contact my mother-in-law frequently

I had a photo of the boys printed and shipped to her today. While I’m not contacting her directly, she’ll know I was thinking of her and listening last week when she asked for one.

Who knew the there was so little of interest in the newspaper? Most of the highly entertaining things (cattle rustling!) make it onto the TV news, so she already hears about them. She’s not interested in the town budget battles or other local government things (she lives a couple of hours away, so it’s not local for her). I did mail her something last week about a tractor ramming incident, which she enjoyed. I’ve got more pictures to mail to her as well.

She visited for Easter, and I made a point of spending more time chatting with her (as did my sister, for which I’m grateful). Yesterday I sent her another long overdue photo book, this one from our Feb. vacation.

I’m not doing well with this goal at all, but tonight I put together a photo book from our vacation and ordered it to be shipped directly to her house. Considering that we just got back from vacation late last night, I’m impressed with myself!

Well, since the last entry, my father-in-law has suddenly passed away, so this goal is possibly more important. For the first few days after his death, my husband and/or his brother were with her. I called her yesterday morning after she had been on her own for just over a day and I think I annoyed her, based on the tone of her voice. She told my husband later that evening that she just couldn’t get anything done with the phones calls she was getting, which I can sympathize with. So, while I’m going to keep this goal, I’m certainly not going to call often! Maybe I’ll stick with the idea of cutting out interesting newspaper articles and mailing them. That’s much less intrusive.

This would have made an excellent goal for Lent. I’ve had to learn how to get along reasonably with my MIL, mostly because she’s not the most tactful person in the world. Just as I’m feeling good about the status quo it took us almost 10 years to get to, a bombshell gets dropped today. (Backstory: my FIL has been in poor health and unable to walk for about a year, needing a full-time caregiver when he’s home. Last week he was admitted to the hospital suddenly and may need to have a portion of his leg amputated.) As I’m talking with my MIL tonight, she tells me how lonely she is in the house by herself. (This is a first—usually she’s pretty cheery when he’s in the hospital or nursing home.) Later, talking with my mother, she points out that I should call her everyday. I know she’s right (a point that’s taken almost 40 years to reach), so here’s my goal. I’m not sure I can fabricate a reason for calling daily, but I’ll try to call her a couple of mornings a week before I head off to work. I’ll also make sure I stick a note in cards the children make for her and my FIL, too. Maybe I’ll even take up her habit of cutting interesting things out of the newspaper and sending them to her.

Tomorrow I’ll write a note to stick into the note the big one needs to write to her anyway, and I’ll call her Monday morning to thank her for the newspaper articles she sent home with my husband today (he was there visiting without us).