Of Wild Turkeys and Bumblebees

Sometimes it is so hard with the matriarch, I get terribly depressed and then are times I look at her and am stunned by her obliviousness to the world around her. Is it an age thing?

My husband took the children to their piano lessons and, as a reward, was the victim of dive bombing turkey vultures. My youngest came into the house, after the lessons, telling me how her father was afraid to drive out of the piano teacher's driveway, how birds seem to attack them out of nowhere and how her father couldn't believe this was his life. I shook my head knowing that particular feeling, not so familiar with the whole turkey thing. The matriarch listened to the story and then asked me husband if he was going to go shoot some.

"They'd make a good supper."

My husband looked at his mother. We don't even own a gun never mind participate in hunting scenarios. He just shook his head and said there was something good cooking on the stove.

"Well, you know how that is..."

I swear sometimes I could just kill her. When one sees my mother-in-law,one sees a tiny woman with white hair and lovely skin, no teeth but steady gait--an angel of by-gone times. But, then, she talks--about her sore knee and how no one comes to visit her and my awful cooking, although lately she wants me to bake muffins because the girls are into making ice cream which she doesn't like, and how she goes nowhere. And, I am forced to listen in silence thinking, "You have it pretty good, old lady," and swear under my breath.

Maybe the matriarch would be better in the home. She has said as much lately although I don't know to whom she has been speaking. Apparently, in the home, they do things like go out for daily drives and excursions, they have restaurants where one can go out for lunch everyday, they have dances--a word, here, the matriarch has telephoned her friend's widower to see if he needs a hand, a meal, company and has told him it would be no problem to visit but the man has declined--the home is apparently such an ideal place. When I have phoned about the places around here, I didn't quite get the same description. Sometimes I wish people would share accurate information rather than what they would wish for the matriarch.

However....

A massively huge bumblebee was buzzing around the house and my middle daughter came up from downstairs to get her father to kill it. It was incredibly sized, she said. It was humungous.

Obviously, my husband couldn't see it. But the matriarch said it was buzzing in her room, too. So, my husband had to go check out his mother's room and find this massively sized bee; he couldn't but did sit down with the matriach to watch the television. I was not amused and killed the one regular-sized bee I found in the basement with a broom. It has just been one of those days.