Two Bits

I can’t go folk dancing Friday because we are vetting Flora’s new boyfriend. If he survives, we are vetting him Saturday, too. (That will be after his first rock-climbing adventure.) This relationship is looking serious, and we are taking full advantage of his being here to check him out. My responsibility involves food. Waples eat - they eat a lot. So I am approaching this momentous task with all the gravitas it deserves. The first item on my agenda is establishing the menu, and to give you an idea of what I’m going through I’d like to provide an actual conversation–verbatim. As the curtain rises, the conversation between mother and daughter has been in progress for a couple of days. There they are, sitting in the morning room drinking tea, a fire buring merrily in the grate. Oh, no, wait-that has been over for 200 hundred years. They are each hunched over a laptop IMing each other:

Jeanne:

Does he eat sausage? White beans? Pumpkin soup?

Flora:

 Yes, no, and no

Jeanne:

Does he eat chili?

Flora:

We already have our meals planed: stroganoff and the one I can’t spell.

Jeanne:

Maybe, maybe not -  anyway, what’s this ‘we’, missy??? I might want to do something on Saturday.

Flora:

….and that “something” is going to be cooking dinner for your daughter and potential son-in-law!

Jeanne:

Yes. Maybe ’something else’, too. Aren’t you the proponent of multitasking???

Flora:

Not when it is the person in charge of my food!

Jeanne:

We’re getting off topic here. What about chili (and biscuits and gingerbread)?

Flora:

That sounds good, but what about stroganoff and the fried stuff?

Jeanne:

I’m speaking hypothetically here. ‘Chili might mean ‘beef stroganoff’, or it might mean ‘cheerios’.

Flora:

LOL! Pause Really? Longer pause Wow…Much longer pause.

Jeanne (caving):

Bagna caulda is on for Friday.

Flora:

Okay… Yes ma’am! Friday it is. Gotta go to hospital now - talk later?

Jeanne:

Great. I’ll be slaving away in preparation.

Flora:

I should hope so!

 

Why am I expending so much effort on this? Because it is my first midterm in pre-Mother-in-Law. I can tell that this one is important.  It isn’t because she cooks for him in spite of her hospital work-load. It isn’t because she lets him spend money on her. And it certainly isn’t because she is bringing him home this weekend. No, it’s because she is taking him rock climbing. You may well wonder when climbing became a test of true love. All I can say is that we have an unusually family.