Marian's Magical Dress

So, Liz included Mike and Dee in her "I'm engaged" telling tour a lil while back, and here's what he has 2 say abt that:

April,

Formerly little sis. Liz might write you about the next part of her story. But since it involves me, I thought I would write it up; so it’s not all about her. After she came to visit mom and then came to visit you in your bedroom to show you her ring and cast aspersions on your matrimonial plans, the next logical step would have been for her to have a conversation with dad. However, she decided to visit Deanna and me instead. This was on a completely different day from the day she visited mom and visited you and we had been forewarned she might come to see us to show off her ring eventually. Mom specifically told me to make a fuss over her ring, because no one had done that yet. Mom was quite right that this ring is pretty much the exact opposite of the type of ring that Anthony’s ex-wife Thérèse was sporting during their marriage. Nevertheless, I put on a game face and as I held my sister’s hand said, “Whooo! Nice ring, sis!” That’s sounds somewhat complimentary doesn’t it? Deanna didn’t think so. After Liz left she was all over me for being so sarcastic in my ring-complimenting.

Anyway, Deanna said that thanks to my lame complimenting, she had to distract Elizabeth before she would realize what I had done and started to get upset. If you remember back from late February, when my wife was crawling through the crawl space in our house and found Grandma Marian’s wedding dress, Deanna took it to the cleaners and had it placed in one of those boxes with the window on top. She pulled it out to show Liz and she said, “This is your Grandma Marian’s wedding dress. I found it in the crawl space and I had it cleaned.” Liz didn’t say anything like what I would have expected like, “Why didn’t you give this dress to mom?” or “What was this dress doing in the crawl space in the first place?” or “Cheeze, how could this dress possibly have lasted over 60 years?” Instead she reached out and touched the window on the box and patted it. She did this enough times, where Deanna had to say, “It’s a window covered in plastic, and that’s why your hand isn’t going through.”

Then Deanna handed the dress over to Liz, who took it out of the box. Deanna said, “Try it on!” Liz said, “Should I?” And you know, April, this habit of asking permission at every step of the way, Liz has picked up from Anthony Caine is pretty annoying. So, I said, “Sure!!” in order to convince her to do it and move things along.

With Deanna’s help, Elizabeth did try on the dress, right there in the kitchen. Deanna was bent down touching Liz’s leg through the bottom fluffy part of the dress, muttering things like, “With these fat legs and huge butt, it’s a good thing this part of the dress has plenty of room.” Liz was trying to find a pocket on the dress with her left hand and she said, “I don’t know about this, guys…it doesn’t feel quite right.” I asked, “Why?” and naturally Liz went to a thought bubble to answer the question instead of telling me. It was then I got really confused. Back last February, when Deanna found this dress, I could have sworn it had solid material for sleeves and not these gauzy sleeves Liz was wearing. And also, I don’t remember the dress being low cut in the front. I said to Deanna, “This doesn’t look like the same dress.” Deanna just hissed at me in that low voice she has which almost always means danger if I don’t do what she says. She hissed, “Shut your flapping gob, Michael Patterson. It’s Grandma Marian’s dress and I will hurt you if you dare to suggest to Liz it is not.”

Deanna’s visage of anger was too unpleasant for me to look at, so I looked at Liz and read her thought bubble. It said, “Gram….I feel like I should be asking for your permission!” And of course I thought, “Cheeze. It’s the asking permission thing again. Visits with Liz and Anthony are going to be really annoying if this keeps up.”

That’s about it for this part, April. There will be more tomorrow.

Love,
Michael Patterson

Funny thing--Dee snapped a pic of Liz in that dress and e-mailed it 2 me. That dress does NOT look like what Marian has on in Grandpa Jim's wedding pics. Plus, like Mike sez above, it doesn't look like how it did when Dee found it in the crawl space. Which makes me wonder how Mike "recognized" it from the wedding pix. Magical dress, eh, Dee?

Liz wrote me this:

April, I saw what Mike wrote about my visit there, and I want to add some things. First, he forgot to say how I was glowing because I'm so happy to be engaged. He's supposed to be a writer, and writers are supposed to say that kind of thing about their sister when she gets engaged! He should have mentioned that I looked beautiful in that dress, and it was like the dress had been made for me!

Also, Anthony has showed me that asking permission is just good manners. Mike should spend more time with Anthony so he can improve his manners!

I would add more, but I still have to finish grading those tests I was supposed to turn in four weeks ago, and my students' parents get pissy when I turn them in a month late.

Liz

And now U R all up 2 d8, 4 now.

Apes