Don’t expect any of this to make sense.  (HA! Like I had to warn you about THAT!) It was just whatever moved me to take a picture of whatever at the time.

Me at chiropractor right before she stretches me ON THE RACK. John took this.

Inside of purse while bored in waiting room... somewhere...

I need a dress to attend an afternoon wedding. OUTSIDE. IN JUNE.

Top two contenders. The one on the right won.

Wedding reception we were attending.

Our tiki bar at the wedding reception of our neighbor across the street.

Ladies from the neighborhood.

The happy couple, Rich and Pat.

And that’s enough about the wedding.

Next we have Henrietta after the SIL showed up early enough to get her out of bed and dressed and hauled into the chair and into the living room and I looked at her and damned if she didn’t dress her in a pink and white striped top and bright red pants.  It’s kinda hard to tell in the picture, cause I didn’t use a flash, but her pants are RED.  When I said, “Couldn’t you have found her something that matched?”  She said, “Oh! That’s good enough for Mom!”

So sweet.

While going to Kohl's the other day. Heh!

So is it going to rain or is this the apocalypse? This is while leaving Kohl's.

Keelan's snake, making himself comfortable.

Look! He's smiling for the camera!

Our new tiki bar. Isn't it cute? OK, but it was free. That's what I thought.

…and besides that, I went outside in the heat of the day and painted it with water sealant. It’s been getting around 95 and 96 degrees here every day and the humidity is hovering around 126%.

Yes I agree.  it is absolutely beautiful.

The cicadas are out and making a horrible racket and leaving these shells around all over the place.

There.  That wasn’t too terribly painful, was it?  OK! OK!  The good news is that my camera is clean and therefore my mind is too.
Yeah!  RIGHT!!!

Whatever.  My political corrected-ness doesn’t go too terribly far.  Ashamed for my “slander” of my SIL’s wetback boyfriend?  Not entirely.

OK, not really at all.

The afore mentioned wetback is a very nice guy and holds a job in a mechanics garage and really wants to get me alone without my husband around learn better English and pay taxes.

Yes, he does in fact stare at me and make me feel quite uncomfortable from time to time.  Even some of the other members of my family have noticed it.  Yet, he always wanders outside and finds something useful to do while the SIL is here.  Mow the lawn, clean out the garage, weedeat.  Whatever he can find.

So hell yeah, I tolerate leering!  I have told John more than once that if he wants to, try out polygamy,  have a three way, or just a girlfriend, it’s fine with me as long as the other chick cleans house.  And I mean good!  Not like I do.

Yeah.  I can be loose and uber cool.

Until I don’t want to.  And that’s? the tricky part.

I am sure everyone out there realizes that Sunday, May 10 was Mother’s Day.  Well, Saturday, May 9 was my birthday.  I am now 46 years old people.

Stop looking so smug.  I know I’m older than you.

So this is what happens at chez Lopez.  I am waited on hand and foot for my birthday, showered with gifts and treated like a queen.  Taken out to eat and pampered.  Hauled in the loot like you wouldn’t believe.  My family rocks.

THEN! The next day, Mother’s Day, a repeat performance.  For two days I only had to get H on and off the bedpan and diapered.   The SIL even came and stayed with her so we could all go out and eat together.  We didn’t get back until after 10:30pm and Kes got here a few minutes before John and I did.  John and I walked in the door and there was Henrietta sitting in her wheelchair in the living room.

The SIL left as soon as Kes walked in the door ahead of us by maybe three or four minutes.

SHE DIDN’T EVEN PUT HER IN BED!  We fed her before we left, (long before), and SIL just plopped her happy ass down and watched TV and didn’t even put her in bed or give her her pills or change her into a nightgown or change her nappy or anything.  I was pissed.  Not to mention tired after being pampered all day and then overstuffing myself on overpriced Italian food.  That can wear a girl out.

Now.  Down to the really, really serious matter at hand here.  I am looking for someone to sponsor me in a program for an addiction I have acquired this past weekend.  This sponsor wouldn’t need to have the exact same problem as me…  Perhaps someone out there started out just occasionally using, ooooh, I dunno, M&M’s.  Or, has been seen in line at Baskin Robbins a few too many times.

I’m not judging.  But when you find that you have fallen and fallen hard into a life where you have become totally dependent on bon bons to get you through your day, THEN you can judge me.

My bon bon addiction combined with my lack of motivation to move back into my regular life of being taken for granted, used and abused, coupled with the realization that I was making a HAUL on gifts there for a couple of days and like any toddler, DON’T WANT IT TO END, just HAS to be the reason I woke up today with nausea and actually REGURGITATED.  This? is monumental.  I cannot remember the last time I threw up.  I have a cast iron stomach and a similar constitution.  My family looked at me like I might be gonna die.  I must say this was disheartening.  I told them all where to go and crawled back in bed.  I got up long enough to feed H breakfast and she very sweetly insisted on staying in bed today so I wouldn’t have to breathe in her face haul her in and out of the wheelchair and get her dressed and all that shit.

So today, I blew “it” all off again.  Life in general.  No laundry got done.  I didn’t clean the kitchen, I didn’t cook supper.  It was all magically done by the little elves that run around here on magical days like May 9th and Mother’s Day and freaky puke days. Well, the laundry didn’t get done but if I have calculated correctly, at least three of us run out of underwear tomorrow.  (huh…better not be me…)

Next year Mother’s Day and my birthday are one and the same.  This happens every seven years or so.  Not THAT big a deal.  And I know what you’re thinking.  No.  I absolutely do not get shortchanged on gifts on these occasions.  I don’t think I would stand for that if it was ever attempted.  My loves know this.

I have been watching Craig Ferguson as I, er, composed this.  It is now 12:59 and I am about to throw it out to the blogosphere and see if it doesn’t get thrown back in my face.  Regurgitated, if you will.

Have I mentioned how I loathe Vista?  I do.  We are getting an Apple sometime in the near future and all I have to do is find a way to finance it….  Hum.  I have children I could sell.  They are 18 and 19 now, but really, if I list them as “slightly used”, won’t that cover my butt?

Anyway, as I was saying before I got all sidetracked, H had a birthday with a beautiful cake I made and Kes iced for me and presents and whatnot.  She had a grand time.  Only her daughter never showed up or called.  So about half way through the day, I’m figuring she may have forgotten and I started trying to call her.  I left messages and never heard back from her.  John did the same from work.

The next day, Thursday, she showed up with the most gawd-awful looking pot of almost completely finished blooming tulips.  Some of them were lying over the side of the pot.    She said she hadn’t called the day before because she was out of minutes on her cell phone and she never gave any idea about why she didn’t come.

She doesn’t own a car, but drives a 14 year old piece of junk Accord that belongs to her boyfriend.  And I DO mean junk.  Rust showing through, no A/C, dings and dents everywhere.  Ugly as sin.  She always parks right in the middle at the end of the sidewalk.  We always make a point not to park there because it is directly across the street from my neighbors driveway.  It’s the elderly couple with the red door that I have posted about before.  They are very sweet and terrific neighbors.  It just makes good sense to not park right where someone has to back out.  You know, the courteous thing to do.

We should have told her not to do it too.  The man that lives there was backing out and hit that piece of junk and dented the front quarter panel.  So he rang the bell and asked me if he could talk to me and I went out and he showed me the dent and said that they were going some place right then and just tell SIL they’d be back in a little while.

So SIL called her boyfriend and told him.

Here’s where I get politically incorrect.

He’s a wet back an illegal alien.

Of course he wanted the insurance info.  **Sigh.**

She stayed here longer than usual visiting with her mother that day so that she could go and talk to my neighbor.  That’s the only good that came out of this.  He gave her his phone number and asked her to call him when she got an estimate.

That was all on Thursday and Friday SIL was calling saying that she’d talked to him and he’s supposed to be bringing a check over.

For $244.00.

To fix body damage on a car.

Yeah,  right.

John was appalled at the whole thing of course and we are both embarrassed.  So when the neighbor came over with the check, he talked to him and apologized.  When the guy left John told me that he’s going to tell his sister that he brought the check but needs a copy of the estimate for his records. He didn’t believe for one minute that $244.00 was going to fix that car either.  And, he and I both know the car will never get fixed.  It will just be an embarrassing reminder every time she comes over here of what happened and how she extorted money from our retired, on a fixed income, neighbors.

She came back on Saturday earlier than she has been here in many, many months, (1:15), and while I was surprised to see her that early, I wasn’t.  My first thought was “OK, at least she’s in time to change her mother’s diaper this time.”.

She stayed 10 to 15 minutes and left.

H promptly rang the bell to be put on the bedpan.

This is my life.

The copy of the estimate she brought looks legit enough.  It’s barely legible, but has the name of the garage stamped on it.   So… whatever!

That’s how weird his employer’s are.  This is a huge national chain that, for the most part has all their stores staying open 24/7.  They close at 4:00pm on Thanksgiving day and are closed on Christmas day.

And that’s it.

They apparently don’t remember what it’s like to just close every night like regular folk do and are completely freaked out paranoid at the thought of any of their stores being left uninhabited for an entire day and night.  So all the stores have to have a manager go up there twice during the day of Christmas and walk through the entire thing, checking all the coolers to see if for some bizarre reason they have stopped working and go through all the bathrooms and backrooms and storage closets and walk-in freezers and coolers and behind all the counters of this 88,000 sq. ft. store looking for… I don’t know what.  It’s ridiculous.

Did I mention they’re paranoid?

He’s gotten it all back in shape by now and he’s off tomorrow, so… YEAAA!

Yesterday was a success.  I decided that I was scaling back a lot and not breaking out every single specialty  Kes and I could whip out.  Turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, rolls, pumpkin pie (1), dressing, gravy, and I think that’s it. It was bare minimum.

On Christmas Eve I finally heard from SIL late in the day and I asked her to bring the green vegetables.  She told me that H had asked her to make a roast the day before and she was going to bring that, too.

OK, fine.

She showed up and had a piece of meat that she later admitted having got at some Mexican meat market and she had no idea what cut it was, but it was NOT a roast.  Tough. As. Shoe. Leather.

She also just said, “I didn’t bring the vegetables.”

That was the only thing I asked her for.

We had her, and her “friend” that she didn’t tell me was coming, her 4 grown kids, along with one of the kids boyfriend, (also didn’t know was coming), and her two grandkids.   So an extra 11 people for supper.

It was interesting.

Anyway, things went along fairly well and it was all over almost as soon as it had begun.  The two nieces of John’s that have 5 and 6 kids a piece didn’t call or show, (thank you God), so it could have been much worse and much more crowded.

Last night we were taking bets on how the “roast” was going to affect H’s “delicate digestive system”.  She went with indigestion and saying that “…it was that roast…it was greasy… she should have boiled it longer.”  There was nothing greasy about that dried up hunk of ass meat.  But I won’t be telling Henrietta that.   Some nasty stuff, that.

I was sitting in here doing bloggy stuff and I realized that she was running the water in the tub in the guest bath.

Well, this is odd.

Normally, you just go in and dump the, ahem, contents of the bedpan into the potty and run water in it from the sink and dump again and wipe out whatever… stuck, with a bit of toilet paper.  You also dump the plastic, Folger’s coffee can full of urine from the catheter bag into the potty, fill with water and repeat.  All of this while wearing latex gloves and then following up behind yourself spraying the facet handles and bedpan handles and coffee can handles with spray bleach.  Not to mention the interior of the receptacles.

Well, cuorisity got the better of me when I heard her spraying something over and over and the bathtub running.

Crap, the only thing in there that sprays right now is the spray bleach and last time she used it she ruined the bathmats… somehow, both of them.

So I go in there and she has the toilet brush in one hand and the urine bucket in the other and she is “cleaning” the thing out and dumping the contents into the bathtub.

“Millie!  You don’t do that in the bathtub!”

“Oh, I didn’t dump the pee in there!”  As she sticks the toilet brush under the tap.

I just left.  It really doesn’t matter at this point what I say, cause it all has to be cleaned anyway.  People really do bathe in that tub.

Does anyone want to come and visit me?

I would like to report that on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, my SIL called me and said that she had gotten the ham she had agreed to bring and it was a nice big spiral cut.  She made a point of saying that it was already cooked and mentioned it a couple of times.  Ok, great.  I’ve gotten spiral cut hams before and yes, that’s the way they come.  Cooked.

I guess I wasn’t too worried since I was doing a huge turkey and I was sure there was going to be enough for everyone.

The following morning, Thanksgiving Day, she called to say that she was going to bring it over to my house to heat up.  OK, fine.  She then told me that she was going over to her ex-husbands house for a meal at noon with her kids since we were going to eat in the evening when John got home.  I told her to be sure and bring a pan to heat the ham in since all my sheet cake pans were being used for cakes and casseroles and what not.  She said she’d buy one and I told her not to bother, I’d wash it, just use a pan from her house.  She told me that she doesn’t own a sheet cake pan, or any other pan other than a skillet and pot.

She is 55 years old.  How can this be?

It gets better.  I asked her what time she was coming over and she indicated not until shortly before we were going to eat.  I told her the ham would have to heat for longer than that and asked her to read the directions on it.  She insisted that the ham only needed about 20 minutes to heat and went over to it and told me it was 10 lbs, would only require about 20 minutes to heat.

I said “Millie, read the directions to me.”

Millie: deep sigh, “Heat for 15 minutes per pound…  hum…”

“That’s two and a half hours, Millie.”

She said she’d take care of it and I assumed she was going to heat it at her ex-husband’s house, at least partially.  No.  She showed up with a cold ham and we hacked off a bunch of slices, put them in the microwave with a little bit of water and heated them up.  It worked out fine, but, man! how could anyone grow to be 55 years old and know so little about something so simple?

And the question of the day is, what made her so sure it only took 20 minutes to heat the ten pound ham?