EVER HAD ONE OF THOSE DAYS WHERE YOU WANT TO KILL YOUR BROTHER-IN-LAW?

4:30 a.m.

I'm awakened by the sounds of Andy in his crib. Basically, in my opinion, the kid's talking to himself. Wondering aloud how the hell he can get his Fisher Price aquarium to come on so he can watch the fishies go round and round for seven minutes before it automatically shuts off. Something like that.

Susie says "Are you going to go check on him?"

"No," I say. "Just leave him alone and eventually he'll get bored and go back to sleep."

Two minutes later, he's still babbling away. Nothing serious, just babbling.

Susie gets up.

"I'm going to go quiet him down," she says with a hint of pride in her voice like she's God all of a sudden.

"Fine," I say.

She walks in there and immediately he starts crying. Not babbling now...crying. As in "Feed me Mama!!" crying.

So she pats his ass. The crying gets louder.

After ten minutes of crying, she changes his diaper which makes him cry even louder. So she sits in the glider and tries to rock him back to sleep as he has now reached a feverish pitch.

I FINALLY get up, walk into his bedroom and see her holding him against her chest, patting his butt and trying to rock him back to sleep.

"Nurse him!" I hiss.

"What?" she says like I just suggested she stick a cork up his ass.

"Nurse him," I hiss again. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out he's hungry!"

She whips the boob out and he calms down instantly, suckling away.

Geez.

I think I've married a moron.

So here I am. Staring at a computer screen on a computer that is REALLLLY going slow this morning.

I have 2,300 MP3s on my hard drive and I'm beginning to think those MP3s may be slowing down my machine.

I have 30 whatevers of memory, where most hard drives have 10 whatevers. Gigs? Megs? Kilos?

I dunno. I'm retarded when it comes to having to keep all that 'puter lingo straight.

Anyway, when I bought this computer last summer, the salesguy ASSURED me that no matter how hard I tried, I would NEVER use up all that hard drive space.

Yet my machine's crawling like a quadriplegic baby right now.

And I haven't loaded the thing down with any games or programs, really.

Just MP3s.

So I think this weekend I'll start putting the MP3s on disc and freeing up some space.

Yep.

That's what I plan on doing alright.

Meanwhile, you'll be on the edge of your seat all weekend..."Gee...I wonder if Bob's taken all those MP3s off his hard drive yet or not...."

...Waiting with baited breath for my MP3 update.

Yeah.

I'm one boring sonofabitch right now, huh?

I got so damned mad at my inlaws Monday and forgot to tell you guys all about it.

Okay...Grandma's watching Andy ...right?

So as I'm leaving Monday for work, I tell Grandma that there's some leftover Jambalaya and Death by Chocolate in the refrigerator and stuff for sandwiches if she got hungry.

Grandma says fine...thank you.

I leave.

Okay.

Apparently Grandma invites my goddamned, good for nothing, lazy fucking, $6,000 owing brother in law over for lunch, because "there's plenty of food over here."

My two brothers-in-law eat like scavengers. It's embarrassing to watch them go at it. I think I've covered this. Sunday night, my fairly decent brother in law came to our Fellowship Dinner at church with his family and he piled his styrofoam plate high with EVERYTHING from the buffet line. Everyone was joking about it and looking at it.

Naturally, I was humiliated. Gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins and this boy was a SINNER right there in the middle of church.

Anyway...I'm not here to bitch about him...

So my asshole nerdy brother in law comes over for lunch Monday and has two sandwiches (on Hoagie rolls...I bought a package of six), ate three-quarters of the jambalaya and left a small portion of Death by Chocolate for me and Susie.

He basically ate four people's lunches.

He brought Grandma some Chicken McNuggets from McDonalds because she didn't want any of our food.

So Monday night, I had PLANNED on having leftovers for dinner.

Luckily, Susie didn't come home until 8:20 because she had a meeting which I think I told you about but don't remember if I did. So she had already eaten.

But he barely left enough Jambalaya for one serving.

Anyway...

...I still wanna kill him.

And I STILL want my $6,000 back.

I keep getting this eerie feeling that when Andy goes back to daycare, Grandma's going to say we can wipe that bill clean because she just gave us six weeks of daycare at $1,000 per week.

I pestered Susie about the $6,000 bill the other day and she said that Brother in Law is basically supporting Grandma, because all Grandma does now is volunteer at the VA Hospital and she no longer has an income.

I thought she was still doing resumes and work out of the home, but apparently not.

So Brother In Law is some kinda martyr now because all his money goes to Grandma.

Ummmmmm...no.

He got stuck with Granny because he's too socially retarded to actually find a woman that might go out with him and wasted his life away. Now he's 38 years old with no hope of ever getting married and his job is to live with his mother and support her until her lungs collapse.

Oh!

He never did borrow my camcorder, did I tell y'all that?

He asked for it and I hem-hawed and told him okay. But apparently some friend of his (yes...apparently he has a friend) had a digital camera that he didn't know about so he borrowed theirs instead.

No skin off my teeth, dude. Go for it.

His 20 year class reunion was this past weekend. I'm sure that went over real well. I bet he shocked everyone in attendance with his success story of the Class Nerd who's now a Computer Geek at the local bank.

Who still lives with his mother.

And doesn't have a girlfriend.

And still stinks like a combination of cheap cigarettes and shit.

Yep.

I bet they were all flocking to him like flies to hear his success story.

I'm a bitter little bastard today, eh?

I called my baby sister last night whose birthday was on Tuesday but I had forgotten to call her on Tuesday because I'm a horrible brother, but at least I don't still live with my mama.

Anyway, on her birthday, one of her co-workers died from a brain tumor.

Damn.

Talk about overshadowing your big day.

"Happy Birthday To You. Happy Birthday To You. Our co-worker just died and we'd rather mourn his death than eat your stupid fucking caaaaaaa-aaaaake. Happy Birthday To You."

She got choked up talking about him. Apparently he got this tumor a year ago ("At Sears?" I asked, which she didn't find funny ... making fun of her use of the term "got" a brain tumor). And on her birthday, she and a co-worker went to visit him at his house on their lunch break. An hour later, he died. She said it was so strange to be looking at someone in their last hour of life, which I had to admit I had never done, unless you count the time we watched "Magnolia" on TV and that same night Jason Robards died which was kinda eerie, but nothing like she went through.

To cheer her up, I made her talk to Andy, who yelled in the phone at her to "SNAP OUT OF IT!" but it came out "NNNNNNNNGHHHHHHHHHH YAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!"

Anyway, it sure wasn't the most uplifting phone conversation we'd ever had.

I told her to look on the bright side...at least she had a boyfriend and didn't live at home with Mom, smoking cheap cigarettes and massaging Mom's feet every night by the light of the TV set, watching reruns of "Mama's Family".

She agreed that would suck much worse than watching a friend die before her eyes.

I smirked at Susie when she agreed and Susie punched my arm.

Alright, these shenanigans have gone on long enough. I'm gonna go read the newspaper and tickle the baby.

Arrivederci (sp?)!!!