Not so deep down inside, I’m a giant wimp. Normally, I handle pain and shit okay but this whole birthing idea has me fah-reeeked out. Yeah, yeah…I know women all over the world have babies all of the time and go right back to plowing the field after they’ve gnawed through the umbilical cord. Well. I am terrified.

And do you know what would be awesome? If my Mama could be here when I squirt out the Bean.

At first, we didn’t think that was possible because we didn’t think she would have that much vacation time. Last night, she told me that she could take two weeks off in November to come down and hopefully the Bean would arrive then or would be freshly squeezed and Mom could help me figure out what the hell I am doing.

Yay! Yay!

We (Sweety and I) look at flights thinking that they’re going to be an arm and a leg since Thanksgiving is that month but we found November 17 to December 1 for super cheap. (I have a feeling that the Bean is going to be here a little after the 16th. Call it intuition or wtf ever.) I call Mom and tell her the dates tonight and she’s excited. I’m excited. Mama will be here when the Bean arrives or very shortly thereafter for two weeks! Yay! Yay!

Mom mentions this plan to her husband. (see? he used to be my stepdad. now, he’s mom’s husband. foreshadowing, peeps. foreshadowing.) And he shoots it out of the air because he doesn’t want to be alone during Thanksgiving. Nevermind that he has a sister he could go visit (but refuses because he doesn’t like his brother-in-law). Nevermind that I’ve waited forever to do this and Mom is very. much. excited. that I’m having her little namesake and has mentioned eleventy-billion times that she’d love to be here when the Bean arrives.

Nope. The holidays make him sad and being home alone ANY FUCKING TIME makes him sad (people, it was an almighty trial when Mom came down last spring with my niece, let me tell you.) and I guess with the combination of them both that he might just wither up and blow away. He didn’t tell Mom she couldn’t go but told her that if it was him that he wouldn’t leave her home alone and poured on the guilt. If it was him in a situation like this? She’d insist that he go because she is nice like that.

I think Mom expected me to handle this gracefully but I did not. She knows that I am very disappointed and I couldn’t even talk to her on the phone anymore because I was getting ready to cry. And I was afraid that her husband would want to talk to me to explain the situation to me (he’s good about that sort of thing.) and I just don’t want to hear it. I really had to bite my tongue to not ask her to tell him that I said to suck my dick.

We’d talked about them both coming down in January and he’d stay for a week and go home while Mom stayed for an extra week. Actually, we spoke of him staying 4 days and her staying for 2 weeks because the tickets were much cheaper that way but he didn’t want to only stay for 4 days and be alone at home for 10 days. Now? I’ve decided that I don’t want any company in January. I think I’m going to be discombobulated enough after having a baby and the more I think about it, the more I don’t feel like having company that I don’t really want to see. Especially if that company was the reason that my Mama didn’t come down when I was having the baby. It’s like, seriously dude? You can’t suck it up and amuse your damned self for two weeks just this one time?!

Summer before last, yeah, 2010 – I’m a grudgeholder – he pissed me off royally while we were there on vacation and I’m still butthurt over it. I heard about how he was talking to the neighborlady because “sometimes you just want to talk to someone who speaks English” (yes, he really said that to me) and I flipped my wig. The short story is, Mom came home from work and he was all grouchy but when the phone rang and it was the neighborlady returning his call, he became all Chatty-Cathy and laughed and talked with her for almost an hour and when Mom said something about how he was grouchy with her but not with someone else, that was his excuse. I’m sorry. He must have overlooked the fact that English is Mom’s second language when they married 12 years ago. Poor guy. What a shock that must have been to realize.

Sweety and I have looked up other days that she could come in November or December (because if she comes alone for two weeks before January then they won’t come in January because she will have used her vacation time for awhile and he doesn’t get his until January. geez, could I say “January” one more time there? and this way I’ll get to see her and won’t have to fool with him at all until next summer.) and I’ll ask her about them tomorrow. Hopefully, he won’t grouch about it but I have a feeling that the fact that Thanksgiving fell in the days we’d originally talked about is just an excuse and that he’s going to bitch at all if she wants to be here for two weeks without him.

Now. Am I being a hormonal bitch? Or am I correct in feeling that he’s being a giant douchepickle? Do people really get so depressed over the holidays that they can’t be left alone? If so, can’t we medicate the hell out of him for two weeks? Or is that insensitive to even think? (i don’t even know when i’m being sarcastic anymore.) I mean, it’s not like I’m saying, “Hey Mom! Come visit for 2 weeks in November that fall over Thanksgiving just because I’d like to see your happy face!”

Guess what’s messier than one new room being built?

When a tiny hose on the back of the toilet breaks and your entire house is flooded.

Oh, yes. Good times.

I was zooming down the road in Oklahoma on Monday when Sweety called and asked me to look up a phone number for a water removal specialist. I wondered why he was asking me to do this but he seemed kind of panicked and I decided that then wasn’t the time for questions. Later I found out that he discovered the flood when he came home from work that day.

The only room in the house that didn’t have water in it was our bathroom. All of the laminate wood flooring and carpet is ruined and has to be replaced. The walls have holes in them to dry them out. Lots of other random things need to be fixed. I thought Oliver was batshit crazy before but he’s really a half-bubble off plumb after being attacked by water in his bed and then having to live with giant fans blowing at his level for 5 days. Tiny Dog seems unfazed. She’s tough like that.

To put it mildly, Sweety is handy motherfucker and is planning on doing most of the repair work himself. (He built the addition on the house years ago and put down the flooring awhile back.) I do not doubt his competence. But…I’m afraid that it will take forever. He has gotten a lot done in the past week so maybe I’m fretting over nothing.

And tonight? We realized that we have carpenter ants. Yay! I am so squicked out by the idea of shit nesting in the walls. Gah. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, the ants came because of the water that leaked through the walls and we’re able to get rid of them easily instead of them being long-time residents who were just discovered due to the flooring and walls being ripped up.

Sometimes I love to push Sweety’s buttons just to watch him get annoyed. The quickest route there? When I say to him, “You know what? I used to feel kind of sick if there was a chance of running into the coaew at one of the boys’ baseball games or at the school. But now that I’ve totally given myself permission to look her in her beady eyes while strolling by and telling her to “fuck off and die”….I’m at peace with myself. It’s nice.” Seriously, people – you don’t know what a relief it was when it hit me that I didn’t have to look at her and even be remotely polite. Sweety said that I’d be stooping to her level and I don’t want to do that. I say I’ve kept my lips zipped for almost a decade. I’m due.

Though, the odds of running into that flaming twatwad are low. She came to one of BB’s baseball games for the first time this year last weekend and people didn’t know who she was. One lady who works with Sweety on the Athletic Association said she didn’t know Sweety had been married before. She just assumed we were an original nuclear family since the boys go to school here and Sweety is a fixture at the school.

The coaew felt the need to leave Sweety a message to let him know it’s turkey hunting season and LB will be busy trying to blast the feathers off of birds this week. The boys are on Spring Break this week. They better enjoy it. I told Sweety since LB is allowed to take something’s life and is damn near my size that he is old enough to become a major workhorse around the house. I’ve been very lax on the boys with what chores I ask them to do but now? I think my floors deserve to be mopped more often than when the time changes and I bet the baseboards would love a good rubdown. I have Sweety’s permission to let LB know that we figured if he’s old enough to kill stuff that he’s old enough to do any household work.

Lucky for BB, he is at our house tonight and tomorrow so he gets first dibs on what chore he doesn’t want to do. I’m not telling him of my plan but I am going to ask him what he likes doing the least and LB will get that one. (You don’t need to tell me I’m an evil stepmother. I’m owning it.)

We have just discovered how much Oliver loves toys that squeak. I’d never purchased him one before because he shreds toys so fast that it’s like throwing money in a hole. But I found a squeaky one on sale and got it for him. Holy shit, batman. He lost his mind. Bwhahahahaha! I just played the video that I’m posting and he heard it and wigged smooth out!

It took him almost 2 hours to kill that toy and that’s a record. Most soft toys die in under 3 minutes. I went back and got him a couple more. I’m going to let him have one tomorrow as a treat. No, I guess I’ll give it to him now so he will shut the hell up.

Yesterday I got up early because I needed to stop for gas. I knew I needed gas the night before when the dashboard light told me but I was too lazy to stop for it. It seemed to be a much better idea to disrupt my flying by the seat of my pants morning routine for it instead. (Obviously, I was tired and delusional when I rationalized that in my noggin.)

I don’t like getting gas in our town because it’s usually around a dime higher here than everywhere else due to the county’s tax but I had to get some. I stopped at the last station before I hit the interstate to give my car a tiny drink. I felt like it was my lucky day because the first pump was broken – this meant that I was able to use the middle pump but pull farther up than you would if someone was using the pump in front of you. I’m a fan of keeping as much distance as possible between me and other cars. (The beautiful truck I had when I moved here was the victim of a hit and run in the parking lot at work. I’ve been super cautious ever since.)

Then I was worried that I’d get to work too late to pick up my much needed Diet Pepsi so I decided to go into the store for a soda. I also spent a few minutes weighing the merits of Funyons over Hot Fries. Funyons won. Breakfast of champions.

As I’m walking back to the gas pumps (there were only 3), I notice that someone with a car just like mine parked right where mine was but their car had an ugly scrape on the corner of the bumper! WTF? What a coincidence that someone with the same kind of car as me would get gas from the pump I’d just used! I turned around to look for my car where it must have been parked against the building. Sure, I didn’t remember moving it from the pumps to the parking spots but sometimes I forget. Sometimes I very quickly forget.

My car isn’t parked in the parking spots. I realize that the scraped up car that I’m looking at is my car! Penelope has been ass-grabbed and the offender ran away! I toy with the idea of going into the store and asking if they have surveillance cameras but it’s a very small station and I’m pretty sure they don’t. So I rubbed as much damage as I could off with my fingers and the inside tail of my shirt and went to work with ideas of revenge floating in my head. I decided that it was better that I didn’t track down the culprit because I’d be very tempted to royally fuck their shit up.

I was so pissed off for a few hours that I was sweating.

Sweety dinked around with it when he got home and swiped off all of the paint that the other car left. Now, there’s just a long scrape mark on the corner of the bumper. He’s going to get some touch-up paint and he said that I won’t be able to tell unless I’m really close to the car.

Sweety gave me some important gas buying rules last night:

1.   Don’t buy gas in our town because it’s more expensive.

2.   Don’t buy gas from a store where a pump is broken.

3.   Never leave your car at the gas pump island.
3b. Move it to the front where people park if you must go into the store.

4.   Tell him when I need gas and he will take it and fill it up.

I’m just going to start following #4 so I won’t even have to bother remembering the others.

One of the big issues with the organization is how to raise money for the different sports teams. They had a meeting several weeks ago and voted on having a cornhole tournament. Since Sweety suggested it, all plans fell to him. Okay. Fine. But EVERYONE in the association knew about it.

It was today.

How many people (besides the baseball coach and association president) from the association showed up? That would be less than one. Zero. I’m pissed. Sweety worked hard to make the game boards for the game and I made up flyers that the association asked for so they could hand them out and not ONE of those people showed up?!

Who did show up? Sweety’s friends, bless their hearts. One guy and his family drove from 45 miles away but the people who are members of this community and voted on having this thing and are walking distance from where it was held didn’t come.

Sweety said some of the association members had expressed disdain over the fact that the game is called cornhole. You throw sacks of corn at a board with a hole in it – hence the name. There’s a national group for it. They have tournaments and whatnot. Sweety thinks some people are going to say they didn’t come because they didn’t like the name of it. I told him to tell them to get over their homophobic tendencies and that the flyer very clearly referred to a board game and not ass fucking.

Well, at least we have four new cornhole boards now. We can play two games at once! I think I’m ready to host a gathering here since we have something to do for fun now besides harass the dogs.