Ch-ch-ch-changes

Never ones to spend much time with their grandchildren, my now ex-in-laws were always notorious for the “drive- bys”, zipping past the house, slowing down only to toss birthday gifts out onto the lawn for my then small children.


This annual drive-by was to cover all past birthdays for three grandchildren with clearance rack gifts tied up in Wal-Mart bags.

Usually it was raining.

Sadly my kids would shriek with pleasure seeing the blur of their Grandparents van go by, then run outside to collect the bags littering the rain soaked lawn.

This year is the first year I never have to worry about spending time with my in-laws again, and I would be lying if I said I felt guilty about it. We were always polite to each other, but sometimes you just know when you see life out of a different window.

The holidays were a little odd...a picnic table in a living room for the occasion with several card tables attached, covered with food in bulk containers. A dog on the table surfing the butter, and nobody seems to notice. “Go ahead, pet him so he goes away” my MIL would yell, with chip dip dripping from the corners of her mouth and down her shirt while on her 4th beer.

I fantasized about stabbing her with a Tide Pen.

She is the only woman I know who sets off a smoke alarm before a stove timer.


A paper plate with an entire loaf of white bread is stacked into a teetering tower, exquisitely placed next to a tub of margarine donning a knife jammed into its center. Generic potato chips and a warm six- pack of Cream Soda add to the holiday sparkle. Expired and mutilated olives float lifelessly in a jar next to green Jell-O with shredded carrots, looking like someone’s aquarium froze up.

I am thankful for one thing, if it were a degree above freezing outside, we would be eating in the garage on her set of mismatched TV trays with space heaters. Minnesotans love to entertain in garages. It is actually considered an “outdoor” activity.

With her ever present cigarette dancing from side to side displaying it's amazing three inch ash; I actually witnessed this monstrous ash give up its fight and break off into a bowl of potatoe salad. I watched in horror as she whiped it and the last of the mayonnaise together in one fatal stir.

And all these years I thought it was pepper.


My anger jolted with each visit I always promised myself, “this is the last time I am spending the holidays with the Clampets....who think Chardonnay is a fabric.”

My FIL thought I was an elitist because I had been to a museum, and have 400 per square inch thread count sheets from T.J Maxx.

“Art is for queers, sheets are for sissy’s” he’d say.

He loved to inform me that he had just eaten dinner over the sink, farted in church, drank from the milk carton, and has a urine flow issue.

Because he was into wood work and furniture refinishing, I’d inform him back that I am painting “good wood”, pounding nails into sheet rock and planning to hang pictures without measuring all before getting my nails done.

I say this in jest (who me)? But looking back over the years,I always felt we were not worth the effort to them to make it a special day, wrap a gift, or share a visit with my kids.

I have never met a selfish person who is truly fulfilled with no regrets.

I have noticed something about relationship worthiness. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery said most eloquently ~“The one thing that matters most in a relationship is the effort put towards it.”

Yep, you can measure relationships by one thing: Effort

People may not remember what you do or say to hurt them, but they will always remember how you made them feel.

When someone feels insignificant, they feel undervalued and hurt. Be a giver of more than you take. (Why does "under promise and over deliver" lead to sales success)?Take time to connect with others and cultivate relationships. Relationships require a balanced amount of time and attention.Relationships need continuity.

My in-laws were so sporatic with efforts, they have no foundation with my kids. Everyone looses.

Effort in the dictionary says: An earnest self-less attempt.

The best gift you can give someone this new years season is time and effort.

Lisa ~

PS: Yes. That really IS a real photo of butter from her house and NO they dont read blogs and NO I don't care if they did (evil smile)!

Franny Got New Drapes

I think insanity runs in my family and I am frightened.

Many of my relatives, living or dead, I am starting to see.... are freaks.

My Grandmother, until her death several months ago insisted that "Franny," her next door neighbor for 30 years, would steal the tulip bulbs from her garden at night and replant them in her own. "Nobody has that shade of a Tiger Lily but me." She would scream.

She also insisted that Franny would systematically cut the buttons off my Grandfathers winter jackets in the back hallway when she came to borrow a cup of sugar. Grandma would disappear into the kitchen to fetch the "cover up condiment," and Franny would apparently be madly hacking off buttons with a scissors she brought just for the occasion.

"They were expensive brass buttons, and her son had a military uniform she could use them for....." Grandma would snap after she left.

She began hiding the jacket.

Franny was a red headed Lucille Ball look-a-like who was drunk 100% of the time and smoked three packs of Camels a day. She could hardly stand up let alone cut a button off a coat without amputating all of her fingers.

I clearly remember being about five- years- old sitting on the back stairs watching Franny teeter back and fourth against the door frame smiling at me through watery eyes with lipstick smashed on her teeth.

As a kid, when I would be telling my Grandma a story, thinking she was listening to me and that I had her undivided attention, she would look out the porch window and say "I see Franny got new drapes"...

I also remember sitting on the floor at Grandmas with my brother watching television only to hear my Grandma scream..”I know what you two are doing! Get those hands out of the cookies”!Not even near the kitchen..we would just stare at each other, shrug our shoulders and continue to watch Scooby-Do.

Grandma had many quirks. She used to insist I sleep with no underwear on (only loose PJ pants) because “a vagina needed to breathe..if you don't, you'll just tear that thing right up"

She also refused to leave the house until she had “a good healthy BM”. We would wait for hours playing games on her front porch until we heard her light a match. Then we could leave.

I often wondered what constituted a “healthy BM” in her eyes. A floater? A diver? A sinker? Did it go according to shape, size or color? Smell or length? Did she measure it? Weight it? Poke it with a stick? Photograph it? Chart it? Make a list of averages?

She was consumed with stools and GAVE my mother and her sisters caster oil enemas (key word here is GAVE) until they were 15 years-old. I asked my Mother why she never refused.

She blinked and said “I guess I never thought to”. (Twighlight Zone music playing here…)

I also have a cousin named Karen, whom back when I was about 19, thought that Satan spoke to her through the kitchen table and that her OBGYN was following her a week after giving birth to her son.

Did no one think to themselves… “Gee, maybe we should call a doctor? Maybe she has some postpartum depression, or that she is just frickin INSANE”?? Rumor has it that she ran away with her children and was never seen or heard from again. Did anyone call the police? Was there an ongoing investigation? Hell nooooooo…

Here’s my Mother on the phone with a relative: “So.. Karen never showed up at either of her parents funerals…ya…sure, no idea. Sort of rude donch know?? Ya alrighty, you betcha…bye-bye.”

God help me if I was ever kidnapped.

"Yeah did ya hear? Lisa never showed up after school??... geez...been three weeks now, sorta rude dontcha think? Teenagers..she's such a rebel”….

In the meantime I would be found 30 years later as a maggot infested bag of bones in a 6 foot hole at Black-Dog Park, found by some horrified jogger whose dog stumbled across my skeleton still sporting a plastic head-band and a monogrammed sweater from 1982.

As for Karen, personally I think her equally freaky family or illegal immigrant ass of a husband killed her and she is buried in her a yard in Vienna VA.

I may have been born into a freaky family tree, but thank God I grew my own branch.