Call Her A Whore

None of that.

Dear God, I've insulted her cooking.

Friends, if you really want to get an Italian man's blood boiling, insult the cooking of the woman closest to him. Man oh man.

Because no trip to see the family would be complete without some drama involving my parents, I more or less tried talking my dad into breaking up with his now live-in girlfriend. My dad has a tendency to think every pretty girl who goes by could be his next wife, and when one sticks around long enough he gets pretty sure of himself. This one's been around about a year now and is the first to have officially moved in. She feels the need to take it upon herself to act as a mother not only to my dad but to my sisters, too. They've noticed more of a change in him than I have, and what I've noticed are pretty big deals:

He loved good food, including many foods that are mostly for pleasure. She refuses to allow soda in the house, buys only (expensive) organic, and got pissed at him for having a hot dog in New York.

He talks about how slow work is, how he has no money for retirement, and how he has to take money from his house to pay basic bills. He lets her move in rent free in exchange for a Harley, home cooked meals, and a garden.

He lived 50+ years eating like an Italian American and all of a sudden won't eat gluten. Oh, and oatmeal is bad for you. And Coors is the "purest" beer because it's cold filtered. And eating eggs will lower your cholesterol. And Big Pharma is making billions drugging the American people.

Who are you and what have you done with my dad??? He's suddenly a whole foods/alternative medicine radical, regurgitating the random distorted facts that she tells him. Makes me want to become a doctor, just to piss him off.

Moral of the story: call her a whore, but don't call her cooking bland.