The Feather

Disclaimer: What you are about to read is not a sexy story or what you’d usually read on my blog; just the inner musings of my mind today.

 

I took half a day off of work today. I’m having company come in this weekend and after freaking out a bit last night I finally decided to take the afternoon off so that I could get some cleaning done and for some quiet time before my life gets chaotic for the next week.

You see, my in-laws are coming to visit from Chicago tomorrow. It’s my husband’s birthday and they thought it would be nice to surprise him. Lovely gesture and all but the thing is, school just started again which means I just went back to work (I teach for those of you who don’t know), so this is not the prime time for me to have guests.   Now, my in-laws are great people and I love them, but I love them probably because they live over a thousand miles away. Also, they just visited in March and I got to spend my entire Spring Break with them. See why I’m not thrilled? I could go on and on about why this isn’t the most opportune time for them to come visit but I think you get the idea.

So I was vacuuming a bit ago and I came across a bird’s feather under the dining room table. I knew immediately where it came from. Seeing that feather began one of those rants you carry on inside your brain. The ones you’d have if your best friend were sitting in front of you at that moment or if you had him or her on the phone.

That feather came from Chicago. My mother-in-law sent it. She has a pet bird. That right there is a big no for me. Birds should not be pets. Sorry to any bird lovers out there but birds are gross. They poop everywhere, they carry diseases, they’re dirty, and their feathers have little disgusting mites in them, and just yuck! Side bar- I am not including owls or penguins in this bird hating rant. I love both owls and penguins and would keep either one of them as a pet and snuggle and smoosh the hell out of them. Anyway…

Mother-in-law has a bird, I don’t know what kind, a green and grey atrocity that is loud as fuck. His name is Sammy. One of Sammy’s feathers was under my dining room table and it pissed me the fuck off. My MIL likes to collect Sammy’s feathers, put them in an envelope, and mail them to my two daughters. You may think it’s sweet, and I did too the first time she did it, but she does it about once a month and I think it’s fucking weird. Even my kids now are like, “Okay, enough already.” What does she think they do with these feathers? Have we started a “Sammy Shrine” in their room? Are we trying to build a Sammy of our own? Make a down pillow? Quill pens?  What?  WHAT? WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THE FEATHERS?!?!

I’ve spoken to H about this. He thinks it’s odd too. “I don’t know why she does it,” he says. “So why don’t you tell her to stop?” I ask. He shrugs. Does he not want to hurt her feelings? Does he think it will make her angry that we do not want her to waste the postage money on the feathers that now go directly in the garbage when we get them? I guess it’s odd to me because if it were my mother doing it there would be a conversation like this:

Hey, Ma. Ya know how you keep sending the girls the bird feathers?

Yeah.

It’s weird. Don’t send feathers, okay?

LOL! Okay! I love you!

Love you, too, Ma!

 

Simple. But this conversation will never happen between my H and his mother and so for the unforeseeable future, there will be envelopes of Sammy’s molted feathers in our mailbox each month.  

 

By the way, when the in-laws decided to surprise hubby for his birthday by coming to visit, they let me know like this:

“Hi Lauren! Just letting you know we bought tickets to come down on the 30th! See you then!”

 

 

Thanks for reading,

L

xoxo