My Husband joins the Chipits Brigade

Yesterday, the tissues were finally found and it was confirmed, Kleenex is no longer making large sized tissues. I happened to be in a grocery store and there were a bunch of boxes in the clear out section; because I am the way I am, I asked the manager of the store (as in someone important who could impress the matriarch) why. Kleenex is no longer making this particular size for Canadian distribution. I bought 20 boxes; I cleared out the store and brought 20 boxes of Kleenex home for the matriarch to hide under her bed. She was delighted although a little bit peeved not to have been with me when I asked the manager of the store the infamous question. But, it's the store where I do my regular grocery shopping, so, I told the matriarch she could ask him herself on her next visit. I love having answers for my mother-in-law; they are small victories, but, sometimes, in this world, when battles are doomed to be lost, those little victories are so important.

Plus, I caught my husband sneaking into MY bag of Chipits. It, ironically, dawns on me that both my husband's mother and my own parents left their children's place of birth to adventure somewhere else. I hope I stay here where my children have grown up and they leave but come back. I think families fall apart when there is no sense of home. My husband disagrees with me: a house is just a house. But I have begun to think locality determines identity and one needs that strong sense of foundation to flourish. Just something I have begun to consider. Maybe things would have been easier on the matriarch and on my family if life with her had begun on a more familiar basis. For all the matriarch being a grandmother, she was very much on an independent road before people started dying on her and the doctor told her to either move in with us or into a home. My husband simply agrees there is a lot of stress. At this rate, the two of us will simply roll down the aisle at the matriarch's funeral.