Friday, October 21, 2011

Twinkle: The Appropriate Response When Someone Makes You Breakfast

The men of Mr. Twinkle's family love to make breakfast. On many a weekend morning Mr. Twinkle will get up early with our girls and I'll wake an hour and a half later to the smell of pancakes. They will be hot on the table when my lazy ass finally decides to descend the stairs, and, you know, I've never once thought to complain about it. I don't even mind cleaning up the disastrous kitchen after the fact. The appropriate response when someone makes you breakfast is to smile and say thank-you, and talk about how delicious the breakfast was, and then insist that they go rest while you clean up.

That's in the normal world, of course. My MIL actually finds fault with my FIL's habit of making breakfast. He is retired, so his breakfast-making operation is a daily event, and he measures and freezes all his ingredients beforehand so it will be easy to grab the contents of, say, two egg white mushroom omelettes. He is also working on his technique for Waffle House hashbrowns (he likes them "scattered, smothered, and covered"...which for the non-initiated involves frying them in a skillet with cheese and onions). I all find the effort endearing, and if someone were making me breakfast every day before I went to a thankless damn job at the elementary school, you'd better believe I'd be grateful to that person. Also, you know that he doesn't dare leave that kitchen messy, so I don't really see what the problem is. When someone hands me an omelette with no strings attached I just say thank you.

Not my MIL. Instead, she just bitches and bitches about it and rolls her eyes when he seems proud about the effort he puts into it. It's unbelievable. Of course I try to make a big deal out of how nice I think it is, and how I admire the creativity, and how I know that's how Mr. Twinkle will be when he's retired. I mean really, how ungrateful can that bitch be? And then her mother is all, "Well, did you skip lunch?" to my FIL, and my MIL breaks in and says, "No! He went to lunch with a friend!" like that is the worst thing in the world. I have a word of advice for my all-knowing mother-in-law: if a man wants to make breakfast for you, let him, and if he then wants to go to lunch with a friend, be nice to him about it, and be glad he's not spending his retirement screwing someone nicer.

Whew. That woman gives me a case of the horribles.

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