The Weekend

Thursday. I babysat five children. By myself. And I made the mistake of taking them to large, crowded public places, like, say, the Mall of America. At one point in time I threatened to tie all the children together and then tie them to my belt, because I got tired of them all wandering off where I couldn’t see them.

I also bellowed, “You are all going to get chicken tacos and you’re all going to LIKE IT!” when I got tired of the mall food court debate.

The mister found me, about an hour after I’d returned the children to their parents, passed out on our couch.

Friday. Attended the Irish Fair on Harriet Island, ate a shameful amount of food, including something called a baby’s head. Turns out it’s a pasty. Drank some beer, watched the Dropkick Murphys concert. Had a glorious time. Avoided the pit with everything in me. Mostly successful, although I did throw a few elbows when people started getting a little too pushy-shovey with me.

Saturday. More hang out time with the cousins from out of town. This time their parents didn’t leave me with alone with them, so I was not reduced to a blubbering moron. Then, the cousins left for home and I got to hang with my family in an early birthday/late anniversary celebration. The mister and I scored a Keurig coffee-maker from my parents, which won’t replace the one my friends gave us for our wedding for big pots of coffee, but for single cups, it’s AWESOME. In other news, I’ve had so much caffeine that I can't seem to stop my right leg from bouncing.

Sunday. 60th birthday party for the mister’s uncle held in aunt’s back yard. Great day. Highlights include traditions such as pass the baby, dodging questions about when the mister and I will begin procreating, eating more food than reasonable, and playing distract the little kids while the men remove a partially decapitated bunny from the croquet course. Whee!

All in all, not a bad couple of days.

Mille Lacs

The mister and I spent last weekend camping on the shores of Mille Lacs Lake with his sister and her husband.

And our three dogs.



It was bitterly cold and the wind howled pretty much the entire weekend. It was too windy to take a boat out onto the lake, go bike riding, or do anything more exciting than take a walk and huddle near the campfire. But we still had a good time. I found a yarn store in Isle and scored two balls of wool sheared off the yarn store owner's own sheep. I then wondered how quickly I could knit it up into something warm; could I make a hat before bedtime?

It was Charlie's first ever camping trip (we've dropped him off at someone else's house every time we've gone out of town), and he did really well. The only bad part came when he got cold and wanted in my sleeping bag. With me. That got crowded and I ended up booting him out and using my jacket to cover him up instead.


He begged shamelessly for food all weekend long.


My sister in law and her husband with their two dogs. You can see that my sister in law is wearing a lot of clothing. In fact, in this photo, I think she's rocking long johns, wool socks, jeans, 4 shirts, a jacket, a wool hat, and mittens. In May. Welcome to Minnesota.

Sitting in the Sunshine

Sitting in the Sunshine
Originally uploaded by SassyBuster

I spent a lot of Easter weekend with my in-laws. The noise was incredible. The chatter of people talking over one another, my mother-in-law's shouted orders from the kitchen, the howling of at least 6 different dogs, men shooting skeet...it was intense.

At one point on Saturday afternoon, though, the men were out in a far-off field having some target practice, the crack of their shots muffled by distance, and my mother-in-law and sister-in-law decided to go for a bike ride from which I politely declined to accompany them, so I got to sit on the porch in the sunshine and absorb the quiet.

Of course, the smell of sheep manure wafted up from my boots when the breeze blew in the right direction and I was accosted by a muddy dog a couple of times, but the blessed silence was worth it.

Photos from the Conservatory

Three inches of snow were dumped on us the night before.


Which made the jungle-like warmth of the gardens all the more shocking.





My father-in-law.

"It's filled with cheese."

On Sunday the mister and I spent the day with his parents and his sister and her husband. We wandered around the Como Conservatory and Zoo. I brought my camera and spent most of the day with it stuck to my face so I didn’t have to interact much.

I know, that’s rude. But I was tired, riding a hormone wave, and just not up to talking for three freaking hours without taking a breath, particularly since the men were discussing hunting, fishing, and keeping coyotes out of the sheep pen (shit you not) and the women were discussing calories and weight loss. I, like all women, can and will discuss these things, but not for three hours. I get bored after about 10 minutes. So, camera.

Then we all decided to go to Matt’s Bar for lunch. The mister and I have been there frequently, but no one in our group had.

For those of you that have never experience the joys of Matt’s Bar, it is a dark hole in the wall place with way too many tables crammed into way too small of an area. They serve Jucy Lucy’s, a delicious, wonderful burger made out of two thin patties enclosing a layer of molten hot melted cheese. And they serve fries. And that’s about it. They don’t even have a full bar. It’s beer, Coke in a can, Jucy Lucy’s and fries.

There’s always only one waitress on duty and the best way to describe her, no matter who she is, is surly. The waitstaff there is always grouchy.

So, the six of us settle at a table. The mister orders for us. “We’ll both have a Jucy Lucy, mine with fried onions and hers with raw. We’ll split a basket of fries. I’ll have a Killian’s, she’ll have a Diet Coke.”

Done.

Sister-in-law and her husband follow suit and order without a hitch.

Then comes the mother-in-law. “How many calories are in a Jucy Lucy?”

The waitress gave her a look that would peel paint, one of those looks that clearly asks are you fucking kidding me? and responded with, “It’s filled with cheese. I have no idea, but I’m sure it’s a lot.”

Christmas with the in-laws

My in-laws are good people. Sure, I find them odd and occasionally annoying, but they are honest, hardworking, salt-of-the-earth people and for the most part, I like them.

That said, I have a couple “what the hell” things from the holiday to share with you.

All the women bring slippers. Everyone came to my house on Christmas Eve and every woman pulled off her boots, produced a pair of slippers from the bowels of her purse, and slipped them on. Every woman, that is, except for my mother, who watched with her mouth open in astonishment. At first I thought maybe my mother-in-law had been telling people I keep my house cool, but the next afternoon at an aunt’s house, I watched all the women repeat the slipper performance. Is there a memo somewhere that I missed?

The mister and I engage in good-natured ribbing. We give each other hard times and poke fun at each other. But we don’t expose our real marital discord for public viewing. The mister’s family, not so private. Within a few seconds of asking the question “How was your Christmas morning?” at an aunt’s house, I was regaled with stories of nagging wives, irresponsible husbands, naughty children, and how big the fights they had that morning were.

They gossip. Now, admittedly, my family does this too, but because we’re so spread out (seriously, other than my parents and brothers, my closest relative is 9 hours away), the gossip tends to be more in the form of big news updates. “So-and-so is getting married.” The mister’s family, perhaps because they’re all in each other’s business and lives all the time, gossips like they mean it. “He got a serious talking-to about his drinking because, you know, last year he tried to hit on Mary at church, and, well, she’s just too young for him!” The he in question is usually on the other side of the same room.

Napping is strictly forbidden unless one is pregnant. And believe me, by the time 11:00 p.m. rolled around on Christmas Day, I was ready to lie and say I was pregnant just to get five minutes of rest. My family, again, probably because we’re relatively isolated and don’t usually have dozens of people over, opens presents, eats something, snoozes, eats something, plays with presents, snoozes, and wakes up to eat again. We’re all about the “watching a movie with our eyes closed.” The members of the mister’s family take any sign of exhaustion, from a smothered yawn to accidentally dozing off while sitting on the floor because there are no damned chairs, as a serious personal affront. One must be engaged in conversation or child-wrangling the entire time one is in attendance. Seriously, folks, I didn’t mean to be rude, but I was running on 7 hours of sleep for two days and after a couple glasses of wine, I just really wanted my bed!

They pry. Good Lord, they pry. “When are you two having kids?” “How much weight have you lost?” “Are you trying for kids yet?” “Well, how much does being a first year lawyer pay?” “I love being an uncle, are you going to make me an uncle again anytime soon?” “How much do you weigh now?” “What’s your mortgage payment?” This is actually stuff I don’t mind talking about with most people, but most people acknowledge that it is inherently private information and don’t ASK for it, they allow me to bring it up on my own. Something about the interrogation technique makes me uncomfortable.

They are weird about thank you notes. I send thank-yous after someone has me over to their house or after they do something nice for me, like give me a gift. Heck, my mom used to make us sit down immediately after opening presents to get cracking on the thank you notes. The habit is ingrained at this point. But his family seems to find this little habit of mine antiquated, unnecessary, and a tiny bit odd. This seems backwards to me. People should be annoyed when you DON’T send a thank you, not when you do, right?

The Shrew Incident

Dude.

SIL and I BONDED, hard core, last night.

Some background information: I was wearing a skirt and three inch stiletto heels. She is a wildlife biologist. She’s staying in our basement guest room, which has a large egress window in it.

She opened the window when she got home because the basement can get kind of stuffy. A shrew (small, mouse-like creature) came in the window and darted across the bedroom into the bathroom.

I was upstairs at the time, just coming in from work, and I thundered down the stairs when I heard her shrieks. She shut the shrew in the bathroom and we quickly located a shoe box and, in the absence of a broom, a roll of wrapping paper. Shut up.

We could handle this. Two smart, educated women, one of whom was able to properly identify and classify the critter as she chased it into the bathroom. How hard could it be?

I never thought I was the kind of girl that screams at the sight of a rodent. Turns out I am. So is SIL. The two of us were standing on the toilet seat (not the lid, the seat, and I feel that I must point out the 3 inch heels bit again), holding each other and shrieking for all we were worth.

We got a bigger box, one that took up nearly the entire bathroom floor, and chased the shrew into it. We then hauled the box upstairs (both of us for one mostly empty box), and tossed it into the driveway.

The mister showed up a few minutes later and came into the house as she and I were both settling onto the couch with beers, still a little jittery.

“What’s with the box in the driveway?” he asked, puzzled.

“Rodent.” “Basement.” “Box.” “Broom.” “Driveway.”

He somehow pieced together our story and laughed so hard he cried.

Crazy-making

My life is sort of chaotic at the moment and it's making me crazy.

My sister in law just moved into my basement.

For an undetermined amount of time. It's always awkward having a long-term guest, particularly since it feels like we just got our house back from our last long-term guest.

In other crazy-making news, I’m dealing with a sort of dramatic case at work (as dramatic as my field of law gets, anyway) and I’ve got a bunch of really needy clients that keep calling and calling and calling and I cringe every time my phone rings and have seriously debated yanking it off my desk and burying it in the kitchen trash can. I made the mistake of forwarding my office calls to my cell phone (which I pay for, not the firm) and spent most of the day yesterday and all of this morning wishing I'd read the manual and figured out how to silence the damned thing.

And I’ve been enjoying another lovely bout of gastrointestinal tract trouble, and there’s nothing I like more than unexplained vomiting.

NB: still not pregnant. But I actually woke up the other day and went “I think it’s time to have a baby.” Weird. I mean, the mister is still allergic to babies, although his 29^th birthday inspired some soul-searching, life-goal-revisiting, and general introspection, and while my biological clock might be going “make babies, make babies,” my brain is going “crushing student loan and credit card debt, an inability to take care of a dog, and general immaturity,” so I know it’s not time. But is that what happens? You’re going along all fine, thinking you’re not ready, positive you’re not ready, and then…bam! baby time?