I GOT DEM MOVING BLUES

I've been meaning to tell you guys, but it kept slipping my mind...

With the impending removal of my fat ass from this computer chair, for the next three months or so, my diary entries are going to be LATE.

I know ... somewhere in America a housewife just dropped her cup of coffee and it crashed into shards of broken coffee cup all over her keyboard as she tried to fathom NOT drinking her morning coffee with Uncle Bob.

Y'see...while we live in an apartment for three months, I'm going to TRY to do without internet access at the apartment.

I have it at work, so I can get my jones on during lunch. That's not a problem.

The problem is ... my entries won't be up at 7:30 EST/6:30 CST.

It'll be more like 9:30 EST/8:30 CST.

I'll still write them early in the morning and just put them on a disc and take the disc to work.

You'll just have to wait two hours for it.

If you're on the west coast or mountain time, this probably won't affect you unless you're like me and get up at the crack of dawn to read this gawdawful shit.

Uncle Bob WILL live because I'm not going away anytime soon.

I'm just going to update about two hours later each day.

Please plan your day accordingly.

We're also going without phones in the apartment, which will be strange.

We'll use our cell phones all summer, so we'll have phone service. We just feel like ... for three months we can do without internet service and telephone convenience.

I just don't use my cell phone like a lot of people do. I don't see it as an extension of my ear lobe with the constant urge to drive all around town saying "Lookit me! I'm a hot shot cell phone user who can't wait until he gets home to call people!"

That ain't my bag.

I'm starting to get a bit sad about leaving here...which is something I didn't think would happen.

But we were talking last night and this is the longest duration of time either one of us had ever spent in a house.

We've been in this house for exactly 13 years now.

Neither one of us has really taken into consideration the fact that this is the ONLY home that Andrew and Maggie have ever known. They have no idea about the concept of moving. Maggie's the oldest dog in the backyards...she's seen other dogs come and go over the years. Granted, she's kind of a loner dog, she doesn't get along well with others. And she really enjoys her sleep now. So maybe there won't be any other dogs around us in the apartment complex and she can just rest all day and night.

Andrew will probably adapt pretty well. We only saw it while it was empty, but it looked like his apartment bedroom will be bigger than his bedroom now. So he should be happy.

I dunno.

A house full of boxes is kinda .... I dunno ... melancholy, I guess.

Soooo last night I get home from work and who's waiting on me??

My brother-in-law.

"I've come to pick up the rest of the stuff in the workshop," he says, tucking his little phone earjack in his ear like somebody's going to be calling him other than his mother.

I sighed, told him to give me a second to get some moving clothes on and I'd help him get his shit outta there.

We get out to the workshop and sure enough...Grandma calls him to tell him it's sprinkling at their house, so don't bring any of the nice stuff home...just the stuff that won't be damaged by rain.

"Yes, mother. Yes, mother. Yes, mother," he sighs while picking up dirty buckets to throw in the back of his pickup truck.

So we still have a great deal of stuff of theirs that needs to be removed from the workshop. I'm guessing that he'll be back tonight to get some of it. But they've got a LOT of it, so it'll probably end up being every night this week that he's over here.

...Which spells "FUN FUN FUN" in my book.

I'll give him credit, he wasn't too bad last night. To the best of my knowledge, he didn't even grab a Diet Dr. Pepper at all. He must have a kidney infection or something, because I've never seen him NOT open my refrigerator and help himself to whatever was in there.

However, I had begun cooking dinner while he was here. There's no name for the dish, I just kept adding crap into a pot until I was happy, trying to clean out the cupboard and the refrigerator.

I had sliced up some turkey sausage links and had them on a cutting board, waiting to be added to my concoction.

"What's that?" he asked, breathing down the back of my neck because our current kitchen is about the size of a postage stamp.

"It's turkey sausage," I said.

"I've never had that," he said.

"Me neither," I said. "S'posed to be good for you."

Soooooo....BIL helps himself to about a quarter of what I had sliced up to cook.

This was pre-cooked meat. I guess you could look at it like you would chopped-up hot dogs...but still. His hands were all spider webby from moving crap out in the workshop.

I learned long ago to not correct BIL on his nasty etiquette. He's a loser and if you point out his loserness, he just laughs loudly and tries to act like it's okay, because he's a little kid in a big man's body.

I hurried up and tossed the sausage that he had left us into the skillet and began cooking it for MY FAMILY.

He hung around as long as he could to see if dinner would be ready anytime soon. He was making the most asinine small talk with Susie while everything cooked, occasionally saying "Boy, that smells good! What is it again?"

"Turkey sausage, onions, peppers, tomatoes and garlic over pasta," I'd say. "It doesn't HAVE a name, I'm just trying to clean out the refrigerator."

"Smells like spaghetti to me," he said.

Alright. Fine. It's spaghetti. And there's not enough for your fat fucking ass, so go home and eat your generic Army rations at home.

He finally leaves.

As SOON as he leaves, Jamie, the guy who's doing repairs on our home, finally shows up.

He was SUPPOSED to be here Friday night at 6.

I guess Monday at 7 is close enough. At least it is for Jamie. Last time he was supposed to be here, he was a month late.

He has brought his young wife Debbie with him. Debbie is nine months pregnant and is supposed to drop at any given moment which is why he brought her ... because if she gave birth, he wanted witnesses or some shit. I dunno.

Debbie had the personality of a tree stump. And was almost as lovely.

Susie had walked her brother out to his truck as Jamie and Debbie pulled up. So I'm in the kitchen cooking and here comes Susie with this HUGE African-American woman.

"This is Debbie," she said. "She's nine months pregnant and needs a place to sit down inside."

This confused me. I had no idea Jamie was there or was even showing up. I thought Susie was just taking pregnant women off the street and giving them our home to rest in.

She finally explained that Jamie was there to fix some things and Debbie was his wife. Which YOU already know because I've told you this and in case it isn't too obvious, I'm just not in sync today.

So Debbie sits down and does not say a WORD. Andrew's eating his chicken nuggets and watching "Blue's Clues".

"I hope you like Blue's Clues," I said with a smile. "Because that's what we have to watch while he eats."

She didn't say a word.

"Is this your first baby?" Susie asked.

She nodded her head yes, never taking her eyes off the TV screen.

We offered her something to drink or something to eat. She shook her head no and sat on our couch watching TV.

We asked if it'd be okay if we went ahead and ate in front of her. She shook her head yes.

We finally gave up trying to make her feel comfortable and quit talking to her. She sat there, still as a rock, watching the TV with Andrew.

Andrew finished his nuggets, got on the floor and did his "Spin Around" routine which always makes the adults laugh. He spins around in a circle, stops and then watches the room keep spinning around him until he falls down laughing.

Debbie didn't laugh. She didn't even watch him and he was RIGHT in front of her.

I wanted to get a mirror and put it under her nostrils to see if it would fog up to make sure she was still breathing.

It took Jamie about 30 minutes to make the repairs. He poked his head in the door and asked Debbie if she was ready to go.

She hopped up off the couch and said in the sweetest voice "It was so nice meeting you both!" and they left.

It was pretty surreal.

Maybe she's terrified of large white men who know their way around a skillet.

I dunno.

I can't get my groove on here this morning, so I'm going to wave bye-bye.

Some days I feel like writing, other days .... I uhhhhh... I.....writing no don't like feel crap diary.

Today's one of the latter days.