A Small Christmas Miracle

Today as I dashed off to work, I came over the crest of a hill to see a cop standing in my path, looking ominous. No idea how fast I'd been going, I looked to him for direction. Unbelievably, he waved me on -- and pulled over the *minivan* behind me. What are the odds?

You can understand why I prefer to think about -- and blog about -- the goodness of this small lovely turn of events, rather than the hellacious, rude, selfish behavior of my wench of a mother-in-law that rears its ugly head every holiday season.

I could fill a whole blog or two just with stories of how she hurts my heart with her immature, passive-agressive behavior. And it's all I can do not to tell her to her face how unfair I think she is being (the basic gist is that she constantly accuses us -- either actively or implicitly -- of neglecting her family in favor of mine, when we bend over backwards to be perfectly "fair" -- sometimes at my family's expense). But I know that somehow, that would be twisted and contorted and used as ammunition against me.

I can only imagine how a child will figure into this. I like to think it might give me some leverage... but the truth is, I am a sensitive person, and she is a raging bi-otch, and so it will probably always hurt me.

Note to self: NEVER be this way to your kids and the people they love.