A Tale of Two Cities - Part 1

It's been an interesting coupla years in Ladyland. We live about an hour from the Gulf of Mexico now, which has been an adjustment, to say the least. In Dallas we lived in a dry, moisture sucking, pizza oven, where we live now has moisture, vegetation, and steady tropical rains that are more akin to a sousvide water oven (look it up, kids). 

In other words, my skin looks amazing and hydrated, but my hair is a bit on the unruly side, and I'm in a constant battle with swamp ass. These days most of my outfits could easily be mistaken for swim suit cover ups, and I do not for the life of me, honest to John, remember the last time I wore socks.

This past year has dealt our family serious blows in the form of the deaths of two of my brothers in law. The good* ones too, Las Vegas and Syracuse. So I'm left with the two scarier ones, Miami and Knucklehead. Obviously this has been extremely stressful for MDH, who in the case of Las Vegas was left responsible for cleaning up after his god damned mess.

Last October, when my DH was in Austin with friends getting together and preparing to attend a music festival he got a call from someone from the Las Vegas police, to tell him that his oldest (and most seemingly normal) brother had taken an upscale suite with comped points from one of the swankier hotel casinos, where he stayed for 2 weeks before carefully laying out plastic lawn and garden bags on the sumptuous, king sized bed and blowing his brains out with a pistol.

Apparently his body laid there for 5 full days before the cleaning staff alerted hotel management. Apparently his head was, for lack of a better way to describe it, gone.

MDH upon getting the call immediately alerted Miami and Syracuse and it was decided that Miami would get on the next flight to Las Vegas to be with MDH and do things like identify the body, and sort out whatever needed to be sorted out, which turned out to be a fucking lot, and Syracuse would drive immediately to Boston so that the news of Las Vegas' death could be given to my MIL in person by someone she trusts.

So that happened.

Fast forward to November. Thanksgiving weekend to be exact, when I never wanted to run away and join the circus more in my life because Miami demanded that the absolute best time ever to have a memorial service for Las Vegas would be THE FRIDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING. Of course the absolute worst time of year for traveling. Of course the absolute worst time for someone who lives in the tropics and doesn't even own a coat anymore to travel to FUCKING BOSTON, where it's freezing fucking cold. Not to mention that frankly I really didn't feel like memorializing Las Vegas. I went because it was important to MDH, and that was the end of it. 

Syracuse had pneumonia and couldn't make it, which made me jealous, (why can't I get pneumonia and skip this stupid thing?) and infuriated Miami so deeply that he declared it unforgivable and that Syracuse was "dead to me", and refused to take his calls anymore.

Anyhoo... somehow I survived that ordeal, and it WAS an ordeal, because anything involving MDH's family is never without dramas, death threats, ridiculous unnecessary complications and drunken brawls. Somehow we also always end up footing the bill for all of this shit, which only makes me more angry. If anything, I was glad to get to spend some time with my MIL, and hug her, and cry together, and reassure her that she didn't have to ever do anything that she didn't want to do, like go to this insane memorial service.

Fast forward to late December, when we learn that Syracuse does not only not have pneumonia, he as been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and has about 6 months to live. He died** the 2nd week in March.

In between the 2 deaths, MIL came down and spent almost 8 weeks with us in Texas. She had been home for just slightly more than a week when Syracuse died. MDH was with Syracuse when he died, and had been there for about a week and a half prior. He had flown home with his mother from Texas, because she can no longer fly by herself, and then rented a car and drove to Syracuse to be with his brother in his final days.

Then he drove back to Boston. Knucklehead had been given the responsibility this time of telling my MIL about the death of her son, but when he arrived at her apartment he found her barely conscious on the floor next to the couch. Apparently she'd had a stroke the previous day, but just chose to lay there, her cell phone in her robe pocket, because she, "didn't want to bother anybody". 

This is the part where I scream.

And I've pretty much been screaming ever since. Starting with finding out that she had out right LIED to me while she was visiting about what medications she was supposed to be taking. Medications which included pills to lower her cholesterol, which she told her doctor in the hospital after the stroke that SHE decided she didn't need anymore.

It's now almost August, and she's still in a rehab facility in Boston. We're not sure what is going to happen next.

In Part 2 of this story, which I will try and write tomorrow, I will explain to you the evil, conniving nature of Knucklehead, and the various ways that he has been nothing but a piece of shit since all of this has gone down.


*Tolerable and mostly polite to me, but still misogynistic and unpleasant to be around for longer than a few hours.

*People die. They are dead. They don't pass, pass away, cease to exist, or whatever other sugar coated phrases people like to use. They die and they are fucking dead.

Miami Facts

Miami does have a certain mystique about him, I'll give him that.  But that's it.  I'm not going to give him anything else.  He's been here as a house guest for eleven days as of this morning and I feel as though I have nothing left to give.  And yet... he's got that certain something...
He's not quite like that guy from the Dos Equis ads, The Most Interesting Man In the World, about whom Miami said, with not just a little disdain in his tone, and I quote, "Didja know dat guy is in actualities a Jew?", even though MDH and I tried several times to explain to him that The Most Interesting Man In the World is fact not a real person, and that perhaps the actor portraying him in the ads may in fact be of Jewish persuasion, but regardless of the actors religion or ethnic origins it is not important because IT'S A FUCKING BEER CAMPAIGN!!

Anyhoo... in order to turn this shit sack of a situation into a bowl of rose petals, I've decided to once again post my observations about my most intriguing brother in law here on my blog (i.e.. free therapy) in the hopes that my pain will become humor. As some of you may already know, all four of my brothers in law are crass and comically misogynistic in their own ways, but Miami wears the crown... or takes off his shirt.  So below are some things randomly observed and experienced during Miami's still happening recent home invasion visit.

Fact:  About 5 minutes after arriving in our home, 11 long, long days ago, he made a cell phone call and it went down something like this:

Miami:  Yeh.  I made it.  I'm here.  I'm calling you to tell you.  You happy now?
Muffled Girly Female Voice: (Gushing from Miami's Phone)  AWWEEE Mwhah Mwah Goo Mwah
Miami:  So dats it.  I'm here.  I'm gonna hang up now and visit with my family.  I'll maybe call you later. (Non committal).
Muffled Girly Female Voice: (Pouty) AWWright.  AWWlove you!
Miami:  Yeh.  Gotta go.  Bye.
Miami:  (To MDH and me) Bagh!  Married chicks, so needy.

Fact:  Miami remembers everyone's birthday and anniversary that he knows and will call them promptly at 6:30am on the big day.  Tuesday was the birthday of my brother in law Las Vegas's ex-wife Geena.

Miami:  Bagh!* I called Geena dis mornin' to wish hers a happy birthday, but she mustnawta been home.
Me:  At 6:30?
Miami:  Yeh, dats when I call everyone.

Fact:  Miami is one of the reasons we don't have a home phone anymore.

Fact:  I went into the guest room, which is also MDH's office and closet, to retrieve a copy of a bill the day after Miami's arrival, while MDH and Miami were out a nearby bar watching the Patriots game, and discovered snapshots of two very different slutty looking women boldly scotch taped to the wall over the desk.  My first reaction was to assume that one of them was Muffled Girly Female Voice, but with Miami one does not assume anything.

Fact:  I have never to this moment asked who these women are, but did ask MDH to please explain to Miami why we don't scotch tape, or otherwise semi-permanently affix anything, including snap shots of strange, slutty women to the walls of other people's homes, no matter how long one intends to stay.

Fact:  One afternoon last week Miami doused himself in baby oil and went down to the pool for about 2 and a half hours using a moth eaten, weather beaten, pilly old blanket instead of one of the plush and generously portioned beach towels I laid out for him to use for the pool.

Fact:  I was not offended that he didn't use our beach towels, but did find his preference odd.

Fact:  Yesterday morning as Miami was passing through the living room he stopped, chugged two Coors Tall Boys within the span of 10 minutes as told me all about the new Ken Burns series on PBS called "Prohibition" and wondered if I'd had a chance to catch any of it while I was visiting my parents in Florida over the weekend.  Apparently it's a great series.

Fact:  It was 8:30 am.

Fact:  Also yesterday morning Miami called me out to the balcony and introduced me to a fifty-ish looking neighborlady that I have sometimes seen walking her adorable little toy terrier around the apartment complex. Jackie has an expensive looking haircut, nails that look professionally done and even though she is usually wearing a velour warm up suit (designer label) or some outfit of a similar nature, she is always fully made up, bedecked in sparkly jewelry and pink flip-flops with a little kitten heel.  Miami had somehow struck up a conversation with her from our 2nd floor balcony during a smoke break and discovered that she's an IT recruiter for a large healthcare company who works from her home and discussed with her in graphic detail, well... me... and the fact that I'm "a real smart cookie" and am looking for a job in healthcare IT.

Fact:  She took her dog back to her apartment and came by again a few minutes later and gave me her card and asked me to email her a copy of my resume.

Fact:  I'd no sooner walked upstairs after she gave me her card and Miami came over and took it from me, mumbling something about how he was going to email her his resume too.  He's an out of work construction foreman and in no way looking for a job in healthcare IT.

Fact:  He'd apparently emailed back and forth with Jackie all day and when I came downstairs at around 3pm I noticed he was gone and he didn't come back until MDH came home from work, well after 5pm.  When he came home MDH asked him where he'd been and he said hanging out over at Jackie's place with a couple of the other neighbors trying to network to find a job. 
MDH:  Wearing that?
Miami:  Yeh.  It was casual.
MDH:  Were other people wearing shirts?
Miami:  I dunno.  I do not pay attention to such trivial details.

Fact:  I scoured the guest room bathroom including the bathtub and shower the day prior to Miami's arrival.  It was spotless.  And white.  Very white.  I haven't cleaned it since because MDH won't let me, and it's driving me crazy because for some reason the bottom of the tub is black.  Serious Black.  Rimmed with gray streaks.  How does this happen when the only person currently bathing in it lays around my guest room all day?

Fact:  I realize that that last sentence is in fact a question and not a fact.

Fact:  Six months ago Miami called MDH and asked him to loan him $8000 because he found a 3 bedroom, 2 bath condo in Coral Gables being advertised in the paper for $8000.  It never occurred to him that it was a misprint or a rip off.  We didn't loan him the money.

Fact:  Two years ago when Miami was also out of work he called MDH and asked him to buy him a plane ticket to Costa Rica because he had found construction work there.  The company would pay for his room and board while he worked, but he had to pay to fly himself there.  MDH bought him the ticket.

Fact:  The day after Miami was supposed to arrive in Costa Rica he called MDH and asked him to wire him some money because he hadn't counted on the airline charging him to bring all his stuff with him (4 Rubbermaid totes filled with all of Miami's worldly possessions, such as coffee brewer, toaster, blankets, pillows, etc..).  He'd missed his original flight over the totes, so MDH rebooked it for him, with a fee and loaned him the money to pay for all of the totes.

Fact:  Miami called MDH 2 days after arriving in Costa Rica upon realizing the whole thing was a scam** and begged MDH to buy him a ticket home.  And all of his totes.

Fact:  Miami seems to really have taken a shine to our cat Turtle.  He clicks and tuts at him and Turtle piles onto his lap without waiting to be invited and proudly allows Miami to pet him behind the ears.  The other night Miami asked MDH if he could brush the cat.  MDH told him no, but could not explain why.

Fact:  I would have let Miami brush the cat, but stayed out of it and didn't press the issue.

Fact:  The day I left for Florida Miami wasted no time making himself more at home in my absence by helping himself to our collection of red wines (only the Italian ones) and whipping up 2 pounds of baked ziti in my kitchen.

Fact:  Two pounds is a buttload of pasta so I fully expected some leftover baked ziti when I returned home, but the only traces of it were a missing ball of prova, a significant dent in my chunk of 18 month aged parm and the cemented bips of carbon and char that won't seem to budge from my good lasagna pan.  Oh yes let's not forget the rust spots on my good knives that were run through the dishwasher.

New Fact:  MDH paid Miami a few hundred bucks to leave today and he is now gone.  He left during the course of my writing this post.  I heard them early this morning in the guest room quietly mumbling out a negotiation so that I wouldn't hear, and then mere seconds after the mumbling stopped Miami came out of the room with a stack of beat up cardboard boxes and blankets (which I can only assume were his belongings) and began trekking them out to his car.

*"Bagh!"  Is the noise that Miami and also MDH's brother Knucklehead often make when starting a conversation or reacting to new information.

**Miami told a tale of being placed into a room with 4 other men who explained to him that they were slave labor and had never been paid because the company charged them exorbitant rent and took it out of their paychecks so none of them had been able to feed themselves and be able to afford a ticket home.  It was like something stolen from a Charles Dickens nightmare.  So basically Miami sold himself into slavery, but is lucky enough to have a brother who is able to bail him out of this constant, ridiculous bullshit.  My hand to God this shit is true, or at least it's true that this is the story that Miami told us.  With Miami you never can be sure.  It's that mystique.

There Will Be Rum

I'm leaving very early tomorrow morning to visit my parents in Florida.  Alone.  MDH will be busy here with work and keeping Miami out of trouble, which as you will read below shouldn't be too difficult as the man doesn't appear to be up to much.

So yes, Miami is still here.  The real mystery is will he be here when I get home next week. 

Although I don't have much to complain about*, it has been a little weird being home all day while he's here all day also.  Except it's like he's not really here, except that he is.  He mostly has been staying in the guest room and I've mostly been doing what I normally do.  I ask him if he wants to join me when I go out to run errands and he usually says no.  I ask him if he wants something to eat when I eat and he says no.  I keep trying to engage him to join us in whatever it is we are doing, but he always says no.

When he first arrived I noticed that he didn't eat anything for breakfast or lunch, but he would have dinner with us if I cooked something, and not only eat everything I put in front of him, but also rave about how great it tasted.  Then he stopped having dinner with us too - so I wondered, is he eating anything??  Then Tuesday afternoon I opened up the microwave to defrost some meat for dinner and, much to my surprise, there was a 12" meatball sub in there.  I have no idea where it came from, when Miami might have left the apartment to go out and get it, or how long it had been lurking in my microwave.  I defrosted the meat and put the sub back where I found it.

So... yeah... there's a tiny, furtive, half naked brown man who has taken over a section of our apartment like a little chainsmoking vole**.  He comes out of his room (Wait.  See what I did there?  I called it his room.  It's not his room.  It's my guest room... anyhoo) and goes immediately to the balcony to smoke, occasionally he'll mumble something that I don't understand, but then he's gone so quickly that I don't have time to ask him to repeat what he said and frankly I don't really give a shit.

*Now instead of washing the paper plates he's apparently just putting the ones he uses back on the stack of unused paper plates.  The other day I grabbed a paper plate off the top of the stack and it was dotted with olive oil and bread crumbs from what appeared to be yet another submarine sandwich.

**MDH apparently told Miami to "stay outta her way", referring to me, while he was here with me and MDH was at work all day.  Miami was apparently also told that he was not allowed to consume any alcoholic beverages while MDH is not at home.***

***Ugh.  It explains a lot and makes me feel queasy and all the more happy to be skee-daddling off to my folks house in Florida for a few days.

You Complete(ly Annoy) Me

I don't know why I insist on watching any romantic comedies made after whatever year When Harry Met Sally came out*.  Don't they all mostly suck?  They meet cute, one or both parties carry out some ridiculous lie  or humiliating bet and most of the story and supposed-to-be-hilarious stunts are all based on support and cover up of the ridiculous lie or humiliating bet.  There's usually some kind of lip synced into a hair brush dance number performed in pajamas or underpants and a convoluted "hey I was only lying to you all this time and making both of us look like idiots because I really, really love you and isn't that the most important message in this movie?" 

The pivotal moment of the modern American romantic comedy says, "Hey, I'm not a jackass, you're the jackass if you can't forgive me for loving you so much.  Aren't we both douchbags who deserve each other?" 

As often as not there's a separation period where they show the guy disheveled and living amongst pizza boxes and beer can pyramids, and the girl is doing her best to carry on with her life amongst vignettes of her in pajama pants (again with the pajama pant shame), shoveling ice cream into her sad mouth, or of her wistfully eyeing the PDA's of other couples while moping around Central Park.

I know the drill and yet whenever MDH is out of town damn if I'm not getting my fill of horrible romantic comedies on cable.  It's like a disease.  They always make me mad and yet here I am again bitching this time about the drivel I just watched called "Something Borrowed".  Maybe I should just avoid any movie with Kate Hudson in it (except she was so freaking awesome in Nine!).

I indulged in a desperately needed cleanse of my psyche afterwards by watching a fine documentary film called Bill Cunningham New York.  You should watch it if you get the chance.

In other news:

• Apartment life kind of rocks.  If something breaks I make a call and someone comes to fix it.  Like, that same day!  Not even that - if a light bulb goes out someone will come and change it.  To take it one step further I called maintenance to have them remove the dark freckly pool of dead bugs at the bottom of one our ceiling light fixtures - and they actually came and took care of it!!  Schweet.
• As cool as it is to have an entire fleet of maintenance workers and grounds keepers at my beck and call there is a downside to apartment living in the form of annoying neighbors.  In particular some douchbag with the noisiest truck I've ever heard that he seemingly rumbles around the apartment complex in wide circles (puffed with pride at the sound of his loud, loud big man machine, no doubt massaging his very tiny cock the whole while ) stopping periodically under our dining  room window (because it's near the security gate) and then revving the engine several times before peeling out to terrorize the larger world with his horrible tranportation choice.  We literally have to pause the TV and stop all conversation and then peel the cat off the ceiling after the inevitable engine rev.  We know his schedule as if we lived next to a train station.  I loathe this person.
• A week or so ago some of my family came to visit in form of my crazy aunt Libby, her daughter (who is my cousin, but I refer to her as "my sister" quite a bit on this blog) and her daughter (who is my second cousin but I refer to always as my niece and she has always called me Aunt Lady).  Aunt Libby is the one that came down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast in her housecoat (she called it a "dressing gown". I don't care what you call it, housecoat, dressing gown... inappropriate.) and no dentures in.  Anyhoo... we had a lovely visit.  We worked out when would be the best time for their visit and planned fun things to do while they were here.  It was glorious and I couldn't have asked for a better visit.
• In two days my brother in law Miami is coming to stay with us "for awhile".  I don't know much more than that.  It's all news to me because I just found out a few days ago that he's coming.  I don't know exactly when he will arrive and he has not been forthcoming with the exact date of his departure.  "For awhile" is all I've been told.  I'm frightened.  MDH is frightened.  Miami is a goodfella type who will ruin my life for the duration of his stay.  He got angry when MDH told him he had to smoke outside and I consider this a bad start.  Best case scenario - he'll dominate the TV and I'll miss the last few episodes of Project Runway.  Worst case scenario - he will be here for weeks and weeks and bring well dressed criminals and prostitutes into my home and they will smoke cigarettes together in my guest room and I will have to burn my 600 thread count Egyptian cotton bedsheets.  Worst-worst case scenario - someone will get stabbed and I will have to burn my fancy guest towels and somehow I will end up in prison because nothing, nothing is ever Miami's fault.

Please note that this post does not contain the word "fuck" or many other of my most favorite swear words and swear word combinations.  It was not intentional, which makes the absence of these words all the more intriguing, no?

*There are some that I really like, like for instance Fever Pitch with Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore.  I don't know that it's technically a good movie necessarily, but that doesn't stop me from watching it every time it's on.  I also loved 500 Days of Summer.

Hammer Time

MDH and I returned from Florida less than 24 hours ago, and it's been so long since I last posted on my blog that I'd be quite shocked if anyone out there missed me.

Some (one or two) of you may be wondering, as I was, just what the fuck were you doing in Florida in the middle of June crazyface?

Central Florida is hotter than Hades in mid-June and judging (and I am indeed, very judgemental) from the snippets of overheard conversations between my fellow airline passengers, only mouth breathing degenerates and their screaming heathen progeny fly to Central Florida in mid-June.

Or people who already live in oven hot climates.

And us.

Seriously, the mental capacity of some my fellow travelers seemed pretty limited. Case in point: The young man and his "gran-maw", sitting behind us, who I'm pretty sure were both making their debuts outside the holler, had never seen a magazine and spent most of the runway taxi time and flight to 10,000 feet, (at which point the flight attendant said we could use portable electronic devices and I praised god's glory in heaven and giddily jammed my earbuds into my listening holes and was able to block these morons out), pointing in amazement at the "pitchurs" in a glossy men's magazine that I can only assume someone had left behind in the gate area, and reciting aloud the prices of each and every item of clothing in the fashion spreads and wondering who would spend $225 for a pair of jeans and the like.

When reading fashion magazines I often wonder the same thing. In the privacy of my own head. But then I quickly get over it. This guy hammered it all out in a twangy monotone. Item by detestable item.

Lookit this Gran-maw - it sez here this guys jacket costed 23 hunnert dollers. Can you believe that shit? Damn! That's a whole years wortha child support!

I've got nothing against rednecks. I've got no room to talk as I myself come from a long line of the finest Kentucky redneck stock, but when your conversational skills are that loud, that limited and I am forced to listen to your stupid ass bullshit it endangers my health. My eyes were rolling up and all around in my head, it's lucky I didn't sprain them.

Well I guess that's what you get for booking at the last minute on Squalor Airlines.

Anyhoo... back to my original question that I imagined you gave enough of a shit to care about or ask me - we went to Florida in the middle of June because we had to reschedule our original, more reasonably timed December visit to my parental units due to my mother's broken pelvis. Understandably, she wanted no visitors during her extremely painful and lengthy recovery. No problem-o. Then I had the brilliant idea to come down in June for her birthday.

It seems extreme, but I'm finding it increasingly necessary to pad visits with my parents with buffer periods both before and after our time with them. This year our 4.5 day visit with my folks was preceded with 3 days at the beach and concluded with 2 days at Disneyworld.

Let me give you some facts about how things go down at my parents house these days:

1. They keep the air conditioning set at 80 degrees.

2. 80 Fucking Degrees.

3. That is hotter than shit.

4. It is not possible to sleep when the air conditioning is set to 80.

5. My mother makes the weakest coffee known to man.

6. My mother is even more passive aggressive than I am.

7. One morning I volunteered to make the coffee and snuck in a couple of extra scoops.

8. She said it was a tad strong for her taste, but cheerfully decided that she could temper hers by adding a little water.

9. When she added the water to her cup she said that it made it too cool and she has this thing where she refuses to heat up coffee in the microwave - so she decided, rather loudly, that she just wouldn't drink coffee that day. "It's just one day. When I was in the hospital recovering from MY BROKEN PELVIS I went for almost a whole week without coffee. Can you imagine that?"

10. It was so over the top she could've won a Tony.

11. It took every ounce of strength left in my sweaty, exhausted, coffee depleted body to restrain myself from suggesting that she leave her cup in the guest room for a minute or two to heat it up.

12. On a brighter note the house rum is 92 proof, flows freely after 11am (new summer hours apparently as previously noon was considered appropriate) and is conveniently located next to the fridge (with built in ice maker) between the cocktail napkins and a bowl of limes.

I'm still Somebody

The neighborhood where my family lived until I was in the 7th grade was brimming with children the same age as me. It was a great way to grow up because I always had other kids to play with.

We had moved there when I was three and from day one my mom pretty much tossed me out the front door every day by the seat of my pants and didn't let me back in the house until dinner time so I was forced to run loose like a little savage and ended up making friends with all of the other children who lived near us. They were all boys and by the time I started first grade it was well established that I was one of them.

I could build a fort and leg wrestle with the best of them. I was a smudge faced, scab covered, toughskins wearing, treehouse building little dare devil. I could spit farther, punch harder, and pop the biggest wheelies. I was a superstar.

But my badge of honor soon become tarnished once I started first grade and had the chance to be around other little girls. Prior to that I really didn't know any other girls but once I started going to school all day long, rather than the half day you have in kindergarten, it soon become clear that I was a freak and I had absolutely nothing in common with any of them.

Suddenly my long distance spitting skills and dirty fingernails were not winning me any friends. Only after being called "tomboy" and "bruiser" and getting in trouble at school for chasing Shannon O'brien* around the play yard with an earthworm until she cried did anyone (my mother and I) realize that this needed to change. Thus began my lifetime struggle to be more girly.

I begged my mom to buy me some dresses and white ankle socks with lace around the edges and black patent leather Mary-Janes. That year my winter coat was red velvet with white rabbit fur trim and I had a matching muff.

Yes, I said muff.

I loved that muff. I was going to search for a photo to post here but I was afraid to Google "fur muff".

Anyhoo... I thought these girly clothes would transform me instantly from Pigpen into Shirley Temple and Darla from the Little Rascals all rolled into one. The new clothes certainly accomplished the mission of my becoming more girly, but alas the year was 1973 not 1933, so I was in addition to being super girly a big giant goober.

In a further attempt to help me get in touch with my feminine side my mother enrolled me in ballet lessons. I was thrilled at the opportunity to squeeze myself into some pink tights and a tutu, swish around in soft pink satin shoes and bingo - no more tomboy. I couldn't think of anything more girly and feminine than ballet.

As it turns out these ballet lessons changed my life and I learned far more from them than simply the joy of the dance. I learned that I lack a certain self awareness. Whether or not the long term effect of this has been good or bad I still can't decide, humility is a double edged sword and something I think kids these days** could use a little more of, but I can tell you that the 6 year old me was devastated. I can also tell you that the 6 year old me got over it and decided that perhaps dance wasn't going to be her bag, but instead moved on to music and singing lessons which turned out quite nicely.

While the actual bad experience with ballet lessons that turned out to be a defining moment of my life was not directly caused by my usual favorite target of blame for all things psyche scarring, my mother, she did however sign me up for ballet lessons without taking into consideration 2 very key elements of the situation:

1. Although she signed me up for the right age group, the 5 and 6 year olds, what she didn't realize was that all the other 6 year old girls in my class had already been taking ballet lessons since they were old enough to stand. So everyone in the class had way more experience than me.

2. I have all the natural grace and agility of a water buffalo.

Combine elements one and two and suffice it to say that I was not successful at ballet. Now add to that my ballet teachers lack of compassion, her inability to be direct and my talent at being unaware of the actions of my own body.

To describe the situation I must assume that you have occasionally had one of those moments where things are going along smoothly but suddenly there is an irritating disruption and you're not sure where it's coming from? A cell phone ringing in the library, a car alarm blasting away in the middle of the night, or some horrible smell on the bus? It could be any number of things and you say to yourself who in the name of Christ could be causing this terrible noise, disruption or odor?

Well that's what happened in ballet class one evening. We had finished all of our little warm up exercises and had just started putting some of our moves together to form an actual dance. As we stood at the bar (or whatever you call that thing) the teacher was counting out slowly and naming the moves. She was not satisfied with our performance and kept shouting STOP! AGAIN!

Then she would start the counting and calling out the dance steps all over again. It's vague because I was only 6, but she must have done this like 4 or 5 times. Each time her shouting, counting and step calling getting louder and more shrill. Finally she had had enough of whatever was bothering her and yelled, "Somebody is completely out of step and ruining it for the rest of you!"

Oh, A-ha! I eyed my fellow tiny dancers suspiciously thinking, yes one of you is really screwing up and annoying our lovely teacher, who would do such a thing?

Our teacher was really, really pretty and had been a runner up in the Miss Ohio pageant (or some such equally impressive contest to my 6 year old mind, but as I mentioned my memory of such detail is a bit fuzzy) the year before. In hindsight I'm sure she was nothing more than an economy sized bitch who had no business working with or around small children, but at the time I wanted nothing more in life than to please the pretty, pretty lady.

By today's standards I'm sure she would have been prosecuted, tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail, but like I said, it was the 70's and back then verbal abuse and psychic scarring, and hell why not, physical beatings were not only considered good solid parenting practices but encouraged and bragged about by most adults and educational professionals.

The ballet teacher then gave some more specific instructions to the culprit, "Somebody needs to keep her neck straight. Somebody needs to stop looking at her feet! Somebody needs to pay attention!!"

Yes, I thought, Somebody really needs to do that!

If you haven't figured it out based on the title of my post I am Somebody. It was a defining moment in my life because I have spent the rest of my existence on this planet trying to avoid experiencing that moment again. That moment that makes all the blood drain from your face when you discover that you are the last person in the room to recognize that you are being a tool. It's my cell phone ringing. It's my car alarm going off in the middle of the night and the horrible smell on the bus is the dog shit on the bottom of my shoe.

Discovering your own oblivion is rather circular and the philosophizing required to ponder it further is beyond me, but I have noticed this:

The decibel at which you complain out loud, the number of people who hear you complaining and the amount of obscene language used directly corresponds to the degree of likelihood that you yourself are the cause of the disturbance or strange smell.

*Not really her name of course. Actually I can't remember the kid's name, but she was Irish.

** Using the phrase "kids these days" automatically qualifies me for old fart status, a senior discount and membership to AARP. I'm going out to get fitted for dentures and big giant wrap around sunglasses this instant.

Employment History Part 1 - The Cash Office

My young blogger friend Player wrote a post the other day about how much he likes his part time job working the fitting rooms at a big name clothing store. It was an excellent post that started my mind ticking back to some of the jobs that I had as a young person, most of which were also in retail.

I never had a job officially until the summer I graduated from high school. Before then I was kept pretty busy at home taking care of my younger sister, who was only 3 years younger than me, but mentally and physically challenged with Downs Syndrome. When my parents were at work and even when they weren't it was my job to bathe her, feed her, make sure she took all of her medications and generally keep her entertained and out of trouble. They paid me a small allowance for doing this and some other household chores which included cooking dinner every weeknight (my mother cooked on weekends), cleaning both bathrooms and vacuuming all the carpets at least once a week.

I got $20 per week for my labors, half of which I was supposed to use to buy my lunch at school. Is it really necessary for me to tell you that I didn't eat lunch for 4 years? Of course not. I pocketed that cash so that I could use it for whatever a teenage girl could buy with 20 bucks in the early 80's. Turns out quite a lot: records, make-up, movie tickets. Back before I started drinking, smoking and doing drugs life was pretty cheap.

Sometimes I was jealous of my friends that had "normal" teenage types of jobs working in fast food restaurants or bagging groceries at the local supermarket. They made more money and seemed to have a lot more freedom, but I didn't push the job thing with my parents because I realized that my friends with legit jobs also had to put up with such indignities as coming home smelling like a fry-o-lator or schlepping groceries across slushy winter parking lots for 25 cent tips. I had it pretty good.

What felt like mere minutes after high school graduation everything changed however. Suddenly it was expected that I would go out into the world and get a job. My parents started taking my sister to a daycare, hired a housekeeper and stopped paying my allowance.*

It was kind of horrifying.

At 18 I had no idea where to even begin to find a job. I had no idea what exactly I was qualified to do other than cook, clean and take care of my sister. The only thing I knew for certain, after listening to the complaints of my friends was that I didn't want to work in a fast food restaurant or a supermarket. So I spent most of June of 1985 trying to find a job worthy of my superior presence, a glamorous and exciting job that was also conveniently located on the bus line or within walking distance of our house because I didn't have a car. (I ended up getting a car later that summer.)

I wanted a job that didn't require me to lift anything, be seen by anyone, sell anything, get dirty or sweaty, move or speak to other people.

At this point you might think that I'm going to tell you that I was fooling myself and that such a job was not to be found for an 18 year old girl with no previous experience, who wore all black, an eye covering punk hairstyle, pale goth make-up and buried herself in books. My parents were certainly convinced that between my style and picky, priggish attitude that I was sure to fail. Perhaps I was being picky and priggish, that doesn't mean such a job didn't exist (Ha-ha!). Turns out there was such a job available (Ho-ho!) in the cash office of a local chain of department stores called Gold Circle (imagine Kohl's and K-Mart got married).

My new part time job in the cash office paid a whopping $3.75 per hour, which was a whole 20 cents above minimum wage at the time. As a bonus I got a 20% store discount. Ha-ha!

Every morning, Monday thru Saturday, at 7am I was locked into a tiny room containing an enormous walk-in safe, two adding machines, all of the store's cash register tills and another cash office worker. We spent the next 5 hours adding up and balancing all the previous days cash and receipts, refilled the tills with cash for the current business day and then prepared the bank deposits that were picked up promptly at noon by one of those armored car companies.

Every day literally tens or hundreds (during holiday season) of thousands of dollars in cash passed through my hands. It was a lot of responsibility and I like to think that my experience being responsible for taking care of my sister was what sold my manager on hiring me. Also I have an honest face. I do! Besides if there were any doubts about my integrity and ability to be trusted with buttloads of cash I had to go through some extra screening procedures and tests.

Anyhoo... that was my first real job and the only thing I didn't like about it was my cash office partner that I was locked into the room with each day. She was a girl named "Missy" with whom I had absolutely nothing in common. We got along, barely.

Missy, although only a year older than me, had dropped out of high school and was already married and had a one year old son. To be clear, it wasn't so much those facts that made me dislike her, but the fact that she was all superior about it. She was from a very small town where according to her being married and having a baby was the end all, be all of life's existence. She could die happy at 19 because she was married and had a baby. I was all like, big deal you've got a uterus.

I think perhaps because I wasn't totally jealous of her superior status as teenage wife and mother and frankly made no bones about my lack of interest or aspirations in either of those things (at any age), Missy thought that I was the biggest smarty pants asshole weirdo she had ever met and never stopped finding new and creative ways of letting me know how she felt. She certainly didn't like hearing about my taste in music, adventures in night clubbing and opinions about religion, politics or women's rights.

I might have stayed longer in the cash office of Gold Circle were it not for Missy. I was able to put up with her for about a year before I moved on to what I thought at the time was the greatest job in the world... which I will tell you about in my next post.

*I'm quite sure they weren't paying either the housekeeper or the daycare center a paltry $20 a week.

Gypsies, Tramps & Skeeves

Well there is nothing quite like combining your 42nd birthday and a family reunion all in the same weekend to leave you feeling a wee bit maudlin. We've been back from Columbus for just a week and I've been a bit down. Not that I didn't have fun. I did. And not that I wasn't happy to see (most of) my family. I was. Perhaps things were a little too good and I wasn't quite ready to leave my old stomping grounds.

Last Friday afternoon I went out to lunch with my mother (in town for the reunion as well), and my friends Amy and Becky. It was marvelous. We laughed and laughed. Until my mom created one of those bizarro moments where the entire world (or in this case the entire restaurant) stops spinning, mouths are silenced and all ears became focused on her when she told this whacked out and racially tinged story about Romani Gypsies that she tried to dignify by saying she'd read it in "the paper".

Awkward.

Fortunately we recovered the moment and the good times resumed as my friends and I collectively made a decision to smile, nod and ignore her crazy ass and quickly move on to less nutty topics.

After my mother left I tried to restore my friends faith in journalism by revealing that the only "paper" my mom reads is the Villages Daily Sun and all they ever report is who died or who has grand kids visiting. I reassured them that she didn't read that clap-trap Gypsy story in the Washington Post or the New York Times. Clearly she made it up.

It's scary to see your parents age. A sad point, driven (literally) home to me in the bullet points listed below in the order that the thoughts popped into my head, as I got in the passenger seat of my mother's rented mini-van and took a short drive across the parking lot of a large mall after luncheon when we all wanted to grab coffees at a nearby cafe:

• Damn. She has to drive? It's so close. Her legs must be very fucked up. I should ask her how fucked up her legs are ...


• Damn. She uses a cane at home? Why hasn't she ever mentioned this. Um... Why didn't she bring it with her?


• Vanity. Apparently my mom is more self conscious about being seen using a cane than she is about getting into a car and driving 50 feet.


• Um... why is she driving in circles? We just drove right by the cafe. There's a spot. Oh. There's a spot. Oh. There's one. Oh. What the fuck?


• Great. Now she's blind too. Apparently she only parks in spots where she can pull forward instead of having to back out.


• This is bad.

I'll just say this about my mom's driving - the only reason she hasn't mowed anyone down (that we know of) is because thankfully they saw her first and were able to get the hell out of the way.

As for the rest of my weekend - here is the highlight reel of my family reunion in the form of, you guessed it, more bullet points:

• Babies, babies, babies! My family sure can breed! I have two cousins who are my age WHO HAVE GRANDCHILDREN. I find this appalling when birth control is so cheap. I can't get excited that you are a grandparent. I just can't. Is that wrong?
  
  
• Speaking of family planning, I'm old enough now that no one is asking MDH and me when we are going to start a family and this made me a little sad. It used to piss me off.


• I raised a huge stink because there was no mustard. Who the hell was in charge of this BBQ shit pile? Call your event planner and get your money back no mustard. (It was my aunt Nan and I totally forgive her - but I made some noise) Hundreds of cheap-ass hot dogs and not one squirt of mustard in the whole goddamn place? I don't mind a cheap-ass hot dog, but I need to put some mustard on that shit to maintain my dignity.



• What the hell? My sister's youngest child is going to be a senior next year. Stop it all of you. No more growing up. I mean it.




• My entire extended family stayed at the Holiday Inn Express near the reunion venue and we basically took over the entire place. It was like that scene from Raising Arizona when all of those wild kids are trashing Hi & Ed's trailer. I lost count of all the people who walked into the pool area, fully decked out in swimsuits, crisp white hotel towel draped over one shoulder, rearing to go and then took one look at the drunk and noisy clan of rednecks who had high jacked the place and hauled ass right the fuck out of there.


• My aunt Libby, who is in her late 60's and seems like a perfectly reasonable person on the surface, came down to enjoy her complimentary breakfast in that room hotels always have right off of the lobby, within clear view of the reception desk, elevators and main walkway of the establishment, wearing nothing but her housecoat (a light blue cotton whisp of a garment with embroidered flowers, gingham patch pockets, and white metal snaps up the front) and slippers (light pink terry cloth slides). Clearly she has come unhinged as she seemed neither to notice nor care that nobody else was dressed in this fashion or that it might be inappropriate or uncomfortable for the other patrons (me) in the hotel to see her in such a state of undress.
  


• I got over it.
  


• I slurred drunkenly on and on about Libby's embarassing housecoat at dinner Sunday night with MDH and several of our friends.
  


• Apparently I wasn't over it, although I had forgotten all about my mom and the weird Gypsy thing until I talked to Amy on the phone last night.

Don't mind me, I'm just some lady who randomly wandered into your yard...

"My mutha, my brutha."

Then nothing.

It was more of a grunt really, followed by 2 nods, one in the direction of my mother in law and one in the direction of my husband.

This was the way in which my brother in law, formerly known on this blog as Syracuse and heretofore known as Captain Caveman, introduced me to his friends, neighbors and finally to the family of his ex-wife at the back yard barbecue they hosted Saturday evening to celebrate his daugher's high school graduation, which is to say not at all.

"My mutha, my brutha."

Then nothing.

After about the 3rd or 4th time I decided to officially move Captain Caveman from the column in the spreadsheet of my mind marked "Somewhat Rude Yet Tolerable" to the column marked "Economy Sized Asshole".

I would like to rise above these types of situations. Grin and bear it as they say, but a lady can only take so much.

My anger had been building up throughout the day after I had been forced several times to introduce myself in an awkward and overly cheerful lilt, realizing that Captain Caveman's six syllable introductions were never going to include me.

By the time we got to the graduation party at his ex wife's house late in the afternoon and the umpteenth fucking time of being totally disregarded in this manner and at the same time having had the epiphany that I didn't even merit a grunt or nod from my dickhead of a brother in law, I was steaming mad and blurted out the very words you see in the title of this post in a loud tone and the surliest of expressions.

At least I didn't stab him in the ear with a plastic picnic fork and scratch his eyes out as was my instinct, but even my surly outburst didn't phase him at all. He ignored me then too.

It pretty much summed up our weekend in upstate New York. MDH and I who are strapped for cash at the moment and PS I'm about to be out of a job, drove all the way to New York, paid for everything, including but not limited to our nieces graduation dinner on Friday night to which Captain Caveman had invited us, breakfast 2 days in a row and were offered nothing in return.

Not even a "thanks", which I might add is only one syllable and could very easily be grunted.

Get in line ladies - he's single!

Anyhoo... On a lighter and merrier note MDH and I brought his mother home with us. She's staying until after the holiday and she's lovely. I lucked out in the mother in law department. She's sweet and funny, does the dishes, makes her bed every day and swears up and down that she doesn't care a lick what we want to watch on TV.

I love her awful.

How she created such a band of baboons (except MDH of course, who is an angel straight from heaven) I have no idea. You can read brief biographies of my 4 brothers in law here if you want.

She has a very thick Cambridge accent:

Shawts = shorts
Sawks = Red Sox
Shawah = shower
Pawk chaps = pork chops

See what I mean? Adorable.

Floats Like a Butterfly, Stings When I Pee

I was going to use that title several months ago for a riveting post I wrote while recovering from a raging bladder infection. Aren't you glad I never published that post? (The answer is yes. Yes you are.) I deleted the unpublished post because it was crappy and not just a little bit personal and disgusting, but thinking perhaps I might later be able to craft another more amusing post around the catchy title.

I'm not that clever and have decided to use the title today for this very special post in which I inform you that I have returned from a fabulous vacation, after realizing I have been sitting here for a very long time, staring at my monitor, unable to come up with any more clever title than "I'm Back!" How dull. Stinging pee is far more engaging.

So there you go. I'm back. We had a fabulous 12 days in Kauai during which time I only had 2 or 3 small snits and one full blown irrational tantrum. Otherwise all was grand. What kind of dumbass vacation condo time-share thingy doesn't allow you to use an open flame barbecue?

Anyhoo... some serious and relevant things occurred while we were away:

1. MDH's grandma Nanny died last Friday. She was 101 and ready to leave us, so there's nothing to be sad about other than that we will all miss her very much. MDH felt a little funny about not going home to Cambridge, but realized that Nanny would have hit him with her shoe if he shortened his vacation. She did that. She would literally remove the shoe from her tiny (wicked small) Azorean foot and beat misbehaving grandsons with it. Oh Nanny.

As an interesting side note, my brother in law Knucklehead was allowed to attend the funeral in shackles, accompanied by a prison guard. I wish I was joking. Perhaps if Nanny had beaten him with her shoe more aggressively...

2. MDH has a job interview tomorrow in Cincinnati. So that's kind of difficult. Come home jet lagged after travelling for 16 hours only to leave again 36 hours later. Also should mention that he had been in Dallas for several days before we left, came home at 2pm and we left for Kauai at 5am the next morning. So basically the poor man has been home a little more than 1 day for the whole month of February. Weird.

Anyhoo... because of weird event number two I've got to close up shop on my blogging tonight. MDH needs the office to get ready for his big interview tomorrow. I have been trying to write this while he's away running errands.

Because I haven't had a chance to do anything with our vacation pictures except for the one at the top of the post, which is a view of the taro fields in Hanalei (and I'm quite pleased with myself about how it came out), and the one below sent in an email to my best friend Amy last week and like the title of this post has nothing whatsoever to do with the subject of this post. Perhaps some of you have seen it already or maybe Skyler's Dad has already included it as part of his bizarre tats series. Anyway... here you go:

I went roller skating in public with no pants and it may or may not have been Thanksgiving

Don't you love not having to go to work? It's one of my favorite things about holidays. The not going to work.

I get so much done. It's not even 8am and I've already emptied the dishwasher, baked a pie, washed the kitchen rugs, had about a million cups of coffee, whipped up a pitcher of Bloody Mary's and made cocktail sauce for the gorgeous giant shrimp (oxymoron anyone?) I bought yesterday on a whim when I picked up my turkey from the deli.

Perhaps much of what I've just described sounds a bit like work, but it's my work and I do it because I want to. So there.

All this holiday hoo-haw and you'd think that I was entertaining for the masses, but sadly this year it's just me, MDH and our cat. I decided to pull out all the stops even if it is only the 3 of us.

I include the cat in the festivities although he won't technically be joining us for dinner at the table and I would beat him with a broom handle if he jumped on the counter and laid a whisker on my beautiful roasted bird, but I did buy him a special can of Fancy Feast turkey and giblets.

This will be the first Thanksgiving that we have ever spent without family and/or friends. How weird.

When I was a kid Thanksgiving and most other holidays were always at my parents house. That's just the way it was. Probably due to the controlling nature of my mother combined with the twin facts that we had the biggest house and were more centrally located to our relatives. I'm not even sure my mom ever actually invited anyone. People just seemed to naturally show up.

While I have a small nuclear family, I have an enormous extended family. Aunts, uncles, and buttloads of cousins. (We are hillbillies after all.) So I have somewhere near like 25 first cousins and of those about 15 of us are within a 4 year age range of each other.

On Thanksgiving day while the mom's were busy cooking and the dad's were occupied playing poker and occasionally slipping out to the shed to steal sips of corn whiskey from the mason jar my dad hid behind a collection of old car batteries, us kids were left to our own devices for very long periods of time. I'm pretty sure there would have had to have been an explosion or rifle fire before any of the adults would have taken notice of us and even then I might not have been surprised if they merely told us to keep the noise down and to sop up the blood before it made a stain.

One year when I was very young, like not more than 6 or 7, I seem to recall that some adult, perhaps one of the older cousins, had had enough of our destructive and rowdy bullshit and decided to get us the hell out of the house and took us all roller skating.

As I type this I begin to doubt whether or not this actually took place on Thanksgiving because what roller rink would be open on Thanksgiving day? Is that possible?

Anyhoo... you will have to suspend your disbelief along with me and mine because I can't think of any other holiday or reason we would all be together and I want to carry on with this story so that I can finish this blog post and dress my turkey and get that mo-fo in the oven.

Besides, whether it's real or not, going roller skating on Thanksgiving day with all of my cousins is one of my best and favorite childhood memories.

One thing I do remember vividly is the fact that I left the house wearing only half of my special Thanksgiving outfit and my parents and the other adults around were so drunk and busy cooking or gambling that no one noticed.

My mom bought me a Jan Brady type of ensemble consisting of a longish, plaid, button front top with a Peter Pan collar and a matching pair of elastic waist bell bottom trousers. I loved the top and despised the bottoms. They were itchy.

The top was just long enough to cover my tush if I stood completely still. So it might have been just fine if we decided to go to the movies or pose for oil portraits.

I thought I looked like my favorite child movie star Shirley Temple, who frequently pranced around my TV screen in black and white, wearing short little dresses with bobby socks and lace up shoes. Apparently I did not grasp the concept of how fashions evolve over time, the importance of covering up your bum in public or, more importantly, how frequently one is required to bend over while roller skating.


I (bottom right corner) along with a few of my cousins, circa 1979, hope you make some great fuzzy holiday memories for yourself this year.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Helpful Hint from Amy - The Cool Paper Towel

School started last week and although I'm not a teacher, most of my friends are teachers. Did I ever mention that my best friend Amy teaches the 2nd grade? Yes she does. Did I ever mention that my best friend Amy is brilliant? Yes she is.

One of my favorite works of her genius is this:

She keeps a little mini fridge in her class room filled with diet cokes and a life time supply of water-soaked paper towels tidily folded up and individually sealed in snack-size zip lock baggies.

Do you know how many snot dripping, red faced, sniffling, crying jags occur in the daily lives of 2nd graders? Well, I'll tell you, it's a lot. Bumps, bruises, scrapes, headaches, loose teeth, name calling, hair pulling, pants peeing, booger eating - no matter what your problem may be it can all be taken care of by the soothing relief of a cool, wet paper towel.

Amy always says it really fast too - Go get a coolpapertowel and sit down. The smeary red-faced child person goes to the mini-fridge and gets his or her own cool paper towel. Sometimes they even tell her when they might need one.

Mrs. Amy I'm very upset. I think I need a coolpapertowel.

I would like to state for the record that the cool paper towel works on children older than the 2nd grade also. Like 41 year old ladies who have had a bad day at work only to come home and find the kitchen sink full of dirty dishes so that she has to work all goddamn day and then clean up the damn kitchen before she can fix dinner, and clean up the kitchen yet again before bed. I think I need a cool paper towel.

Yesterday there were lots of cool paper towels getting tossed around at my house after my husband, who had started off the day sticking to the original plan of renting one of those Rug Doctors from the grocery store, ended up ripping out all of the carpet in our living room, dining room and hallways.

This is something that I have wanted to do from the minute we first walked in the door of this house, but MDH has always held back because hardwood floor restoration is in our home ownership fear zone, along with pretty much any home improvement project that goes beyond spackling or painting.

Needless to say there was some drama, but as you can see, it's a bit too late to turn back.

I'm not sure we have the skills to refinish this floor properly because it has some pretty bad stains in the wood, and I'm fairly certain that we do not have the money to pay someone else to do it.

Even scarier, MDH, in a similar fit of reckless impulse to the one that caused him to go from cleaning the carpet to tearing at it like a wild animal, decided to call in his brother Miami to see if he could come up and do the floor for us.

Bad. Idea.

Yes. Miami is by trade a concrete foreman and tends to work on high rise buildings, but started off as a carpenter and general contractor, so he knows how to refinish a floor.

He is also a roaring drunk.

Several years ago he nearly ruined the office of our old house when MDH asked him to make us some built in book shelves. Miami was all disciplined and lovely the first 2 days, but after that I'm not sure what happened, but I do know that he discovered the bar down the street kept Valpolicella in stock, and after that the job was rather untidily abandoned. He claimed it was complete, but I ended up hiring someone to come in to fix nearly everything he had done.

The thought of him coming here and attempting to take on our floors makes me need a coolpapertowl. Maybe five.

Even Turtle needs a cool paper towel after this...

The Dodgin' Bullets Hokey-Pokey

MDH came home from Texas on Friday only to leave me here all alone again this morning.

I don't mind. Go my darling. Have fun.

Yes. He rented a car and is driving to Cape Cod. Without me. Go my darling. Have fun.

I don't mind because first of all, that's a long fucking drive and quite frankly I've had it up to here with traveling (envision me holding my arms up to the ceiling, but not too close to the ceiling fan), as we have already been on 3 long weekend jaunts in the past 5 weeks.

Secondly, this trip to Cape Cod is occurring during week days and I have to work.

Thirdly, MDH is going to sleep on the sofabed of the cottage my brother-in-law Syracuse has rented for the week in Eastham. As glorious and high-falutin' as that sounds, I don't sleep on sofas, even if they do have the word "bed" tacked on at the end.

Now, to be totally honest, the real reason that this adventure is wholly unappealing to me has to do with my unsavoriest of brothers-in-law, Knucklehead, who has for the past several months been safely tucked away, enfolded in the gentle, loving arms of the Massachusetts penal system.

At first MDH and Syracuse were not worried about inviting my mother-in-law to the cottage because Knucklehead was otherwise occupied making license plates. But then after the plans had been made and Ma was already invited, Knucklehead was somehow released, all charges, having something to do with beating a co-worker senseless with a brick, dropped. He was now running loose once again in the world. At any rate he was back to using Ma's tiny apartment as a flophouse and she cannot be invited anywhere, let alone to a beach vacation by her other sons, without being upset if Knucklehead is not also included on the invitation.

So as much as MDH and Syracuse would have liked to treat Ma to a nice couple of carefree days at the beach it could not be done without Knucklehead bumming along for the free ride.

Then a miracle happened. Knucklehead, within no less than a week of his release from the pokey, was arrested and jailed yet again for beating someone senseless. I think it was someone different this time and I'm not sure if it was with a brick, but whatever it was I've never seen one family (minus Ma) so excited to have one of it's own behind bars. This time when Ma called around crying for bail money, nobody was putting up.

MDH and Syracuse were gleefully back to high spirited vacation planning. It was going to be great. MDH would drive to Boston to pick up Ma and then drive her up the Cape for a fabulous 4 days of relaxing on the beach, eating steamed lobsters and quality family time spent huddled around the TV watching the Red Sox.

Last Saturday however, a scant week before Cape Cod go-time, Knucklehead was released yet AGAIN !

At this point it is too late and let's face it you can't uninvite your Ma from a trip to the beach now can you? Well, if it were up to me I could, but I have chosen to distance myself from this situation by having said no from the start.

In Knucklehead's defense, after the moaning and grumbling from MDH and Syracuse about how he's such a free loader, Ma has offered this delectable tidbit - that Knucklehead will pay for all the food for the trip with the food stamps that he has been collecting and unable to use since he's been locked up. Fabulous. Wonderful.

How this is supposed to make up for the fact that my darling MDH is now going to be sharing the sleeper sofa of the cottage with Knuckehead, a deranged and dangerous criminal, instead of me, a person who has never been arrested for any crime or beaten up anyone with a brick (as much as I have wanted to I was able to restrain myself) and has never once threatened to kill him in his sleep however loud his snoring was, I have no idea.

So this is what I'm missing out on. Go ahead my darling. Have fun. Without me. Just don't turn your back on this guy or leave any sharp objects or blunt ended building materials within his reach.

Child Abuse: Exhibit A*

Why haircuts should be included as a household expense in the family budget.

0.0 Miles from Crazy

MDH and I will be off visiting my folks this weekend. We visit every year on Memorial Day weekend, and usually squeeze in a couple of days away by ourselves at Disney World or something, but this year we decided to spend the entire time with my parents.

What the fuck were we thinking?

My parents are lovely people. Truly, they are. If you were to meet them you'd say my god, what lovely people! And you'd be right, they are wonderful and amazing and I am lucky to have been raised by two such as they, but after about 2 days they will annoy the living shit out of me.

We aren't even there yet and it has taken 4 days of negotiations via email and phone calls to make plans for MDH and I to go to the movies on Saturday afternoon. It has been decided that since my mother doesn't want to see the movie and my father thinks that the sound systems in modern movie theaters are too loud that MDH and I will go to the movies by ourselves. Thank you baby Jeebus.

Meanwhile since the movie theater is too far away to go by golf cart and they are paranoid about anyone driving their car, they have decided that it is no trouble at all for them to drive us to the movies and then pick us up when the movie is over. Like we're in middle school over here.

After 5 days trapped in The Villages with my folks don't be shocked if you see me and MDH on the news flying down the freeway a la OJ Simpson, back to Orlando in a stolen golf cart. That's just a joke. I'm not planning to stab anyone.

Wish me drunk, I mean luck.