Lois Foutley

Lois Foutley (Laraine Newman), a nurse, is the mother of Ginger and Carl. Although she is a nurturing mother to Ginger and Carl, she is also something of a strict disciplinarian, and does not hesitate to put her foot down when she feels it is necessary; for example, in Kiss and Make-up, Ginger, Dodie, and Macie create their own make-up using crayons, pudding, and other household ingredients. Lois becomes furious at this blatant defiance, for she had already told Ginger that she was too young to wear makeup, and subsequently grounds Ginger without hearing her reasoning. However, with Carl, Lois seems to have adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" philosophy. Lois drives an old blue Volkswagen Beetle, which has an engine fire in the episode TGIF.

Before the beginning of the series, Lois was married to Jonas Foutley, who left her shortly after Carl's birth. Lois' love life remained dormant until Ms. Foutley's Boys, when she and Buzz (the plumber who fixed the Foutleys' mold problem in TGIF), develop a flirtatious relationship, later leading to Buzz and his three sons moving into the Foutley house, and becoming an annoyance by giving everything "a man's touch". Buzz continually uses the excuse "boys will be boys" to justify he and his sons' conduct, eventually leading Lois to break up with him.

A while after this, she then began seeing a coworker from the hospital, Dr. David Dave. He proposed to her in About Face and they were married in the series finale, The Wedding Frame.

It is worth noting that Lois kept Jonas' last name although they had presumably been divorced for somewhere around ten years (assuming Jonas left before Carl was a year old and considering Carl is in fourth grade, which would make him nine or ten years old) at the series' beginning.

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