Avoiding the kiss at greeting MIL

[WoolPippi]

soon I'll be seeing my mother in law again. She's an energy siphon and one of the first people I banned from my life when I fell ill in 2008.

Now I'm up to seeing her. But that dreaded kiss of hello at greeting... having to touch her cheeck... being enveloped in her personal space and perfume and cigarette smoke... Yak!

My solution: face paint. Butterflies on my cheeks. A dragon perhaps.
No kissing possible, obviously. And she thinks I'm nuts anyway so no image shattered there.

I'm actually proud of this solution I thought up. It will work!
ME makes me inventive and ruthless where social subtleties are concerned. I now dare to show my excentricity. And nobody complained thus far. We are more free than we assumed.

 

[SDSue]

You're a better person than I. I'd probably be in my lab, mixing up something that looks like a green booger to hang from one (or both, depending on the persistence of MIL) nostril. But hey, that's just me

 

[vamah]

Ugh. I hear you. My husband's family is full of huggers and cheek kissers and it drives me nuts. Not so much with my mother in law (when she was still alive) because I likked her and knew she did it out of geniune affection. But there is this huge extended family of cousins, most of whom are jackasses I can't stand, but who hug EVERYONE because they think they are being all European or something. I am not intyo phony hugs or generally being touched by people I dislike so I try to put something between me and the hugger whenever possible -- like a table or a young child or a city block. The cousins in my kids' generation find this hysterical. They want to get me a t-shirt that says "don't effing hug me."