Squidboy is now a legitimate Squid!

Youngest Son graduated from Navy Basic Training on Christmas Eve morning, so on the 23rd we drove more hours than we'd counted on though snow and heavy traffic (will have to post a pic of that clusterf***k later), and saw far more wrecks than I hope to ever encounter again. Semis on their sides are NOT a good thing. The roads coming home the next day were better for the most part, but we still got into some nastiness. More semis off the road, more accidents (including a four-car pile-up on an on-ramp that had happened shortly before; no apparent injuries, tho' - everyone was out of the cars and walking around), a lane of traffic that was shut down on the interstate so an overturned semi could be winched out of the center ditch by a couple of heavy-duty wreckers, and a mid-size SUV that had run up an embankment and then flipped back onto the roadway onto its side.

Other than the going to and coming from, the trip and the graduation ceremony were all right.  It could have been very weird, but turned out okay.  See, his girlfriend went with us. You have to bear in mind that we'd never met her until we picked her up at her house Tuesday morning, and it wasn't until shortly before he left for Basic Training that he even told us her name! So us spending two days with The Girlfriend, and she with The Parents, was potentially a rather uncomfortable situation for all. Well, damned if it didn't work out just fine!

She's cute, she's sweet, she's smart, she seems to be very down-to-earth and sensible, and once we got her to open up a bit, we discovered she has a good sense of humor.  I like her.  And I approve of her, even if the kids don't really need my approval.

But most importantly of all, my son lit up when he saw we'd brought her with us. That tells me all I need to know. If she makes him happy, I'd try to be nice to her even if she were some high-maintenance airhead bimbo. And thank the gods, she's not!!

Some people may think I'm nuts (and maybe I am; you'd have to ask my shrink about that), but I told her I like her.  Don't know that it makes a difference to them, but it may.  Sometimes just knowing that The Mother likes The Girlfriend can certainly make a young man's life much easier. (Unless they gang up on him, of course, and then he's quite thoroughly screwed! LOL) I don't know exactly where Youngest Son's relationship with this young lady will end up, but I will be go to hell if I'll be the kind of Boyfriend's Mother (or MIL) that I've dealt with for all these years!

You see, after 24 years of marriage to her son, I have yet to hear those words from my MIL. When she found out Athos and I were engaged, her response was somewhat less than enthusiastic (her exact words were "We should have seen this coming"), and when he got him alone she told him, "I see you've chosen her over me."  WTF?!?  I wasn't aware that it was a one-or-the-other choice!

She snubbed and insulted me at every opportunity before we got married, publicly turned her back on me at the wedding rehearsal dinner, and continued making it obvious to everyone that she considered me an interloper for way too many years. (Things are somewhat better now; at least we have what could best be referred to as an armed truce.)  Making her a grandmother just two years after the wedding didn't make things any better between us, either; she wasn't old enough to be a grandmother, according to her, and took it out on me.  Never mind that her son bore half the responsibility for such an event!

And what kind of vicious person tells an first-time expectant mother, "Don't get too excited, anything can happen"?!?  I kid you not, those were her exact words to me in the second trimester.  I got the feeling she was actually hoping something would go wrong.  Maybe she thought a dead baby would precipitate a divorce?

The only thing keeping me from telling her to shove her attitude up her ass and refusing to set foot in her house ever again was my FIL.  He never treated me like anything but his own flesh-and-blood.  We lost him 6 years ago, on Dec. 23rd, and I don't think any of us will ever stop missing him.  I certainly won't.  RIP, Dad....