The Your Mom Saga

I think I've only mentioned Thing's mom, Your Mom, once in past posts. She's a very nice woman but very high strung. She's in a constant state of perpetual crisis - whether one actually exists or not. I don't know how she does it. It's exhausting just to watch. But as far as (future) Mother-in-laws go, I've always known I could do much worse. While we aren't terribly close (we don't 'do lunch' or have phone chats), we've always gotten along, talk at family functions and have each other's families over for dinner periodically.

And then Christmas of '08 happened. (insert ominous sounding music here)

Your Mom is also a foster mom. Her current charge is a smallish boy of 10 whom we shall call Odious. Need I say more?
Now, my kids are far from perfect little Stepford children. I know this. However, I can snatch and discipline a misbehaving child at 20 paces; location or situation be damned. My kids, Thing, and friends can attest to the fact that I run a pretty tight ship. There isn't much I put up with and I have no problem dealing with problems as they arise.
Which brings us to Christmas Day. We had dinner with the Thing's family at his Aunt's house. If you remember, Thing's extended family is totally normal, which I'm still getting used to being associated with. However, I've failed to mention previously that they also have money. And not McMansion kind of money either, but money. So they always make me a little nervous. AND I was really nervous on Christmas because it would be the first time they were all meeting my kids. When I've seen Thing's extended family before (Thanksgivings, some parties, etc), it was during times the kids were with The Paperweight so this was the introduction of The Boy and The Girl.
As with all situations, we went over the rules beforehand, I had a bag of small toys and art supplies to entertain The Girl and I properly threatened The Boy. They were dressed in their Sunday Best and reminded of proper manners.

Overall, I was very impressed with them. The Boy shook hands and made pleasant conversation and remembered to be polite. The Girl even shook off her usually shyness for the day and politely answered any questions asked her.
Then we finished dinner.
And Odious poured down on us like a rain for fire.
Odious had been at Thanksgiving dinner so we pretty much knew what to expect from him. He started getting a little loud and wild in the next room, having finished his dinner first and been excused. I waited for Your Mom to step in and settle him down before something broke in the expensive-totally-not-child-friendly room, but she didn't. After a while, The Girl finished her dinner and went into the next room. Being young herself, it didn't take long before she got sucked into the loud 'play'. I excused myself from the table to take care of The Girl and I heard The Thing say to his mom something to the effect of 'Odious is getting out of hand and you may want to settle him down'.
I went one way into the next room and snatched The Girl. I saw Your Mom come in through the other doorway and approach Odious.
As always, I got down on one knee to face The Girl and started to go over The Rules again. I was just beginning when Your Mom approached me and started to talk. She was saying something about kids just being kids and everything's okay.
At first, I must admit, it did not occur to me that she was actually trying to interrupt me. I assumed that having just walked away from Odious she didn't realize that I was already in conversation with The Girl. And even as I was talking to The Girl, part of my brain was waiting for Your Mom to say 'oops, sorry. I'll come back' but she didn't. She just kept talking and talking about how the kids were settled now and what Odious said they were doing, etc.

So I stopped talking long enough to raise my hand in a stop motion and said to Your Mom 'I need to speak to my daughter right now please' and then went back to speaking with The Girl while Your Mom returned to the dinner table.
There were no further incidents with The Girl. She dug out her coloring book and markers and sat at the dinner table sharing with a younger boy.
Your Mom completely avoided me.
Odious spent the rest of the afternoon between periodic wild behavior and cornering victims into long 10 year old boy conversations where one could only hope for an atomic attack just in the hope that it would stop his yammering.
People left and the party was over much earlier than usual.

On the car ride home, I told The Thing what happened and how his mom even refused to acknowledge me when I told her goodbye. He agreed that I did nothing to warrant this behavior from her but admitted that he wasn't surprised she acted that way. The next night, I overheard him on the phone with her and he discussed it with me completely afterwards. She's very upset with me for being so 'hostile' with her.
Hostile? ::snort::
She thinks that was hostile? Can you imagine what she would think of my blog?
Yea, it was funny. Until The Thing told me Your Mom's version of the story....that she went in and talked to both kids and settled them down. And then I came in, snatched The Girl, was hostile to Your Mom and insinuated that she didn't know how to take care of kids.

That's too big for just initials - WHAT THE FUCK?!

We ignored it for a while, but The Thing came to me last week and asked if, out of the goodness of my heart, I'd be the one to approach her and make nice. After confirming it was not an apology he was after (since I did nothing wrong), I agreed. Thing admitted it was just not in Your Mom's personality to be the one to break-the-ice, and that she would, in fact, turn this into a melodrama in which to fret over for the next 20 years. So, in order to not have things be weird, I took the first step and called her.

She didn't pick up her phone.

She's never called me back.

Let the melodrama begin.