The aftermath

How many teaspoons can two grown adults use in barely 24 hours?

If you're my in-laws, the answer is 16. SIXTEEN. Considering that their menu consisted of chicken nuggets, tater tots, and Hamburger Helper, I have no idea how they used that many spoons.

Monkey Man has decided that they suck because they apparently ate all his Chewy Chips Ahoy cookies last night after he went to bed.

Rufus thinks they suck because they wouldn't give him any table scraps and my father-in-law is always trying to pet him. At this point, I think Rufus enjoys torturing my father-in-law by sitting *just* beyond his reach and then scooting away as my father-in-law inches closer. He doesn't move very quickly so it gives Rufus ample opportunity to scootch a few inches and then look back with a shit-eating grin.

*****

The wine expo was fun, but damn was it crowded. We noticed a definite lack in staffing at each of the booths, so the people weren't flowing through the expo as smoothly as they did last year. After about four hours fighting the crowds only to get small sips of wine, we ended up back at the hotel bar having drinks and a few appetizers. I think next year we'll try the Friday night event - the cost is steep, but the crowd is much smaller and you actually get to taste the wine versus standing in a crowd 20-deep and hoping to get a small dribble in your glass.

We met downstairs in the lobby to go out to dinner and soon discovered that a new sport could be "Drunk Walking Through the Marriott Lobby". The women were hilarious...teetering dangerously in heels, usually carrying a few boxes of wine and they would teeter dangerously as they wove toward the elevators. Watch out for that.....corner.....aw, another one down!

Dinner at Juleps was amazing as usual. We took a short walk down to Havana '59 for a nightcap and ended up back at the hotel just in time to catch the Hokies' upset of #1 Duke. There were a lot of happy and unhappy people in the hotel bar. We ended up heading to the room with plans of an early checkout so we could get home at a decent hour.

Sleep was elusive, to say the least. We had a wedding party staying on our hall - they showed up loud and drunk around 11:30 and mercifully only changed clothes and banged doors a few times before they disappeared again. I never heard them come back.

What did happen was the worst case of heartburn and acid reflux ever. The only thing that kept me from throwing up was the thought of losing that wonderful dinner to the sewer system of Richmond. Especially after daydreaming about Bananas Foster for the past two months. Oh, but I was miserable...I think I finally fell into a restful sleep around 4 AM when I configured some pillows to elevate my head and therefore keep the acid located somewhere right above my heart.

As it turned out, I know Joey and our friends Wendi and Gerry also had the same issue last night. Was it mixing the wine and liquor? I thought it was beer then liquor, never sicker...where does wine factor in to all that? Unhhhh.

We got home to find my in-laws ensconced at the kitchen table. Father-in-law was airing out his arm - apparently he fell out of the chair in their living room and banged up his arm and he is allergic to Neosporin, but instead of calling the doctor to see what he could use he proceeded to put his own home remedies all over his arm and made it worse.

Did I ever tell y'all about their dog Odie? Poor Odie was a chocolate lab and the sweetest dog. Well, he got some kind of spot on his tail that I think was probably a spider bite. My father-in-law's mother was some kind of country "doctor" or medicine woman I guess, and she had taught him how to mix up all kinds of salves and stuff to cure everything. He mixed up a batch of this horrid looking yellow gunk and liberally applied it to poor Odie's tail.

His tail fell off, and then Odie died.

I have made Joey swear to me that he will never, EVER let my father-in-law apply any sort of potion, lotion, salve, or cure to anyone in our immediate family.

Odie, dude, I'm sorry you had to take the bullet for the team, but I don't want my tail falling off.

Wine is fine

Somehow, the gods are smiling on me tonight. Not only did my son win the Veggie Car Derby for the third grade today (don't ask), but he and Joey are at the big monster truck show. And I am not.

For two consecutive Mother's Day weekends, I ended up at the big monster truck show at the beach. It might sound like heaven, but it seems like every time we've done that it's unseasonably cold or it rains and we end up on metal bleachers freezing to death and getting sand in our teeth. Not exactly my idea of properly exfoliating - I'd rather be in a spa rather than sitting on bleachers watching women go by in tube tops with breasts so saggy they're smuggling fifths of liquor in under each one. I get a little jealous because I can only do a pint at this point in my life.

I settled in tonight with a wonderful bottle of cabernet sauvignon. Priming my liver for the big wine expo this weekend. Last year, I think I was drunk by 1 PM but kept rolling until 4...took a nap, went to dinner, and was drunk again by 8. Needless to say, I am hoping this year to just maintain a nice warm and fuzzy feeling versus going into a coma at 4:30 and waking up at 6 to discover everyone is waiting on me and my mascara is somewhere around my chin.

The out-laws are coming into town tomorrow to babysit. My friend Heather said on IM last night, "Yay! Free Babysitting!" to which I replied, "Oh no, it's not free - there's a cost. MY SOUL."

The last time they were here, you might recall, my father-in-law lectured everyone at Christmas dinner how men need to eat more turkey to make their sex lives better. Good information that every 9-year-old boy needs to know. I can only imagine what sorts of wisdom he will impart this time without us to filter. I am already daydreaming about the phone call I could conceivably get from the principal next week.

I am counting down the days until we bring Big Nick home. Oh, did I mention that after nagging for 3 years that Joey decided we need new carpet? Mmm hmm. I never said he was the practical one, did I? New puppy + new carpet = WTF were you thinking?

Have a lovely, lovely Saturday. Hug the ones you love.

Pass the ketchup. And a fork, too.

I have to say, hands down, that my Mother's Day was probably the best one ever.  

But let's not be so hasty, because you know there had to be something that went wrong that weekend, right?  Oh yeah.  A Forced In-Law Interaction.

We had originally worked out that we were going to meet the Outlaws for lunch somewhere halfway between our house and their house, mostly because we had a baseball game at 10 AM on Saturday and plans with friends for Sunday.  Not that I really wanted to drive over an hour for lunch with people I strongly dislike, but I figured as long as Sunday remained unscathed and there wasn't the traditional Mother-In-Law Meltdown that I would suck it up.  Not to mention it had been a few months since I'd had to see them, so I really didn't see a way out of it.

By Friday night, however, their plans had changed.  They decided that they wanted to come up and watch Monkey Man's baseball game and then we would go to lunch.  Oh, great.  So Joey gave them explicit directions on how to get to the ball field and what time the game was and all that jazz.

To add to the stress of the morning, we were responsible for supplying drinks and snacks for the team that day - of course.  So after a stop for ice and making sure we had everything together, we hit the road and were running probably ten minutes late heading to the field.  That's when the phone calls started.  

At one point, thirty minutes after the game started, Joey tossed me his phone after his mother had already called six times because they couldn't find the field.  By the time they called again I figured out that they were driving up and down the street right outside of the entrance to the ball field.  The one with the six-foot sign.  That they couldn't find.

So I'm trying to watch the game, give directions, and keep an eye out for them when I finally see my mother-in-law come waddling down the pathway.  In her typical ADD manner she has forgotten - yet again - not only what field the team is on, but what school he plays for and what color the team's uniform is.  Since I had just told her for at least the third time when she got in the parking lot.  She announces that my father-in-law is not coming to the field because it's too far to walk.  

Well, great.

At this point, one of the other parents, feeling like they are being helpful, tells my mother-in-law that there is another parking lot closer to the field where maybe she could move the car.  But instead of HER walking over to look, she asks me to do it.  I found a few parking spots there, but honestly had no clue exactly how to tell her to get to said parking lot.  

To sum this up, she moves the car...and he still refuses to come to the field because now 20 feet is too far.  

Kill me now.

After the game, we ended up going to lunch.  My mother-in-law picked O'Charleys, which if you are not familiar with it is a chain similar to a Bennigans or something like that.  Nothing exotic, just plain ol' American food.  By the time my mother-in-law chose something off the menu - twenty-five minutes after we got our drinks - I was ready to stick a fork in my eye just to be excused from the table.  

Did I mention she ordered the till-a-pee-a?  You know what that is, right?  She ordered the cedar-planked tilapia, which she not only butchered the name of, but also smothered in Heinz ketchup.  

My father-in-law ordered ribs, which he ate with his fingers.  Which would've been okay if he hadn't also eaten his steamed broccoli with his fingers too.  Pretty sad when your seven-year-old has better table manners than a grown-ass adult.

The highlight of lunch, other than the skillful preparation of the till-a-pee-a, was my mother-in-law's 20-minute story about buying a lightbulb for her office.  You know, she only needed one fluorescent tube so she had to drive into town...got to the store where they had six individual tubes, or a carton of 20 tubes.  And how hard it was to decide whether to buy the six individual tubes, or the carton of 20.  And how then the six had to be wrapped.  And the drive back to the office.  And then how she tripped in the parking lot and fell, gashing her elbows and knees open - but, dammit, the lightbulbs made it unbroken.  Wow.  

It was at that point where I stuck a fork in my other eye.

On Mother's Day, we went to Busch Gardens with two of the Badasses, their spouses and kids.  We had a freaking blast.  The weather was gorgeous, the kids all got along, and everyone had a great time.  

It was almost worth sticking a fork in my eye.  And watching someone slather Heinz all over their till-a-pee-a.

Sunday

I'm feeling much better today, thankyouverymuch.

*****

In a few minutes, my lasagna will come out of the oven in all of its cheesy glory. I'm looking forward to eating at least half of the pan. It's been a lazy, lazy weekend. I have read more and watched more TV than I should be allowed to. I'm kind of relieved that we have no one coming to our house for Thanksgiving this year because I'm just not that into it. Don't worry, I will be appropriately into the holiday spirit by Thursday, but not a minute before that.

My only commitment this week? Apple pie to bring to my sister's house. I'm not taking jack shit to my in-laws' Thanksgiving circus. Not after last year's Ugly Cheesecake Incident. No way, no how.

Hope they enjoyed it. Bastards.

I'm a little bitter because this year we will have to drive 2 hours to eat lunch with my in-laws, and then almost 3 hours to my sister's house (which is 45 minutes north of our house) for dinner. The thought of spending the whole day in the car is not appealing - however, we've dodged the bullet for at least the last two years so I guess my luck has run out.

On the good side, at least they're not coming here. Nope. No cheesecake will be stolen this year.

Do I seem bitter about it? Sorry. It was only the most beautiful cheesecake ever. Ever. It was so pretty it made me cry a little.

*****

So today I found out that a former high school classmate that I went out a few times in high school won the freaking Pulitzer Prize a few years ago. How freaking cool is that?

It's times like this when I feel woefully inadequate. I know I shouldn't. But I do.

My mom the other day, when I mentioned the fact that I didn't get a raise this year, started barraging me with the whole "now is your chance to go back to school and DO SOMETHING with your life." Um, I thought I already did? My mom has this funny way of always making me feel woefully inadequate no matter what I do.

She stayed home with four kids. I work with one kid. Not to compare apples to oranges, but life is a lot different than it was in the 60's and 70's when she had us. I wish she could walk in my shoes for just one day to see what it's like.

*****

Is anyone else's kid driving them crazy with their Santa list for this year yet? Egads.

Have a great Monday, y'all. I'm looking forward to a short work week!

Finally, a title for my memoirs

Just when things had been relatively quiet around here, it happened.

A Forced In-Law Interaction.

And it was just as bad as you could imagine.

Let me preface this by saying that the past four weeks have not been fun around here. Monkey Man has still been sick - we moved on last week to a second prescription for antibiotics along with an inhaler, and then this past Tuesday the Vomitstravaganza started. It was really odd that he would barf one day - be absolutely fine (no fever, no aftereffects), and then exactly 48 hours later he would barf again. Huh. Anyhow, we have now been almost 48 hours vomit free (yay!) so hopefully we are on the tail end of all this crap.

Therefore, we have had serious lack of sleep. Or, I should say that I have. Joey has to be relatively mentally sharp to do his job or it can be really, really bad. Me, I can phone it in most days with no problem. However, when I've had four days of sleep without any night wakings in 26 days, even I can become a flaming bitch. I even had the courtesy to go into EPOD's office on Thursday and apologize in advance if I happened to rip his head off and shove it down his throat. I'm thoughtful that way, and evaluations are coming so I figured that was the right thing to do.

Okay, so back to the Forced In-Law Interaction. So my father-in-law's 70th birthday is today, and since no one in their right mind figured that this chain-smoking alcoholic could make it to 70 it was time for a celebration. Yay.

Joey and I tried to plan the whole thing (or let's say he had all the ideas and I was trying to fit in phone calls to places trying to figure it all out) until my mother-in-law decided that she was going to take control. Or, as I've found out, it is roughly translated into "I will plan to do something super spectacular knowing that in the end I will stick Joey and Liz with the bill for the entire thing." I've been down that road before, so although Joey protested that *this* time was going to be different, I kept my mouth shut and secretly knew that at the end of it all it would be our Visa card picking up the tab.

We had Monkey Man's homecoming game on Saturday, ran home to take showers, and then hit the road. I was exhausted and slept most of the way there, mostly because it the days of yore I could usually hole up in a bedroom and take a nap at the in-laws' house, but since they started letting their goddamn cat in the house I cannot put any part of my body except my ass anywhere without my throat closing up and wheezing like crazy.

When we arrived at their house, we were met in the driveway by Buddy the Psycho Dog. Buddy has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever other than he breathes. And honestly, he's a waste of oxygen. He proceeded to jump all over each of us, getting mud all over our pants (which we had no extra pants for, yay!).

Everyone ran inside where we found my father-in-law in the recliner, drunk. He then got up and proceeded into the hallway bathroom to sit on the toilet and grunt, groan, and whatever else for thirty minutes. With. The. Door. Open. Since I've been on the receiving end before of this eyeful of redneck goodness, I stayed in the living room and prayed that I didn't need to make a trip up the hallway for any reason lest my corneas become seared from the sight of my father-in-law's naked ass sitting on the commode. Not to mention that he had to leave the door open because the exhaust fan wasn't working, God forbid he actually have to put up with his own bodily odors without sharing them with the rest of the family.

I could go into huge detail here, but there were a few key elements that I'll just briefly touch on so this doesn't become the modern-day version of Moby Dick. First of all, their house is back to being as nasty and filthy as it was last year before the big "renovation" (translation: interior painting) took place. My mother-in-law had previously sent her computer tower up to Joey via my brother-in-law a few weeks ago because it was making a funny noise...and when he opened up the panel, it was so gunked up with dirt, hair, and grease that he had to use a toothbrush to get the crap out since the compressed air and the little vacuum didn't work. Ick. So if the computer, which is basically encased, was that bad...you can imagine what the rest of the house was like.

Then there was the gun. My father-in-law, apparently, has taken to sitting in an armchair in the living room and shooting his shotgun out of the sliding glass door. There are several pecan trees right off of the deck and he has been protecting the nuts from scavenging crows, so obviously the reasonable way to do that is to sit in your armchair all cozy like, with your travel mug full of bourbon, slide open the sliding glass door and shoot the motherfucking crows with your double-barrel shotgun. Doesn't everyone do that?

Well, if they do, hopefully they put said shotgun away before their grandson comes to visit. Instead, it was laying in the armchair with the butt hanging off and all I could envision was Monkey Man bumping into the gun, knocking it into the floor, and someone other than my father-in-law getting their head blown off. 'Cause it was loaded, of course. Finally, my mother-in-law moved it to the dining room table, and then at Joey's behest finally moved it...somewhere, I'm not sure exactly where.

At this point, my head was about ready to explode and Joey had finally gotten his mom's computer back up and running and spent an hour downloading some antiviral software via dial-up. We decided to head to the restaurant for dinner...an hour and a half early.

By the time dinner rolled around and all of the other 45 people were there, I was just done. I can only deal with the lunacy for so long on a good day, but when I'm already sleep deprived it's a whole other story.

The kicker, perhaps, was after spending almost a thousand dollars between the dinner and the present we got him (which I'm not exactly even sure what it was, that's how interested I was in the whole thing), do you know what his favorite gift was? Want to take a guess?

A cooler full of uncooked chitlins. Or chitterlings, if you want to be more technical about it. Uncooked pig intestines. And no, smartasses, that wasn't what we gave him.

All I have to say is that I'm thankful we came back home Saturday night, because he was practically foaming at the mouth with the anticipation of cooking them up bright and early on Sunday morning. And if you've never smelled chitlins being cooked, they smell like ass. Go figure.

As I was relaying the story to my friends over the past two days, there was a distinct mix of laughter and horror. Just when you think the stories can't get worse, they do. And I'm convinced that one day, either when I'm divorced or widowed, I will be able to finally write about it all and make millions - "Shotguns and Chitlins - The Memoirs of a Long-Suffering Daughter-In-Law."

Held hostage by crazy people

I am one of the few people that you will ever meet that will willingly admit to being a control freak. And not in an angry, bitter way - just as a "this is who I am" part of me.

I try not to impose my opinions or wants on other people. But if I feel like I don't have control over a situation, it makes me feel a little sick inside. Okay, really sick inside.

I've worked on it some. And I've embraced it a little, too. I think you can do both, right? RIGHT?

Okay, losing control. Must focus.

This weekend is shaping up to be fun for the most part. In about 30 minutes we will have the following equation take place:

2 moms + 4 kids + 1 Brazilian au pair + 2 bottles of wine + 1 swimming pool = FUN.

Yes, I'm meeting Jay and her crew at the pool. This is our first venture out to our neighborhood pool this year, not exactly sure why but I'm kind of looking forward to it. Not looking forward to blinding everyone with the whiteness of my thighs, but there's going to have to be a point where I have to do that in order to fix the problem.

Then there's tomorrow. Baseball game followed by a trip to Heather's pool with husbands and kids - there will be plenty of beer and good food. Oh, and I have to sneak out and pick up Joey's present from Monkey Man which is ready.

And then, there's Sunday.

As I mentioned last time, the dreaded in-laws decided that they were coming. Then not coming. Then maybe coming. And now, we have no freaking idea exactly when they are coming or if they are coming or if we're meeting them halfway or what. As in, now we have no concrete plans for Sunday waiting on their stupid asses to make up their minds what they are willing to do.

I hate being held hostage by crazy people.

So until then, I am determined not to give Joey any eye-rolling, not to make any snide comments, or undermine his opinion that his parents are the most considerate people on the face of the planet. I think it's pretty evident that they're not and we all can see it, even if he can't. I still have faith that one day, he too will realize that they are psychopathic idiots of the highest magnitude.

Whew, that felt better.

*****

A good thing and a bad thing. Bad things first.

Cat Door's wife - The Mrs. has a very small family. I guess her family didn't reproduce a lot, and her own parents died years ago, so she has a brother (with wife and kids) and a cousin she is close to (and his wife, kids, and parents). Well, she lost one uncle on Tuesday to cancer, and then another passed away this morning unexpectedly. So if you don't mind keeping her in your thoughts, I'd appreciate it. Two funerals in one weekend, and she's taking it pretty hard.

And a good thing. Today is the last day of school, and my boy is officially a rising first grader. With a perfect report card. Mama couldn't be happier.

What exactly is normal, anyway?

I was going to call this post "Back to normal" but what exactly does that mean around here, anyway?

Joey came home last night. I have to admit that I've grown to enjoy his yearly Manstravaganza, especially now that Monkey Man is older and grown to be so much fun. We packed so much crap into five days that it was unbelievable. And fun.

And you know, I secretly enjoy having a few days where I don't have to worry about anyone's schedule. With Joey's job, it's a constant struggle to work everything around when he's going to be done. I know his cell phone rings at 5:15 every night with me on the other end wanting to know what the plan is for the evening and he probably cringes. So having a few days where it is me and my little buddy is fun. Not saying that I want it that way all the time, but it's a nice break.

Of course, this weekend is Father's Day and somehow I had the inkling that my in-laws were going to rear their ugly heads this weekend. Sure enough, the hair was standing up on the back of my neck as Joey pulled into the restaurant parking lot tonight at dinner and he was on the phone. Yup, my mother-in-law. It seems that they will be going to a nephew's graduation party about 40 minutes from our house on Saturday night (we were not invited, go figure) and they want us to meet them for breakfast or lunch for Father's Day.

Holidays are a serious sore point around here. Especially Mother's Day. Starting with the year that Monkey Man had turned one, my mother-in-law started with her theatrics the Friday before Mother's Day. She locked herself in her bathroom at her house and cried for hours because "her boys" (a.k.a. Joey and his brother Kenny) weren't coming for Mother's Day. My father-in-law called Joey and cussed him up one side and down another for "disrepektin yo mama" or some bullshit like that. So he was upset all weekend and basically we barely spoke.

The year after that, she locked herself in their bedroom crying. Again. So Joey decided after his father's angry call that WE had to go down to see his parents on Mother's Day weekend.

Um, I say bullshit. Again.

I was so angry with him that we ended up fighting again the entire weekend. And for at least a week after that. It got to the point where we had to actually sit down and come up with a written "contract" of what holidays would be spent where and all that stuff. It worked for about a year, and then fell by the wayside. The point being, I think he finally got it.

My whole bone of contention...not that I wanted him to disrespect his own mother, but I really felt like Mother's Day should be my day with my family. As in, the three of us being my family. At that point, my mother-in-law had gotten 32 Mother's Days all to herself. I had gotten two, both of them ruined by her fucking theatrics. It was mean and unfair. Joey's point was that she is his mom, and how could he ignore her on Mother's Day?

My point was...you don't have to ignore her - make plans to do something with her the weekend before, the day before, or the weekend after. Call her on Mother's Day. Send her a gift and/or a card. But dammit, Mother's Day should be our family day together. I never dragged him to see my father on Father's Day, so I expected the same courtesy. All I ever wanted was just to get to choose what *I* wanted to do on Mother's Day. Which would not involve spending the day with people I can barely tolerate.

Believe me, if you know my rocky relationship with my in-laws, you would know by now that my idea of the perfect day would be to get as far away from them as possible.

So anyhow, since the big blow-up I have gotten Mother's Day to choose whatever I wanted to do. And he has gotten Father's Day, and almost every year we have had to tolerate meeting his parents for lunch. I hate it, but it's his day and I just suck it up and pray that it's over quickly.

The worst part is that now that I know that we're going to have to see them this weekend, I am automatically on the defensive as well as feeling pretty snippy about the whole thing. My mother-in-law has called Joey's cell phone three times tonight and they are whispering about who knows what, probably some scheme she has come up with for Sunday. It makes my stomach hurt.

Maybe my father-in-law will share some of his hooch with me. That might make Sunday more tolerable.

I need elastic-waisted pants

I got back home yesterday and will be living on twigs and air for the next two weeks. Bleh.

Thursday afternoon, I flew to Boston to see my friend Meredith. And I ate and ate and ate. And we drank. A lot of martinis. And we talked until I was almost hoarse. The weather was atrocious. Like no higher than 50 degrees and rain the entire time. But we managed to keep ourselves pretty entertained and also got in some good relaxing time too.

Next month will mark 20 years since I moved down here from "up yonder." Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get used to being down here, and sometimes I wonder how in the hell I ever fit in up there.

Things I miss about living up yonder:
The bread. Oh god, the bread is divine.
Authentic Italian food that doesn't taste like Ragu.
Good pastries and baked goods.
People that tell it like it is.
That you can actually drive and get somewhere without having people driving 30 in the fast lane.
Having stores actually be open on Sunday, and even *gasp* some before NOON.

Things I don't miss about living up yonder:
People constantly invading my personal space. I'm sorry, but when I'm going through a rack of clothes in a store having someone almost stick their head in my crotch to grab something from the rack underneath it is a tad unsettling.
The traffic. As in having to drive like you're in a Sherman Tank just to go to the CVS.
The lack of good iced tea.
The lack of personal warmth in some of the people working in the restaurants and stores. Seriously, I don't want to have a deep conversation with you but something other than surly indifference would be lovely.

It's good to be home. And even better, I missed three days of In-Law Interaction, which in itself was well worth crossing the Mason-Dixon line.

New and improved holiday, with less family and more drama!

Somehow this year turned out to be one of the rare years where we didn't travel anywhere for Christmas. Nor did anyone travel here.


It rocked.


Back when Monkey Man was little, we made the decision to stay home for Christmas and then use that week between Christmas and New Year's to make the road trip to see all of the grandparents. We did that for two years with pretty good success. Then last year when my dad was sick, we did a pre-Christmas jaunt down there and ended up back home on Christmas Eve. We did have my sister and brother-in-law over for dinner but other than that, we were just trying to recover from the madness of the weeks prior to the big day.

This year's madness has been even a little much for me. The three weeks prior to Christmas - or maybe it was four weeks - were so jam-packed with crap that by the time Sunday rolled around (which was our first real "day off") I was exhausted.

On Sunday, though, we had the Forced In-Law Interaction. And honestly, on a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 being the possibly best visit we could've had, I'd easily give this a 9. No drama, no fits, no rude behavior. The restaurant sucked. Sunday brunch with Santa had the most random offering of food imaginable, it was almost like the cook said, "Hmmm, how can I make this interesting? I'll put out some French toast. Some sliced fruit. Chicken casserole. Tacos. Lasagna." Um, WTF? It was just kind of gross, but since this is the "best place in town" we just sucked it up. My in-laws thought it was spectacular, of course. Oh, and Santa looked like a 23-year old skinny college student. Anyhow, we were supposed to open presents after lunch, but it was pouring rain so we all just shoved our gifts in each others' cars and took off toward home. I'm sure my mother-in-law was upset about it, but there was no way in hell we were standing out in the rain to open gifts.

On Monday, I did the last-minute grocery run which was kind of like being a gladiator. If I'd had a sword and maybe a club it would've gone a lot more smoothly. You know it's nuts when the store has employees that are doing nothing but walking up and down the aisles picking up trash and replacing items that have been dropped/knocked over/misplaced. I wouldn't want that job if my life depended on it. Anyhoo, we ended up meeting my nephew Steve and his wife Yancey at their new house (too cute!) and went out for dinner and to look at the Christmas lights downtown. If I could figure out how to download pictures off of Joey's camera there would be one on here...but I can't. Argh.

Yesterday was quiet. Kind of too quiet, maybe. We made the requisite amount of phone calls to family and friends that kind of put me in a funk. My mother was decidedly cold to me on the phone - she acknowledged receiving her Christmas gift and never said thank you or that she liked it or anything. I guess maybe she's angry with me for being upset with my sister last week. After I hung up I just kind of sat there for a while. It really hurts that no matter what I do, what I say, it's never good enough for her. I'm kind of done with the whole thing. I'm thinking maybe I need to go talk to someone and find out better ways of coping with this short of just cutting my mom out of my life. I know she's had a really rough year - their lifestyle has changed so drastically since my dad's illness and it has thrown her for a loop. I get that. But every time I offer help she turns me down. I can only offer so many times. You can't help someone that doesn't want to be helped or is too prideful to accept help. Not to mention she can be so fucking nasty sometimes that it's no wonder she was estranged from her sister for almost 18 years or that she doesn't have many friends or that my brothers have so little to do with her.

Anyway, that kind of put a little bit of a damper on the day for me. We hung out at the house, Joey helped Monkey Man assemble at least 9,672 Lego kits, and I watched a lot of crappy TV. What is it with the new Lego sets anyway - remember when we were little and all they had were the big sets with ten kajillion Legos that you could build all kinds of cool stuff with? Now everything is a "set" and once you get it assembled into whatever the set is for, you're done. Not a whole lot of imagination or re-use going on with those. Monkey Man was also the proud recipient of a Pittsburgh Steelers uniform, helmet, and "locker". He wore that damn helmet almost all day, it was comical watching him try to talk on the phone while he still had the helmet on.

The Santa haul was awesome. Santa (um, that would be me) gave Joey this cool laptop stand that he can wheel around and use downstairs in the Man Cave when he's watching TV. He had formerly been using the coffee table down there which is oh so ergonomically not working for him. He also got Guitar Hero II and III and is waiting for the appropriate time to get his rock on (not when Monkey Man is around because he isn't great at being patient). Some shirts, socks, Lowe's gift card, candied pecans, new books. He did okay. My mother-in-law gave him some odd hood/neckwarmer thing that is just the gayest thing ever. I told him if he wore it he would have to change his name to Miss Thang. I suspect it will get "lost" in the Christmas trash.

Me, I got some iTunes money, a new North Face jacket that I desperately needed, two identical JJill sweaters (he ordered 2 different colors and they shipped 2 of the same color), and a really beautiful black leather Coach bag. It is hawt.

And the Monkey Man - other than the aforementioned Lego sets and Steelers stuff, he got golf clubs, a globe, the Underdog DVD, an Erector set, a racetrack, and a bunch of monster trucks. We won't be going near any toy stores for a while.

So the other excitement going on around here is that we have mice. Jay had told me that they had mice and apparently a lot of their neighbors do too. They live around the corner from us so I knew right then and there that the little fuckers would be showing up at our house in short order. Then one morning late last week, I had gotten up at 5:15 to let the dog out and popped into the powder room next to the garage door to relieve my aching bladder, and as I was sitting there in a daze I heard scribble, scratch, scribble. I rubbed my eyes and then made a little more effort to listen. Nothing.

Then the other night, we were eating dinner at home (!) when I heard something again. This time in the kitchen. But every time Monkey Man would hush long enough so I could listen, it stopped.

Yesterday I was fixing our Christmas lunch and, um, found some evidence. Ew. So I guess you know what I ended up doing - calling an exterminator and cleaning out cabinets. Blech. Like the kitchen didn't already look like a bomb had hit in there after I fixed lunch.

Today I'm off of work so I can be with Monkey Man. We're going to meet Joey downtown for lunch and if I'm feeling particularly brave we might venture to the mall. Or not. Then we ship him off to one of the Badasses for two days so we can work and actually get paid so we can pay off the Visa bill this month. Our anniversary is Friday, Joey is going to DC on Sunday to watch the Cowboys play the Redskins, and Monday I have to work and then we're having a party. I must be insane. Who invites a ton of people over and ends up working all day? Me, that's who. Hopefully we will close early but I'm not counting on that.

I did think of a funny Christmas story from my childhood this weekend. Back when I was about five or six, my brother Dave had already gone off to college and had come home for Christmas break. I still believed in Santa that year, and I was so excited that I could barely sleep all night. Well, my brother came stumbling in from the bars around 2 AM and I heard him in the living room and thought he was Santa. I went running in there and no, it was Drunk Dave who was sitting there shelling pistachios. "Did you think I was Santa?" he slurred. "Well, you can open your presents if you want to."

So at 2 AM, I shredded into all of my Christmas presents and sat there for playing with everything. Finally around 4 AM I staggered back to my room and fell asleep. And imagine my parents' surprise when they awoke to discover that not only had Santa come, but that their angelic daughter had obliterated every present of hers under the tree.

Give me an inch, I take a mile. Not to mention that it was the year that I got a huge bucket of Slime from my brother. Remember that stuff? I got it EVERYWHERE. My mother was less than enthused.

So this year, Monkey Man got his traditional package from Uncle Dave and Aunt Karen. She works for a huge bookstore chain and is a children's literature specialist so she sends the most awesome books. And inside, a card addressed to me, from my brother: "Next year, Monkey Man gets a big bucket of slime. I was going to do it this year, but Karen stopped me."

God bless Karen. My carpets thank you.

T-day roundup

Survival is success. So obviously, I made it out relatively unscathed.

Wednesday afternoon we found out we were closing at 3 - so I high-tailed it on home and got cracking on making pies. The plan was to make two pumpkin pies and hopefully get started on the sweet potato souffle that I was making - namely, peeling, chopping, and cooking 14 cups of sweet potatoes. In the meantime, Joey was at his office handing out turkeys to the employees (which is one of the DUMBEST things ever - Malcolm came up with the idea years ago, and I'm sorry - but giving someone a rock-hard frozen turkey the night before it has to be cooked is somewhat akin to torture) and I was trying to get in touch with him to find out what time his parents were coming. Eventually, he called me back and said that they were coming around 6 and that his mom had wanted to come and cook dinner for us.

Now, very sweet gesture on her part. However, there were a few flaws. First of all, she wanted to fix this thing she and the family call "baked zita". Not ziti, zita. It's a totally bastardized version of baked ziti that requires her to use no fewer than 47 pots and pans to fix and at least an hour of prep time, let alone cook time. So I'm not exactly sure what she was smoking when she came up with this idea, but I think I need to get some for myself. The other thing is that knowing that you are going to probably eat your weight in gravy and stuffing on Thursday, it's not a great idea to eat a huge, greasy meal that sits in your gut like a grenade. It's not a matter of if it's going to explode, it's when.

Anyhoo, the plan all along had been for us to go out to eat at the local pizza joint. I find that getting them out of the house serves two purposes - first, my FIL tends to be much better behaved when we are out somewhere, and the other is that it kind of breaks up the monotony of being trapped with two people that talk incessantly. At the same time. But somehow Joey yet again had gotten this idea that we were going to eat the pizza here so he called and asked me to call the pizza place and order pizza...meanwhile, I had just put a pie in the oven that was going to require me to stay put at least 45 minutes and I was expecting everyone to come to the house and THEN go out...so then when we had this discussion about take-out versus eating in the restaurant and blah blah blah it kind of got a little ugly. He was irritated that I wasn't ready to drop everything and head out the door, I was irritated that he was making all these plans that clearly weren't what we had been discussing for several days. Do you see a pattern here?

Anyhow, everyone came rolling in the door and we had pizza and everything was fine. For some reason Joey disappeared with Monkey Man into the basement and left me with the IL's to entertain them, so I did what works best - I turned on the Food Network and then zoned out myself.

Thursday, the weather here was fabulous. It was like 75 degrees and had a nice warm breeze blowing, very un-Thanksgivinglike weather. I dragged out some coffee cakes and in the meantime, I'd had this bee in my bonnet to make this recipe for pecan cheesecake pie that I saw in this month's Southern Living to take to my sister's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Keep in mind, I had already baked 2 pumpkin pies (1 for sister's house, 1 to eat with the IL's) and then an apple pie to have Wednesday night after the pizza. So I threw the pie together and the entire time, my MIL kept obsessing about it.

I should have known this would lead to trouble later.

Anyhow, the pie was done and we took off to go to the restaurant for lunch. It was surprisingly good, and I found that the newspaper's assessment of the cost per person was way off - it was about half the cost of what we had expected. I know my FIL enjoyed it since he cleaned his heaping plate and then let out a huge belch. Yeah, classy. MIL obsessed the whole time that it was too much food, she couldn't eat it all, why did they give us so much food, blah blah blah. I guess she is one of those people that belongs to the "clean your plate" club and if you don't you are evil and wasteful. But we finished up, paid the bill, and then came back to our house.

The whole way back to the house, both MIL and FIL were obsessing about that fucking pie. How they really wanted some, but they were soooo full. Honestly, I wasn't planning on serving the pie to THEM...that's why I made 2 pumpkin pies. So we got back to the house, I went in our bathroom and when I emerged, I found my husband in the kitchen getting ready to desicrate my lovely pecan cheesecake pie. His parents wanted theirs "to go". And of course, I was irritated. And like the big old wimp that I am, I kept my mouth shut while they left with two pieces of my beautiful pie and I was left with a pie that I certainly couldn't take anywhere. ARGH.

After they left, Joey and I took a nap (Monkey Man deemed it unnecessary and then fell asleep on the way to my sister's house) and then we left for my sister's. My parents and my brother, sister-in-law and niece were all there. We had a really nice evening - my niece is in college majoring in Arabic studies so she's pretty interesting to talk to...maybe a little over-the-top in her involvement with the whole thing but I am hoping that she'll find some interesting and profitable work when it's all said and done. I hadn't seen my sister-in-law in about 4 years and she is always so fun to talk to - she originally hails from Augusta, Georgia so we have that whole Southern thing going for us. And my brother...well, he's kind of a lot like me and we have a lot of fun together. I was so freaking excited to see them that I barely slept on Wednesday night.

Today, once Joey gets home from doing a little network maintenance at the office (that can only be done when noone is there) I will leave the boys and take off for the land of the unknown. My niece desperately needs clothes so we will be braving the crowds to try and hook her up with some clothes. Should prove interesting and I'm sure my mother will have a total meltdown at some point...I'm thinking maybe SIL, niece and I should drive separately from my sister and mom since they will want to run and run until they collapse...and my mom just didn't look good yesterday.

My dad, however, looks fabulous. He read to Monkey Man last night and they talked football and Army men and all that good stuff. I love my dad.

So that's about it. And now I better get myself in the shower so I can get my day going. Laundry is done, dishes are all cleaned and put away, and I have a Monkey Man calling.

*****

I am thankful my brother and his family were able to come visit. We don't see each other but once a year, and it's always so much fun!

Invasion of the turkeys

And I'm not talking about my in-laws, either. My motto for today: Survival is success. Quite fitting. So far we haven't had any major incidents but a few hiccups yesterday that will wait for another day for me to write about.

Yesterday, our local paper had a feature on why people shouldn't deep-fry turkeys. Something about how they might explode. Which makes me ever so thankful that I have dodged the turkey bullet yet again this year and it will be left to my sister to handle wrangling the beast into the oven.

My last pie is in the oven. I've done pumpkin, apple, and pecan cheesecake pies. I have one sweet potato casserole to finish putting together this afternoon after lunch. I kept it easy for breakfast - thank you, sweet gourmet grocery store, for making delicious coffee cakes that don't require me to do anything but make coffee.

My brother and family will be here around lunchtime - half are coming from Seattle, the other half from Atlanta. I am so excited that I could barely sleep last night. And of course, my parents are here - we haven't seen them since October.

Last year, my dad was still in rehab. Monkey Man had just had surgery 3 weeks prior. It wasn't a great time last Fall. This year is so much better. Despite all the requisite in-law drama, it's going to be a great weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all. From my house to yours, I hope you have a day filled with fun and laughter.

******

Most of all, today, I am thankful for my life and the people in it. I am so lucky.

Oh joy

Well, this is going to be a great few days.

Notice the spots? Yeah.

A few days ago, I ran out of my main staple of showering, Dove Body Wash. Dove is my friend. So I grabbed a travel-size bottle of this citrus-lemongrass body wash we got at the Wynn when we were in Vegas back in February. I used it for three days. And I guess this is the result.

I only had a few bumps on my right arm on Thursday. By Friday, it had spread to my stomach. By this morning, it is creeping slowly down my legs.

I ended up at Urgent Care having a strep test and bloodwork done and pretty much nothing showed up. So now I have some steroids and Zyrtec and hopefully it will go away. The disturbing thing to me is that I apparently have a low-grade fever and my blood pressure is up. So I cancelled Monkey Man's playdate with Quentin and we will be laying low the rest of the day.

The higher blood pressure might be because of the phone call I got from Joey this morning. He was on the way to Blacksburg for the Hokies game and apparently got a call from my father-in-law about Thanksgiving. I believe my blood pressure started climbing at that precise moment of hearing that.

My in-laws have decided that they want to see my niece for Thanksgiving. My brother-in-law and his second wife have decided yet again to boycott the family get-together in favor of going to Myrtle Beach (I am starting to think they are the smart ones but whatever).

My in-laws' great plan? To invite my ex-sister-in-law and my niece to eat with us on Thanksgiving day.

My niece is delightful. Really a sweet kid. Her mother...not so much. There's some serious bad blood there between us, going back to when we were both pregnant at the same time. Basically, we'd been having infertility issues for over 2 years and finally got the doctor to give us meds. We made the mistake of mentioning to my BIL and SIL that we were doing this...and she being the competitive type decided that SHE wanted the first grandchild. And bam, in one month they were pregnant. The morning they called us at 5:30 to crow their victory over the positive test, I ran out into the snow in my pajamas and threw myself down in the cold grass, cursing God and wondering what I had done to deserve what my life was turning into. And then, my SIL was actually angry with us because we weren't "happy enough". I'm not sure exactly what she wanted our reaction to be - we congratulated them and put our game face on and tried to be enthusiastic, but inside we were quietly dying. Thankfully, we were pregnant about 2 months later, but it was the beginning of the end of our relationship with her as well as their marriage.

So, needless to say, I think we might be on record for possibly having the most Fucking Awkward Thanksgiving Dinner Ever.

And they wonder why I keep breaking out in rashes.

*****

Today I am thankful for the technology that made it possible for us to have the wonderful son that we have! He is our miracle child.

The Great Thanksgiving Negotiations of 2007

Today's the first day of NaBloPoMo. Remind me in about a week when I'm whining about the lack of something to say that it was a great idea to sign up for this so I can break out of my posting rut!

We survived Halloween. And when I say survived, I mean that we had a blast. We got together with a group of the Badasses and their assorted young 'uns and we hit the streets around 7 PM. I don't know whose idea it was to bring a wheeled cooler, but God bless them. I'm really not sure who had more fun - us or the kids. And no one was maimed during the making of Halloween 2007, so that was all good. Pictures will be forthcoming when I'm not too lazy to go outside and get my camera out of the car.

And with the advent of the first day of November comes two important events. First, The Birthday of The Monkey Man, which shall be celebrated in multiple parts culminating on the Day of His Birth, November 19th. Then the Great Thanksgiving Negotiations of 2007 will be commencing, probably this weekend.

I think it was Gretchen who referred to it as the Holiday Dance. Who goes where for what holiday. It's a topic that I generally avoid since it usually results in something akin to World War Three every few years or so. Things got so bad three years ago that Joey and I actually had to sit down and negotiate where we were going for what holidays, birthdays, and even down to Father's Day and Mother's Day. Last year, our whole holiday season was pretty much shot due to my dad's illness and Monkey Man's illness - we were saved from having to negotiate down to the minute where we were going for the holidays. We just didn't really go anywhere.

I'm glad that everyone is healthy this year (which I probably just jinxed so I am knocking on some wood - with my forehead) but honestly, it makes me a little sick to think of the upcoming argument. I just found out tonight that apparently my Brilliant Brother will be coming from Seattle for a visit so that throws a whole monkey wrench into things. My only saving grace is if I can convince Joey that we can invite his parents up to go eat Thanksgiving dinner at a fancy restaurant. We did that a few years ago and it was the most mercifully conflict-free Thanksgiving we've had in years. Plus I didn't have to put up with their asses for the whole weekend, which was a win-win...no in-laws, no dirty dishes. And thankfully, no naked father-in-law sightings.

*****

The other part of NaBloPoMo that I'm taking part in is 30 Days of Giving Thanks. Some of the things might be silly, some might be serious...but they'll be at the end of each daily post.

This year, most of all, I am so thankful for the health of my entire family. You are all amazing!

My new mantra

Survival is success. Such was the mantra given to me by Mer, who has endured more than her fair share of panicky pre-In-Law visit phone calls. And ya know, it's a damn true mantra if there ever was one.

As I mentioned earlier, Cat Door had been at our house Friday afternoon prepping our bathroom window (as in removing it) and then returned for dinner since the Mrs. was out of town. He's kind of pathetic in that she doesn't cook and all the food she keeps in the house is super-healthy stuff like kale and butter that resembles spackle. So when she's out of town, he relishes a good dinner so usually he ends up at our house or at his neighbor's house like a little refugee. He hadn't eaten with us in a while, so I took the opportunity (and her absence) to kick it up a bit and do this pork dish that is really extraordinary along with some balsamic vinegar-laced roasted asparagus and some egg noodles. Ice cream for dessert. I swear to God he ate three helpings of everything like he hadn't eaten in about seven years.

Saturday morning, he showed up at 8 AM with his brother and one of his neighbors to put the window in. Let me preface this by saying in addition to the anxiety that I was having about the IL's descending, I was more than a little freaked out with having no window in our bathroom all night. It rained part of the night and I could hear every sound outside, so I barely got any sleep at all. I was tired and knew I had a long day in front of me.

It was fun having the guys working at the house. Well, Cat Door's neighbor is a little bit of an odd duck, but once the window was in place (all 200+ pounds of it) he took off leaving Cat Door and his brother here to finish up. While all this was going on, Joey took Monkey Man on a last-minute shopping trip for a birthday present for my FIL and also for them to get haircuts. And I stayed home to make an apple cake and keep an eye on the dog who was driving me absolutely berzerk. You see, Cat Door's brother looks exactly like him but is 5 years older and probably a good eight inches shorter. Our dog isn't exactly the brightest match in the pack so he couldn't quite figure out which one was Cat Door and which was Brother, so you could see the confusion on his face as they were going in and out of our house..."Hmmm, that's Cat Door - wait, no, that's the other guy, no wait...."

So Cat Door and Brother took off for lunch and I ended up eating and then crashing on the couch for a while. Later on, Cat Door came back and ended up finishing the window completely even though he'd originally said that it would be the middle of the week before he could finish up. It was fun having him around, we usually talk on the phone a few times a week but getting to actually see him has become somewhat of a rarity in the past year since he's gotten so busy with his business. So he had finished up and was hanging out shooting the shit when it happened.

He met my in-laws.

I wish I could've captured the look on my face when my father-in-law hugged me hello - I'm sure that to Cat Door I looked like I had just stepped in shit. So of course being the shithead that he is, Cat Door decided that he was going to hang out and talk to my IL's for a few minutes. And then the bastard patted me on the back and said "Have a wonderful time!" and with a shit-eating grin, sidled out the door. Jackass.

Being with my IL's is exhausting, frankly. I know this is going to sound super snooty of me, but there is nothing more excruciating than listening to two uneducated rednecks spout off about everything under the sun like they are the born authorities on it. Not to mention they have to discuss everyone in their tiny little town (whether my husband knows them or not), all their health problems, doctor's appointments, how many times people have been married, and on and on and on. They read all kinds of articles in the newspapers and magazines about health issues and tips on things and they want to discuss all of that. And not only do they want to discuss it, but they also both talk at the same time with varying versions of the same story. It's maddening.

So after about an hour of this, all I can do is go into my little zen mode and sit there without making eye contact with anyone, with the same theme running through my head..."shutthefuckupshutthefuckupshutthefuckup...." All I want is for them to take turns. Shutting up would be preferable, but probably not going to happen.

For dinner, we decided to dine at Outback. We gave my FIL the option of Bonefish Grill but of course, since it wasn't something he readily recognized (as in seen on TV a zillion times) he wasn't interested. We did the call-ahead seating so thankfully we only ended up waiting about 5 minutes for our table once we got there. And, they seated us at a table with booth seating on one side and chair seating on the other so we were blissfully saved from the embarrassment of our last visit to Outback (see yesterday's post). My FIL only had two mixed drinks, which probably wasn't a bad thing since I know he'd probably had a few out in our garage out of the hooch he carries in his truck.

We got back home and Joey took my FIL down in the basement to watch TV while my MIL decided to hang out upstairs. With me. This is not something that I particularly relish, but it's not usually too painful - she's not as annoying and rude as FIL is, but she won't shutthefuckup either. So I feigned falling asleep on the couch and did other thing like mentally making my grocery list for next week and having fantasy hot monkey sex with the guy I saw at the sub place last week. Ahem. Much more pleasant than listening to her talk about her worship of Paula Deen for the umpteengazillionth time. Finally at 10 PM she gave up on me and went upstairs to bed, so I slunk off to our room to divulge in a little reading and then fell asleep myself. Which was a good thing, since....

I was awakened at 5:30 this morning by the sound of what seemed to be a large herd of elephants. Nope, just FIL coming down the stairs. Then he sat at our kitchen table - which is like 30 feet from our bedroom door - and proceeded to cough up phlegm for the next 20 minutes.

Then there was silence. I drifted back to sleep. And then the fucking doorbell rang. The stupid idiot had locked himself out of our house again. Again as in he does this every time they come to visit. Joey jumped up out of the bed and I think if he'd had a shotgun, he would've used it and maybe then we could've gotten some sleep. He went and let FIL back inside (against my better judgement) and then crawled back into bed.

For the next hour, I listened to rustling, coughing, snorting, farting, and any other noise that could possibly be made by one human being. Finally at 7 AM I rolled over and poked Joey.

"Well, I'm up."

"What can I do to help you with breakfast?"

"Kill your father. How about that?"

So I sent the two of them off to Food Lion with a list of stuff that I really didn't need. And I was pissed. And bitchy. And exhausted. No sleep makes Builder Mama bitchy. Okay, bitchier than usual.

As it so happened, I was hoping to get a good half-hour to an hour by myself to get breakfast rolling. I was making sausage gravy, which isn't exactly hard to make but it does take some time for the gravy to thicken - then I had to do biscuits, bacon, and eggs. But no. Apparently, Monkey Man had never gotten back to sleep either after the doorbell rang so he was up. And then MIL got up. So here I was, trying to get the gravy to thicken and having to wait on my MIL and deal with Monkey Man who for some reason had landed the TV on a channel of infomercials that he had endless questions about. I was snippy and less than pleased with this turn of events.

We made it through breakfast and apparently my IL's had decided that they were leaving after breakfast. I have no idea where they were going unless perhaps they were going by my ex-SIL's house to see my niece (note: how ironic is it that they have a better relationship with my psycho ex-SIL than with my own BIL?). But hey, I was all about them leaving so I busied myself with cleaning up the zillions of dishes, pots and pans from breakfast. Not like anyone offered to help, but whatever.

One of my MIL's most annoying traits is that it takes her forever to get ready to go anywhere. And even when she's done, it doesn't even look like she's done anything to herself. It's kind of baffling, honestly. And one of my FIL's most annoying traits is that when he's ready to leave, he will be rude and yell and carry on until my pokey MIL finally is ready to go. I hate it.

So she's upstairs doing God-knows-what and he is in our kitchen yelling up the stairs every 3 minutes telling her he's leaving and she better hurry up. Or, in his terms, "Goddamit, I'm leaving and you better hurry the hell up or I'm leaving without you!" Which if she wasn't so annoying, I'd say FINE, go ahead you miserable bastard. But honestly, I want her to go too so I keep my mouth shut.

Finally, he turns to Monkey Man and says, "Monkey Man, you go tell your granny that if she doesn't hurry up and come downstairs that I'm leaving her here forever!"

Oh hell no. Sorry dude, you are so not dragging my kid into your stupid little games. I shot Joey a look across the room and believe it or not, he stood up to his dad and told him that Monkey Man was not going to do that because it was rude and disrespectful for anyone to talk that way. And that if FIL had a problem with that, then he could go wait out in the truck for MIL.

Go Joey!

So thankfully, it was only about another 10 minutes until she came downstairs and they left. And then I collapsed on the couch and did absolutely nothing except watch Housewives of Orange County (I know, I know) until it was time to go to our company picnic. And now, when I should be downstairs on the treadmill working off that barbeque I ate, I am so freaking exhausted mentally, emotionally, and physically that I just can't.

It used to be that we saw them all the time. Thankfully the visits have waned down to only a few a year, but it's still enough that I am gripped with anxiety for days prior to a visit. It's not like the anxiousness that they're going to do something bad - we all know by now in this point of the story that the stupidity will happen, it's just a matter of how colossally stupid it will be. And I can defend myself, and Joey can defend himself (when he chooses to), but it's Monkey Man. It's having him around people that have no respect for anyone, including each other and their own selves. I just don't like having to shelter him like that. My MIL was all concerned this morning that she didn't want Monkey Man seeing FIL take all of his medications because it "isn't good for him to see things like that" when in reality I want to shake her and ask - so is it better to have him see your husband treat you, his own son, and his daughter-in-law like crap? Hey, I'm just askin'.

So, just add this to yet another chapter of As the In-Law World Turns. And goody goody, it's almost the holidays. Gah, shoot me now.

Descent into darkness

Today is the dreaded arrival of the Out-Laws. God help me.

So far we have no plans of what the hell to do with them other than take them out to dinner. And this is a serious issue, mostly because my FIL will expect a gourmet meal of filet mignon but will refuse to wear anything better than jeans, a wife-beater, and a plaid snap-button shirt. Unbuttoned. Klassy.

So it will probably be off to some place like Outback or Lone Star. The last time we took him to Outback, we waited about 45 minutes and then they only had a booth. Slight problem, because he is too fat to fit in a booth. Yes, I'm serious. So the waitress pulled a chair up into the aisle and he sat there, but not without bitching constantly about how Outback discriminated against him by making the booths too small. Um, could you possibly bring me a gun, kind waitress? Thanks.

Then there's the matter of my brother-in-law Kenny. He has apparently decided that he will have zero participation in this weekend's events. So not only do I have to deal with my FIL's usual level of assholishness, then I have to listen to him bitch about Kenny.

Can you tell I already have an optimistic outlook on how the weekend is going to go?

On the good side, Cat Door came over for dinner last night so we got to hang out...and right now he and his brother are putting our new glass block window in our bathroom. It's so purty I can barely stand it. Not to mention he has been cracking me up all morning, so it's been a nice relief from the pre-IL-tension that has enveloped our house this week.

Apple cake is in the oven, bourbon is downstairs just in case. Wish me luck.

Independence from insanity

Happy 4th, y'all.

By 8:30 this morning, Monkey Man and I had already dined at Panera and picked up the fixings at Kroger to make dessert for tonight's cookout. Now that I've finished destroying my kitchen, I'm taking a break while waiting for the dishwasher to finish running so I can throw the crap in there from fixing the dessert. More on this in a bit....

So today is Independence Day. And I have declared my independence from the insanity that is my in-laws. Y'all aren't going to believe this one. Just when I think my in-laws have reached a new stratosphere in stupidity, they come up with something else that leaves me shaking my head.

Their beloved dog Blue died two weeks ago. They had Blue for about three years and she was a really sweet dog that they doted on. Ironically, they have always treated their dogs better than their own sons, but that's another post for another time. Anyway, my MIL has been weeping almost daily about missing Blue so I guess FIL finally relented and said they should get another dog.

Enter my brother-in-law into this scenario. His wife has a friend whose son (19 years old) had a dog for 1.5 years and never took care of it so she told the son they had to get rid of the dog. And of course, my brother-in-law thinks that this would be a perfect dog for my in-laws. This is also the moron that got a Wiemeraner (hunting dog that requires daily exercising) when they lived in a 1200 SF house and both worked full-time and had a newborn, but whatever. The dog ate a hole in their couch it was so bored.

My in-laws are hugely overweight and lazy. So what better pet to get them than an Australian Shepherd. A working dog with behavioral issues. Perfect! I give it two weeks before my FIL takes the dog into the woods and shoots his ass. I know with Rufus, who is also a working dog, he has to have a job or he is a total pain in the ass. And he's actually one of the most mellow working dogs I've ever seen.

So besides this fact, the dog apparently hadn't had shots in a while nor had it been neutered. So that was money that they had to pay for that. And then my MIL tells Joey last night that they want to get an invisible fence for the dog. We looked at each other and shook our heads - not only have they had like 10 dogs in the time they've lived in this house, they live on a 38-acre farm in the middle of no freaking where and have yet to have a dog get hit by a car. So why suddenly are they so insistent on getting an invisible fence?

"Ma, skip the fence. Do you realize how much they cost?" Joey asked. No, she had no idea. And then Joey told her that it would be thousands of dollars and that was that.

So after the other week, I am just done. They don't have money to get their air conditioning fixed, but they do have money to get a fucking dog, get it the required shots and get it neutered, and then to get a fence? Or maybe they thought we were going to buy the fence for them? Um, NO.

Argh. All I have to say is thank God for Maker's Mark, because it at least took the edge off my anger last night so that I didn't even say a word to Joey or give him a shitty look either. I'm trying, even if it requires self-medicating. Is that bad? No, in reality, I've kind of come to the point again where I have to readjust my attitude. I can't control them, but I can control my reactions to them. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Tonight we are going to my sister's house for a barbeque - not exactly sure who will be there but she has a core group of friends who are usually present and I think secretly that my sister really doesn't give a rat's ass about us coming unless we bring Monkey Man. I think she's told me like 10,000 times how excited she is to see him, which is totally cool. He loves his Aunt Kathie. And we love Aunt Kathie too.

This behemoth dessert that I threw together is kind of messy to make, but damn is it good. I got the recipe a few years ago from Bon Appetit magazine on a feature they did on Hawaii and this coffee shop that makes this. It is gooood. I made two dishes of it just in case.

Kauai "Pie" Ice Cream (courtesy Bon Appetit Magazine)
Serves 12

6 tbsp. whipping cream
6 tbsp. (3/4 stick) butter
6 tbsp. light corn syrup
6 tbsp. powdered sugar
7 oz. bittersweet chocolate (NOT unsweetened) or semi-sweet chocolate, broken into small pieces for melting
3 pints coffee ice cream, slightly softened
1-1/2 cups of 1/2" pieces of shortbread cookies (about 5 oz.)
1 7-oz. jar dry-roasted salted macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped
3/4 cup sweetened shredded coconut, toasted

Bring first 4 ingredients to simmer in heavy saucepan over medium heat, whisking occasionally. Remove from heat. Add chocolate and whisk until melted and smooth. Cool.

Spread half of ice cream in 8-inch square glass baking dish. Sprinkle with half of shortbread, macadamia nuts, and toasted coconut; press to submerge. Drizzle 3/4 cup fudge sauce over. Repeat layering with remaining ingredients (dish will be full) and drizzle with more fudge sauce (save extra for another use). Freeze until firm, about 3 hours. Scoop ice cream into bowls and serve.

Can be made 3 days ahead - cover and keep frozen.

We put the fun in dysfunctional

Yesterday morning, I got a phone call from my sister that apparently my nutjob sister-in-law, Cindy, had decided to send a letter via e-mail to both my parents and my sister. My sister forwarded a copy to me (and I also got a copy from my nephew Steve as well).


Let's just say I was somewhat stunned. You can go back to this post and read the whole story, but the general gist was that my family went to Pennsylvania to my nephew's graduation party and basically got the cold shoulder that weekend. And then my sister, who from this point until I get tired of calling her this shall now be referred to as The Bad Sister, went completely apeshit on my sister-in-law.


Well, I guess that telling my very religious sister-in-law that she had violated one of the Ten Commandments kind of struck a nerve. Because what we got was a four-page diatribe about what transpired along with a lot of other bullshit.

A few excerpts from the letter...keep in mind that this woman allegedly is working on her PhD and can apparently barely write in the English language....

"I believed when I married Paul "his" family became my family. I guess I perceived that incorrectly..There seems to be an actual divide as I mauled over Kathie's phone call. "

So glad she was mauling over the conversation. My goodness.

"I thought for sure that with the birth of our two sons the ones to carry on the family name made us one family.We were all one. When one was hurting we all hurt. That was my misperception. I took that for granted that family meant a team effort. Were one was weak the other would come along side them. I also thought that love covered a multitude of sins but not knowing I had caused such pain these last 31 years I was unable to ask for forgiveness. I need to know this horrific pain I caused."

Um, huh?

"In hearing Kathie's accusation of the neglect as compared to what I did for my family I again make no apologies for what I do for my family. As life has it we live less than a mile from both my brother and my parents. I do understand the honoring and respecting one's parents maybe more than anyone but the Lord may know. I do not do it as well as I could but for sure I do try. I do believe that my being born in PA was God's divine design as parents age there is a responsibility. "

I guess the fact that I was born in New Jersey pretty much means I'm screwed, huh?

So anyhow, this crapola went on and on and on. I showed it to a few friends and they were shocked. "You and your brother and sister actually come from the same parents?" several asked. Notice, however, that my brother is significantly removed from this entire situation. That would be because he has no balls since my sister-in-law removed them several years ago.

Frankly, I don't care what happens from here. My brother and I have never had any relationship. His wife and I have never had a relationship. His kids and I have no relationship. So if I never talk to them again, well, that's their choice.

What amazes me is that throughout the letter, my sister-in-law continually attacks my sister and defends her own actions. And all I can think of is that she suuure must feel guilty if she had to write a four-page letter defending herself.

So right now between my family and my in-laws, I pretty much have a plate-full of crazy. And my stomach is full. I'm just waiting for Jerry Springer to call to book us on a show.

A shitload of baggage

It's been one of those days when I couldn't even finish a thought without being interrupted. Everything I started, even if it was only a ten-minute task, seemed to take for-freaking-ever because it was either the phone ringing or being paged or someone coming in my office. It was unbelievable.

At one point right after lunch, I walked over to our accounting building and when I got back my voice mail light was blinking. I punched in my codes and lo and behold, it was good old SG asking if he could bill retainage on a job he did for EPOD about six months ago. Now normally, I would erase the voice mail and go track down EPOD to find out the answer. But somehow, I forgot all about that part of it and ended up wandering around the building for twenty minutes looking for EPOD to ask the question and totally forgot to actually hang up my voice mail. Which happened to be on speakerphone. And stuck in permanent "Make your selection now" mode. Luckily, The Fox was in a decent mood and we shared a good laugh about my tunnel vision. But honestly, that was probably the most I accomplished all day.

Mentally, I'm not in a very good place right now. The in-laws' extortion attempt has really eaten away at me and I'm having a really hard time dealing with it. I think the biggest realization is that my husband is afraid to even mention his parents to me anymore because of my shitty reactions and that makes me sad. Really sad that it ever got to this point. We had a really long talk last night and a lot of stuff got unloaded, one of the biggest things being my admission that I still kind of resent the fact that for years he took his parents' side against me every time we had one of our little skirmishes. Whether my feelings were right or wrong, I felt like he totally invalidated my feelings about the way they treated us and it has bugged me the whole time.

I don't enjoy being pissy about my in-laws. I don't enjoy being physically ill every time I know I have to see them. I don't enjoy knowing that nine times out of ten, they will pull some stupid bullshit stunt every time we see them which will leave me reeling for days. I miss the way things used to be when we all got along and respected each others' boundaries. Now we have been reduced to adversaries in competition for the love of one person.

On one hand, I feel bad for Joey. As the son of an alcoholic, he falls into the role of "peacemaker" all of the time. Always afraid of being criticized, of not being good enough, of being rejected, and of making people unhappy. He's not only this way in his personal life, he's that way in business too and I think he's beginning to see this with a little more clarity. What worries me is that he has gotten to the point where he bottles stuff up inside instead of sharing with me because he's scared of my reaction. Yeah, I tend to have a pretty crappy attitude when it comes to my in-laws, but after all that they've done who exactly can blame me? I can put on a happy face until the cows come home, but that doesn't change how my heart hurts and my stomach does flip-flops every time I have to deal with them at all.

As for the money part, the agreement has been that he will give his parents half of the money for the air conditioner - his brother will hopefully chip in a quarter of it, leaving a quarter of the cost for his parents to pony up. I'm not really confident in his brother's participation, but at this point I'm just so tired of worrying about it that I just want it all over with.

One thing I want, though, is for Joey to go spend a weekend with his parents and have a real sit-down with them about their financial situation. We really have no idea what they do and don't have, and the fact that they had to ask for money yet again has me really disturbed. I think Joey worries too, but he's stuck his head into the sand and tried to avoid dealing with it. He believes that his parents won't share any financial information with him, so I say play hard ball - no info, no money. Period. End of story. We have our own retirement, Monkey Man's college, and a big-ass mortgage that we're responsible for, and if we end up having to supplement them on a regular basis when they are both 63 years old, we are soooo screwed. Or at least we will be unless we get some kind of plan in place.

About two years ago, I tried to change how I felt about my in-laws. Obviously, they did something right in that Joey is honestly one of the greatest people I have ever known in my entire life. We used to all get along until all the crap started. And I know I can't control them - but I can control how I react to them. My biggest problem with that is that I can't stop this cycle of hatred that has lodged itself in my belly like a cancer. "Our number one sticking point in our marriage is my parents," said Joey last night, "and that's not a problem that's going to go away."

No, it's not. And I just don't know how to handle this anymore, because I am fucking exhausted.

Keeping extortion in the family

I haven't posted since TUESDAY? How did that happen? Has that ever happened, except for when we went to Cabo where apparently there is no internet service to be had?

I can explain, really. Wednesday night we had dinner with Jim who is a friend/business associate. He brought along his girlfriend Beth - now, Jim's wife up and left him and the kids a year ago, and really took it pretty hard. He's a nice guy. She felt like she "deserved better." Not exactly sure what about Jim wasn't to her liking anymore but anyhow, he's pulled himself up by his bootstraps and reconnected with an old high school friend (Beth) and brought her along.

We had fun. And a lot of pomegranate martinis. Oh wait, that was me....never mind. Hopefully everyone else had a good time too.

Then last night it was the Founder's Night dinner for Rotary - Joey got an award so we of course had to go. It was surprisingly fun and the food, for a catering facility, was fantastic. Don't even get me started on the bread pudding with chocolate chips in it and a buttery bourbon sauce and whipped cream or I will start moaning and people will think I'm doing bad things in my office. Like that's any different than normal.

Okay, so last time I posted I alluded to the fact that my in-laws are trying to extort $10,000 from us. Good times, good times.

Just to give you an idea of what we're dealing with, my MIL worked for a major textile manufacturer for 42 years and when her plant closed four years ago she was forced to retire and given a cash settlement. Well, her retirement plan was an ESOP and when the stock shares fell to under a dollar each, there went pretty much their retirement. Not to mention the fact that she burned through the cash settlement in under a year, buying things like dining room furniture that wasn't needed and lots of stuff off QVC. It was like every time we turned around she was buying something else stupid like a back massager. A $500 back massager. Do you realize how many massages you can buy in BFE for $500? Okay, I'm digressing....She finally got a job last year working for a family friend and I suspect she might make $10 an hour at the most. And it's not like there weren't jobs available, she was just too freaking lazy to get one.

FIL hasn't held a steady job in years. He had back surgery about 5 years ago and has basically laid around and gotten fat. Last year, he got a job as a substitute bus driver for the school system (not sure how he passed either the physical or the pee test) and does that once or twice a week.

Between them, they own a 1300 square foot house, 38 acres of land, three clunker vehicles, and have more debt than you can shake a stick at. Yes, I realize that they are on a fixed income and I don't hate them enough to make them suffer or deny them basic comforts (food, shelter, etc.)...but this is a little over the top. Okay, a lot over the top.

So last Saturday when we went to meet them for The Last Lunch, my MIL kept yammering on and on about their air conditioning that needed to be replaced. The figure of $10K kept being thrown out there, but I was so occupied with Monkey Man and ignoring my pissy FIL that I didn't pay a lot of attention. I did notice that FIL had bought the A/C guy's business card and gave it to Joey, but like I said - I was ignoring him.

On Tuesday, I was sitting at work and suddenly it hit me. Joey had been raising a little stink at home last week because, like most people, he has a "magic number" in the savings account that is where his comfort level is - and we are getting close to our July payout from the company and the last payout is almost gone. We did a lot of work on the house last year that ate big chunks of it up. And I get that - and I always cut back on the frivolous crap when we get close to the Magic Number just to keep peace. Well, from the conversation we'd had like 2 weeks ago where we had plenty of money in the account to last week's Doom and Gloom forecast, there was a huge drop. Like a $10,000 drop. Hmmmmm, coincidence? Hardly.

I stewed and stewed all day. Finally at dinnertime, I flat out asked Joey who was paying for his parents' air conditioning. Now, conversations about his parents usually don't go well so I picked a public place to have the talk so that at least we would both keep a civil tongue and keep the volume level down. So Joey tells me that he doesn't really know exactly what it's going to cost, but the A/C guy (who is a family member) quoted $4,000, and our friend from up here quoted $4,300 (travel time would be more). They need the ducts cleaned, a new air handling unit, and a new heat pump. And it's not being done on an emergency basis - their power bill was $400 last month and an inspection of the unit revealed that it has freon leaks everywhere so therefore it needs replacing. So they're not baking to death and it can be priced out and done on a normal billing basis.

Okay, so what about the other $6,000? Well, they want to do some stuff to the house. Like what, you might ask? And at this point, I would tell you that in the past 10 years we have paid for a new roof, new replacement windows, a new microwave, a new dishwasher, a deck, and we personally painted the outside of their house. This doesn't include money that Joey has given him on the sly (or at least he thinks I don't know about it).

Well, they want to clean out the basement and paint the inside of the house. For $6,000.

For $6,000? Hell, I'd do it myself for $1,000 if they would just leave us alone.

Joey said that he told them he would help with the air conditioning. But getting $6K to do stuff around the house that wasn't necessary (not to mention something we could do ourselves) was ridiculous. And really, I'm insulted that they look at us like their personal ATM.

So we haven't talked about it since. I did tell him that before he gives them the money, I want him to sit down with his dad and figure out what their debts are, what income is coming in, what their expenses are, and how they've gotten into this situation. I mean, don't people have savings accounts to take care of "emergencies"? And isn't needing your heat pump replaced considered an emergency? Why can't they take out a home equity loan? I'm more curious if they actually don't have the money, or if they do and are just trying to see what they can get away with.

And as bad as it seems, I almost hope that they're just trying to be skankballs and hold onto their money while they spend ours. Because if they're this freaking broke at 63 years old, it's going to be really hard for us to supplement them every time they have something come up. We have our own retirement and Monkey Man's college to think about, and while I'm not cold-hearted enough to make them roast all summer or freeze all winter, I resent the fact that it seems like more often than not they have their hands extended wanting more, more, more.

The worst part is that Joey is so stuck in the middle it's not funny. And it's not fair, either. Not fair at all.

Edited to add: He hasn't actually given them any money yet. Joey is infamous for going ahead and deducting the "big ticket" stuff mentally from whatever is in savings, so my guess is that they hit him up for the money last week and with his own Mental Accounting System therefore it means that we already have $10K less in the bank than what he had told me the week before. Strange, but that's him. Probably a good thing, because if I'd found out that he actually had gone ahead and given him that kind of money without talking to me first, Lorena Bobbit would have a new member of her fan club writing her from Cell Block D.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Obviously they missed one of the ten commandments

It's been a long time since I talked about my brother Paul, a.k.a. The Salsa King. And there's a good reason - we pretty much have little if anything to do with each other.

My brother married a woman named Cindy when I was about six years old. They lived about 45 minutes from us and other than a rare appearance, they pretty much spent every waking moment shoved up her family's butt. When I was 13, my dad fell off the roof of our house and was in the hospital for almost two weeks...and my brother came to visit one time. I mean it was almost a joke in the family how we had this invisible brother that everyone talked about but no one ever saw.

They have two kids. They seem to be nice young men, no thanks to their mother. You see, my sister-in-law is a total nutjob. She dressed them alike until they were like in middle school. She would cut stories out of the newspaper that she didn't want them to see. She put a big sticker on their television that said "Would Jesus Approve of What You Are Watching?" Oh yeah, she's nuts. And that's just the shit that we know about in our limited contact with them.

My brother and sister-in-law got involved in a fundamentalist Christian group about ten years ago that pretty much ended my relationship with them. I don't have a problem with people having religious beliefs or faith - what I do have a problem with is being preached at constantly and made to feel like someone is forcing their views down my throat. A visit with her is like being trapped in a Mason jar with Pat Robertson for about 10 years. It's horrible.

When my dad was in the hospital last August, I called and begged them to come because the doctors didn't think he was going to make it. To their credit, they drove all night to come. And then left in six hours because they had stuff to do at home. So at that point, I pretty much washed my hands of the whole situation. Obviously, getting their carpets cleaned was way more important to them than my father's survival.

About eight years ago, my parents drive nine hours to visit them. They knew my parents were coming. And they decided to go to an amusement park around an hour away and left the key under the mat for my parents to use. My father swore up and down at that point that he would never visit again.

But time fades the hurt, and when we all got invitations for my youngest nephew's graduation from Penn State, my parents were itching to go. This was their first big trip since my dad almost died last year, and my sister volunteered to drive them up there.

The whole thing started out strangely. You see, my brother "retired" from the state police about 2 years ago and has been working as a concrete truck driver since then. My sister-in-law hasn't worked for decades because she is working on her PhD from some mail order bible college in the Everglades. And yes, I wish I was kidding about this. It's something about King David having ADD or some bullshit like that. And yes, I wish I was kidding about this too. So anyhow, neither one has a decent job and no money toward retirement, so they got some crackpot scheme to go to South Carolina for some kind of Department of Homeland Security training (for who knows what) last week. The party was scheduled to be at their house on Saturday, and they weren't going to actually get back to their house until almost noon on Saturday. Talk about some planning.

So my sister and my sister-in-law discussed several times that my parents really wanted to take the nephews out for dinner on Friday night when they arrived. And honestly, my parents were super excited not only to be back on the road traveling, but to see their grandkids and catch up with them. So after confirming this several times via Cindy, my family arrived in Pennsylvania around 4 PM and called the house to let them know that they had arrived and to let them know where to meet for dinner.

No word from the nephews. They called again. And again. And again. Called cell phones. Left messages everywhere. And finally at 7:30 PM, after having been on the road all day and starving to death, they gave up and went to a seedy diner down the street from the hotel.

The next day, apparently my sister went totally apeshit on my sister-in-law - who then handed the phone to my brother with the words, "Here's your sister, now you can listen to her tell you what a horrible person you are." I guess my sister had just had enough of the years and years of having our parents ignored and treated poorly. And of course, she had to throw the "Thou shalt honor thy mother and father" in there just to add insult to injury.

Part of me wants to believe that the nephews are good kids - but then David, the graduate, out and out lied to my sister about where he had been. And part of me thinks that my sister-in-law never even told the boys that my family was coming or mentioned dinner on Friday, because the other one had to take his music class to a band competition for the weekend and didn't even make his brother's party. I don't know, but the whole thing just smells like rotten fish.

I will say one thing, though. My sister - who is single-handedly one of the nicest people and will let people walk all over her - totally broke bad on my loser brother this weekend. And I'm proud of her. Not to mention that it's nice not to be the bitch in the family for at least a little bit of time.

Tomorrow's episode of "How Builder Mama's World Turns", how my in-laws have told my husband that he needs to give them $10,000. Oh yeah, this week can't get much better than it's going already, and it's only fucking Tuesday.