Well, I had a lovely day of not being at work. I saw a doctor this morning about having a growth -- what a disgusting term -- removed from my face, of all places; it's not even something that anyone else would notice but it bothers me. It's a cosmetic procedure to me but it isn't one technically. I'll have it done in December and it's nothing. I can drive myself there and back and it's done under a local. No big deal.What's bothering me today, in an annoying sort of way, is that we're making the arrangments and reservations to go to K's graduation in May and they have turned out not at all as I expected. This is because the ILs, as it happens, are planning to go. Now, they are the child's grandparents, and it's a wonderful thing to have grandparents who are a) living and b) willing to come to your college graduation. And even though I was very, very angry with them three years ago (around the time of R's graduation, following my father's death) I'm not anymore and I love them and blah blah blah. It's the logistics that are going to kill us here.
Our basic plan is to go to DC on a Saturday, stay overnight, go the graduation on Sunday, and either come home that night afterward or stay over another night, coming home early Monday. (The Hubs, of course, wants to go to work on Monday.) Given the cost of hotel rooms, especially in the part of the city where K lives, we were going to save about $500 on the two nights at the hotel by having R just stay with K in her apartment. Getting down there would be cheap and easy, since my little car would easily take the three of us down there. I offered to take one of K's friends and her parents to dinner one night because they live not far from the school and have given my kid countless home-cooked meals and even a refuge during a hurricane once. So.
To begin with, I just made the hotel reservations, $1000 and change for two rooms for two nights. (Kill me now.) One of them is an "accessible" room, which I almost couldn't get because they didn't have one with a roll-in shower that was also a non-smoking room. Finally, I said to the idiot on the phone "They don't have to smoke, do they?" and took the room. Because herein lies the crux of the problem with taking my in-laws:
The FIL is disabled following the last of his four hip-replacements. Not because the procedure didn't go well. Because he weighs 350 pounds, or more. Human joints weren't even made to take that much weight, not to mention artificial joints. He can walk, but not far, and he has a very heavy limp and requires a cane. He does not have or use a wheelchair; he would need a special extra-wide heavy duty chair if he did. He's also about 6'2", which would add to the wheelchair issues. If he had one.
He doesn't have one. He just expects that everyone everywhere will accomodate him. And to a certain extent, society does accomodate people with such special needs, nothing wrong with that. This is going to be a tough one, though, because what little I have been able to find about this graduation ceremony online indicates to me that even handicapped people will have a ways to walk to get to their special seating. (They must presume that handicapped people are riding in wheelchairs, not walking.) We will have to drive him to the campus (the Hubs and R and I would have taken the Metro) and let him out as close as possible, which will not be close enough, and then park.
We will have to drive, btw, in his car, because it's the only car he can fit in. (It's a Cadillac or a Grand Marquis or some large car. It's a really nice car, actually, if you like that sort of thing.) That means we'll have to drive to DC in his car, leaving our car at the ILs house an hour and half south of here, and then the Hubs will have to drive his dad's car the rest of the way. Which means he'll do all the driving since I'm not driving a car that big. Rest stops, I'm thinking, will be a nightmare, not to mention the stilted conversation in the car for hours because it's not just us. Not our music. Small talk. For days.
There will be no walking around the city when we're there because he will need to drive anywhere, even if it's just around the corner. There will be no parking for his huge boat of a car on the city streets. We can't just call a cab because he can't get in and out. And the whole reason I picked this hotel, I remind you, is that it's in K's neighborhood, around the corner. So that's out.
I haven't even mentioned what I'm assuming is going to happen with the money thing here. The ILs are not cheap but they are not generous in the way that my parents were. (They are well-off retired people.) In a situation like this, even if my parents weren't going along, my father would have simply paid for the whole thing. The hotel, the dinner, everything. I'm not saying the ILs have to do that. I'm saying that my guess is that they will let us pay for it all. Their hotel room, their meals, all of it. At the end of the weekend, they will proudly present K with a graduation gift of a check for $100, or maybe $200, tops. That's what they gave R, and gave it like it was a really big deal. My parents were both gone by then, but they -- and they were comfortable, but not well off in the same way that the Ils are -- quietly gave their grandchildren $500 for high school graduation. And paid for the occasional prom dress. Or gave the boys $100 or so to spend after the prom since they hadn't bought dresses, and did it all on the sly. That's not what's coming this May, I think. I think this is going to cost us an arm and a leg, and literally, twice as much as it would cost if they didn't come. Not to mention the gas that the Hubs is going to have to put in that car (that he hates to drive.
I hope they think better of this. It means that they get to go, but they also get to be the focus of attention for the whole weekend, at least, he does. The MIL just wants to go! If she would leave him for the weekend, which she never will, it would still cost the money but it would lose the hassle entirely. She would march resolutely through the Metro on her arthrtic knees and never complain once for a second or let anyone know she was in pain because that's her nature. She would neither ask for nor expect special treatment of any kind. She would glory in walking through K's neighborhood and seeing her apartment, which he cannot do. Of course, she would cry the whole time without him, so, that's a wash right there.
Oy. I wish this would go away. Thanks for letting me vent here, guys.
