My Former Sister-in-Law.....

For some reason I found myself thinking about my former sister-in-law today. The second one. (We have lots of exes in our family.)

Bless her heart (if you're from the South you KNOW there's something not nice coming), she was sweet as she could be, but she was not blessed in the brains department.

But boy could she talk. Our brother used to tell her, "Honey, why don't you save some words for tomorrow?"

She once referred to the location of something as being "overneath" something else.

But my favorite story was when she lost her engagement ring.

Don't worry, there's a happy ending. I would never make fun of someone for having lost something so precious as an engagement ring, especially considering I lost my own and got it back after two weeks.

She called Jack at work, hysterical. Jack responded rationally.

"What were you doing when you lost it?"

"Taking down the Christmas tree." It was probably March or April. Just kidding.

Per his instructions, she went through the tree, the dead needles on the floor and in the trash, in all the ornament boxes, to no avail. She continued to update the status by telephone.

"Did you look _______?"

"Yes, I looked there."

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Just like a man, brother finally said, "I'll buy you another one."

"Okay," she wailed, "but it won't be the same."

This went on for days. Not really, it was just a few hours. It just seemed like days.

Finally, she stopped by Jack's office on her way to her job. She didn't even have sense enough to look sheepish.

"Never mind about the ring," she said, grinning. "I found it."

Just like a man, brother gets annoyed at the waste of good emotion. He sort of snarled, "Where was it?"

"It was on the other hand."