The past few days have been weird. I think we have Empty Nest Syndrome. Having the evil mother-in-law living here altered our lives so much that we don’t really remember what it was like before. We had been in this house for 9 months when she came and then she was here for 2.5 years. The husband keeps muttering now about “making the house our own.”
We are having to learn to live together again. I spent all my time either on the computer or in the bedroom. Now I can sit in the living room at night. But neither one of us are used to making allowances for each other’s peculiarities anymore. An example was our discussion about cuddling on the couch. He said we should. I said there wasn’t room. He said we used to. I said, “How?” It took some thinking but we remembered how we used to fit. The cat jumped up and cuddled too. We wondered if she would come in at night and head right for the bedroom. She always did because the evil MIL worried about her beating up her cat and wanted her banished from the house altogether. But as soon as they left my cat seemed to forget there even was a bedroom until I would go to bed and instead reasserted her dominance over the whole place.
The biggest difference is the candles. I was annoyed when the evil MIL banned candles in the house. But the husband seems to now think of candles as a form of liberation. He is using candles as the only form of light at night. At least our electric bill will go down!
Ever since we knew there was a possibility that she may be leaving I have been fantasizing about cloth napkins. That is downright bizarre. I’ve never seen the point of cloth napkins. I’ve never bought cloth napkins. But I’m obsessed. I imagine laying out fine tablesettings complete with tableclothes (?????), cloth napkins, and fancy napkin rings. Even worse I have this fantasy about using all this finery with kids!
I think the origin of this lies in the fact that her bedroom was our dining room. We didn’t have a table because I had something specific (and expensive, of course) in mind. The husband had said repeatedly over the years that the day she left he was going to get a table. He thought that meant she couldn’t come back. Like a magical forcefield. So the day she left I moved a card table into the dining room. A smaller and plainer forcefield to be sure but so far it is working.
I guess my mind put that all together to have fancy table linens meaning freedom and moving on. But I still don’t have cloth napkins. I tried to find some but couldn’t at the store I was at. I think it will be more meaningful to make them anyway. Now I need fancy napkin rings…
