Fairest Ophelia

My in-laws are hurricane magnets, so of course they are here for the weekend. Ophelia has been demoted to a tropical storm, but that still means we have to batten down the hatches, put away the Paddy O'Furniture, and stock up on batteries. The in-laws (who, by the way, I absolutely adore, so stuff it with the in-law jokes -- these are the people who like to send me on trips to Amsterdam and New York City for no apparent reason) are actually staying in Provincetown, so they just stopped in this morning to say hello goodbye until our scheduled fete Sunday evening. By then Ophelia should have said hello and goodbye, too, so all should be well.

It's the truth about those guys being hurricane magnets, but maybe it also has something to do with their propensity for visiting friends and relatives all the time in hurricane-prone locales like North Carolina, Fire Island, and Provincetown. So when I heard they were visiting this weekend, I figured on inclement weather.

Word to the wise: They're coming back in October. Which is still well within official hurricane season.

So they stopped by this morning, I brewed up some tasty coffee and gave them a tour of the garden, such as it is. They made appropriate "EEWWWW" noises at the monstrosity McMansion across the street, and recommended stealing the lightbulbs out of their 500 mega-watt driveway lamps that have stolen our night sky. I mentioned that we had considered shooting them out with beebee guns, or spray-painting the lamps with black paint and they said that was a good idea too.

You gotta love in-laws who endorse creative vandalism in the service of a good cause.

I was gratified to receive, in their presence, a phone call from one of the folks I freelance for, offering me a nice big fat job, just to show them that I am in fact gainfully employed. I couldn't have set up that phone call any better if I tried, right down to my mother-in-law looking at the phone as it rang, reading the caller ID, and exclaiming "It's from (big fancy New York City publishing house)!!!" I took it in the other room, feeling important and well-connected.

Almost makes up for the whole No-Grandchildren-Produced-Yet thing, doncha think?

I also think they're a little horrified, or at least mystified, that we live so happily in just about the tiniest house ever in the world -- you could fit about twenty of our houses into theirs, and their upstate New York farmhouse is far from huge. But they are also jealous that we live by the sea, and they can see that we are happy and content, and this motivates them to send us on trips to Europe.

Then we checked the radar and decided it was well past time for them to find their B&B and fortify their provisions with suitable amounts of wine and cheese and candles and magazines and other pleasant things to sit out a storm with, so we sent them on their way. Like I say, we'll see them for dinner on Sunday.

And it has just now begun to rain, so I guess that whatever is going to get battened down has been battened, my car windows are rolled up and the candles are lit, so let's see what this latest storm can do.