We Interrupt November to Bring You My Annual Pre-Holiday FUNK.

Doesn't the look on my face say it all? Don't worry, this isn't the picture we're sending out this year. We were just experimenting with where to set up the camera. But Tito still stuck his tongue out. Charming.

Wow, I didn't realize it had been so long since I last posted. Sorry, PennyLuvvahs.

Ok, so the last thing I wrote about was Dollar Burgers on my anniversary. The days following that event were spent scrubbing the old house from top to bottom. It took forever. It was exhausting. I would drop Tito off at 9, then I'd take Pie over to the old house and he'd watch me clean for about two and a half hours, then I'd pick Tito up and we'd all go back to the new house for lunch, drop Pie off at Kindergarten, take Tito over to the old house and clean for another two and a half hours, come back home and wait at the bus stop for Beebie and Pie, then make dinner and wait for R to come home, whereupon I'd get the kids bathed and jammified, and head back over to clean for another hour or two while R and the kids watched TV. Then I'd come home tired and bitter, only to be greeted by a sinkful of dirty dishes.

And R and I differed greatly on how to move stuff from the old house to the new. I thought it would make more sense for him to let me go through the countless piles of crap to see what we wanted to keep and what we wanted to pitch. He decided to move it all and organize it later, the logic being that once we get it out of the old place we can take all the time we want to deal with it at the new place.

See, "deal with it" basically means I have to find time in my day to open up some randomly-packed box of shit and figure out where the individual items therein should go. Nobody helps. Oh, they act like they want to help, but what it boils down to is someone yelling MOM??? WHERE DO YOU WANT TO PUT THIS THING??? and I might as well do it all myself. Like I have time. Or, best case scenario, someone will help by taking the entire box to the basement, which is the dumping ground for everything, and it will be years before I get around to dealing with that.

Anyway, so after I spent about six days cleaning the old house, I got to drive forty miles round trip to drop off the stupid keys. Remember the camp I drove Pie to last summer? The Evilite P.O. Box is out there. And while for a brief moment I waxed mildly nostalgic as I handed over the keys to the house where I potty-trained my two sons, where Buddy The Wonder Fish is buried, where the kids went sledding with socks on their hands, where we watched fireworks in the front yard and where I first learned to knit.

Then, within the same thought, I remembered the FIVE DAYS that we lived without electricity and what a total fucking idiot that stupid Evilite bitch was every single time I tried to contact her, and Evilite's complete lack of any sort of Basic Customer Service Skillz. And I gave the keys back with an uplifted heart and a secret wish that the Evilite bitch would somehow choke on them, right after she refunds our deposit, of course.

I'm reasonably confident that we'll get a good chunk of it back, as we saw that our old house was posted on their website (which I would really rather not link you to, because I don't want them to enjoy any free publicity - even negative - from me) two days after we gave them the keys back, and they were asking $100 more than what we paid at the beginning of our lease. So somehow, we added value to the house. We better fuckin get all of our $950 deposit back, that's all I gotta say, cuz otherwise we're livin' on about $50 until the 7th, and I'm almost out of meds. God help us all. Oh, and my parents are coming to stay with us for Christmas, by the way.

Ok, so now that I have washed my hands completely of the old house, I can focus all of my time and energy working on the new house. And doing laundry. And cooking. And shuttling apes around. And working on my holiday knitting. Oh, that reminds me, I made something. You know how Necessity is the Mother of Invention? Our TV remote kept falling behind the head of the bed, and it was pissing me off, so I made this goofy little pouch that buttons around the headboard so I can always know where the remote is! It's a little ghetto, sure, but who cares?



And while the house was clean, Beebie had a friend over to spend the night for the very first time in her life. And it went great. The boys had a campout in R's and my room, and the girls actually managed to be quiet and get to sleep before midnight. We ordered pizza for dinner - even ate it at the dining room table I got for free on Craigslist - and had donuts for breakfast and rented Love Comes Softly. It was a lot of fun.

Craigslist has been good to me recently. I've bought some Christmas presents and sold several items we no longer needed, which has allowed me to keep food on the table and gas in the van. I've got about ten items listed on there now. Not selling any yarn, though. I figure if we ever lose the house, I'll need it to knit a blanket big enough for all five of us to huddle together under a highway bridge.

But anyway, you know I need to discuss Thanksgiving. I made my famous Pumpkin Cheesecake and Chocolate Caramel Brownies, both of which were well-received. We had the traditional Thanksgiving fare - quite excellent, as always - and then the kids wanted to play with MIL and FIL's Nintendo Wii. The Aldis were also in attendance. Aldigirl was SO OBNOXIOUS I was ready to kick her buck teeth right down her throat. She kept doing this ghastly fake laugh that sounded exactly like a donkey. And Aldiboy, who is 2, was all over the fuckin place.

My kids, by comparison, were absolute angels. Still, we all know that FIL likes to stir shit up just for the sake of it, so at one point when Tito got a little bored waiting for his turn to bowl on the Wii, he was behaving in a slightly rambunctious but completely age-appropriate manner, FIL said,

Good Lord, Sarah, what did you feed that kid for breakfast??!!?

You know how sometimes you have a split second to debate whether or not you want to say the first thing that comes to your mind? I don't even remember consciously conjuring up the answer to FIL's question. I don't know how the words I said got into my brain. I know I didn't take the time to process the actual correct answer because it would have taken me a minute to remember anyway - probably Fruit Loops or something - I totally made it up extemporaneously.

I swear to God I have no clue where the answer Pixy Stix and Crack, FIL...I fed my four-year-old Pixy Stix and Crack... came from, but I heard myself say it out loud before I'd even felt the words sneak past my gritted teeth and curled upper lip. It was so incredbily satisfying, I think I'm just going to shut off my FILter from now on. I should probably be glad that Why the Fuck would even you ask me such a fuckin stupid question, you Fuggin Jaggoff? didn't slip out accidentally.

I wasn't going to go out on Black Friday - I didn't see anything I really wanted and we didn't have a whole lot of cash to get through the next two weeks, but Thanksgiving morning was cold and rainy and I told Beebie to put a coat on and she finally admitted that her jacket was too small. It's been in the 30's in the mornings, so I'd tell Beeb to put her coat on when she went to the bus stop, and she'd just flat out refuse, and now I know why. Why do kids never tell you that their clothes don't fit? Either she was afraid I'd be angry that I'd just bought that jacket and she'd worn it all but twice, or maybe she's sensitive about her weight or something. Incidentally, the jacket's for sale on Craigslist now, if you're interested.

But anyway, I got a newspaper and saw that JCPenney was going to have winter coats 60% off, so I told her that she was getting up with me and coming along so she can try on the coats with a sweatshirt underneath so we'd know for sure that it fit. So I woke up at 3:15am (without any alarm or anything), got to Penney's at about 3:45, found Beeb a coat and a Christmas dress, had breakfast at White Castle (which I do NOT recommend) and got home by 5am, before R even knew I was gone.

You guys know I love that man like crazy. I hardly ever complain about R. But today, kids, I must.

My sleep problems have been well-documented over the last two years, yes? Well recently, R's been experiencing some sleep issues of his own. Remember how he got his prostate exam on our anniversary? He'd had some strange lower-abdominal pain off and on for several weeks, and it turned out he had Prostatitis, an infection of the prostate gland. He was given two rounds of antibiotics, and it's gotten better, but it's still not all the way gone, and it sometimes wakes him up at night.

There are fundamental differences between Insomniac R and Insomniac Me. When I wake up in the night, I'll turn the TV to some PBS documentary and I'll keep it reeeeeeally quiet and read the captions, so as not to wake him. R turns it up to regular volume, which of course wakes me up, and then he flips through the channels a billion times. And he also does this thing where he'll tap the pillow or the headboard with his fingertips in frustration (which I can hear), or kick the bed, or let out this huge, hideous, theatrical, stage sigh of exasperation.

And then he'll roll over in angst and yank the covers off of me until I have a little bitty corner left. And then he'll yank that off me too. And remember how we're in a King Size Bed? I could be alllllll the way over on the edge of my side with half of my butt cheek hanging off the side, and the man's feet STILL touch mine. I hate people's feet touching me. Even then, I say nothing. I pretend that I'm sleeping, thinking that just MAYBE if he thinks I'm sleeping, he'll try not to make so much fucking noise. But no. Perhaps it's time to try a new tactic. If he wasn't already in pain, I'd kick him in the balls.

This morning he got up at about 5am and went out of the room. I had no idea where he was going, but I hoped it wasn't the living room to play Xbox, because he usually plays games with lots of shooting and loud explosions. What do I do when I can't sleep? I KNIT. So anyway, a minute later he comes back in bed - with food. Does he eat eggs or oatmeal or yogurt or something quiet? No. CAP'N FUCK'N CRUNCH.

Asshole.

And THEN - about ten minutes later - while the TV was still on, I heard him snoring. SNORING. Like something you'd see in a cartoon - like the trees bent in the direction of his inhales and exhales. So if by some crazy chance I could have slept through the volume on the TV, I could never have slept through R sawing logs. I woke up with an aching jaw from laying there clenching my teeth for three hours, and I was actually quite happy to shake him as hard as I could when the alarm went off at 7am.

And I went back to sleep.

Until I rolled over and found a piece of Cap'n Fuck'n Crunch in the sheets.