Bless Her Heart

If you are from the South, or know people from the South, you may well be familiar with the phrase, "bless his/her/it's heart." Here's a little blurb on this if you don't know about this phenomenon.

Anyhoo, my MIL, bless her heart, came to visit last Wednesday, and I can handle her in small doses, but I think I rolled my eyes more this weekend than I have since her last visit. Picture me in the passenger seat of the car, Hubby driving, the boys in their carseats in the back, with MIL perched between them, rattling on about anything and everything. The most annoying thing is that MIL, bless her heart, tends to say something not particularly funny and will laugh afterwards, forcing her listeners to either roll their eyes silently, force out a slight chuckle, or say, "Mmmhmm" while rolling their eyes. Or maybe I'm the only one.

We spent a great deal of the day Friday and Saturday in the car in the above situation. Fortunately, today we dropped MIL off with her friend at the Lavender Festival and high-tailed it home (well, as much as you could call a 3 hour drive high-tailing it). We had a good excuse for not partaking in the Lavender Excitement, and I'll have to write another post about that. The point is, we spent a lot of time with MIL, and that was without the much-needed breather breaks I require from pointless chit-chat. Or maybe it's pointless chit-chat followed by laughing at everything. Oftentimes I wondered if we couldn't all just silently enjoy the beautiful scenery.

I know, I know. I'm a bad daughter-in-law. After all, my MIL came all the way to Seattle to see her son and grandsons, and paid a lot of money for us to stay at a lovely little cabin at a lovely lodge in a lovely national forest. Heck, she planted daylilies for me, and I would not be surprised if she has bought me lavender plants today as she and her friend from Florida traipsed around at the Lavender Festival. And no doubt, if she bought them, she'll gladly plant them. Plus, she is one of the sweetest women you could ever meet.

Bless my heart, I'm just a cynical bitch. That's cheating. I don't think one is allowed to bless oneself. One of you can use that phrase about me, though.