WHAT DO YOU KNOW? AN ENTRY ABOUT MY MOTHER-IN-LAW!

First off...I love this guy...and this is perhaps the most politically incorrect thing you will ever read in your life. I had no idea it was possible to be so P.I. on so many levels.

But it cracked my butt up as most of his entries do.

I love you, you crazy hairy pseudo-gay guy.

Alright folks...forget the war...I've got a REAL problem in my life now.

When I explain my problem to you guys, I'm SURE some of you will be offended by my nature and my beliefs.

Screw ya ... it's me we're talking about...not you.

My mother-in-law has her faults, but she's a very nice, giving person.

I've known her now for fifteen years. In that time, she has taken in numerous "strays".

And I'm not talking animals. She runs across people who have no place to live, and lets them live with her.

She's been burned several times by doing this. One guy got her involved with a multi-level marketing scam, took her money and she never saw him again.

Another stole her antique silverware and took off.

One guy told her that for $100, he had a friend who'd invest that money into an off-shore pyramid scam that would turn around and garner her over a million dollars in just three years.

She was so impressed with this scam that for Christmas of 1997, she spent $100 on each one of her four kids and their spouses ($700 total) plus $300 for herself so that she'd make $3 million. The guy took the $1,000, "invested" it and she never heard from him or saw him again.

Each one of us kids cringed when she told us of her wonderful gifts that year.

Most of her "strays" just eat all her food, sleep in her beds (not HER bed...beds in her home...for all I know anyway)and leave when they find some place better to go.

So ... now she has a new "stray" that she's taken in.

Susie tried to call her on Tuesday to talk about the national crisis we were under.

She wasn't home.

Susie finally called her oldest brother to ask if he knew where her mother was.

She had gone to Florida to pick up a man.

That's all he knew.

Most people go to bars...she goes to Florida. Some people are more desperate than others, I guess.

On Thursday, she calls Susie. Susie asks what was going on and she said that she went to Florida to pick up a man who got out of prison and brought him home to live with her and Susie's Coke-chugging, $6,000-borrowing-and-never-paying-backing, every-appliance-in-our-house-breaking brother.

Excuse me Grandma. Maybe you're not familiar with the abbreviated version of the phrase, but I'm going to use it anyway....WTF???

Apparently, the guy's name is Pepe. He's originally from Cuba...for those of you who are about as history-literate as myself...Cuba is a COMMUNIST country.

He illegally left Cuba and illegally entered America. As soon as he got to America he got into "some trouble" (we don't know any more than that and Pepe isn't talking) and spent a number of years in a Florida prison.

Pepe got out on Wednesday and Grandma was waiting outside the prison gates with open arms.

Grandma is 65. Pepe is 40.

How did they meet?

C'mon...how does EVERYONE meet these days??

On the freakin' internet.

Okay...you and I met on the internet. That's a fact. With the exception of two of you...Wendigo and Edweird...the rest of us all met by reading each other's words.

The internet is NOT full of crazies...unless you count my mother-in-law.

I can understand meeting someone over the internet for coffee.

Perhaps after years of correspondence you decide to meet and have sex and realize that neither was as great as they presented themselves over the 'net.

But...to drive 10 hours, pick up a man that's been corresponding with you from prison for a crime that he doesn't want to get into, and bring him home to be your new housemate...that's kinda creepy.

Add in the fact that he's escaped from a communist country...we're smack dab in the beginning of a World War...and nobody really knows this guy's agenda or past...and it's DAMNED creepy.

So Susie calls her Mom yesterday, just checking in...and Mom wants to bring Pepe over to our house today to meet Andrew.

Not me. Not Susie...Andrew.

After Susie hung up and told me this I said "no".

I said it over and over and over again.

I'm usually a very trusting person. But in this case, I'm balking.

A) I do NOT want a communist who's spent the last several years in prison for a crime that he won't go into anywhere NEAR my baby.

B) I have some fairly nice things in my home. Antiques. Stereo equipment. Computers. Things that could easily be unplugged, thrown in the back of a truck and pawned off.

Some of you are thinking "Oh Uncle Bob...you're horrible for not accepting a Communist jailbird in your home!! Give the man a chance!"

Fuck.

You.

I am a VERY protective father now. As I told Susie, if there was no baby, I'd probably meet the guy. Because Susie and I as adults can defend ourselves.

NOBODY really knows this guy. Not us, not my mother-in-law, not my brother-in-law.

I told Susie to tell her mother that Pepe was not allowed in our home because his situation made me very uncomfortable.

I told her that I'd strike a deal...if Pepe was STILL in my mother-in-law's life and hadn't stolen her finances and skipped town in one year, he'd be allowed over here.

One year of proving himself.

I've never asked for anything from my mother in law.

This is the first time I've asked her for anything.

...To respect my wishes.

I don't think it will fly. She WILL be offended by my way of thinking. She raised her children to help the less fortunate and that's cool. I give money to several different charities, I worked my ass off in April to raise $10,000 to give to the American Cancer Society. I help the less fortunate in very civil fashions.

But this is a little too bizarre for me.

And I want to protect my son. I'd rather he didn't befriend his first communist ex-prisoner until he's well into his teens.

The worst part for me right now is that we still haven't seen the first penny from that six grand we gave them to pay off my brother-in-law's debts that they swore they would pay back.

Yet, they're taking in a guy who admittedly isn't going to be any more than a drain on their already limited finances.

I refuse to give them any more money. And I know the day that they ask for more is coming soon. Having three adults live off of one guy's salary isn't going to work for very long.

Pepe will have to get a job.

And my guess is that job will be swindling Grandma out of what little money or goods she has around the house.

Just like all the other "strays" she's picked up over the years.

Andrew and I had a great day yesterday. You know...considering his Grandma's a nut and all.

We went to get the tires balanced and rotated. He loved watching them do that. Until one tire went flying off and almost tore his baby head off. I think that left him pinching a baby loaf in his diaper.

We then went grocery shopping where a semi-cute gal flirted with me. I know this because my sister called later in the day and I told her we went grocery shopping together and she asked if anyone flirted with me, because a man with a baby in a grocery store get flirted with constantly.

(Apparently, my sis is a whore for men with babies).

So I told her about "the charcoal lady". I was trying to get some charcoal and this lady's cart was right in front of the charcoal. So I waited for her to move her cart, she apologized. I nabbed a bag of Match Light and she told me that the store brand was on sale. I told her that I'd tried the store brand and it didn't burn as long as I needed it to. She said that she only cooks for herself and it burns just fine for her. I asked to see her boobies. She whipped them out. I twisted her nipples and said "Tokyo...come in Tokyo" like I was twisting the dials on an old fashioned radio and sending an SOS to my troops in WWII. She giggled and said to meet her in the meat department to show her my meat. I giggled back and said that my Kielbasa would be waiting for her. She ran quickly to the meat department and I hauled ass to the checkout lane and got the hell outta there.

We then came home and Andrew helped put up the groceries by screaming like weasels were ripping his flesh apart with their razor sharp teeth and claws.

I picked him up and we rocked. He was almost asleep when the doorbell rang.

I thought to myself "If this is somebody wanting to mow my yard, I'm letting them do it."

A man in his fifties,wearing a Miller Lite Halloween shirt and sporting the ultimate rednecky mullet asked if I needed my yard cut.

I looked at him closer to make sure he wasn't a refuge from Slaughter or Warrant or any other 80s hair band. He wasn't.

"Sure, my good man," I said, patting him on his bony shoulder. "Be my guest."

He and his sidekick began mowing the yard. They did a damned good job too...better than anything I've ever done.

They rang the doorbell when they were done.

Expecting to get paid.

Ha!

We never discussed payment, Ricki Rocket!! I thought you were cutting it out of the goodness of your heart!!

Finally I relented and gave them forty bucks.

I asked Mullet Boy how he kept his hair in such pristine mullet style. He told me he cuts it himself. I said I could tell. I don't think he grasped the sarcastic tone in my inflection.

I fed Andy and he started passing out in his high chair. It was so funny. His eyes would droop, his eyeballs would roll back in his head, his head would start dropping and then he'd catch himself...eyes wide open, head jerked back, staring at me and then laughing his baby ass off.

My God...this kid amuses me.

He then laid down for a three hour nap which is unheard of with this kid.

I cleaned house for Mama and made some hamburger patties for dinner. Talked to my sister. Talked to some friends.

Susie got home, we ate and watched "Growing Up Brady".

That's two hours and millions of brain cells that I'll never get back.

Susie's been on this "Brady" kick lately...if the Bradys are on any channel...we HAVE to watch it.

When I was eight, I loved the Bradys. Freakin' loved 'em.

Now I find them....ummmmmm...gee...at the risk of offending the politically correct...we'll just say I find them juvenile.

Heaven forbid I get flamed by Bradyheads. That's all I need.

Anyway...if you missed the movie, and I'm sure you all did...the movie basically solidified the fact that Barry "Greg" Williams had a constant hard-on for both Marcia and Carol, the mom.

If the timelines are followed distinctly in the show, and if my memory serves me correct, Greg and Marcia were getting their groove on when she was like 12 and he was 13.

Ewwww.

Anyway...after the movie I just sat there stunned and wondered, "Did we really just spend our Saturday evening watching that?"

Yes we did.

Mainly because we had watched MSNBC and saw Dr. Mark Heath and his bonechilling video that he shot of the warzone at Ground Zero about a hundred times in an hour last night.

The one where the tower comes down and buries him in soot?

I'll admit...it's a very creepy video.

But the herky jerky motions of the camera made me more queasy than anything in the Blair Witch Project.

And after he emerges from the soot, the background noises remind me of something you'd hear in on a vintage Pink Floyd album.

The alarms going off in the distance. The men shouting the same things over and over.

It's creepy.

Alright...I think I've stirred up enough shit today. Time for me to pack my bags, shave my ass and head to church.

I'd like to suggest that we all go to some church today.

It'd do you a world of good.