Why It’s Mother’s Day, and Not Mother-In-Law’s Day: The Disturbing Conclusion

May 1,2008

The final dinner went very appropriately, considering the whole mess of the last two months.

We decided we’d take MILfH to Montana Ale Works.  She has to drive separately because my car only fits two adults and the two carseats in back.  It must have been nice, back in the days before car seats, to actually fit everyone into one car.  Anyway, she followed us to the restaurant.  The problem was, the place was so packed that there wasn’t even a place to park.  We imagined it would be pretty loud inside and would take a long time to get service, two things that just don’t work with kiddos.  So Jesse said, “Let’s go somewhere else.”

I turned to leave the restaurant.  For whatever reason, MILfH turned the opposite direction.  “What is she doing?” I said. 

“Who knows.  Let’s just call her.”

It would have been a real mess to have to find a way to turn around and get her in this narrow parking lot, and chase her with two kids just to have to tell her that we were going somewhere else.  So we instead hit the road and called her.  She has been attached to her cell phone from the moment she arrived, so we didn’t think that tonight would be the one night that she didn’t have her phone.

But she didn’t.  We called three times and she didn’t answer.  We headed for Old Chicago and waited.  We waited for her to check her messages, surely she would do that, she wouldn’t wait around for us at the place we had originally gone? 

But she did.  She waited there for an hour.  And we were waiting at Old Chicago, hoping that she would check her cell phone.  She has been strapped to that phone the entire time she has been here.  Of course she didn’t have it this time. 

So finally after an hour, she figured out “hey, they must have gone somewhere else” and went back to the house for her cell phone.  She showed up at Old Chicago and we had already given up and ordered.  She was very upset and I’m certain she thought we did this on purpose.  Like I said, it was an appropriate ending to the whole ordeal.

Unfortunately, it was not the end.

May 2, 2008

Friday.  She is leaving tomorrow. 

Joy.  Elation.  Life.  Happy.  Alone with my family at last.  Montana to ourselves.  Our house to ourselves.  Joy.  Greatness. 

Jesse was going out to take some pictures.  I was taking the kids to Butte for the weekend and spending Saturday out on the land. 

“Just so you know,” she said, “I’m coming out to visit tomorrow to say goodbye.”

“To the land?”

“Yes,” she said.  Deflation.  Shrinkage.  Ulcer. 

“Okay,” I said.  “Well you won’t make very good time,” I pointed out.  “Long way back to Colorado.”

She shrugged. “I’m in no hurry to get back,” she said.  “I don’t want to go back to him.”

“Well, I guess I will see you tomorrow,” I said.  Smothering.  Suffocation.

May 3, 2008 9 AM

I arrived out at the land.  My dad was in the cabin making coffee.

“MILfH show up yet?” I asked.  “I’d really like to get the visit over with.”

He gave me an annoyed look.  “Not yet.  Want me to call her?”

I was surprised.  “You have her number?!”

He nodded.  “Yeah, I think it’s in my phone.  She’s been calling her every night.”

Shock.  Anger.  Butt out.  “For WHAT?!”

“I don’t know.  She keeps showing up here too.”

“What!?”

“We usually talk about grandkids,” he said.  “We had a couple of beers and some good talks.”

He explained that she has been showing up to his place, uninvited, for the past several weekends.  

“It’s getting strange,” my dad said.  “I think she likes me or something.”

“WHAT?  How did that…”

Too late.  The car pulls up.  MILfH enters, carrying a box of donuts and a small cactus plant with a bow on it.  She enters the cabin and sets it down like she owns the place.  Obviously she’s been here before.  I am pissed.  All those weekends, she told Jesse and I she had been visiting Yellowstone.  So not only has she been lying to us, but she’s been visiting my dad.  I am immediately suspicious.  (Not of my dad…the last woman that spent time with him like this did it for years, she was a lot prettier and nicer than MILfH, and he told even her he’d already been married and he’d never do it again, thanks much.  I wasn’t worried about this nutjob who’d been around a week or two.)  

She really seemed to love the place.  “Heaven on earth,” she called it.  I think so too.  “Can’t you just sell me an acre?” she asked me.  “All I need is an acre.  I could have a garden, and a cabin.”

What I said:  “No way,” I said.  “What about your house in Colorado?  Besides, half of this land is my brothers, and neither of us would ever sell.”

What I thought:  Not for a million dollars, you dolt.  I would rather squeeze my eyeballs with tweezers than to sell a teaspoon of this dirt to you, much less have land next to you, you crazy, crazy demon woman from the ninth circle of hell.

Since she couldn’t have the land, she started in on asking for what was on it.  She’d point to something, say a pair of antlers.  “Can I have that?” she would ask.  If it wasn’t tied down and could fit in her car, she wanted it. 

“Sure,” my dad would say.  “See something you want, take it.”  He says this to everyone.  He’d give away anything if someone asked for it.  He’s like that.  She thought it was because she is special. 

“I like this chair,” she said, referring to the wooden chair she was sitting on.

“Uh, so do I,” I chimed in.  She gave me a dirty look. 

Later on she asked for the chair overtly.  “Can I bring it back with me?” she asked.  “Do you mind?  I really like it.”

“Actually I’m pretty sentimental about that chair,” I said.  “My dad made that when I was four.”

“Is that a yes?”

“No.”

We’ve seen this odd behavior once before.  When Jesse and I bought new furniture for our house in Divide, she showed up to see it.  She came under the guise of a visit to AJ who was only a couple of months old, but really she was there to scam for things.  She asked if we “really needed that bookshelf.”  She wanted the armoire we had just spent a grand on. 

No.  We.  Just.  Bought. It.  God.  Who does that?

She was genuinely annoyed when we said no, too.  She is just so entitled.  And for what?  Her contributions to the world?  She of the “I’m too good to work” ethic?  Alas, perhaps I am too hard on her.  All of this could very well be behavior caused by mixing all those unprescribed drugs she carries around with her. 

I digress…

She spent the entire day out there on the land.  What happened to the nice day I was going to celebrate with my family…celebrate her leaving the state?  Sigh.  The evening came, and I had to take the kids back to Butte.  MILfH stayed for a while past that.  I know this because my dad called me later, and said she “was worried about finding the hotel in Whitehall,” so he drove in front of her so she could follow him there. 

Now color me crazy, but if she managed to find that piece of land in the middle of nowhere several times over, would she really have a problem finding the ONE hotel in the only nearby town?  The town with one road?  Perhaps she thought she’d be able to manipulate my unassuming dad into a room in said hotel?  Instead, he politely showed her the way to town, then said that he was going to meet some friends in town and get drunk. 

He called to tell me all this.  “I told her I was meeting some friends…but really I just turned around and went home.”  Way to go.  Sad that you have to find elaborate ways to ditch an adult, but I understand.  She’s been sucking the life out of my household for two months now.

Then she called me.  Ulcer.  Anxiety.  I was still on my way back to Butte.  “I’m worried about your dad,” she said.  “He’s going out to town to drink with some friends.  What do I do?”  This phrase in itself perfectly illustrates just how little she knows any of us.

“Uh, okay?” I said.  “And?” 

“Well, I tried to get him to stop,” she said, taking ownership.  “I really tried to stop him.  He just wouldn’t listen.” 

“Yeah.  He’s a grownup,” I said.  “And you wouldn’t be the first to try and get him to do anything.  No one can get him to do anything.” It’s funny that he really wasn’t at a bar this time.  He was trying to ditch the crazy woman.  If he would have told her he was going back to the land, she would have just followed him there. 

What happened next pretty much wrecked the wreckage of the wrecky relationship we all had with MILfH.  This is mostly translated from my dad, who is now mentally traumatized from ever having meeting her.  I can relate. 

It all started during one of their “friendly conversations” when she asked him if he “ever thought about getting back with <MY MOM’S NAME>”  Like most men, he didn’t hear what she was really asking him.  He said from that moment, everything changed.  He started getting endless phone calls.  She brought him gifts.   That’s right, my mother in law from HELL started chasing my father. 

“I’ve heard of crazy women like her,” he said.  “But holy &#%…this has never happened to me in my entire life.”  It’s so very embarrassing that my husband’s mother is the one who he is talking about. 

Instead of leaving even the next day, going back home to her house, her mom, her dog and oh yeah, her husband, she came back to the land.  She asked my dad if she could stay for the summer “to help out with the garden.” 

“No way,” he said.  “If I need help out here, I’ll find me a Mexican gal.”

“But the other night you were practically begging me to stay here,” she told him.

“Bullshit,” my dad called it.  “I told you that if you had one more beer, I wasn’t going to let you leave,” he said.  “I wasn’t going to let you go get killed on the highway so that my kids blame me for giving you beer and letting you drive.  And I said you could sleep in the cabin, and I’d stay out in my truck.”

“But you practically begged me to stay,” she insisted.  (Desperation apparently leads people to hear what is not there.)

“That’s not the same thing,” my dad said.  “I wasn’t going to let you leave and drive drunk.”

She whined and pandered.

“I think you better leave,” he said. 

And she did.

But fifteen minutes later, she called him.  He didn’t answer the phone.  He didn’t answer when she called fifteen minutes after that, either.  In fact, he had to turn his phone off.

The next day he turned his phone back on. 

You have eight messages, it told him.  He had to listen to every single message in order to delete them.  She had called him eight times.  I’ll shorten the messages because they were long and dramatic, but here is a summary for your entertainment.  I wish I could tell you that I was exaggerating or better yet, completely inventing it all.  I am not:

1. Hey, I’ve decided to go up to Glacier Park instead of going home.  Should I stop and visit on my way back?
2. Why aren’t you answering?  I thought we were friends.  I’d like to come up and stay for the summer.  Seriously.  I could stay until September or something.
3. I really don’t understand this.  Why aren’t you answering?  Call me back.
4. Look, I’ve never met anyone like you.  I thought we had something really special.
5. I love you!  I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.  Please call me back so we can talk about this.
6. Never mind that last message.  I’m just confused as to why you aren’t calling me back.  Call me right now! 
7. Why aren’t you calling me? What is wrong with you?  What kind of person are you?  Apparently you are evil, for doing this to me.
8. I’m really disappointed in you.  I thought you were better than this.  Stop being so evil to me.  Call me back right now please.  Please.

Of course he didn’t call her back.  The whole time, he thought they were two friends with grandchildren in common. 

Over the next part of the day, she called four more times.  Now my dad is drinking down at the bar for real, because he is scared she is going to show up with her dog and try to move in.  He said he watched this week’s ‘Desparate Housewives,’ and the voice at the end of the show said: “Be careful who you invite into your life, because they may never leave.”  He said he laughed, because that was really happening. 

In the meantime, she called her son (Jesse) and was crying.  “I’m so confused.  Should I go home, or should I live at <The Land> for the summer?”  WTF?  No one invited you to live there.  Where do you get off?  Who do you think you are?  Why aren’t you spending all this energy on your husband…use that energy it to fix it or get a divorce, already! But…

What the hell was she thinking?  My dad is one of the friendliest, give-the-shirt-off-his-back sort of guys that you will ever meet.  She interpreted it all wrong.  All wrong.  Besides acting like a socially retarded teenager with a crush on the lifeguard, was she not thinking about who he was? 

I mean, in no way was there ever a chance that my dad would be seriously in to her, but let’s say in another plane and another dimension…was she not at all concerned about what her son would think?  Did she think that maybe her oldest son, my husband, might resent her a little bit for attempting to make him a step-sibling to his wife?  Why do I suddenly feel like an Appalachian cliché? 

My husband left a message for her (she wouldn’t answer the phone…she was probably on the other line) telling her to please get help if she ever wanted to see any of us again.  I’m almost certain she will tell this story quite differently to everyone else she “vents” to.  She is one big bag of crazy.  I never want her around my children again. 

So that’s how it all went down.  I feel icky.

Oh, by the way.  When I got home from Butte that Sunday, I tried to make a pot of coffee.  But there wasn’t any. 

She stole my coffee. 

I asked Jesse if he had touched the coffee, and he had made a pot that Saturday morning, but the bag had been full.  Jesse had bought me a brand new bag of coffee on Friday.  The bag was now empty with a few consolation grounds dusting the bottom. 

She won’t be invited back. 

Happy Mother’s Day.

 

Why It’s Mother’s Day, and not Mother-In-Law’s Day (Part IV)

April 20, 2008

There have been several times in the past week that I have come home at random moments during the day.  Why is it that every time I enter the house it seems the baby is laying on the rug in the living room, crying?  MILfH is busy in the kitchen eating all the yogurt.  I bought the good brand of yogurt, see, and she goes through that like it’s water.  When I bought the cheaper, non-Tillamook brand, that stayed in the fridge, untouched.  She’s awfully picky about her free food.

Part of the deal of her staying here was that we would feed her.  And I make dinner every single night.  I would do this whether she was here or not.  There are very few nights that I do not make dinner for my family.  But now and then I use the leftovers.  I hate waste.  So chicken tenders become chicken fajitas.  Mashed potatoes become potato patties.  Et cetera. 

But MILfH doesn’t eat leftovers.  I can only assume that she is too good for them.  So she instead chooses to leave the house and go buy her food from a “sub-par Mexican restaurant” where she will most certainly “make a point of sending her food back after telling the waiter it was no good.” 

It’s a free country and she can do that, but the problem is that we can hear her complaining on the phone at night about how we aren’t feeding her.  WHAT?  Not feeding her?  On the contrary, MILfH.  I’m actually upset about the huge grocery bill that we’re paying due to your presence.  And I’d normally feel bad complaining about it, except that you are bitching about us to everyone you talk to on the phone at night.  Yes.  She has loud conversations every single night.  Her cell phone must be enormous.  Usually, the subject of these calls is “feel sorry for me” because of “X,Y, and Z.”  Jesse and I often come up in her conversations, about how awful we are, and how uncomfortable it all is, and how we aren’t paying her enough, and how none of her children respect her. 

So why doesn’t she just go home?  To hear her talk about her “conditions” would make you wonder if Jesse and I got our training as guards at Auschwitz.  So leave, why don’t you?  Any rational person would have left long ago, if they felt it was that bad.  Oh, because then you would have nothing to complain about, and if you had nothing to complain about, you wouldn’t know what do with yourself.  You might dry up into a little ball of paper.  Or perhaps you would seem like an actual nice person?  HA.  AHahahahha. HAHAHAHahhahAHHA

(By now I am really losing my mind.)

Every day that I drive home and see her car in front of the house, I get a knotted-up feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I don’t want to go inside the house.  I don’t want to see her.  I don’t want to hear her.  I don’t want to see the mess that is left.  I don’t want to smell her overpowering lotion that has permeated my very skin.

April 27, 2008

My dad calls me to inform me that MILfH has visited him out on our land today.  Why?  I’m stumped.  Sure, she kept telling me that she wanted to go see the land, but I didn’t want to show her the land.  That place is very special to me and frankly, she doesn’t need to see it.  It’s not a freaking carnival, lady.  But she showed up nonetheless.  How?  I couldn’t figure out how she even found it.  No one told her where it was.  No one.  I double checked with my dad.  He was just as surprised to see her as I was to hear about it.

This piece of land is not a place you would “just find.”  No way in hell.  It’s not like Ted Turners spread, anyway.  Maybe it’s like .000000000000000002% the size of Ted Turner’s land.  So I asked her how she found it.

“Oh, I just remembered that it was by <NAME OF WHERE ITS BY>.  I was out for a drive and I saw your dad’s truck.”

Riiiight.  Let me just tell you that in a state the size of Montana, it is easier to win Powerball than to “just be out for a drive” and find property of someone that you just met a couple of weeks before.  And why was she so concerned about seeing the land?  She met my dad when we all went to Butte for St. Patrick’s Day.  But wouldn’t she feel weird, being the insecure person that she is, just showing up out there?  Was it possible she had a crush on my dad?  My mother-in-law?  That was just a fleeting wonder.  Would never happen.

Later that day when I was cleaning up the kitchen, I discovered how she found the land.  It’s the only possible way she could have.  I had an insurance bill sitting in a pile of mail on the counter.  She had to have gone through it.  She could have gotten the address from one of the policies inside.  It wouldn’t have been the first time that she dug through my personal paperwork.  She dug through my entire desk years ago when she was staying at our house, recovering from a bad car accident.   She went through all of my personal paperwork.  I was furious.  So when she did it again, color me unsurprised.  My only regret is that I didn’t have the foresight to scribble notes on all of my bills that said “HA I SEE YOU!  GO HOME NOW.  YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE.  -GOD”

My husband took a short weekend trip back to Colorado to get a load of things that were still in our house there.  It was blizzarding outside.  I was stuck in the house with MILfH all day long.  I decided to make the best of it.  Maybe we could get along.  Maybe she wasn’t so bad. 

She started in on talking about Greg, the guy she is married to, but apparently doesn’t want to be.  She talked and bitched about him for three hours before I finally said “Okay.  What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you sound like you’re in a bad situation,” I said.  “So what is your plan to get out?”

Tumbleweeds.

I continued.  “Cause I don’t want to be hearing about this six months down the road, and neither does Jesse.  Either you figure out a way to get out of it, or you don’t complain.”  I was semi-surprised at how direct I was finally being with my MILfH.  It just came out.  “Sorry,” I kept going.  “But I’m pretty sick of hearing about Greg.  So just do something.”

Then I decided we should get out of the house, lest I lapse into a coma from hearing one more thing about her life.  I took us all to the Museum of the Rockies.  We all had a fun time, come to think of it.  Then I took us all to dinner at Johnny Carino’s.  The bill came to fifty bucks, but it was fun to be out of the house and away from the drama.

Sometime during the meal she said “You know how I used to work at the <MEDICAL OFFICE>?  That place I quit? Well, if I tell you something can you promise not to ever repeat it to Jesse?”

Oh, shit.  When will I learn?  If someone ever tells you something that comes with a caveat, plug your ears.  Bad juju.  But when it’s your mother in law telling you to keep something from your husband, how can you resist?  I will say that I never promised.  I just smiled.  (If you’re ever telling me something I’m not supposed to repeat and I just smile, you should know what is coming) 

“Well, I looked in <Step -MILs NAME>’s medical records and guess what!  <Step-MIL’s MEDICAL INFORMATION>.”

“Oh,” I said.  I was a little let down.  “We already knew that.”  I was referring to knowing that she looked through the records.  Sheesh, practically the whole town knows that.  Incidentally, my step-MIL knows that too, and her response is great:

“The only thing she can find out about me is that I’m younger and I weigh less.” –Step-MIL

Anyway, what MILfH didn’t admit, but that we all know, is that she was fired from that job for snooping in those records.  We all know, but she doesn’t know we know.  It’s funny.  She tells everyone she quit, but hell-O.  You can’t go snooping through medical records. 

Which brings me to an age old question (at least in this family):  Why the hell does she care?  She’s been divorced from my husband’s father for nearly 30 years.  I don’t understand the animosity that she still holds toward him.  I worry about what bad information she will pass on to my children about their other grandparents.  That is, if I ever let her see my children again…

Anyway, these obsessive tendencies come in to play very soon.

April 30, 2008

I hear whimpering.  AJ must be crying about something.  I thought the whole house was asleep.  I get up to investigate, but AJ is sound asleep and probably dreaming about cartoons.  The sobbing is coming from my MILfH’s bedroom.  My husband gets up to see what is wrong with her. 

She is apparently having a nervous breakdown.  My husband emerged from the room feeling really bad.  “She thinks we don’t like her,” he said. 

“She’s half right,” I assured him.

“Be nice,” he said.  “She is having a hard time.”  He explained what the breakdown was about.  Basically, she is upset because everyone in the whole world “hates” her and she feels like she should go “disappear.”  Okay, so now I feel bad for her, momentarily anyway.  A grown woman…s the most insecure person I have ever met, who pops pills that aren’t prescribed in God-knows-what kind of detrimental combinations.  I am certain that these pills must be creating paranoia and weirdness in her mind, but my husband swears she has been this way her entire life.  Husband does his best to comfort his mommy, and say all the right things, and reassure her that we like her.  Husband decides we should take her out to dinner tomorrow since she is about to leave to go home to Colorado.  I roll my eyes and say “Fine.” 

We’ll take her out to dinner tomorrow.  But I have a gut feeling that this show of tears is a ploy for pity.  I’ll let my husband buy it since it’s his mom, and boys love their mommies. 

But I’m not falling for it.

 

Why It’s Mother’s Day, and not Mother-In-Law’s Day (Part III)

4/15/08

I’m sure I already mentioned that MILfH is the first to bed and the last one to get up.  Sometimes she sneaks out the door and goes somewhere.  The other day she was complaining about how she is running out of money.  Right after that, she said:

“Have you ever been to that Indian store?”

“What Indian store?”

“The little touristy place downtown?”

“No,” I said.  Mostly because I’ve been too busy, I’m not a tourist, and this is a new town for me. 

“Well I guess the Indians in Montana aren’t as creative as the ones in the Southwest,” she said. 

“What?!”

“The store sells mostly Navajo stuff.  So I guess the Indians in Montana just aren’t as artsy.  But I did find a really nice necklace made by a Blackfoot woman.”

“Huh,” I said.  This was quickly becoming my response to everything.  “Huh.” 

Now I don’t know much about the artsy-ness of the various Native Americans in the country, but I’m pretty sure that was some kind of insult.  Hopefully she won’t talk that way out in town, because there are lots of “Indians” still roaming around town.  And if one of them decided to pull out an original handcrafted antler-handled hatchet and used it to split her skull, I think they’d get all time suspended by a Montana jury. 

I hear she is running out of money due to an insatiable craving for souvenirs.

But the weirdest, most insecure show of behavior so far has to be regarding the coffee.   

I made a pot of coffee on our first morning in the new house in Bozeman.  I made the full pot, 12 cups of Starbucks Breakfast Blend.  I made 12 cups so everyone could have some.  I started to clean the kitchen and put things away.  I saw a glass container of coffee grounds on the counter (not mine) so I moved it to the area near the coffee pot.  MILfH saw this and said, “Oh, is my coffee in your way?” 

“No,” I said.  “Is that yours?  You can keep it on the counter.  I don’t mind.”

She stood up and raced to the coffee.  “No, I don’t want it to get in your way.” She had Macy in one arm.  She scooped up the coffee in the other arm (it’s a pretty large container).  I thought maybe she was going to take it up to her room.  No.  Instead she went back to the living room, rocking the baby in one arm and rocking the coffee in the other.  She stood there, holding the baby and the coffee for several minutes. 

Are you going to hold that all day?  I wondered this.  “I don’t mind if you keep it in the kitchen,” I said.  “I won’t take it.”

“Oh, well, if you don’t mind,” she said.  “I’ll just keep it on the counter.”

FINE.  Sheesh. 

The next day I made coffee again.  She finally woke up after her hours of restful sleep and pulled out her own coffee pot.  Apparently this was how it was going to be…two coffee pots making coffee simultaneously.   Whatever.

The next day she was amazingly awake early.  She already had her coffee going.  And she offered me a mug! “You can try my coffee if you want,” she said.  I thanked her and took half a cup.  It was really good!  It must be that Millstone French Roast, who knows. 

There was a little left in the pot.  “Do you mind if I finish off the pot?”  I asked.  “I’ll make some more.”

She leapt off the couch and headed for the pot. “No, I need more,” she said.  She emptied the pot into her own cup.  “I can make more,” she said.  “Where’s your coffee?” 

Okay, I guess we can make more as long as it’s my stash of coffee.  Fine.  Her coffee was good, and I would have really liked more of it, but whatever.  She grabbed my bag off coffee and added some to the already-used grounds of hers. 

Fine.  I swear I won’t touch your flippin’ coffee. 

I also am barred from her Vermont effing cheese, her yogurt, her juice, and anything else that she brings home.  Which I don’t mind in the least.  What I DO mind is that she happily helps herself to everything that I bring home…she was the first to tear into a new box of crackers I bought for Jesse, into the juice boxes that I provide for AJ (I hate it when other people drink those darn expensive juice boxes…they are for PRESCHOOL USE ONLY), the fruit, the snacks.  And when I make dinner, she is always the first to eat…even before my children, who I always make sure are the first to eat.  She even finished off the pan of scrambled eggs I made the other morning for breakfast before my husband had ANY.  The rudeness and general self-centeredness astounds me in this grown woman. 

A couple of days ago she asked me “Do you think I’ll ever find someone?”  (Uh…she is MARRIED.) 

“You found Greg, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but Greg is stuck in this cycle of abuse.”  I swear, if I hear cycle of abuse one more time…

I yawned.  “I’m surprised you would want to find anyone, after your experiences.”

“Well, it would be nice to find someone nice.”

“The key is to not need anyone,” I said with my 30-year old wisdom of the ages.  “Then you won’t need to depend on anyone, and maybe you won’t take the first person who comes along.”

She nodded.  “Well, I was fine before I met Greg,” she said.  “I was happy in my house with my dog.  Now I’m in debt, have no savings, and I don’t know what I am going to do.”

I didn’t point out the obvious, like well if you were happy, why did you marry that guy, because pointing out the obvious never gets anyone anywhere.  I just shrugged. 

“Huh,” I said. 

That fancy cheese is still in my refrigerator, unopened.  Yet the package of feta that I purchased for myself has been opened and used by MILfH. 

Last night for dinner, she tore into the package…midway through opening, she stopped…and asked me, “Is it okay if I open this?” 

 

Why It’s Mother’s Day, and not Mother-In-Law’s Day (Part II)

4/6/2008

Since Sharon and I were tag-teaming kid duty, the rest of the drive to Montana was fairly uneventful.   Sharon, thank you so much.  The only other thing that happened was that we stopped at a McDonalds in Columbus, MT for lunch on the last day of the move.  Sharon took Macy to the bathroom to change her.  AJ was hungry.  The restaurant was very busy. 

I asked MILfH if she could watch AJ while I stood in line to order him a kid’s meal. 

She shook her head and said “Actually I’m going across the street to look for souvenirs.”

Don’t ask my why she wanted a souvenir at that very moment in Columbus, MT.  But I hung onto AJ in line and ordered him food, though he kept trying to dart off, which was why I needed the help in the first place.  Kids who have to sit in cars all day have lots of pent up energy.  Oh well.  At this point, I was glad to have five minutes sans MILfH.

We got to Bozeman and as it turns out, the landlord was applying touch up paint to the house.  The fumes were very strong and I didn’t feel good about staying there with a kid, a baby, and heck, myself…who was getting dizzy from the paint.  I decided to take my kids and myself and Sharon to Butte, to stay at my moms. 

“But your mom has cats,” she said.

“Yes, she does,” I confirmed.

“Then I can’t stay.”

YES!  Finally a MILfH repellent.  MILfH sulked off to a hotel and Sharon and I headed for Butte.

Things have settled and the paint has dried, and she is still with us in Bozeman two weeks later.  Since Bozeman is such a hot spot to live right now, finding daycare for an infant has been next to impossible.  Most waiting lists are extended into 2009.  So MILfHis “helping.”  By “helping” I mean sustaining life, which I know is important. 

But she lets the baby sleep ALL DAY, and then Macy is awake and ready to party at night.  She gives ZERO attention to AJ throughout the day, and is content to let him watch TV for hours on end.  She leaves him downstairs while she goes upstairs to read her various Montana travel magazines and books. 

I play with AJ as much as I can between setting up house, getting ready for the new job, unpacking, etc. but the poor kid is sad.  Jesse can barely walk because he had to do 99% of the heavy lifting and it’s made his foot problem flare up terribly.  The whole experience has made me feel very stretched and busy and not a good mom.  But I know it’s temporary, and I am on several waiting lists for daycares.  We also have one spot that we are going to try to take at an “okay” daycare just until one of the good ones opens up.  MILfH HAS TO GO.

She said she would be happy to stay if “she could bring her Dukey.”  Duke is her old, smelly ass dog.  Well, it isn’t my choice because we are renting, and they don’t want dogs from their renters.  She does not seem to understand this.  “Just tell them you are desparate,” she said.  “He’s a good dog and I’ll keep him on the porch during the day and he can sleep in my car at night.”

“I think we’d get reported as animal abusers if we kept a dog in a car overnight,” I pointed out. 

“But he loves my car,” she said.  “Or maybe he could just come up to my room at night.”

“It’s not our house,” I said.  “And even if they did allow dogs, there would be a non-refundable dog fee, and it would increase the monthly rent. 

She said “Well, that would be fine,” she said.  “Then I could stay.”

HA!  Right.   

MILfH is the first one to bed and the last one to get up.  It makes me insane.  That of all things, makes me insane.  I cannot stand lazy people.

The news was on, and there was a story about how people in the military follow orders.
“I can’t understand how those soldiers just blindly follow orders,” she said.

I am a former Marine. I said, “Well, they’re all really trained, and the ones that can’t follow orders get weeded out pretty early.”

Her clever response:  “I guess that’s why I’ve never been able to work.  I just ask too many questions.  Like, why do you have that rule?”

I wanted to say, “No, you’ve never been able to work because you are LAZY.”  But I just smiled my most sarcastic smile and thought of all the people on earth slaving away to make a buck, while my mother in law chooses instead to marry the first (and second, and third) men who happen upon her. 

Her current husband is a real tool.  A real jerk.  They are both jerks to each other, and she is an awful stepmother to his two daughters, of which he has full custody.  She was proudly telling me the other day how she really told off the eleven year old before she left to join our caravan.  Wow.  You told off an eleven year old girl from a really troubled family.  How proud you must be. 

Anyway, she’s been touting the “abuse card” for a while now.  How he’s “very abusive.”  She can never tell us just how he is abusive, because I don’t think she knows.  She probably feels abused.  She did hint around how he pushed her during a fight, which does constitute abuse.  She didn’t flat out say it, but she hinted around enough to where I think they hit each other when times get tough.

“I don’t deserve that,” she said.  “I’m a child of God.”

I DID reply to that.  I said, “I hate to tell you, but even if you WEREN’T a ‘child of God’ you  still wouldn’t deserve that.”

She chuckled with non-understanding.  She has already confessed to “making fun of” Buddhists, Muslims, and other non fundamentalist Christians.  I’m pretty sure she thinks all non “children of God” deserve the smackdown. 

We’ve already heard the story (she doesn’t know we know) about how she got drunk and threw a beer bottle at her husband’s head a week after they moved into their new house.  He called the cops on her, and she fled the scene in her CR-V.  She headed for the safety of the Christian retreat up near their house, Rainbow Valley Ranch.  The gate was closed, which is why she left the vehicle and jumped the fence and started scampering across a field, which is where the cops tackled her.  I guess abuse works in both directions.  I’m sure she thinks those police were probably Jews.

The time came to fill up the new refrigerator.  Part of the deal of MILfH coming up to “help” us included me cooking her stupid meals for her.  Fine, I get it.  But I am not a grocery store runner. 

The first trip to the grocery store (she had already been to two) for us was exciting.  As we walked out the door, MILfHsaid “I need some Millstone French Roast.  And I need special margarine, it’s in a green and yellow container.” 

Fine.  Whatever.

I went to the grocery store and I did look for these special items, I really did.  But the Smith’s only carried a couple brands of coffee and while they did carry Millstone, there was no French Roast to be seen.  So I went to the dairy section.  As it turns out, every brand of margarine in America comes in a yellow and green container.  So I didn’t buy that either, as I know I would have purchased the Wrong Kind.  And MILfH would have taken this personally.

She seemed insulted that I returned with nothing for her.  “I tried,” I said. 

A later attempt at a grocery store run yielded another request.  “Will you get me some cheese?”

“Sure,” I said.  “What kind?”

“Vermont White Cheddar.”

FINE.  I went to a new, very nice Rosauers.  The dairy aisle had your run of the mill cheeses, four kinds of cheddar…but none of them white, or from Vermont.  I headed for the deli area, cursing up a storm that I was wasting minutes of my day searching for specialty cheese for the laziest woman I know.  I could have said no, but I’m holding it all back.  I want a peaceful house and it’s already tense enough with a mother in law living in it.  I finally found a block of “natural cheddar from Vermont.”  FOUR NINETY NINE FOR A TEENY WEENY BLOCK OF CHEESE.  Whatever.  I threw it in the cart.

I got home and unpacked the groceries.  “Did you get my cheese?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How much was it?”

“Four ninety nine,” I said. 

Her jaw dropped open.  “Are you serious?  For Cracker Barrel?”

My eyes have started to do a funny thing when MILfH talks.  They jerk around, like I am about to have a seizure, or perhaps a stroke. 

“You didn’t say Cracker Barrel,” I said.

“I didn’t?  Oh, I thought I did.”

“Nope,” I said.  “You said Vermont White Cheddar.”

“Yeah,” she said.  “From Cracker Barrel. I swear I said that.”

I know that this visit from MILfH, while semi-helpful, is shortening my lifespan by several years.  I wanted to stick the fancy Vermont White Cheddar somewhere where the sunlight would never hit it. 

 

The Agony of “The Corner”

I see nothing wrong with a good, old fashion spanking.  However, spankings don’t seem to work on all children.  Take mine, for example.  AJ is a mini-adult, and he will be the first to remind you of this.  Spankings are completely and totally ineffective on him.  In fact, they veer toward the counterproductive.  Spankings make him angry and apt to spank you right back. 

Enter “the corner.” 

I was a “spanked kid.”  I won’t say they worked on me, come to think of it, they just made me realize the sheer importance of ingenuity…figuring out new and clever ways to not get caught.  I also don’t think I’m neurotic or angsty due to those spankin’s, either.  I don’t think that spankings have long-lasting ill effects (as long as they were just some butt-whacks, mind you).  When we made a major offense, such as the telling of a lie, we even got The Belt. 

AJ gets The Corner. 

Who would have thought that a child could wail like a fire engine at the mention of The Corner.  We simply found the dullest corner in the house.  Nothing interesting to look at.  No possible way of entertaining himself.  And when he’s naughty, The Corner is where he gets to stand.  I must say The Corner is a hundred times more effective than a spanking, in AJ’s case.

But I’m afraid the neighbors will hear his screams and think we’re doing something worse!  It’s just The Corner, I promise. 

He’s really a good kid.  And we have The Corner on our side when he’s not. 

 

You Gotta take the Good with the Bad…

Things about today:

Good:

1.  I’m going to be a huckleberry farmer.  Alright, ‘farmer’ is too strong of a word.  But did you know that you can buy huckleberry bushes online?  I ordered eighteen.  The first two came today.  They will all supplement the lonely, huck singleton already planted out on the land.  Who knows if they’ll ever make berries.  I guess the plants are easy to grow, but getting berries is the challenge.  I got a box from FedEx today.  Out popped two slightly compressed huckleberry plants in one-gallon buckets.  Packed lightly in foam peanuts.  They have blossoms and everything.  At first I didn’t think they were real and that I was the victim of some Nigerian huckleberry online scam artists.  But then a couple of leaves fell off and I noticed a stalk was slightly wilted.  Cool!  But what will I do if the bushes do make huckleberries?  Nineteen huckleberry bushes?  I dunno…make jam? 

2.  I got my car detailed.  I’ve never had a car get detailed before.  I’ve also never had a manicure, but I imagine that the feeling is similar.  What happened was, my “Check Engine” light came on while I was tooling down I-90 at about 85 mph.  I got a tingle of panic.  Is the “Check Engine” light the bad one? I wondered.  Nah, I think the bad one is “Service Engine Soon.”  Or is it?  Ha…”soon” they say…as your engine drops out of your car onto the highway.   It oughta say “Service Engine NOW, mofo!”  Okay so after my train of thought stopped, I made an appointment to get the “Check Engine” light checked.  I might add that the “Cruise” indicator was also blinking.  As it turns out, some air sensor was going bad and it was going to cost about $350.  The standard warranty for a Subaru ends at 60000 miles.  And here I was at 64000.  Doesn’t that just stink, the service guy said.  Ha! 

You underestimated me, service-guy! 

You and your posse of highly-paid labor-guys who were planning to stand around my car, look inside once or twice and then replace a fuse! 

But I bought the extended warranty!  MWAH HA HA HA! Eat that, service-guy! 

He seemed to be annoyed at my dance of triumph, so I stopped.  “Hey,” I said, “since I’m saving all that money, can I get this?”  I pointed at the flyer sitting on the counter.  Gold Detail.  It listed all the things that they cleaned, which was everything, even the engine compartment.  “Sure,” the service guy said.  He was probably thinking “At least we’re getting something outta her…sucker!”  Anyway I picked up my car and it’s so clean I kind of wonder if they brought out the right one.  It even seems to drive better…maybe because it’s happy.  It’s happy because it no longer smells like a combination of toddler fart and month-old Whopper. 

I vow to try harder to keep my car clean.  In order to accomplish this, I plan to tow my children behind the car on a reinforced toboggan.

Bad:

1.  I bought a new lamp for my office.  My new office at my new job is an “inner” office, and I can’t deal with fluorescent lighting.  Yet the dim, flickering bulb over my desk is woefully inadequate, and I may go blind if I don’t get a lamp.  So I found a lamp for 5 dollars.  Score!  Then I went to purchase some light bulbs. 

All the light bulbs have jumped on the Go Green bandwagon.  I was intrigued.  Could *I* be green?  Might *I* contribute somehow, little ol’ me, to saving the earth?  I picked up a package of those curly pretzel bulbs.  “Lasts six years!” the package said.  “Save $141** in energy with these bulbs!” the package said.  I noticed the warning asterisks, and flipped the package around.  The warning reminded me of the contract that Willy Wonka (Wilder not Depp) made all the kids sign, starting out with normal sized writing and getting smaller and smaller and…anyway, the gist was that if you used the bulb for four hours a day for the next six years, your energy savings would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $141**, if lots of other factors came into play and if nothing went wrong***. 

***But it could go wrong. 

I’m no mathematician, but $141/6 years/12 months/30 days ended up saving me about six cents a day***.  I decided it was not worth paying eight bucks for a fancy, green-packaged, tree-hugging, whale saving pack of four light bulbs when I could get four gas-guzzling, forest-fire starting, blood diamond, DDT-drinkin’, starving children bulbs (that were of a higher wattage, mind you) for ninety-four cents.  Sorry earth.  I love my wattage. 

2.  You can’t buy Bran Flakes anymore, apparently.  I am pissed about this.  I love Bran Flakes.  Before you ask, I am not a senior citizen.  But it is what I grew up on.  They used to be called Kellogg’s Bran Flakes.  Over the years, they became Kellogg’s Complete, and you could get them wheat-bran or oat-bran (I love the oat variety).  Is this because people just want their stupid Froot Loops?  It pained me to spell that out.  It is NOT ‘Froot,’ you dumb toucan.  I miss my Bran Flakes!  The metamucil is just not the same.

Side note:  A while back I did a post on Extreme Bust-Up Flaming Nachos.  I want to apologize to all the pervs out there who keep landing on my blog because they were searching for “extreme busts.”  I feel terrible about all the confusion.  I mean, there are dozens of you every week. 

You all must be terribly disappointed.

 

Little Friends

AJ made a little friend at the park on Sunday.  The park is awesome…huge, landscaped, complete with lake and creek and wonderful bridges and things to climb on.  The sun finally came out after a long, long, extra long winter here in Montana and suddenly the park was packed with families.  AJ was a little intimidated by all the new kids, but in a short time he was venturing onto the slides.  He didn’t latch on to any kids, instead playing with ‘Mac’ his imaginary friend. 

Soon a mommy sat next to me and we both had babies with us.  Babies are a great way for moms to start talking to each other.  There are endless questions such as “How old?” and “Is he/she sleeping?”  Her baby and my baby were born only three days apart, as it turns out.  And then she said she had a 3 1/2 year old running around on the rocks.  How convenient!  So did I!  So we introduced the kiddos and they spent the next two hours throwing grass into the creek, racing around the playground, building houses for ants, and making the very last pile of snow in the park into snowballs.  I was very happy to see AJ having so much fun with another little kid finally.  Bonus:  I got the mom’s phone number so we can meet at the park again. 

 

I Blame Homer Simpson

Parents get freaked out when they think their children are in trouble.  I figured that once I reached adulthood, this silly worry would go away.  However, it just gets worse, according to one of my mothers-in-law (I have two…).  Apparently the older your child is, the more there is to worry about.  I guess I can understand.  Parents spend their thriving years raising kids, keeping them safe, feeding them, spending every last stinking dime on their stupid sports uniforms and yearbooks.  Children are a huge investment of time and money, not to mention all that love and DNA crap.  So when it comes to worrying about their children, can you blame them?

Back to me foolishly thinking that it would stop when I no longer qualified for that 18-24 target age group…

I had a house in Northern Virginia when I was working in DC.  Here is what my life consisted of when I lived in DC:

• Wake up (4:30 AM)
• Leave for work (4:50 AM)
• Leave work for home (4:30 PM)
• Arrive home (5:30 if light traffic)
• Simpsons/King of the Hill reruns (5:30 - 6:30)
• Dinner, read, bathe (6:30-8:00)
• Bed (8:00 PM)

One day, a day just like any other day, I came home.  I was in a great mood because traffic was smooth and I got home before dark.  All the neighbors were coming home too.  I was going to make myself a nice dinner and get some reading in before going to sleep and waking up and doing the whole commute thing again.  I took my cell phone out of my purse, plopped it on the coffee table and turned on the Simpsons.  It was the one where Homer attempts to assemble a barbeque in the backyard.  Things go crappily, and Homer begins beating the life out of that poor, unsuspecting grill.  Homer screams like a madman, and the grill is reduced to a pile of nuts and bolts. 

I listened to Homer scream as I changed out of my work clothes.  The doorbell rang.  No one ever rang my doorbell.  I looked out the bedroom window.  The street was blocked off by a fire truck!  Red lights bounced off the thick trees and the neighbors smart yellow siding!  What the hell?!  An ambulance pulled up.  I ran downstairs.  What in the world?

Two police officers were standing on my porch.  “Can I help you?” I asked.  The officer looked concerned. 

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“…Yeah,” I said.  “What’s going on?”

“Are you in the house alone, ma’am?”

“Yes,” I said.  What did I do?

“Do you mind if we come in and take a look around?” said the second officer.  “We want to make sure no one is forcing you to say that you are alone.”

“Come on in,” I said.  “What’s this about?”

“We received a call that someone had broken in and was beating you,” the officer explained. 

“What?!??!?”

The police came in and looked around the house.  My phone rang.  I answered in.  My mother was on the other end of the line, barely breathing.  She was yelling really loud, like she always does on the phone, like it’s still 1910 and we’re yelling into cans.  “Are you okay?  Oh my God, are you okay?”

Curiouser and curiouser.  “I’m fine, mom.  What’s wrong?”  

“Are the police there?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” I said.  “How did you know?”   I had not yet made the connection.

“Why did you call me?” she asked. 

“I didn’t call you,” I said.

“You called me and you were screaming!  Someone was attacking you.”

“…”

“You called me,” said my mom.  “Are you okay?’

I’ll leave the rest of the very confused conversation out to make a long story shorter.  Apparently when I had tossed my cell phone on the coffee table, it dialed the last person I had called (Mom).  She answered the phone and heard Homer Simpson beating up that effing barbecue.  She was sure it sounded like me, and that I was getting attacked, and that somehow I managed to get the telephone to call her.  I mean, who else would you call if you were getting attacked and murdered? 

The cops didn’t really laugh much when I figured out what had happened.  I guess it’s not funny when a Simpsons rerun is responsible for what was probably several thousand dollars worth of emergency response.  I mean two officers, a fire truck and an ambulance.  Impressively, it only took fourteen minutes for them to arrive at my house…a 911 call in Butte, Montana calling about a potentially dire situation in a busy, populated part of Virginia during rush hour.

So I can look back on it all and chuckle a bit now.  I was furious at the time.  All my new neighbors gazing at my house in curiousity…as the 911 crews swarmed in, ready to get the perp.  I was flabbergasted that my mom would think I would be so retarded to call her…a ten digit dial 2500 miles away…instead of a three digit 911 call to a police department that actually had funding.  I understand a bit better today.  If you think your kids are in trouble, it’s hard to think clearly.  It’s hard to think at all. 

Well I haven’t heard my mom panic like that, that barely breathing thing, again.  That is, until yesterday.  My brother pulled quite the stunt this weekend, which I will get to in the next post. 

 

 

Thanks for the Memories

I had a conversation with my brother yesterday.  This is actually a big deal; the last time we had a conversation, it was 1984 and the topic was which one of us had better crayons.  Anyway, my son would follow his “Uncle Mike” anywhere so naturally we have to talk.  AJ was clenching his toy dinosaur during the ride, as he had forgotten Teddy back at home.  Kids love their teddy bears/blankies/whatever.  Psychologists call them “the security object”: as a child enters toddlerhood and new freedoms and knowledge, it’s common for kids to latch on to a “security object” as they venture into their own.  My security object was a ratty stuffed Cougar.  My brother’s was a brown, hole-filled teddy named Picky. 

Anyway, the conversation was about traumatic childhood things.  Not Darfur-traumatic, more like Christmas Story-traumatic.  Perhaps a shade more than that.  Either way, it began like this:

Mike: “Remember when I pushed you down the stairs on roller skates?”

Me: “I remember falling down the stairs on roller skates.  You pushed me?

Mike: (Laughs) “Yeah, I pushed you.”

Me: “I remember when you threw yourself down the stairs and blamed me for it.”

Mike:  “Ha, yeah, I was a little jerk.”

Me:  “Yeah, I know.  Remember when you climbed up on the roof and dropped that rock on my head?”

Mike:  “I thought I threw a rock over a fence and hit <name of neighbor>.”

Me:  “Maybe, but you also dropped a huge piece of quartz onto my head when I was playing in the yard.”

Mike:  “Remember when <relative> was going to burn all our toys?”

Me:  “That actually happened.”

Mike:  “It did?”

Me:  “Yeah, but I don’t think you were even born yet.”

Mike:  “Oh, <expletive>.”

Me:  “At least you had Picky.”

Mike:  “Yeah, but he was my second teddy bear.”

Me:  “He was?  I don’t remember that.”

Mike:  “Yeah, I had a big white teddy bear.   I think we lived in the green house?”

Me:  “The green house?  The one with the dirt floor?”

Mike:  “I don’t remember the floor.  It was the same house where I cut the cat’s tail off with scissors.”

Me:  “That was the house with the chimney fire.  The brown one.”

Mike:  “It was?  Oh.  Anyway, I had a big white teddy bear.  Remember?  He got wet in the snow one day and Mom put him on the stove to dry out.  Remember?  He caught on fire and melted.”

Me:  “Your teddy bear melted?”

Mike:  “Yeah.  He burned and melted right there on the stove.”

Me:  “Holy <expletive>!  That must have really sucked.”

Mike:  “Yeah.”

Me:  “Well this is depressing.  Let’s not talk anymore.”

Mike:  “Yeah.  This <expletive> sucks.”

And there was the end of the first conversation in 24 years.  It’s better this way. 

 

Pizza Delivery

It’s probably not a big deal to the vast majority of you out there, but I have to say we ordered pizza last night and it came right to the door.  Amazing. 

We moved (very spur of the moment, by the way, for a move with two kids) from Divide, Colorado.  Divide was a great place to live, if you are going to live near Colorado Springs.  We liked the idyllic outdoor setting, the rural expansiveness, the huge pine trees, the Pikes Peak views.  Colorado Springs was getting too big for both of us and we decided we should raise the nuggets in a less populated place.  There were many factors that played into the timing of the move so we did it.  And we had pizza last night, delivered right to the door.

See, when you move to a rural area you give up such luxuries.  Instead of pizza and a movie, you sit on the porch and shoot ground squirrels.  When you call a place and ask if they deliver to Divide, it’s hard to understand the answer through all of the laughter on the other end.  Instead of a backyard barbeque, you have a fire pit in your yard.  Shoveling snow requires a plow of some type, preferably one with lots of horsepower.  Checking the mail often requires a vehicle.  But I didn’t realize how much I missed the convenience of delivery services!  I am going to see if I can get Chinese delivered tonight. 

I am also thrilled to be in a neighborhood with tons of kids running around.  Some of the strange things we are getting used to: the sound of car doors slamming, the street lights, the frequent neighbors talking and laughing on the porch.  The trash truck is strange.  I got stuck behind a street sweeper.  I can’t remember the last time I saw a street sweeper.  I’m excited about my < two mile commute.  Jesse is excited to be within an hour’s drive of five major mountain ranges.  AJ is excited about the park down the street.  Macy is excited…well, she’s excited to eat and poop and that’s about it, but we assume she will like the park soon.  AJ’s new preschool is amazing…it has “Nigerian dwarf goats, chickens, a woodworking shop for kids, and the most beautiful setting one could imagine for a preschool.  Yet it’s just down the road from us. 

So I guess you could say our new town is not too big, not too small…but just riiiiiiight. 

Hopefully this means we are done moving.  I’m ready to stay put for a while.  I think. 

 

Valentine’s Cards

My son is only three, but he still “has to” bring little Valentine cards to his preschool tomorrow.  So we filled some out tonight.  He picked out a “Pixar” themed pack of cards, so his wee little classmates will be getting cards with Toy Story, Cars, and the Incredibles on them.  He wrote his name on each one, often in the wrong spot…so we went through twenty-three cards to get eleven good ones that will be taken to his class tomorrow.  He is also in charge of bringing carrots and ranch dip for the Valentine party they are having.  Sheesh.  Only three and my son is already a Valentine’s Day kind of guy.  He learned at school that Valentine’s Day is “hearts and flowers” and he keeps reminding me about it. 

Thankfully we didn’t have to make a shoe box this year.  I’m sure that is coming soon.  You know, the shoe box?  From elementary school?  Who knows if they still do it.  We sure did, back in the day.  My class always had to decorate a shoe box (usually we remembered to do this the night before, sending mom one step closer to the looney bin by reminding her that we needed a box tomorrow, as we brushed our teeth for bed) with pink and red and candy hearts, and cut a little slit in the top.  This was so our classmates could stuff a Valentine inside. 

We kids were told multiple times that we “better bring enough Valentines cards for everyone, or else.”  This part was the worst.  The dread of wondering if the cute kid in the third row was going to give you a really good card, you know, one that said “You’re the best!” instead of the lame card that said “Totally rad!” or “Friend Time.”  On top of the stress of waiting, trying to pick out appropriate cards for classmates was also rough.  Which card to give the cute kid in the third row?  (I’m almost certain that only girls thought about this) 

Or more challenging, which card to give the smelly kid in the back who frequently pooped his pants?  You didn’t want to give the wrong idea.

 

Snow Cave 2008

Today was annual Snow Cave Day in our yard.  AJ was happy to contribute to the igloo.

 

Not as big as last year’s cave was, but this one has a bench inside.

 

Bacon Haiku

I’ve never been a huge poetry person.  I like some of the classic poems by Robert Frost, and I do enjoy T.S. Eliot’s stuff.  But in general, I think poets are just a little too…emo…is that still a popular word?  However I do pen a haiku or two now and then, because I think haikus are fun and since you have to stick to the syllable pattern, it’s somewhat of a challenge.

  This haiku popped into my head this morning as I did the dishes:

Hungry husband waits

Smells bacon and comes running

Leaves dish under couch

 

Saturday Morning Cartoons

I remember Saturday morning cartoons being a lot better “back in the day” than they are lately.  I mean, today’s options for the kiddos really stink.  Am I just viewing the past through rose-colored glasses?  We tend to do that, when remembering the past.  We only remember sitting in front of the toasty-warm fireplace, watching the road-runner float safely above the canyon, drinking the chocolaty milk from the cereal bowl.  We forget that we had to shut the cartoon off prematurely, and then get stuffed into a snow-covered vehicle, filled with cigarette smoke (windows rolled up) to drive to the grocery store to help look for the sale hot dogs.  But that is not the point.  The point is, the cartoon was really good. 

I’m mostly upset that my son doesn’t seem to have Bugs Bunny as an option.  Can anyone point me to it on DVD? 

Let’s compare yesterday’s options to today’s, just to see if I am imagining things.

Yesterday:  Bugs Bunny

Summary:  A clever bunny uses his mind to outwit, outplay and outlast the futile hunting attempts of Elmer Fudd; a happy-go-lucky desert bird continues to evade a hungry coyote with clear and questionable political ties to the Acme company.

Today: Yu-Gi-Oh

Summary:  Weird, angular humanoids battle each other with magic cards.

Winner:  Bugs Bunny.  The other one sounds lame, unless your diet consists of Cheetos and Pepsi…then I can see how a mushy brain may get sucked into its repetitiveness.

Yesterday:  Sesame Street

Summary:  A cast of likeable, mammalian characters face life’s lessons in a quaint, tree-filled neighborhood, while learning numbers, letters, and how to tie one’s shoes.

Today:  Teletubbies

Summary:  Four furry, jellybean shaped robots with televisions for abdomens chant unintelligible sounds while dancing on a hill under a garish, baby-faced sun.

Clear winner:  Sesame Street.  Thankfully it’s still on PBS.  It seems to have gone downhill since the introduction of Elmo and Mr. Noodle (how I hate Mr. Noodle) but it’s still seems to be a good choice, considering the alternatives.

Even with Mr. Noodle, I think it only takes these two examples to see that Saturday morning cartoons, and kids’ television in general, is less plot-driven and educational today than it used to be.  Today it appears that to be a successful children’s program, you don’t even need real words, you just need flashy, seizure-inducing images and a decent timeslot. 

It’s really just best to shut the box off and go play in the trees instead.

 

So this is what it’s like…

…to have two children.

 I’m really in awe of those people that show up on Discovery Health channel, you know, the people that have quintuplets and triplets two years apart.  Their houses must instantly become tornado-stricken, spit-covered diaper bins.  I have no idea how they do it.  Maybe if you carry more than one child in there, some hormone kicks in that delivers extreme patience to the mother.  Or possibly these parents begin to experiment with hard drugs.  Either way, our house looks like it’s been ransacked with Munchkins, and the dishes are piling up next to the laundry.  AJ even pointed out that the stack of laundry on the couch “looks like Pikes Peak” as he started to climb it.  And Macy doesn’t even sit up yet.

Well of course we all know babies like to wake up seventy-eleven times per night and eat three drops of milk and then immediately doze off into a peaceful three minute nap, which allows Mom and Dad to juuuuuuust fall back to sleep, and that is the point baby screams again.  So two nights ago, we awoke to hungry baby at the same instant AJ got sick on the other side of the house.  Screams and wails floated from both ends of the house and met in the middle…it was a medley I like to call “So You Have Two Kids Now.”  I started laughing.  Jesse looked at me very seriously and said “That’s it, I’m leaving.”  He’s still here, but that may be because he’s too tired to escape.