Wife of the Year Award
by Sherra on July 2, 2008
in Finding the Funny, Moments
Nominations are now opened.
Feel free to nominate yourself.
Because I am.
Nominating myself that is.
Here’s why.
Phone call at 11:40 a.m. yesterday…
Me:
Hello
(Okay I might have said “What?” because I don’t really like to talk to anyone before noon.)
PhilBillPaul:
Don’t freak out…
As you can see he’s been diligently working on improving his communication skills.
That kind of opening line always has a calming effect on me.
…but my mom is at the Atlanta airport and if we can find a good flight for her to get back to Austin, she’d like to come to the house and stay with us for a week. (She was flying home from visiting her sister in Florida.)
Me:
Silence
PhilBillPaul:
Obviously I am at a customer’s doing my job so I can’t get on the internet. Do you think you could get on your computer and see if you could find a good airfare for her so she could stay?
Me:
Silence
PhilBillPaul:
I mean, if that wouldn’t stress you. She has a two-hour layover and if we can find a flight she’d like to stay.
Me:
I’ll look.
PhilBillPaul:
Thank you! Call me back if you find something.
Me:
Bye.
I open my laptop, do a quick search for a one-way flight.
At 11:54 a.m. I call Granny on her cell phone and tell her what I have found. She says that sounds great and I book the flight for her. I tell her that I’ll call PhilBillPaul and one of us will come and get her and call her back in a few minutes.
The airport is 46 miles straight through downtown Atlanta which could be 46 minutes IF there is no traffic.
Which would be when pigs fly.
Just in case you’ve never driven through Atlanta.
I call PhilBillPaul and tell him his mother has a ticket for next Tuesday and he’ll need to take a 1/2 day off work to take her to the airport next week.
I ask him where he is (he travels throughout the metropolitan Atlanta area almost daily for his job) and he is not really close to the airport. But he says he should be done in about two hours if she could “hang tight” at the airport then he could go get her so I wouldn’t have to.
He knows I’m in the middle of a big work project and I really don’t have time to stop and take three hours to go down to the airport and back.
Here is more of his always-improving communication skills…
PhilBillPaul:
Will you call her and ask if she can wait at the airport for two hours?
Me:
NO.
You call her yourself and take care of getting her to the house.
PhilBillPaul:
Okay, you’re right. I should call her back. I’ll handle it from here. Thanks for getting her the ticket.
Come on now – I’m not bragging but I would like to know how many of you would welcome your mother-in-law to your home for a week long visit with two hours notice?
I should tell you one more thing that does make a big difference about how much spontaneity I can handle.
I love Granny.
The kids love Granny.
PhilBillPaul is very lucky that we all love Granny.
He is also lucky that Hormone Hell Week was last week or he wouldn’t have a calm, flexible wife who booked a flight for his mom.
Good timing Granny!
I cannot name one friend I have that would welcome their mother-in-law for a week in their home with virtually no notice.
Bring on the nominations – just leave a comment below and then we can all vote next week on the winner. (Remember to click through to the blog to leave your comment if you are reading this through an email update or RSS feed reader.)
Please don’t let me win this award uncontested.
I’m all about a good healthy competition! 
You’re definately the winner in my book…yep, you get the award!
(I haven’t been by for awhile…hope all is well…have a good week with Granny).
Wait!!!! I am your friend and I would LOVE a two minute advance warning if my mother-in-law were coming. That, of course, would constitue a miracle. She died 18 months ago and I miss her so very much. My hubby says it’s because she lived far enough away to appreciate her. Okay, you win the wife award for normal circumstances!
SORRY!! I can top this after having just sent you an e-mail a short while ago telling you I don’t have time to post replies. Anyway, here goes:
My m-i-l, who was a virtual stranger at this point called my husband when our girls were 5 and graduating from pre-k to ask if she could come and visit. This after a scary call (to me anyway) from his sister when our twin girls were born asking if his mom was there yet? She and her husband had left a couple of days before on their Harley to come and visit WITHOUT calling. This was before my own Harley induction so it freaked me right out since her husband looked like a biker! So they showed up shortly afterwards for that visit and I have to tell you the first thing I did the next morning since my DH had to go to work was sneak out of the house with the twin babies. Yep, that’s right, ran home to mommy!
Anyway, back to this story. She calls in May asking to come visit and once my DH got my permission, she came and NEVER LEFT! Yep, that’s right. Lived in my basement for a couple of months, then finally moved out but still local and then moved back in about 2 years ago again, with very short notice,after schmoozing my DH by helping him to buy his first Harley. Was I thrilled or what??
The good thing is she’s actually very little trouble to me. Bugs my DH more than she does me since she pretty much keeps to herself UNLESS he’s home alone, lol!
I’ve been glad, sometimes, that she’s around for babysitting purposes obviously and also so that my children would know her. She’s from Oklahoma so they probably wouldn’t have known her very well otherwise since we haven’t made many trips west. My DH is from a very dysfunctional family.
Guess I could have took a lesson from you and bought her a plane ticket home. Maybe that would have gotten rid of her although I’ve bought a couple of tickets anyway but she always comes back. Brings more stuff with her too.
I’ll check back later to see how my story rates OR you can just send my prize to me. You know where I live.
I am impressed by the calmness and flexibility!
My mother-in-law lives with us. She has 1,300 square feet of her own in our basement. Though I love her and she ahs her own space, she is ALWAYS here. Thankfully, she is helpful with the kids and tries (not always successfully) to stay out of our business.
Enjoy your time with Granny and remember she is going home next Tuesday.
OK, I would welcome the day that we actually have my mother in law OR my mother want to come and visit. My mother seems to use every excuse in the book to not travel and my inlaws go everywhere on the planet but don’t seem to have time to come and see the grandkids. When they do come it’s during a lay over from another trip and it is never more than 48 hours. Our kids are good kids and we have a decent house in which I run like a bed and breakfast when we do have visitors and I am pretty darn hospitable. So what’s up? All I can say is that the grandparents are missing out on precious time with their grandkids and someday it will be too late to make up for lost time. My lovely husband wonders what I have done to make them stay away and I swear it’s not me!! By the way this post is going, it looks like I don’t get the award at this time. Hmmm, I think I’ll just enjoy my family and not stress over the fact that I never have to worry about the two hour notice!
Sherra – looks like you opened a Pandora’s box here with this topic! Perhaps that will up your comment count drastically and really entice more readers to stop by your fabulous and oh-so-real site. That said, I will throw my hat into the ring for wife of the year…
My husband’s family hates me. They hate the choices my husband and I have made concerning home school, dating, religion…you name it, they disagree with it. I have even written them all notes to apologize for what they perceive I have done (I couldn’t really apologize for the things they accused me that are totally crazy, now could I?) and to ask them if we could try and rebuild our relationships so that my husband doesn’t get thrust in the middle. To which their response was ZILCH – NADA – NOTHING!!! I could go on and on and post one of those monstrously long posts but suffice it to say the fact that I live surround by crazy people while homeschooling two teenagers, helping out with my handicap brother and taking care of my mom following her double knee replacement starting next week should qualify me for at least a runner up position!
Good luck and have fun with Granny! Six days to go Miss Flexible!
I do believe I should be in the running… At the end of my first preganancy, I invited my MIL to stay with us until the baby was born AND until the christening. Now I got along very well with my MIL while she was across the country. She is a worrier and planner who thinks she’s easy going. She stayed with us for 5 1/2 weeks with my FIL joining us for the last 2 weeks. By the end of the stay my husband and I were hiding in our bedroom! Still…2 years later with my second child we invited her again – for 6 weeks. What were we thinking?
She now lives 8 miles from us since my FIL passed on Thanksgiving.
I must say that the kids love her and my husband does in small doses, like dinner or the movies. I’m the one who listens to her concerns, gives her practical advice, and makes her laugh when she’s down. It turns out that not expecting much from her for myself has been really good for our relationship and we have now started to become friends!
Don’t even get me started on my mother in law! You win in my book, Sherra!! It would really help my situation if my MIL were like Granny!
My Wife of the Year award doesn’t have much to do with my mother-in-law, but….
I’ve spent 23 years learning to like things my husband likes: I learned how to love Auburn football (season tickets, weekends tailgating every fall, carrying a stupid orange & blue pocketbook, etc.); I learned how to play golf (took lessons, got a set of clubs for “my birthday”, bought those stupid shoes, played on the weekday mornings to save $$ (thanks Sherra!); I learned how to like NASCAR (went to races, memorized which cars went with which drivers, even eventually took a job at Atlanta Motor Speedway); I learned how to appreciate fine wine (read “Wine for Dummies” book, went to wine tastings, tried fancy & expensive ones – but give me $6 a bottle of Beringer White Zin anyday!).
But do you think he EVER sat down and worked on ONE SINGLE scrapbook page with ME???? Nope.
I still love him, but BOY does he owe me! (Or you could just give me the award – that should suffice. A pat on the back from someone would be nice and would probably help me release all this pent up hostility….)
My MIL reamed me out a few years ago for not making (and keeping) her son happy. After 25 years of marriage she and I ‘tolerate’ each other very minimally. She really doesn’t travel much so I rarely have to deal with long visits but they do happen occasionally. Besides, I feel that it is your own responsibility to make yourself happy- not someone else’s job.
MAN OH MAN, the mother-in-law subject stirred you all up!! It’s been a very busy week but I promise to review the nominations next week. I think we have 3 contenders in Joanne, Diane & Melinda. The rest of you just need support because you are a GOOD ENOUGH daughter-in-law (and might even be better than good!) In Gayle’s case, she has been more than a GOOD ENOUGH wife – so here’s your pat on the back!!!!
Thanks to all who took the time to comment!
I vote for Melinda as winner. Holy cow is all I can say! Purple Heart might be appropriate for her!