Ok, hate to do this to you, but I have to start the day off with a rant. It has to be done or my fuckin' head is going to explode.

My in-laws are driving me nuts! They are quickly becoming the poster children for hypocrisy. As I stated a few entries back, the wife is leaving next month to go to grooming school in Tampa. Well, I get a message last week, from my boss, asking me if I'm interested in going to Orlando for a week to the NBAA (National Business Aircraft Assoc.) trade show. This is perfect. The trade show starts the exact same day that the wife has to be in Tampa. Anyone who can read a map knows that Tampa is pretty close to Orlando, so I can get my rental car, take the wife to Tampa, and then head over to Orlando. Plus, Petsmart will reimburse us for the gas and stuff. But, there's one hitch. MonkeyBoy is in school now, and we'll need my mother-in-law to watch him and his little brother, Icebear Jr.

Well, knowing this won't be an easy subject to approach, I just come out and ask her if she'll do it. She says she'll think about it. Great, that's a lot of help. If some of you are new readers, then I need to 'splain something...I'll try to be brief. My mother-in-law has a condition, we don't know what it's really called because she won't go to a doctor, but I call it irritable bowel syndrome. She's been a worrier most of her life. She lets even the littlest thing get to her. Well, all this stress has piled up over the years, so now, at even the slightest bump in the road, she gets completely nervous and can't deal with the outside world. This usually happens when we need something from her, but not always. Anyway, I ask her, again, about watching the kids and she says that sometimes she thinks she can handle it and other times, she just gets nervous and can't do it. And this is what's really pissing me off.

If she needs a ride somewhere or needs us to get something for her or anything, and we can't do it because we're busy or something, she gets kind of huffy and pouty. Like we don't care about her anymore. Their entire family is like that. If they need something from you and you don't help, then you're an inconsiderate asshole (but they won't say this to your face...no, they'll wait until you leave and then talk about you behind your back). BUT, if you need something from them, no matter how much you have helped them in the past, they have to "think" about it or they just can't. Never fails. I've even offered to take Icebear Jr. with me to Orlando and just leaving MonkeyBoy with her, but I think that would be a big mistake, taking a 2 year-old to a corporate trade show. Anyway, even if she does take them for the week, I still have to figure out a way to get MonkeyBoy to school and back each day. Maybe if I do get everything else figured out then she'll feel obligated to take them for the week. I'm just afraid I'm going to get to Orlando, get settled in and start working, and then I'll get a phone call telling me to "come back now, they're driving me nuts!" Fucked if I do, fucked if I don't.

I keep thinking back to what my mother keeps telling me in the e-mails she sends me. "I wish we lived closer, we'd be happy to take care of them." And that's the whole difference. My in-laws keep taking their grandkids for granted. I ask my m-i-l if she'll watch them and it's like I'm asking her to sacrifice her firstborn sometimes. But heaven for-fuckin'-bid if I say, "We're moving to Missouri" or some shit like that. She'll be all, "You can't take my grandkids away from me." How do you think my fuckin' parents feel? They get to see their grandkids, maybe, twice a year. When they come down to visit, do they want to go to Disneyworld, or shit like that? No! They could care less where we go, they just want to see the kids. In fact, last time they came down, they watched the kids while the wife and I went to a movie. We ask my m-i-l to do that and she gives us a look like, "What do I get in return for it?" And, what's worse, her sister comes down to visit, having never seen Icebear Jr. and only seen pics of MonkeyBoy and she spends like, 10 minutes with them and then takes off.

FUCK! Now I've got myself all worked up over this shit. I'm fuckin' tired of it. I can't even mention moving anyway to the wife because she vetos the idea before I've even finished with it. She believes, and I have to say, she's probably right, that if we moved to like Missouri, or even to North Florida, that it would literally kill her mother. She doesn't want to be "the death of her mother." She's almost 30 years old, her mother has to learn to let go sometime. And this brings up another interesting point. To kind of supplement the money that my father-in-law makes, my m-i-l cleans houses like 2-3 days a week. She doesn't have a real job, but she does this for a little extra cash. Anyway, she cleans the apartment for this elderly woman, named Edna, and she's always bitching about how Edna's son still lives with her and he's in his mid-40's. She goes on about how he's a doper and he keeps stealing money from Edna to support his habit and she should just toss him out and shit. Kind of ironic, seeing as how my idiot brother-in-law still lives with my m-i-l and he's 25, has no job, keeps getting stoned or high all the time and mooches off of her. Go figure. She's a real hypocrite. And, god-forbid, we ask her to come over and help us clean our house once. Shit. If she isn't getting money for it...ah nevermind.

I'm tired of all of this. I wish we were financially independent enough to just pick up and move when our lease is over. I've often thought, though not recently, of just giving the wife an ultimatum. "I hate it here, I'm tired of all the shit. It costs too much money to live like this. Our lease is up in 6 months, after that, we're moving to Missouri"...or something like that. The wife told me the other day at the store that she's tired of walking through the store, continuously adding up everything we have to make sure we can pay for all of it. She'd rather be able to just go to the store, pick what we want/need, and check out without having to worry about being overdrawn or not having enough money. That's why we need to get out of Florida. I bet we could find a comparable place to where we live now in Missouri (and it doesn't have to be Missouri, I'm just using it as an example) for half of what we pay in rent. Hell, we could probably buy another house and make the mortgage payments easily. We'd be saving money hand over fist. But, she'd rather live paycheck to paycheck, counting every cent we spend, than move away from her "family" and cause them any grief. Of course, no one takes time to consider the grief of my family. Guess we don't matter since we're "Yankees".

Fuck, I hadn't planned on this getting so long and I've still got more shit I can rant about. Oh well. I had originally planned on doing an entry and reviewing a few movies. Maybe I'll do that later this afternoon. Anyway. Take care, all of you.

Da 'Bear

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