it snowed monday and tues was my birthday. not cold enough yet to stick around for long. i still have yard winterization stuff to do so i am hoping we get a few more dryish not-freezing days. also, we need to buy a snow shovel.

spouse's parents were supposed to come up for his mom's doctor appt before her hip replacement. but they didn't get in touch despite us texting them so we assumed either the appt changed or they weren't staying in town long and we wouldn't see them. then they did end up wanting to meet somewhere last minute. so they didn't visit the house. they baffle me - i seriously have no idea if they are purposefully, meanly snubbing us or are just utterly disorganized. is this some weird passive aggresive punishment or is the slightest effort of coordination too much to manage? i'm starting to see why spouse is so weird with plans.

i thought maybe spouse's mom would chill out when she's removed from her home territory. nope. if anything she doubled down on being sort of an exaggerated caricature. if you can imagine jack sparrow from the third pirates movie (when he's just weird and not clever), except as a red hat, hippie super christian grandma. well, maybe it's the hip pain and the anxiety of future surgery, right? right??

you know what i think it is? she hasn't had a job working under a boss for a desperately needed paycheck in probably a couple decades. she's not had to deal with someone correcting her and telling her what to do and dictating expectations. or working with coworkers and clients/customers. her collaboration skills are garbage. she'd be that awful coworker everyone avoids because she can't mind her own business and has an excuse for everything, and she's slow as fuck because she's always going off on neverending distracting tangents that revolve around herself. like there's a bizarre insecure performative vibe to everything she does and i have no idea who this woman actually is. i keep hoping she will calm down and be a real person.

for instance, she got on the topic of kombucha and how much she likes it and how it has probiotics that help with her fibro and she's "not crazy" and "there's a method to her madness" and she wants to brew her own and how great it is for her body and gut health. spouse and i sit there saying absolutely nothing except sometimes "mm hmm". i did brew my own for a while, and i plan on starting up again with a scoby from one of spouse's coworkers. spouse knows quite a bit about brewing kombucha just secondhand from my experiments and he hates the stuff. but there's no room to have a back and forth conversation/exchange. it's all her. she's lecturing us about kombucha like it's some exotic thing she discovered that we couldn't possibly have heard of.

the funniest bit was when they mentioned the social prospects of our nephew currently living with them (he never escaped - he's 26 and he wants to get famous streaming video game commentary and mil seems to think this is a viable option ugh) and his chance to play with a local d&d group, if he can get his own transportation. "i don't like that dungeons and dragons," said spouse's dad with a furrowed brow, obviously not aware that spouse and i met via a roleplaying group, have been playing together ever since, and currently are in an actual d&d game. we had a good laugh about this later, but in the moment it's not worth the effort to get in the conversation. it's like the conversation is being performed at us and not meant to be interactive. i get why spouse tends to be very opaque and reserved as a default, because i feel the same pressure when i'm with his parents and we both mostly sit there and "mm hmm" a lot even though potentially we have a lot to contribute.

you know, i think it's because his parents kinda crave drama to keep their lives interesting, and by opening up and presenting info from our perspective we are just giving them something to potentially make drama about. and we're just not interested in being the next juicy cut of meat when she needs to pass time with spouse's sisters, etc.

mil is under the impression that hip replacement recovery will be easy, so (to my relief) there was no discussion of potentially staying with us. i had got some stuff to get the guest room fixed up just in case - new pillows, etc. - but we should have the guest room prepped anyway. i did volunteer to drive her home when she is released, because thanks to unemployment i am available when spouse & bil are at work. "you're going to be stuck in the car with my mom for 2 hours," spouse reminded me later. "yeah, i'm going to download all the enya and if she gets too loud i'll just blast it." he laughed. i survived my mentor for 2 years. i can listen to mil blab about whatever for a couple hours. with any luck she'll be doped up and sleepy. the drive is beautiful and the hybrid gets good mileage.

making decent progress on the house. a number of projects are nearly finished and i've gotten some organization done. things are finding real homes finally. i have gotten sidetracked with some programable led lighting. i got some lamp bulbs from costco and a led strip for under cabinet lighting. it's pitch black in the winter mornings in alaska and lights on timers are the only civilized way to wake up. i programmed a sunrise effect in the bedroom that works very well. it's going to be super cool. i don't think spouse likes rainbow disco party lights because he makes this cat hiss noise. but he tolerates solid colors well enough. i haven't told him but i want to put led lighting on the nicknack shelf. i should get him used to the kitchen lights first or he'll pull an Other Cat and hide under the bed. too much change. i can tell he likes the house though. i'm so excited to mark more projects off my list.