YOUR WISH HAS BEEN GRANTED ... A PHOTO OF ME IN THE BATHTUB

I think my son is teething again.

Now, I'm sure there's plenty of you out there with no children who are thinking "How do you know when your baby is teething?"

And the answer is simple.

You know they're teething when you are constantly fighting an insatiable urge to kill them.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

(grrrrr...)

Which makes me think...if Andrea Yates' lawyer had been smarter, he would have said "Judge, have you got any children?" And if the judge said "Why yes, lawyer man...I have three children", the lawyer could have just whispered the words "They were TEETHING" and the judge would have yelled "CASE DISMISSED!! SHE'S FREE TO GO!" and would have hammered his desk into submission.

I'm sure of it.

Anyway ... I received a grand total of three and a half hours of sleep last night.

I've been awake since 1:30 a.m.

And Andrew's not even REALLY fussy. He's just uncomfortable. And there's no amount of Children's Tylenol and Children's Orajel currently manufactured that would make him happy.

He's miserable. But in surprisingly good spirits.

At 2 a.m., the wife decides that she's got the secret plan to get him to fall back asleep after my method of "Rocking and singing "Rock A Bye Baby" gently" wasn't working.

...Her ingenius plan??

...Take him out to the den, pop in one of his favorite videos and let him play, play, play until he wears himself out.

And that's great if this takes place on a Friday or Saturday night. Whoooohooooo!! We'll just all sleep in tomorrow morning!

But when it's Sunday night/Monday morning, it just ain't cool.

So Andrew's out in the den, happily banging on his piano and babbling to all his toys and turning around in circles until he falls down, laughing hysterically.

While I lay in bed with a pillow over my head, desperately trying to fall asleep.

It wasn't in the cards for me. There would be no more sleep for the evening.

I laid there. I tossed. I turned. I counted sheep.

Nothing.

Finally, I got up, went to the den, shut off the VCR, grabbed Andrew, woke Susie up from her fetal position on the floor and said "Let's go to bed."

We all three went to our bed, where Andrew was as wired as a rabbit on crank.

He was dancing in bed. Dancing! At 2:30 in the morning! With no music! Dancing to the music in his head!

"Give him the boob," I grunted to Susie.

"I thought you wanted me to wean him," she says.

Yeah. That's what I want at 2:30 a.m. on a Monday morning. A fucking argument about weaning kids off the breast.

"The boob puts him to sleep," I said.

"He doesn't want it," she countered.

"Alright, fine," I muttered. "Take him back out in the den and overstimulate him some more. That should reeeeally get him to sleep."

She did just that.

While I laid in bed and felt guilty for some reason.

At 4 a.m., I got up and moved to the computer. I hadn't been on the computer all weekend, except to write my horribly bad recap of Ed on Saturday morning.

And you're thinking to yourself ... gee Uncle Bob...you must have been pretty busy all weekend to not get on the computer even once in almost 48 hours.

Well duh.

You stay real busy when you're .... BUYING A NEW HOME!!!

Heeeeeeeeeeee!!!

(Uncle Bob bounces up and down in his seat, clapping his hands with glee)

We haven't put any money down yet, but we've told the real estate agent that we ARE moving to her neighborhood, we ARE buying a new home and we ARE going to make a decision on which model we want in the next week.

Okay ... and here's the really strange part. And I've tried to okay this with the person before writing it here where he'll see it in black and white or whatever the hell color scheme I've got going on this page.

...We may be either living directly across the street from Mattie Gee or our back yards will border each other. Because Mattie Gee had the foresight to pick out a half acre lot in this subdivision a little over a week ago. Susie also wants a half acre lot. I would take an apartment since I abhor mowing the yard each week, but I'm a good husband and give my wife what she wants and if she wants a half acre, I'll give her four rock hard solid inches for two hours and we'll call it a half acre.

(Sorry...the lack of sleep has me making lewd comments that make absolutely no sense. Deal with it)

Y'see ... about a week ago, Mattie Gee and his gorgeous fiancee Cate secured a lot to have a house built out there.

He told me about it, told me about the neighborhood and how much they fell in love with it out there. I admitted it sounded just like what Susie and I had been looking for before September 11th but couldn't find. Then September 11th came and we quit looking for a new house and waited to see if we were going to have jobs in the next few weeks.

We still have jobs ... she's looking to get a new job where her pay would increase substantially (like a 33% pay increase)now that she's a certified and licensed crackwhore and we've been wanting out of this gang-member infested neighborhood for the last several years.

What I hate is that Mattie Gee may not want us stealing his thunder. You go and buy a nice new house and you want everyone to ooh and ahhh over your new purchase.

You don't want your friends moving right next door and people oohing and ahhhing over them too. You want all the ooohs and ahhhhhs. You deserve those ooooohs and ahhhhhs, dammit!

So, since we ARE moving out there and we WILL be Mattie Gee's neighbors ... I must officially state now for the record that Mattie Gee discovered this wonderful opportunity first and that Susie and I are just lemmings in his wake. He leads. We follow. He and Cate are the masters. We are their slaves.

And if you're still thinking "Hey Uncle Bob...that's still pretty shitty of you to take away part of the attention from their purchase and glom it all over yourself", I offer you this...

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How can you deny me my big man's tub?

Plus....it has bookcases that I can cram full of my Japanese anime porn videos!!!

Oh. Yeah. We fell in love with the model home and ... if our mortgage company gives us the okay today (and the real estate agent, after looking over our figures, said that shouldn't be a problem) ... then we're beginning the four-five month process of buying and moving into a new home.

...Naturally, we have to sell this rat-infested shithole that we live in now to some unsuspecting vagabonds first.

But that's gonna happen because my new best friend the real estate agent has assured me that her job is NOT to sell me this new house...her job is to SELL the house we're in now. That's the only way she makes any money.

It doesn't make sense to me, but she's assured me that she can sell our house within four months and get us into a swanky model home by the end of summer.

I'm sure I'll be babbling about this for the next several months, but I just wanted to give you a heads up as far as which direction the diary may be turning soon.

Lookit the time!

It's actually late!

I guess that's what I get for staring at 128 pictures that I took of the house yesterday over and over again.

I've gotta go, which is a shame because I had a great story to tell you about eating at Cracker Barrel the other night and buying Andrew a videotape of "The Wiggles" which are four Australian men who frighten the shit out of me, but enthrall the kid.

Maybe another time.

You know...if I don't strangle the kid first.