2004-12-29 - 6:05 p.m.

my house is infested

Infested, I tell you. With in-laws and rodents. Well, in-laws and rodent. No no no, you're not accidentally reading a couple of past entries smushed together. But this is rehashing the same old thing. So - judge how bored you are, and read on accordingly.

My in-laws didn't come while I was gone. I got back late Monday night and they arrived Tuesday morning. Had anyone cared enough to bother to ASK my husband or me whether this was a good time for visitors, we would have said NO. They don’t care. So they get whatever behavior they get from me.

Same for the mouse, by the way. I know it's winter. I know it's cold. But all the rest of the vast hordes of mice in New England found some other place to go than my house. So since it didn't ask, it gets what it gets.

I'm so tired. I got maybe 2 hours of not very restful sleep last night. Turns out it's hard to sleep when a cat is chasing a mouse underneath your bed. Who knew. Up until now I had convinced myself, however irrationally, that mice couldn't come upstairs. There's another illusion dashed.

Late last night, after everyone else was in bed, I heard Thump. Thump. Myow. Thump. Thump. Thumpthumpthumpthumpthump Myooooow Myow. I went to see if the cat was okay, and she was at the top of the stairs, facing into our bedroom. I went up, and there she was staring down a little mouse, who looked terrified, and saw me and was like, oh shit, now I have people trouble on top of everything. The only thing I could think of to do was try and get something to capture it, so I ran back downstairs and got a big plastic bowl. I came back up, and if the thing had sat still for just a few more seconds, I would have scooped it up and tossed it outside. But about the time I got there, I think the cat knew I was going to take away her toy, so she rushed it, and it ran under the bed.

Greeeeeeeeat.

My only hope is that either my mother in law is so freaked out by the prospect of a mouse (I certainly hope my husband told them this morning; they were in hiding and avoided me completely) that they leave, or at least that the mouse terrorizes her today.

At the very least, it'll give the cat something else to think about today, and maybe she won't freak out so much about the fact that there are strange people in her house, and they've locked her out of her room.

Tonight the plan is to get Chinese take-out (unless pre-empted by mouse freak-out, which, I won't be so lucky) so I guess I have to eat dinner with everyone and be pleasant. I was not pleasant last night. I was not in the mood for company and particularly not for them.

I walked in the door, and was greeted by the cat, freaking out, screaming at me. Her: "They're here!" Me: "I know." "They're in my room!" "I know." "They won't let me in!" "I know." "They're driving me crazy!" "Me too." "They don't like me!" "Me either." "I didn't know they were coming!" "I told you this morning." 'You did not!" "Yes, I did." "Did not!" "Yes, I did." "I don’t like them!" "I know." "I want them to leave!" "I know."

Okay, so her part really went "reowr!" "reowr!" "reowr!" But I know what she meant. I let her walk around my shoulders for a few minutes, chewing on my hair, then I held her for about ten minutes and rubbed her face, while we had that conversation several times over. She's funny. The more I rubbed, the more relaxed she got, but she never stopped complaining for a second. She never wants to be held for that long. She was stressed. I should make my inlaws pay for her Kitty Prozac.

Or mine.

During that whole time, plus the time I spent putting away my groceries, my mother-in-law kept glancing over from the living room couch. I kept pretending not to notice. Sorry. I never said I was nice. In fact, what am I? Everybody! "A BITCH!" That's right.

Okay, just a quick survey here. If you are well aware that your spouse and your mother do NOT get along, and your spouse has just come in from work, and your mother is in the living room where your spouse cannot avoid her, do you: A) get off your ass and go greet your spouse at the door so he/she doesn't have to confront your mother alone and repeat the usual negative pattern? B) sit tight, knowing you have already spoken to your mother and told her in no uncertain terms that this time she is not to pull that exact same shit she always pulls, starting the entire visit off on the sourest of sour notes? Or C) do nothing, figuring your spouse is an adult and can handle the situation himself/herself? What do you mean, C? Well, you people can all bite me too, then. A little support would be nice!

So finally when I have to choose between crawling into the kitchen cabinets and living there for the rest of the evening or facing the mother in law, I walk into the living room and say hello. "Oh!" she faux-startles. "I was asleep, I didn't know you were home."

"Liar." Subvocalized and extremely far under my breath. She didn't hear me. I don’t get a full demerit point for that.

I ask how her trip was. She blows me off and says, "Let me look at you." "Here I am," is my smart-ass answer. "Oh, no, turn around and let me look at how beaaaauuuuutiful you are," she says, following her general script. I rolled my eyes big time. Come on. You'd roll your eyes if your OWN mother said that. But at least if it were my mother saying it, it would be someone who liked me. So I turned around. And walked out of the room away from her. Hopefully she got to see whatever beeauuuuuty she wanted to see as I was walking away. I'm sorry, based on past experience, I had to leave before she proclaimed me "skinny," at which point "liar" would pretty much have been unstoppable at full volume.

She follows me. She picks up my hair off my shoulders. Which I HATE. She says her line: "Oh, you cut it again, it's shorter." I morph into Attitude Woman (which admittedly, wasn't much of a change from Bitch Chick). I sigh loudly and say, in the kind of tone that gets you Spoken To when you're a kid, "NO, it's the SAME LENGTH it's ALways BEEN." She begins to babble about something, and I ignore her and say hello to her husband. Pleasant person and I'd like to feel sorry for him being caught in my nuclear bitch fallout, but I really can't. He brings her. I say hello to my husband. He says hi and doesn't look up. Fine. You just put in a formal request for an evening of BitchWife.

Which, me being the passive-aggressive person I am, means I took my bag and went upstairs and went to bed. If I were a drinking person, I'd have drunk myself unconcscious. Since I'm not, going to sleep is the only painless way I have to do it. Turns out it's a good thing I got that hour nap (see above mouse-themed paragraphs).

After an hour my husband came up to see if I was coming down for dinner, or indeed for the rest of my life, although to his credit he only asked the first question. I honestly had no appetite at the thought of eating dinner with them. Hey, the irrational hatred diet. I think there's a best-selling book there. So I told him no. He said he was going to make dinner and if I wanted to come down that would be nice. I said something in the neighborhood of "mm." Possible scenarios I can expect if I come downstairs: Eating with three people in uncomfortable silence; eating with three people who are all speaking to each other in a language I don't speak; eating with three people, one of whom is speaking broken English for the sole purpose of preaching, lecturing and attemped guilt-inducement of the others; eating with three people, with some English preach-lecture-guilting thrown in here and there, culminating in a loud, foreign language argument; or sitting upstairs in my bedroom with a cat who is as indignant about being chased out of her living space against her will as I am, watching television until the evil ones go to bed and we can sneak back downstairs.

Guess which I did.

When I finally came downstairs at about 10:30, my husband said, "Hello, sleeping beauty." Yeah, nice try, but too little too late, bud.

Anyway, now that my husband is reminded just how insane this woman makes me, I guess I'll try to be semi-pleasant and semi-social tonight. I'll try and support him, because she makes him even more crazy, but I need some help too.

When I left this morning, I told the cat to catch the mouse for me today. However, I'm currently fantasizing about coming home and finding the mouse kicked back watching TV, with its feet on the furniture, and my mother in law trapped in a corner by the cat. Is that wrong? I believe in humane disposal. I'd just scoop her up and toss her outside. Promise.

my mood -

the mood of the whole world wide bleepin' web -