As you may have remembered from a past entry, my sister-in-law moved to Ohio. A lot of us expected her to have come crawling back by now, me included, but she's sticking it out up there. Not sure how long it will last, though. She doesn't really seem to want to get a job, her lazy-ass, worthless boyfriend is having a hard time getting a job because they drug test and the fucker can't lay off the weed long enough to get a job, so they're living off his mother...for now. She pays their rent, she pays for their groceries and other stuff. Don't know how long that will last. Oh well, not my problem. The worst part, is that today is my nieces birthday and my mother-in-law is really going to be bummed about it. And her favorite thing is to spread it around. Oh goody.

My parents came down and visited last week. That was fun. No really, it was pretty fun. The week prior, I paid my mother-in-law to come over and clean our house from top to bottom. It took her all week. It wasn't really that bad, she's just really really thorough. So, the house was in good shape when my parents got here, unfortunately, none of us were. The day they arrived, Saturday, I get hit with a rotovirus. Basically, I'm puking like crazy and have diarrhea so it wasn't fun. Then, after I get over it by Monday, the wife gets it. She's off work sick for 2 days and feeling pretty shitty. The kids both had a short run with it but it only lasted a day so they missed the worst of it.

Illness wasn't the only problem, though. One night while my dad was cooking on the grill, my mom was cooking some mac'n'cheese on the stove. She went to drain the pasta and while we had our backs turned, Icebear Jr. snuck in, reached up and touched the burner. He immediately started screaming bloody murder and running around clutching his hand. He got the tips of all 4 fingers on his right hand and they immediately started blistering and getting puffy. I put a cold compress on them and the wife showered him with some ultra-maximum-strength lovin' and he calmed down. We took him to the doctor the next day to have them looked at and while we were there we started down the path of getting him caught up with his immunizations. Yes, we're evil parents. He hadn't had any of his immunizations since he was like a month old. But we're rectifying that. So, all week, Icebear Jr. walked around with bandaged little fingers and just raked in the attention. My mother is extremely sappy anyway, and she felt that it was her fault that he got burnt, so she was even more sappy to him. He had her in the palm of his hand. Needless to say, he was sad to see her go. Heh.

I enjoyed visiting with my parents, but it went by too fast. I only see them about once every 6 months so I really look forward to their visits, but time always seems to fly by too fast. We're planning on taking a trip up to Missouri to see them and the rest of the family this summer, but if war breaks out, who knows if that will happen or not. Fuckin' towel-heads. I haven't been back home since about October of '00 and I really miss it. Before that, I hadn't been home since X-mas of '98 so I've got about a 2 year pattern going here. That's got to improve.

The wife is actually talking about moving out of the area. No, it's not back up to Missouri, or even out of the fuckin' state of Florida, but it's still good. When she was coming home from grooming school in Tampa, she went through a small town in Western Florida called Arcadia. It's your typical small town. Nice open areas, farms and stuff. She was smitten with it and now she constantly talks about moving there. She's even gone as far as to find a nice 4/2 house with 5 acres of land that we're positive we could afford, if we could just get a mortgage on it (since we've declared bankruptcy 2-3 years ago). I've been encouraging her to keep looking into it, but there's one problem. She's also talking about taking her parents with her. What? One of the reasons I want to move is to get away from her mother. Yes, I like her mother, she's a very nice woman who has helped us out countless times, but she's also caused us a lot of fuckin' grief. Plus, I know there's no way she's going to get her mother to move away from their house. They just spent 2 months fighting to save it from foreclosure and now they're going to leave it? I don't think so. And the last thing I want is to have to drag her mother with us. She needs to get away from her mother. Her mother is 48 and she's 28 and they both seem to act like they can't live without each other. But, I get the idea that, if she feels she can't convince her mother to move, that she won't move either. Then I've gotten my hopes up all in vain, and I've done that before only to come crashing back down, so I'm more apprehentious this time. Besides, she seems to only be caring about her mother. What about us? Her husband and kids? Anyway, we still have about 4-5 months left on our lease anyway so we couldn't move yet even if we wanted to. I just hope, if the time ever does come, that she doesn't hesitate and will take that step. Oh well, we'll see.

The Daytona 500 is this weekend and thus starts the 2003 NASCAR season. It's about fuckin' time! Thank goodness that Tampa Bay went to the Super Bowl and won because that tied me over until the race season started. If they hadn't made it, I would have been done with football back in December and then would have had to suffer a month and a half until the race season. This year though, I was right there up until Jan. 26 and that kept me pumped up until now. This is the year that Mark Martin takes the Winston Cup. I can just feel it. First, Tampa Bay wins the Super Bowl (as I predicted) and now Mark Martin is going to win the Winston Cup Championship. You heard it here first!!

Well, gonna go and do something deconstructive. Take care.