Lately....or, how Bea has abandoned our Blog...

As loyal followers of this blog know, in July my dearest (Beau) moved myself and our three year old to his parents' home in order to take a more lucrative job. We put our house for sale and moved three states away. I love the state we have moved to; however, we are still living with Beau's parents. Things are getting a bit out of control and I might soon have to take someone down a la Jimmy Cagney from White Heat. I'm losing my mind.


Problem from the Get-Go:


We don't have full cable. My father-in-law, Lord, pays for full cable, but only gets about fifty one channels. He seems to be OK with this because our pleas for satellite that we'll pay to install are rebuffed: insisting that his cable company is "going to improve." Seriously. I am still without Comedy Central, Food Network, or Bravo, amongst others.


How this has gotten worse:


We really only watch about two things: Mountaineer sports or M*A*S*H. Don't get me wrong, I like a good Hawkeye/BJ prank as much as the next guy, but I've seen about every episode twice. There's only so much good natured Corney-ness I can stomach without wanting to rip the TV off the wall and throw it across the room in an effort to make Hot Lips see how stupid Frank really is.



Problem from the get-go:

Lady's mother, The Duchess (sadly, not Fergie), is also living here. She's 80 and a survivor of three husbands (they all died, not divorced), cancer (breast and colon), and numerous falls which left her with a myriad of broken bones (including her face). She's an amazing woman who educated herself and supported herself and her two young daughters when her first husband died, and carries the weight of both her screwed-up family and her tiny town on her shoulders.



How this has gotten worse:

Remember the great aunt from "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation"? Because I live with her. She means well, really she does, but she's going senile and I'm going slightly mad. The other day she made macaroni and cheese which is delicious, then when no one ate the left overs, she made macaroni salad because she forgot that she had already put the cheese in it. So now we have macaroni and cheese with carrots, Miracle Whip, and onions. It's, well, not good. I realize that she doesn't want to be wasteful (she washes Styrofoam plates) but her passive-aggressive comments about how I'm not helping need to stop.

I don't like onions. I've never complained about not liking onions, I just pick them off of whatever food is made with them and go about my day. Well, one time she saw me do that and we talked about it. I assured her that I would always eat anything she made and not to worry about it. Now she dramatically comments on all the things I don't eat. Since then, she watches my plate at dinner and when I don't get a spoonful of something the comment, "You don't eat (that) either?! What do you eat?"

Then she got very mad at me for throwing away my yogurt after it had accidentally frozen in the back of the refrigerator, thawed out, and then froze again. She said I was being ridiculous because we eat frozen yogurt all the time! It's still OK. Dude, the stuff smelled like the wash from last month that you forgot to put in the dryer.

Problem from the get-go:

Glow Bug is now living with his mother, his aunt, his grandmother, and his great-grandmother. There is only proverbial Indian and four proverbial chiefs.

How this has gotten worse:

My darling little Glow Bug is becoming a brat. If mommy says no, dammit if one of the others says "Of course!" Beau and I talked about this yesterday and finally had to have a talk with the family about it. When Glow does something wrong, we all try to correct the behavior and he gets really confused. So during our sit down with the fam, we insisted that when he misbehaves that Beau or I need to be the ones to speak and deal with it. Now, we've had this talk before, and it will last for about a week before going back to the aforementioned, anti PC, turn-of-the-century saying about chiefs and Indians.

Things are clearly hitting a breaking point. And by "hitting a breaking point" I mean I'm about to become a scrolling headline on Fox News.