Kitchen of Joy

This weekend we had my mother-in-law staying with us because she was having her kitchen renovated. I didn’t like to point out that she did have two other fully functioning kitchens at her house. Denise stayed with us on Friday and Saturday night, mainly as a precaution should her entire plumbing system go down, an extremely unlikely outcome of a simple kitchen renovation. Melbourne summers have not been kind to her skin, and as her years have advanced, Denise has taken to making adjustments to her already very lovely house.

Last weekend she had the painters in to fix up the top coat around the door frames, the difference is wholly unnoticeable. Every now and again her penchant for renovations impacts us. When she told us she was having one of her kitchens renovated I assumed we would not be required to provide support, alas, I was wrong.

Denise was having a big old oven installed and her entire kitchen re-tiled and refitted with overly priced but extremely beautiful accessories. She had planned everything with the best kitchen renovators Melbourne experts have been raving about. They were going to take care of the entire procedure; from fitting the excessively heavy oven to painstakingly laying the millions of tiny handcrafted Moroccan tiles. I must admit the kitchen designs were lovely, much nicer than our home. 

As a result of these renovations, we enjoyed the pleasure of Denise’s company over the weekend. She requires an egg white omelette at precisely 7:45 am and if a steaming hot black coffee isn’t by her side at 8:00 am you may as well run away and never look back. My wife is seemingly oblivious to the complexity and arrogance of Denise’s demands, she just loves it when her mummy comes to stay. I told Denise that one condition of us putting her up yet again is that I get a free pass to use the oven whenever I like. It was agreed to, unwillingly.