Some Things Are Never Outdated.

My mother-in-law, God rest her soul, and I had a little game we played.  Whenever I was at the in-law's house, I would do two things:  count the number of sour cream containers in the fridge and, at least once a year, check the medicine cabinet to find the most outdated item.

This was an interesting game, because though they averaged three sour cream containers, I once found five.  Granted, there was some Polish in their lineage, but five containers is a LOT of sour cream.  Seth apparently got the sour cream gene, because he enjoys it on most anything.  That, and honey mustard.

The medicine cabinet was a bit more tricky.  The first time I cleaned it out, I found meds that were nine years past the expiration date.  This means that after that, I should never have found anything that was expired more than a year, right?  Wrong.  Somehow, I would always find something that was five or six years gone.  I never understood it, but was always interested to see what was gonna show up from year to year.

And so it was that today, the mother in law came to mind.  Mind you, I will probably always refer to her as my mother in law, despite the fact that her son is now the ex, because she was my mother in law when she passed away and, quite frankly, would probably roll over in her grave at the events of the past two years.  We had a special bond, because we both faced the special challenges of being married to an Utter man.  She alternatively drove me nuts and made me laugh, but she was the Utter Mother, and understood some of the challenges I faced.

So tonight, my boo was making dinner (I tried, I really did, but the man likes to cook, and I like to clean up.  It works.).  I was setting the counter (we were eating in the kitchen), and pulled out the tartar sauce.  Now, I knew that I had a brand new container, but thought maybe we'd finish up the old one.  My boo has a thing about not wanting to scrape the bottom of the barrel to finish stuff, where I will use the last tiny bit of the contents of the container.  I figured I would check before he said something, and maybe get rid of it, because I knew the container had been around for a long time. 

The label said "use before 28 Oct 2009."  I pulled out the new one.

It wasn't till I was cleaning up after dinner that I realized that today was the mother in law's birthday.  And so it is that I'd like to think that somewhere out there, Yvonne is laughing, thinking I have taken over the game, and that someday, my own daughter in law will play along with me.

RIP Yvonne. And just so you know, I have two containers of sour cream in my fridge.