Mother's 90th birthday tomorrow. This morning was a whirlwind of early deliveries - flowers, cards, parcels, very exciting! One tall cardboard carton seemed to come from a florist, so I thought I'd better open it straight away in case a plant needed water. One dozen helium balloons burst out like jack-in-the-boxes - we jumped out of our skins, breakfast tray went flying, the cat nearly cr*pped herself and hurtled from the room, the dog started barking his head off…
Well wasn't that a lovely surprise. I just hope nobody gets any funny ideas about her birthday cake at tomorrow's posh luncheon party.
Years went by, and she relaxed the TV ban somewhat, although she still didn't have a color television until the mid-1980s, my husband and I gave her our old one.
Later on, she and her boyfriend got a small flat-screen TV that the boyfriend used to watch golf tournaments. MIL mostly avoided it like the plague, although she'd sometimes watch things like "Masterpiece Theater." Husband and I liked to joke that she surreptitiously watched "Jersey Shore" and "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," when no one was around to catch her at it. The TV, was kept in a little room off the main living room, because MIL believes it's "tacky" to have a television in the living room. (Husband and I have a HUGE flat screen TV in our living room, a fact that she probably puts down to my corrupting influence.)
Then one day, about a year ago, when she was out of town, her boyfriend's son thought it would be a nice surprise to buy them a large flat screen TV and put it in the room they use as a library. MIL came home, found it among her "beloved books," as she calls them (she's a major drama llama) and had a shrieking meltdown. It was removed but she still talks about how awful it was to come home and find it. You'd think it was a severed head, the way she carries on about it.
I do volunteer work at a local hospital on Saturdays and once in awhile we will get a tall boxes from an on-line florist to be delivered to a patient.... I know the sender meant well, but how on earth is a patient, who is hooked up to all sorts of things, or someone who is elderly, going to open up that box? I wish I could help open the box but one needs tools or brut strength to tear into it.
Some on-line services have direct delivery from a local florist and we get to see the flowers when they come in by the florist itself.... or a person can call a hospital gift shop [if the hospital has one] and buy flowers from the shop to be delivered.
Christmas came. My ex - and though he may have his faults I never said he wasn't a smooth b*stard - didn't give the children a television. He gave ME a television. Thin end of the wedge… Your MIL was right!!!
I also resisted cellphones for about 15 years. One year my OH gave me a lovely bottle of perfume, but because he'd wittily packaged it in a Vodafone box it very nearly got chucked out with the trash.
I am also beginning to think that people who send flowers who don't also send vases need to think it through...