Weekend Redux

My wife's parents came to town Saturday and took us to see the Moscow Ballet's performance of The Nutcracker. Now, I'm not a big fan of ballet. I suppose it's sort of wasted on me. I can appreciate the fact that it was very well done, and that the dancers were very talented, but I can't say that I really enjoyed it. I sat there for over two hours thinking things like:

-"*prance* *prance* *prance*"
-"I haven't watched Top Secret in a long time."
-"Whoa, that was pretty cool!"
-"Hey, that old lady has nachos. They sell nachos at the ballet?"
-"*flounce*"
-"I want some nachos."
-"Wow, I bet she could really..."
-"Heh. Sugarplum fairies."

But the kids enjoyed it, and the music was cool, so it wasn't a complete waste.

This was the second visit from the in-laws in just a couple of weeks, and I nearly reached the breaking point with her mother yesterday. She can be very critical, and it does get old. We sat through digs at my wife's cooking (my wife is an excellent cook, her mother absolutely does not cook at all), the snow tires I have stacked next to our back patio (I'm saving them to give back to my dad and don't have room in the garage), our house (not big enough, the basement windows are too small, etc., etc.), and our van (hard to get in and out of the back seat). I can put up quite a bit of these, because frankly I don't care much about her many opinions. But when she started in on the kids, I almost lost it.

One of my mother-in-law's more baffling (and infuriating) beliefs is that we can somehow "train" our youngest daughter to not be left-handed. When we were at a restaurant yesterday, the waitress set a bowl of applesauce to A's right side, and she used her right hand to hold the spoon and start eating. Because she usually makes a HUGE mess if she uses her right hand to eat, I asked her to switch hands and eat with her left. The MIL took issue with the fact that I wasn't letting her "choose" which hand to use, and that if we'd give her the opportunity to, she could learn to use her right hand just fine. I bit my tongue and let her spout off, but one of these days...