Dessert and Mother-in-Law Telepathy

Men don't have it; I tell myself my husband just doesn't get it and I watch and I wait and I think to myself he just doesn't get it.

Dinner is over and the children have escaped to the family room to watch television; my husband, my mother-in-law and I sit at the table, drinking our tea and chatting.  My mother-in-law begins to kind of look around.  It becomes something of a game as I watch my husband and he watches his mother.  I know she wants dessert.  I am sure my husband knows she wants dessert and I wait.  The children aren't having dessert; I didn't make a pie this week; there is ice cream, but really no one wants dessert. Except the mother-in-law.  And she is hunting around at the table with her half-blind eye to see if I have put out cookies or cake or something.  I know I am being cruel but I justify my behaviour--my husband can easily get her a slice of banana bread.  God knows, I always have a sweet for her but sometimes I am sick of always being the one to have to say, "Do you want dessert?"

The matriarch never asks for dessert; she just assumes it is always there.  She has been in the house for almost a year and I rarely have dessert for everyone; there is always a sweet for her, but the children have grown up without regular dessert.  When we want sweets, we make them--hence our making doughnuts at 9 o'clock at night.  The matriarch knows this and still won't say anything.  But, worse, my husband, with whom I have been for TWENTY years knows this.  I wait.  And she just sits and reaches for a bowl only to discover it is the remnants of the dinner's pickles.  My husband watches and I find it unbearable and offer banana bread--which the matriarch eats and toddles off to bed; her bowl of frozen fruit and sugar already up in her room.

Then, I glare at my husband, my life's partner, "Did you see what your mother was doing?  Do you ever notice what she does?"
He nods, all nonchalant, "She was looking for dessert."
He grins at me, "I knew you'd give her something, you always do."
Men.  They just don't get it.  At All.