason, she attracts M.'s ire. 'Not someone I will go out with.' 'Probably cooks a lot.' Making fun of house-wifeiness.






M.'s brother and sister-in-law have just had a baby.






'They will take a name from the grandparents,' she says. 'My parents are far more likely, of course, to choose an appropriate name.'






'Why?' I ask






'Well, because ...' and even she probably feels embarrassed at finishing the sentence.






Her sister-in-law's parents do not - I believe - come from an 'old family' with illustrious relations.




However, they are lovely people who have brought up a lovely daughter. Are they incapable of being intelligent enough to think up a good name?!






You can be proud of your family's achievements but they are not your achievements. So, why this arrogance?