My sister in law has been in Israel for the last two weeks with her husband. Her husband's family lives there and they went to visit them. It was the first time she had met her in-laws. It probably was not a good visit since she is Christian and her in-laws are Jewish. In fact, her father in law is a Rabbi. But I digress. The reason I mentioned my sister in law is because I wanted to tell you what a dumb thing she has done now. She is the one who is the shop-a-holic. She shops just to be shopping. And the junk she gets… well she is the one that gave me the shiny gold purse and the Dubai tissue holder. Need I say more? She was supposed to arrive home yesterday. Or rather she was to arrive in New York yesterday and would then drive to Maryland where she lives. Then she is to hop on a plane on Friday morning with her mother and fly out to Indiana to spend Christmas with us.

She had to change planes in Madrid Spain yesterday. She gets off of the plane and heads over to the gate where she is to take the next plane but she got way-laid a bit. She couldn’t resist stopping in a couple of the shops. Like I said, she is a shop-a-holic. You know what is coming. The nit-wit missed her plane. She had to spend the night in Madrid. The airline helped her get a hotel room so she is all set. What this means is that instead of her arriving home on Tuesday she will arrive home on Wednesday (if she doesn’t miss anymore planes). So she will have about 24 hours at home before she has to get on the plane to come here. We will never hear the end of this one.

And I know what is going to happen. I am going to start opening some crappy cheap gift on Christmas morning and she is going to say “that is the gift that caused me to miss my plane, I hope you appreciate it.” Every gift from her has some stupid story with it. And she insists that she tell the story while you are opening the gift. And since she believes in quantity not quality there are a lot of gifts. One Christmas it took us 4 hours to open the gifts because she had a story to tell with each gift. It gets annoying. It gets to the point where you want to tell her to just keep her crappy cheap-ass gift. And with her spending the night in Madrid that gives her extra opportunity to shop in cheap-ass dollar stores. (Stores where everything costs only $1 per item, and it shows). Do they have dollar stores in Madrid? If they do she will find them. I wonder how much valium Santa can fit down the chimney because I have a feeling I am going to need it.

Another annoying thing? G-man’s mother calls him every Sunday night and talks to him for an hour to two hours. So of course that occurred Sunday night. So Monday night she calls to tell him that his sister is stuck in Madrid (because she is a shop-a-holic) and she spends another hour on the phone with him. I ask you, what the hell can they find to talk about for so long? That is 2 ½ hours in 2 days.

And while I am bitching let me mention something else that has pissed me off. The self proclaimed faith healer neighbor. I didn’t mention this but 2 weeks before Thanksgiving when she was over for tea she happened to see my new holiday cookbook and she asked to borrow it for one or two days so she could write down some of the recipes. You know what is coming. She has never returned it. It didn’t occur to me until last night when I went to look for it. Then when I realized, a string of profanity escaped my lips. I know I will never see that cookbook again. You know, she is one nasty piece of work. Here she is thinking she is all holier than thou and going to heaven while the rest of us burn in hell. Well I have news for her, it’s going to be the other way around. You can’t get into heaven acting the way she acts and using people like that. Bloody cow!

Tomorrow night is Lil Miss’s Christmas play at school. I am so excited! I am going to be one of those annoying people that stands up and snaps pictures blocking everyone else’s shots. Lil Miss was very excited when I picked her up from school yesterday. She told me about a Christmas party she had gone to in a ballroom downtown with her daddy and his friends and their two kids. She said with a look of awe and wonder in her eyes that she had even sat on Santa’s lap. I gave a gasp of shock and said “that’s awesome” and high fived her. She said they even got to dance in the ballroom. She was also happy because the car we sold her mommy is drivable now. In fact her mommy was driving it yesterday. Lil Miss says she is riding in style now. It was G-man’s old Nissan which needed a new catalytic converter. If you remember she found some Russian men in a bar to fix it for free. They finally delivered it to her Sunday night. Say what I may about Lil Miss’s mother, but you know what she did yesterday? She thanked me for giving her the car and she had a tear in her eye when she said it. It made me feel like we had done a good thing. Now I am going to do a good thing by finishing up the laundry before it attacks me.