Brokeback MIL

For all of you worried about how in the world I would entertain my dear mother-in-law for a whole month, rest easy she wont be coming after all. Perhaps she had the same thought? I guess after having a chance to catch her breath, the thought of a 16 hour flight did not sound appealing. We didn't even tell her that it would be a 12 hour drive after the flight. She told us to save our money and come to visit her instead. That is the story of our families. Family, they don't call, they don't answer emails, they don't visit. Both mine and Jeff's family. I realize that we made the choice to live overseas, but does that make all contact our responsibility? All the time? Aren't relationships supposed to be two way? It doesn't seem like other military families have this problem. Everyone else, their families call, email and visit. I'll get over it I always do.

Yesterday, was my day off. Most Saturday's Jeff takes care of Lily and I get to do whatever I want the whole day. Lay in bed, go shopping, hang out with friends. A day of no responsibility. When we tell other couples with small children about my day off, they are shocked. Wives say that their husband's couldn't handle the kids for a whole day by themselves. That the husbands do everything all wrong and they give me a big list of all the things their husbands do wrong. Husband's say that they need their weekends and that taking care of the little one all day is just too much. But, on Sunday, Jeff gets the whole day off, he can sleep all day, watch sports or whatever. I don't bother him at all. Most of my friends share the responsibility on both day and neither parent really gets a day off. But, what works for us probably wouldn't work for anyone else. We are just weird.

So on my day off, what do I do? I usually hang out with Jeff. What is wrong with me? I should be painting the town red, reading a book, catching up on homework, learning to speak Japanese or something. I woke up yesterday, after sleeping until 9 a.m. (yeah me), and I had a ton of plans. I went downstairs and started talking to Jeff and then, I spent the entire morning with him. I went grocery shopping, to the post office, the dry cleaners -all the errands he kindly does for me on my day off.

The dry cleaners is next to the video store. Lily loves to run in and rent a movie. So while Jeff was turning in his dry cleaning Lily and I went to browse the movies. She loves Dora and Jo-Jo's Circus. I don't usually rent her a movie we just look at the pretty pictures. Jeff came in and he found a war movie, and then he saw that in the bin of used movies for sale was Brokeback Mountain.

He told me how the wife of his friend has bought the movie and made his friend watch it. Jeff proceeded to tell his friend how I couldn't make him watch that movie. How there is no way. And they proceeded to have a conversation about how much their wives could MAKE them do. My husband who gives me a day off, right, he says I can't make him watch a movie. I just have no idea how men's brains work. They are a mystery to me. I wouldn't make Jeff do something, but I cannot remember him ever telling me no about anything, he is that easy going. But, he swears that he is some macho man whose wife doesn't make him do anything. Weird. Perhaps you have to know Jeff for this to make sense, he is very laid back and easy going. But, I guess I couldn't make him do something everything he does is because he wants to do it.

When Brokeback first came out, it was playing in the theater here on the base, a military base. Don't ask, don't tell. Jeff hadn't heard about the movie so Mandy and thought it would be funny if we told him he should go see it. If we told him it was a movie about mountain climbing he would be all excited and go see it. Wouldn't that be funny if he went to the movie alone in front of the whole base. ha, ha. We didn't trick him, we were just messing with his head. Not that there is anything wrong with the movie or the theme of the movie. Just that boys are sensitive and it is fun to pick on Jeff-the-man whose wife cannot make him do stuff.

**PS: Angel I hope this post meets your length requirements (lol) and I didn't write the code for my dad's website. I don't know JAVA. I tried to write the code, and couldn't get it to work, so I used Publisher to create it, used Publisher to turn it into a website and then went through the code and fixed all the links to graphics. So don't be too impressed. I was just glad I could get it to look right, even if I couldn't write it myself. I am taking my first Java programming class and it starts tomorrow so maybe in a few months.