WHO SAID MOVING WAS FUN?

Gawd. Whatta weekend.

Let's see how quickly I can get this done because the wife has laid down a new rule ... if the house is on the market and every minute should be spent getting ready for the house to BE on the market ... then I shouldn't be wasting 45-60 of those minutes writing this each morning. I could be cleaning out a bookcase or a kitchen cupboard or scraping the shit off the fur around my dog's ass.

Something. Anything.

So in the next few months, there may be days when I don't update this beeyotch like you've come to expect from me. Just relax in the fact that I'm not dead. Then again, I might be. All this strenuous activity around the house may end up moidering my ass.

Let's see...the weekend ....

After I left you dear, handsome folk on Saturday morning, I went and jumped on our bed, waking the wife machine up and announced that it was a bee-yoo-tiful day and we needed to go straighten up the workshop out back in order to squeeze more stuff in there.

She tried to strangle me to the best of her abilities, but she was doing it telepathically and ... I'll be honest...it's getting harder and harder to strangle me telepathically these days.

So we rouse Baby Boy Andrew up, who's fussier than Willard Scott with a jock full of bumblebees and we go outside to the workshop.

I started taking things outside ... lawn furniture, bicycles, boxes, etc. while Susie sat on a box and did her patented Stare Into Space(TM) routine.

I'm a morning person. She is not.

Nosy Assed Neighbor came outside in her bathrobe to see why her dogs were barking nonstop. This is nothing new. She has the two most neurotic dogs I've ever met. They bark at everything. If nothing's going on, they'll bark at the grass or clouds. On the one hand, it's good because nobody would ever attempt to break into one of our homes because these dogs would bark non-stop. On the other hand, it's bad because I cannot get these fantasies of taking a rifle and shooting them both point blank in the throats out of my head.

So she comes out and I ask Susie "You wanna tell her we're moving?"

Susie says "I guess we should."

So we walk over there with this attitude of "You might want to sit down for this. With a heavy heart, we must tell you that....we're moving."

So Susie tells her as I stand there, barely suppressing the glee inside of me that Nosy Assed Neighbor is going to have to start being nosy with someone else.

Nosy Assed Neighbor barely flinched. She asked about the new house and said she was never going to move because her house was paid for, blah blah blah.

I distinctly remember a few years ago when she told us (in a joking manner) that we could NEVER move because she liked us too much.

Now she's practically wanting to help us box everything up.

I'm thinking that we've become such a boring family since Andrew was born that we're no longer worthy nosy material.

Back when I was smoking pot and had shady characters coming over, she had sold her television and moved her binoculars and refrigerator right beside her window so she could sit and monitor everything going on in our house.

Now it's just "Don't let the door hit you in the ass."

Gee thanks, Nosy Assed Neighbor. Sorry we're the epitome of boring now. Maybe I'll go out and find a teenage mistress to spark up your life again.

Yeah. At least I'd have a good reason for it. "Hi honey, meet Candy. I'm humping her so Nosy Assed Neighbor can have something worth living for!" Works for me.

So she goes back inside her house and about ten minutes later, the curiosity gets the better of her so she comes back outside and wants to know more about why we're moving.

A) We've outgrown the house. We found out that we have 1,476 square feet in this house. That's an okay size for some people...but not us. We outgrew this house in the 80s and have just been too lazy to sell it.

B) And there's just something about sitting in the back of the house, watching television and the house beginning to shake because the gang member four doors down is coming home from his job of killing people and he has the urge to listen to DJ Nasty Rulah Funkmaster Murder Man at a level that has planes dropping out of the sky and exploding.

In our new neighborhood, loud music in cars is banned. There is none. The only annoying sound you hear out there is crickets. Literally. Crickets day and night. I can live with crickets. Not ... you know...in my house. But they can chirp all they want in the woods out back. No complaints from me. When it comes right down to it, I'm trading in gang members with no respect for their neighbors (yet constantly pissed off because nobody else shows them "respect" ... turn down the damned music and maybe you'd hear us praise you once or twice, Pooh Boy. I sincerely doubt it, but it'd be worth a try) and those damned dogs next door who bark nonstop at the pollen in the air.

So she NOW wants to talk and occupy our time. We told her we had a full day of getting things done, but she wouldn't shut up.

Susie talked to her for an hour and 15 minutes until Nosy Assed Neighbor had enough information from us to give to the Russians or whatever the hell it is she does and went back inside.

Susie announced she was "tired" because Nosy Assed Neighbor had worn her down, giving her the third degree. So she went inside to sit down for a few minutes.

I continued working in the shed, stacking case after case of Barbies and Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer dolls (I wonder if I could give an MC Hammer doll to the gang member in a trade for just one day when he didn't cruise up and down the street, sharing his Wu-Tang Clan collection with us?). Finally, I had made a big enough space where I thought we could start storing more boxes in and went inside.

Susie and Andrew were passed out on the couch. So I took the lawn mower in for its annual tune-up, came home and they were still asleep.

I took a shower.

Still asleep.

"Honey," I said. "Do you want me to put Andrew in his crib so you can shower and go to H&R Block to get out taxes done?"

"Fine!" she snapped. Apparently she was having a dream where I was bitching at her or something.

So she showered and went to the tax place and came home to announce that we're getting $2,100 back in taxes.

We did a "Yippee" dance which woke the kid up out of his self-imposed coma and decided to celebrate by going out to our new neighborhood and shooting video of our lot and the model home.

As soon as we turned on the street, from a distance I saw some skinny bastard in a ballcap walking around a car and getting ready to walk in the model home.

"Like THAT redneck can afford to live out here," I sneered in my new "Better than thou" voice because we were finally living in a nice, respectable neighborhood.

As it turned out, that skinny redneck was Edweird who may be skinny, but he's a northern boy like myself and is hardly a redneck, even though he was dazzling in his redneck costume.

So he and his live-in lover Ramona toured the model home with us, then we walked around the neighborhood, just soaking in the quiet and the massive amounts of dirt that building a new neighborhood requires.

We met our neighbor from across the street. Her name is Paula. I don't think I'm going to say anything bad about her here because I may get drunk one night at a neighborhood party and blurt out that I have a diary on the internet and give out the address and since she's a stay at home mom, she'll read every single entry that I've ever written and eventually stumble across this entry where I almost said something bad about her.

She seems a whole lot more friendly than Nosy Assed Neighbor...let's put it that way.

Not in a whorey "Better watch your back lady or I'll hump your husband" friendly way.

Just ... friendly.

She also has a little girl exactly a year older than Andrew. Which is kinda cool because maybe someday they can play doctor and Andrew can get him some girl next door tail from an older woman that will start him on his road to Studleyville.

We hung out and talked to the girl in charge of sitting in the model home that day and staring at the walls. She recognized me from somewhere and finally said that she used to work at the local Fox TV station ... the same one that I had a morning show on several years ago called "Focus".

"I used to be one of the co-hosts on 'Focus'," I grinned while scanning the room looking for a Sharpie to autograph her breast with since chicks really dig guys with really bad morning TV shows at 5 a.m. that are followed by the Farm Report and are constantly wanting to share their boobage with us.

"Never saw it," she said. "I think I used to see you at press conferences."

"Yeah, that's probably it," I sighed, ending my search for a Sharpie.

We left there after Andrew hit his teething mouth on the corner of a book (don't ask...it's hard to explain). He was getting pretty loud and so we hauled ass before we drove this girl insane.

Came home, grilled some steaks and baked potatoes and watched "Trading Spaces" while we boxed stuff up.

Sunday...damn...I'm just now getting to Sunday?

Errr...Sunday we both got up at 5 a.m. and boxed more stuff up until 5:30 when we offically ran out of boxes.

Now our home is in shambles. It is without a doubt the messier that it's ever been. Our sectional sofa is in sections all over the den. Andrew's toys are taking up every inch of floor space. Boxes everywhere. Dog fur where there isn't any boxes. I looked at it last night and it was depressing until Susie reminded me that the reason it was such a mess is because we were getting ready to move into a home that's twice the size of this one where everything will have a place.

That made me feel better.

Went to church where I had trouble focusing on the sermon, so I just went over our blueprints of the new house, making decisions in my head of new things I wanted done to it.

Went to Service Merchandise after church since they're only open for one more week and they had tons of patio furniture at 50% off.

Of course, they've jacked the price of the furniture up to 200% its original value so you're still not saving anything.

We came close to buying a whole new bunch of furniture until I told Susie that I wanted to look around at other stores and find something that I truly WANTED and not buy something just because a store is going out of business.

Susie was shocked that I was actually the voice of reason in this instance and nearly wet herself.

So we left there and went to Burger King for a quick bite to eat. Andrew was so tired he passed out in his high chair which was kinda cute because he was quietly fighting the nap but it finally overtook him and he slumped over into a faceful of open faced hamburger.

Came home, I laid him down, Susie went back to church and I walked around the house in circles for two hours, trying to find something to do but realizing there wasn't much I could do with no boxes.

So I took some boxes to the workshop until I threw my back out which didn't take that long.

I crawled back into the house, found my massage pad and laid down on it, hoping my back would feel better.

It didn't.

So today I have a sore back, a house full of boxes, stuff all over the floors and a scary thought that we will never get this house clean enough to where we can show it off.

And I've just wasted 45 minutes telling you about it.

God.

I am going to get my ass chewed out when the wife gets up.

I'd better go.

Peace out.