"My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot." ~Ashleigh Brilliant

We've had a lot going on lately and yet nothing's really transpired. Well...that's not entirely true. I did go on another interview last week. This time, in a curious turn of events, it was for a local job. What's more, it's my aunt's job at the high school I attended. She's been there for 35 years and is retiring in June. She says 90 people applied for her job. Out of them, 10 were interviewed. So we'll see.

The kids are adjusting to life here kinda-sorta well. Bubba's doing great. His speech is exploding and he understands so much. You can't slip anything past this kid! Beth is riding the rollercoaster of "I'm still in a new environment AND I'm four years old. Wheeeee!" She still talks about going "home" and how she just wants "to get out of here." We have to keep explaining to her that, for now, this is home. It breaks my heart. Quite frankly, I like calling this domicile "home" about as much as I like raw onions. For those of you who know me, you know nothing makes me gag as much as tasting a raw onion.

Living in my mom's house has been, to say the very least, trying. She's lived alone for the last six years and has become accustomed to her solitary life. Then we come straggling in with our two small children and their toys, wreaking havoc on her simple, quiet home. We're up at 7:00 a.m. every day, there are Cheerios, Kix, and occasional cookie crumbs strewn about her floor, and dinner is a three-ring circus. We're cooking with seasonings and flavors she's never cooked with and she informed me that she's eaten more vegetables since we arrived then she's eaten in the last year.

With all that comes her belief (or, at least, what I suspect is her belief) that since I'm "home," I need to be led around and parented like the child she must think I am. She's meddling in my job search, brow beating me into working at that damn Cracker Barrel and trying to make me feel bad for not wanting to work into the evening. They only want to hire a prep cook for the afternoon/evening shift. My availability clearly states that I want to be home by 6:00 p.m. I want to eat dinner and bathe my kids and be there for bedtime. That's extremely important to me. Mom doesn't get that. She seems to think that this is the Best Job on Earth and that I should kiss the toes of the manager who's planning on calling me to try and convince me to work in the evenings. Good luck with that.

I really hope something comes along soon so we can move the hell out of this house. I don't care where it is. I need my own space back and my kids need to be free to have fun and yell. THEY'RE KIDS! Let them be kids!

And then there's the nebby, gossipy canary about town who's telling people I'm some oppressed housewife with no opinions and no chutzpah. I've got an idea of who it is and frankly, I'm not surprised. Conneautville is the very definition of Small Town, U.S.A., and what better to talk about than the person who moved out of this town a beer-loving, wildly independent party girl and came back a calm, settled wife and mom who appreciates the art of compromise and doesn't feel the constant need to be a hard-nosed, stand-offish bitch who keeps everyone at bay to avoid getting hurt. I went through a very rough five-year period before I met my husband. I lost my dad, my grandparents, an aunt and an uncle. I had two different boyfriends cheat on me with good friends of mine. I had friendships fall apart. By the time I met Rob, I had lost a lot of respect for myself and was sick and tired of getting hurt.

But when he came into my life and stayed, didn't hurt my feelings or make threats of leaving, and showed me that it was okay to let people in and that he wasn't there to use me, and most importantly that nothing was going to shake his love for me, I softened. I calmed down. I trusted him. And what people didn't bear witness to over the last six years was the metamorphasis I went through. I started seeing life differently, especially after having children. My values changed, my opinions changed, and I wanted different things out of life. I guess some people write that off as a character flaw and are bent on sharing the news with everyone.

Maybe all that city livin' in California did me some good. It taught me to mind my own business. It also taught me to stand up for me and mine. My politics may have changed, and I may not be as wild and crazy as I used to be, but I'm a whole lot stronger now than I ever was. So if the gossip hound reads this, pass this along, too: I don't need anyone's approval to be happy. I absolutely love my life and that's all you need to know.

It's just another anxious Monday...

I've got two things to yap about today, both of which are causing me great anxiety. First, we'll address The Eagle (for those just tuning in, that's codespeak for my mom who's been here since 10/23).

Tomorrow morning can't get here fast enough. I don't know if it's that we're too much alike, too different, or if the cheese is sliding off her cracker but we are almost constantly at odds. She's spent the better part of her stay here trying to overrule our parenting, browbeat me with reasons we need to move out of California - ignoring all the reasons we can't right now and won't be able to unless Rob gets laid off, fired, or we've paid off a vehicle - and make thinly-veiled jokes about our weights. I'm pretty sure 10 days should be the time limit. She's been here 12 days and I. Am. Done. She's still very much convinced that I know nothing about parenting and said as much. I was in the middle of addressing a disciplinary issue with Beth and was handling it just fine. Mom butts in and tries to overrule me again so I say to her, "Mom, I've been raising her for nearly four years, I think I can handle it." She says, "Yeah, well I've been doing it since 1959. I think I can handle it."

*blink*

What???? For starters, she hasn't been raising Beth since 1959 and furthermore, she hasn't dealt with a four-year-old in 25 years! The woman needs to BACK OFF.

My other anxiety-attack-in-waiting is the election. I'm confident in my choice for candidate, can't wait to vote, and am eager to watch this election go down in history, no matter the outcome. However, I'm anxious because although I'd like to believe in the Bradley Effect, I'm worried about the Bandwagon Effect. What if America is full of lemmings and they all just vote for who they assume is going to win, just so their vote isn't "wasted" on a candidate who isn't going to win? It stresses me out that there are people out there who would actually do that.

That aside, we're eager as hell to be glued to the TV tomorrow night. Wheeee!

And so we've turned the corner...

...in mom's visit, that is. The niceties are more or less done and now it's back to the way we were five and a half years ago when Rob and I still lived with her. We're butting heads. She's refusing to accept that I'm now a mother and am perfectly capable of raising and disciplining my own children and is constantly trying to overrule me with my own kids. At least once an hour, I find myself saying, "Mom, stop. I've got this."

Last night, things reached kind of a head. It started with a disagreement about MyCoke Rewards. She's of the opinion that Coca-Cola is discriminating against people who don't own a computer because you can only do MyCoke Rewards online. "What about those of us who don't want a computer or can't afford one?" she asks. I say, "Well, if you choose not to buy a computer, then it's your choice to not have online contests available to you in your home. What's to stop you from walking two small-town-sized blocks to the library? I'm sure the librarian would be happy to show you how to go to the website and enter teh codes. Same goes for those who can't afford a computer."

Her response? "Well, it's still not fair. What if I don't want to go to the library?"

Oh. My. God. "Then it's your loss." She says, "They should have a 1-800 number to call and enter codes." I say, "Then how would you see all the rewards?" She says, "Well, they could print them on the inside of the box." I say, "There are, like, thousands of rewards and contests. That's an impossibility." She says, "Well, they need to figure something out. It's discriminatory."

I nearly choked on my tongue I was trying so hard not to push it. Then there was the argument about a story we saw on the news. Reader's Digest version: an older woman's house went into foreclosure in February, she was ordered to be out by the end of August. August came, she left, and then repeatedly broke back into her home. Her reason? She didn't know what else to do. Finally, yesterday, police broke down her door and arrested her because she refused to leave.

Mom's take: That poor lady. So sad.

My take: Well, that sucks for her but she had six months to figure out what to do and where to go. I'm sure her mortgage-lenders could have pointed her in the right direction and if they didn't, she could have talked to the local housing authority or homeless shelters. They all have resources for people in her position. What stopped her?

Mom's response to that: A bunch of huffing and puffing about how old the woman was, how she maybe didn't know who to talk to, how upsetting it must have been.

My response to mom: In six months, she couldn't find one person to point her in the right direction? I'm sorry she's in this situation but it's her fault she didn't do something to secure a landing place in the six months they gave her.

Mom's response to me: I'm sorry to hear you say that and I'm sorry to see you thinking that way.

[Big, deep, calming breath and a slow count to ten to stop me from flipping my lid.]

STOP TRYING TO BLAME EVERYONE EXCEPT WHO'S ACTUALLY TO BLAME! It's not Coca-Cola's fault you don't have a computer and it's not their responsibility to ensure your participation in their online rewards program. It's not the police department's fault, nor is it her lender's fault, that the old lady in Oakland couldn't contact the local housing authority during her six-month grace period and that she was dumb enough to keep breaking and entering a house that was no longer hers. She was trespassing and she deserved to be arrested.

RAWR! I feel a little better. Thanks for asking. In other news, I decided to shut my yap - for a change - and graciously allow my stepmother-in-law to bring the pizzas. Can't hurt, right? Mom and I are making homemade mac 'n cheese with cornbread tonight. I haven't had homemade mac 'n cheese in YEARS. Yay!

Oh, and my son has a new word. He can say "cookie."

And that's all the news in Darcieland.

The Eagle Has Landed

She's here and so far, so good. No comments about my weight, our financial stupidity, or any decisions we've made, save for a few remarks on how she can't believe - and for which she gives us credit - we've stuck out California for over five years.

We did some shopping, got Chinese take-out, and have vegged all night watching TV. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

Welcome to my meltdown.

Stage 1: My weekend.

Saturday was intended to be the day we steam-cleaned the carpets. The original plan was to clean them right after breakfast and then go out grocery shopping and errand running the rest of the day to allow time for it to dry. What did we end up doing? Jack shit in the morning and an hour on the phone with AT&T's tech support trying to figure out why we can't establish an internet connection. Said phone call took me on a snoozefest journey of "ipconfig" on the DOS screen and switching cable ends to trying to find our LAN and it dropped us off at "Yeah, your ethernet card is fried." So we shuffled off to Fry's to buy a new one. Then we went to Hell-Mart Wal-Mart to get a few other things. Then we bought our anniversary dinner on the way home (Chinese take-out, we're classy, folks) and called it a day. So much for the carpet.

Sunday, we finally did clean the carpet. Right after breakfast. Husband picked up, I ran the cleaner. You might be saying, "Should he be doing this?" No. Why? He'll do a slapdash job. He's into getting un-fun things done as quickly as possible so he can watch the 49ers game efficiency and he wouldn't get the edges as meticulously as I would and he certainly wouldn't take that extra sweep over the wet stuff to suck up just a little bit more. So I run it and I'm happy about it. As for the results, well, I can't complain. I didn't pretreat with stain remover so all I was able to do was lift all the nasty dirt and pet dander and hopefully alleviate some of our allergy troubles for a few months, but that's fine by me. We don't exactly host dinner parties up here.

Then it was off to the grocery store where we threw a bunch of stuff into the cart, leaving me to have to go shopping again tomorrow because, again, he wanted to get home in time for the game. Admittedly, I'm not sure if he was trying to see the 49ers or the Raiders. I don't really pay attention. You see, if the Steelers aren't on, he'll try to watch the 49ers (he wants them to win) and the Raiders (he desperately, vehemently, savagely wants them to lose).

So what happens over the next 12 hours? My daughter drops the can of Diet Coke she's taking to my husband - it's closed and she's carrying it with both hands, she's such a good kid - and it slips out of her hands, hits the floor, and explodes. Okay, it didn't exactly explode, but it definitely sprung a leak and fizzed all over my fresh carpet. Grr.

This morning? The cat yaks up his breakfast on it. RAWRRRRRR. Why did I bother cleaning the carpet again?

Stage 2: The Eagle lands on Thursday. A bi-product of a 1950s childhood, raising little ones in the 1960s, divorcing and remarrying in the 1970s, being a working mom through the 80s and 90s, and still working through her late 60s and into her 70s because it's all she knows and wants to do. This woman has seen a lot and yet seen nothing. She's lived in western Pennsylvania for the majority of her life, save for about 15 years in south Florida. She's seen the Civil Rights movement, the Hippie movement, the modern feminist movement, and five wars. However, she watched it all go by while carving out her life in a once-booming-but-now-very-quiet little town and decided that that town was all she'd ever want or need. Occasionally, she'd say, "I've always wanted to see [insert far-off location here]. Oh well. Someday." But that day would never come and I think, after a while, it made her really bitter. So when Rob and I moved out here she made up her mind, I believe, that any place other than her hometown was just plain awful and completely uninhabitable.

Now that you have all that background information, you understand a little better why I'm a bit apprehensive about her visit. She knows I miss living back east. What she doesn't get, though, is that I don't mind it out here either. Were I to have to pick between the two, I'd pick Pennsylvania, but for now I'm content to live here. She takes that little grain of knowledge though and she browbeats me for the entire duration of her stay. This browbeating kinda makes me want to stay here a little more, that petulant teenager in me rearing its ugly head, simply out of spite.

Stage 3: Mom is that proverbial Suzy Homemaker. Her carpets were always clean, her table and countertops always wiped down, her plants watered and healthy, and her furniture without blemishes. You rarely saw any of my crap laying around because she was on my ass to put it away when I was done with it. She kept her lampshades dust-free, her picture frames all matching and perfectly arranged, and it always smelled of roast beef, some sort of casserole, or fresh laundry in her house. You know the type. They make the rest of us look bad. Real bad.

I'm attempting to clean the HELL out of my apartment to eliminate as much criticism as possible. I only have about 850 square feet to attack before Thursday morning but it's making me a bit panicky. I still have to mop the kitchen and bathroom, put a dent in our laundry pile, take down the "Condemned by Health Department" sign hanging on our bathroom door and disinfect it from top to bottom, and then attempt to clean the kid's room in the ten minutes before we leave for the airport so that it resembles something close to neat. If I do it any sooner than that, it'll look like a cyclone hit it before I walk out the bedroom door. Oh, and I need to dust everydamnthing. All before about 10:30 a.m. Thursday morning. The Eagle lands at 11:35 a.m. I have to haul a preschooler and a toddler strapped into a stroller through SFO and then keep them entertained until the Eagle gets off her plane and through the terminal. God help me if her flight's delayed.

So, welcome to my meltdown. This is Day One.

Five Weeks and Three Days Until Landfall

Or, About A Month From Now, The Perfect Storm Will Manifest When Mom Comes To Visit and We're Under the Same Roof Again for Twelve Days.

From the time I was 17 till my husband and I moved out when I was 23, it was just been me and mom. Mom and me. Two women, too much alike, sharing space. For those of you who aren't familiar with my family - or more specifically, my mom's family - my mom's family is FULL of hot-tempered women. Some are less obvious than others. But we're all very feisty, anger quickly, and can whip ourselves into a panties-twisted frenzy in 1.4 seconds. We take most flip comments way too personally and it ends up with us picking fights with whomever made that unfortunate comment. God help the complete stranger who says something out of turn and I catch wind of it. Some shmuck at the Kaiser pharmacy almost got an earful. Lucky for him, I didn't hear about what was said until we were leaving and he was long gone.

The women in my family, myself included, are not afraid to make a scene. Restaurants, banks, grocery stores, doctors offices...if we've been wronged, everybody within a 25-foot radius, as well as bystanders listening as we exit the building (because we're still bitching and mad as hell when we leave), knows about it.

So imagine two of these women living together, one constantly standing in judgment of the other. We fought like crazy. My poor husband bore witness to us calling each other "bitches," and as I stormed off was left standing there with my fuming mom looking at him as if to say, "What? You wanna say something?" We rarely agree on anything. We can't talk about my brother, politics, religion, how to prepare food, laundry (yes, laundry), childcare...the list is endless.

You know what she said to me right after I graduated from college? And by "right after," I mean, "...as we're walking out of the stadium and leaving after the ceremony." She did not say, "Congratulations, Darcie," or "I'm really proud of you, kiddo." She said, "So when are you going to start applying to graduate school?"

I wasn't planning on graduate school. Thanks, mom.

So, for the third time in 5.5 years, she's coming out to see us again. Every time she visits, we fight. It's like no time has passed, I haven't aged five years, and she's still in charge of me. She thinks she still has the ultimate influence over me and my decisions. She's actually encouraged me to make decisions regarding our children behind my husband's back! Oy.

I do look forward to my mom's visits, I really do. But a small part of me dreads it because I'm afraid I'm building up her visit to be much more pleasant than experience has taught me it will be. She's very hard on me, she judges and makes rude remarks, and always ends up hurting my feelings. I've tried calling her on it and it only helps in the short-term.

This isn't to say we don't have our laughs and enjoy each others company for the better part of the trip. We do. We reminisce a lot too, which I think she really enjoys as she gets older. Unfortunately, it only takes one remark or reaction from her to sour an otherwise pleasant day.

On the flip side, I can't wait to see her with my kids. When mom last saw Beth, Beth was only 15 months old. She was just learning to walk, had not yet spoken, and in my eyes, was still a baby. Now she's a little girl, 3.5 going on 13, filled with attitude, spunk, and a thirst for knowledge. Let's not forget the fact that she's a totally conversational, talkative, jabbering-like-a-monkey-in-a-tree KID. And of course, there's my son. Happy little guy, all kinds of entertaining.

Seeing her with them will make me wish she lived closer. To them. Not to me. Ha ha. We both agree we're better friends when we live apart. It makes peace easier to keep.

Good news!

She's fine. I called her again at 7:30 a.m., got her machine this time, and then called her at work. Found her! Turns out she was having problems with the phone and they just got it fixed this morning. Yay!

*phew!*

Please talk me down from the ledge

So my sister calls me last night and starts off the conversation with, "Well, the reason I'm calling, and I don't want to alarm you, but..."

Evidently, she had tried calling mom three times yesterday evening between 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. and mom never picked up. It's very unlike mom to not be home that late at night, especially if she has to work the next day. She's usually in bed by 9:00 p.m. or so.

However, her machine didn't pick up either, it just rang and rang. So I'm trying to sit on the optimistic side of things and say Well, maybe she turned the machine off, or even the ringer off, when she went to bed. Or the line came loose from the wall and her bedroom phone isn't ringing.

No matter how you slice it, I'm worried. She's almost 70, she had a cold the last time I spoke to her, and she's a transplant patient. Although she's sailed through having the transplant and has had ZERO problems with it, they did only give her an extra ten years with the new heart. This Christmas, it'll be seven.

So someone please reassure me that she's fine!! I'm not ready to go down that road.