My God! What is in that casserole?!

I've thought, many times, that I lead sort of a double life. For instance...

This past weekend, Kevin, the kids, and I headed to Bunceton for a family reunion. It was held in the small Bunceton H.S., on the edge of what was once a small but functional farm town but what is now an empty shell consisting of some nasty looking trailers, old and small homes, and a pathetic little main street with no businesses. Thank you, Wal Mart.

I made shredded BBQ pork in--what else?--a crock pot. Kevin stopped at the store and got the buns. There were big construction worker coolers of lemonade and unsweetened tea, and a couple of coolers full of pop. Except for the lame-o's who brought buckets of KFC and some "store-bought'n" cole slaw, all the food was homemade and shone in all of its Midwestern family reunion potluck glory--no less than 4 different kinds of pig, a couple different varieties of cow, about 5--I'm not kidding!--versions of au gratin potatoes (my favorite features shredded potatoes and enough butter and cheese to clog the jugular), green bean casserole in--what else?--a crock pot, at least 3 bean salads, including 3-bean salad, and rolls. For dessert, pecan pie, cakes, brownies, cookies...but none of it looked very good, surprisingly. The cookies were made with mint chocolate chips. Terrible! I don't know why so many people make such lousy cookies! They're usually dry, dry, dry, or...I don't know...just lame in some way. I make fucking GOOD cookies. But I only made BBQ pork for this shindig. Too bad for them.

Anyway, we're surrounded by mostly The Old Guard of the Old German Forefathers, and it's quite boring. Still, I make idle chitchat ("Yep! We're back in Town. We have a business. I'm Kevin's wife, those are my two lovely kids. Oh, you bet they're glad to have those grandbabies right next door!"), look nice, don't make good jokes when I can because I don't want to be Kevin's mouthy wife.

Each year they elect a president, a vice-president, and a treasurer-secretary to do the duties for next year. The president gets the pop, reads the minutes from the previous year, announces births, deaths, etc. Guess who it's gonna be next year? My own dear spouse, Kevin. Which is a riot. This is a reunion that has been going, if not always strong, at least GOING, for 73 years. There are a few people that have been to all of them, or missed only the ones that occurred while they were at war. And even though we're getting far away from the original brothers (at great-grandparent level), and many of their children have died, and now it's down to a few children and, mostly, their children, and the cousins are getting further and further removed, it's still taken pretty seriously.

So, next year, I'll make more food. We're going to try to get more of our generation to come. We might even do some structured activities for our kids' generation! So that's one Lisa--cornfed Midwestern gal who gets the whole potluck thing and can converse with all the old farmers without cursing or revealing that she doesn't believe in the god they ALL bring up way too casually, in my opinion.

Anyway, after all of this, Kevin and I left the kids with the tail end of the Greatest Generation and headed out to see Knocked Up. On the way, we passed the swanky apartments of a girl Kevin dated in college, a rare mid-MO Jew whose dad had a lot of money and whose mom taught her how to deep throat out of--I don't know--necessity? Is suppressing your gag reflex so you can choke down an entire penis really something you want to do, first of all, and you want your MOM to show you how to do? What the hell happened to sewing and properly disposing of feminine products? Did any of the women at the (religious! so religious!) reunion teach THEIR daughters how to deep throat some college dude? Ya'll know me. And I say "Yuck". So probably not. But that didn't keep me from Wayne Bradying a filthy song about Kevin's deep-throating ex-freak freak.

And that's when it hit me: If the people at the reunion knew what kind of entertainment we enjoy (rated arrrrrr) and knew that I could make up 4 funny phrases about a cock-swallerin' JAP while parking a car, and knew all of the other stuff that Kevin and I do (mostly..."have done")...would we be invited back? Would we be invited but impeached? What secret lives do others have? Are there that many surprises out there, or are they as boring/normal/clean/God-fearing as they seem? Just how tolerant are people?

You gotta wonder. I don't pretend that there was some golden age back then, where everyone was as squeaky clean as pre-American Pie apple pie. We didn't invent cussing or fucking or even deep throating, and we weren't the first to call it that either. In fact, it really horks me off when I hear people going on and on about the "good old days". Sure, it wasn't bad in the, say...I can't think of a time! Let's see...Depression, War, more war, conformity, assassinations, generational chasms, totally pointless war, energy crises, poverty, rationing--and if you were black or brown or an Injun or a JAP or a Jap, was it ever so shiny and bright?

I'm getting off the point. Maybe that is why secret things are secret. Do I really want to know? I really don't. Best to just bring the potluck pleaser and shut the hell up.

"Hey, Chele, you know it's kinda funny..."

Yes, I'm happy to spend more time with my kids.

But this is a LOT of time.

In the absence of grandparents who don't want to make a "commitment" to watch the kids on any kind of steady basis, I will have to find a babysitter for 2-3 days per week. I simply MUST have some sort of schedule. Otherwise, it's like I spend the whole day preparing food, cleaning up food, cleaning food off of toddlers, buying food, making beds, wiping butts, buying underwear, buying and returning plain t-shirts for a surprisingly fussy husband ("I asked for LIGHT blue, not NAVY blue...") and trying to move into a house that's 90% done with about 60% of my stuff, the rest stashed in boxes buried as deep as those in my warehouse of a brain.

I made an extensive, detailed To Do list, with coupons and addendums and phone numbers and various other crap stapled and paper clipped...and left it at goddamn Barnes & Noble 25 miles away. Now, I no longer commute 50 miles a day, so a 50 mile round-trip to pick up a to do list should be no sweat. But, when I did commute, I didn't do it with a baby. Marky is a great traveler and no problem in the car. He's not even really a problem in a store. He's a good baby! But he does weigh 25 pounds, and a trip to just one place means at least 6 bucklings and unbucklings (in 90-degree + heat), and long walks across blacktop, and dealing with weekend mall-goers, and I'm tired of going to stores because they never have everything I need all at once and even if they did, by the time I spent 2 hours back at home I'd have another list of miscellaneous crap to get (a screw for the drawer pull in the bathroom, drawer locks so I don't have to yank contraband toothpaste several times a day out of the clutches of a toothpaste-eating toddler who screams and vibrates like a cornered banshee when the big, mean mommymonster comes to steal his precioussss toothpaste--seriously, a new baking pan for my mother-in-law because the enchiladas required roasted garlic and the garlic stuck to the supposedly non-stick, previously unscathed and unused baking pan because mine is in a box...somewhere...and goddamn if I didn't put a 1-inch scratch in the tender chemical coating trying to get it off). You get the idea. It's just too daunting.

So here I am. I took the kids out. I had two goals: sign Stevie up for day camps at the YMCA, and check my emails and bank account. We rolled into the Y at 2. They close at 2 on Saturdays. Fuck. Roll into the office. Check emails. Get served by friends for asking for emails and then not replying--I hope this post explains my actions a bit. Did I mention that Kevin works about 12 hours a day? And that I've been with the kids all day every day for about 8 days now, all while trying to get my house into functional condition??? Check bank account--pleasant surprise! Actually got one whole paycheck when I thought I was in for my unused vacation time only.

Overall mood: Surprisingly happy! Sure, there are definitely a lot of details to work out, but I'm much less stressed. No commute! More sex! Hell...I'm Claritin clear! No intervention is necessary at this time. But I could use some toothpaste. I'll just add it to my list...

...goddamn it!

Tenacious B

Well, here we are in Missouri. Everything is in half-ass mode. We're kinda set up here at the shop, we have about 1/2 our stuff unpacked in the 7/8 done house (still needs a shower curtain, caulk, a bathroom door, baseboards, window casings, etc.), and most of our stuff is here.

The only thing really working, at 100% capacity, is my mother-in-law, Beth. On my last nerve.

She has this quirky thing about challenging my (not so much Kevin's) parental authority on many levels. Every frickin' day. She did this, in freakish abundance, when we lived here before. This was back in 2000-2002, when Stevie was brand new and she was living out her misguided fantasy of being the 'wise ol' grandma' to our 'bumbling-kid new parents'. I'll save you a really long-ass story, but you should know that it was definitely a problem that marred our (hers and mine) relationship, and the memory of it--and the possibility of it happening again--has been my biggest source of anxiety about moving back. Think about that--I've just left a secure job with many benefits, put a house that I love on a tepid market, moved away from family and friends, and started a business with nothing more than a few hundred dollars left in the bank...and SHE is my biggest source of stress.

It can be little things. I go to change Marky's wet diaper. She says, "He doesn't need a diaper change right now." This has happened twice already, and we've been here 7 days. This happened after he got yet another diaper rash within 2 days of being here (and being cared for by her and my father-in-law) because they don't change him often enough. In fact, Mark ALWAYS gets a diaper rash when they babysit.

It can be more serious. I tell Stevie that he's coming to the shop with Daddy and me so he can see all the stuff we've done and check out his little space with the paper and the markers and the what-not. He says OK. I say go get your shoes. He realizes that the only shoes available require tying. He can't tie his shoes and has built up a lot of anxiety over this fact. He suddenly says "Um, I'm just going to stay here". Knowing exactly why he changed his mind, I say, "No, you're coming. Just get your shoes and I'll help you." He says, "I don't want to go! Why do I have to go?!" I say, "Stevie, just get your shoes. You're going to like what we've done."

Then she says...are you ready for this? "He doesn't have to go if he doesn't want to."

And this I've heard before.

I say, "Uh, actually, yes he does. The reason for his change of heart is his shoes."

Sure enough, he stomps to the car but, when he sees the now-functioning office in the shop, with his little stuff, he is delighted. He grabs the pad and a colored pencil (that I, in my wisdom, have set aside for him) and goes around making a list of "improvements" to the shop. He has so much fun that he doesn't want to leave. When Kevin heads to the shop the next morning, he asks to go. Funny how I know my own kids, huh?

"He doesn't have to go if he doesn't want to." Can you believe that shit?

The worst one was yesterday, when we were out shopping with the kids. She plunks Marky into the shopping cart and takes off. I say, "He needs his belt on" (the little strap that helps secure kids in the cart. She puts it on. In the course of 45 minutes at Lowe's, Marky, the 1 1/2 year old, gets fidgety in his cart seat. She chalks this up to the belt. So then we go next door to get some groceries. She plunks him in his cart and takes off. I say "He needs his belt on".

Then SHE says...are you ready for this? "He doesn't need it." while she rolls away.

Momentarily stunned that yes, this is really happening again, and what the fuck am I doing here, and stupidly trying to keep the peace, I say "Well, you need to stay right in front of him".

And now I'm pissed at her and at myself for putting my kid's safety aside to keep the peace, and for being in this situation in the first place (how many of you out there--esp. you grandparents--would do this crap?), and just for having to deal with her in general.

This morning when I had a chance, I said, "Beth, will you do me a favor? Will you just strap him into the carts when you take him shopping?" Was that a little smile of embarrassment on her face? Surprise? "Sure" she said. And I felt better. But not totally.

When all this kind of stuff went down before, I vented to friends and family and they always said "You're just going to have to be the better woman here." Well, that's true. But I'm also going to have to be a manager. I was talking to Flip about her management duties and made the comment that managing is all about learning how to treat people to get the best out of them/make them better. I know--stunning insight. This is a management situation. And a tricky one (or else so simple that I'm not seeing it.) I have to manage my mother-in-law. And I can't fuck it up or it might be unbearable, because, unfortunately, I can't just fire her ass for insubordination. (That'd be so awesome!) But she's on my list, and I'm going to have to harden up to deal with her. And doesn't it suck that I have to do that? But, as I wrote that last sentence, it almost fully sunk in that, yes, I do, and just shut-up and deal with it.

Dangit.