Swimming

I walked through the door after my hour long commute, the closets were done, minus the doors, but hey it's progress. The room was otherwise undisturbed, the place looked ransacked, nowhere near neat and clean, so much for tiny and tidy.
My mother was hollering in the back yard, I stepped into the porch to find her giving Michael swimming classes.
Why would a grown woman jump into a pool fully clothed? This woman does not believe in bathing suits.
"Float, just like I showed you." She commanded.
He caught a glimpse of me out of the corner of his eyes and went into "mommy-is-here" mode. He splashed and kicked as she held him.
"That's not what I taught you." She looked up at me, "Your father wants me to give him swimming classes for an hour each day." As far as I know she wasn't a YMCA employee, classes and training and teaching and discipline where not her forte.
I sat on the swinging chair and watched him emerge from the pool. He was wearing a diaper, holding about 2 gallons of pool water with a cascade of water freely flowing down the back of his legs with each step.
"Mom, he has the Donald Duck ass!" The diaper bounced up and down giving him momentum towards me, he rushed to me and jumped into my arms, work clothes now drenched.
"Mom, you are wearing clothes." I asked, curious about why.
"By the time I go in, change, and get ready for the pool I just don't want to get in, so I just get in when I feel like it. Why?"
"No reason." Common sense, right? I lack it in this house, the sense running around here commonly was not the sense of sensible people in the real world, but living on Ronald McDonald's Retirement Center, I was voted out, 5 to 1.
I walked into the porch and grabbed the Swimmers diapers, my child needed to change before the pool turned into a cotton picking session, that diaper was ready to blow, and I was not about to go cotton picking.
Mike jumped back in the pool, my mom was in the middle of the shallow area, he was on the steps and glided like a swan to her, missing his mark by a foot, swimming like a rock, she grabbed him, he coughed, I waited for a naked boy to diaper.
She took off his diaper, "Ay shit!"
"What do you mean "Ay shit?" I stared at her as she held the diaper, now resembling a fluffy white pillow.
"He pooped!" She began scooping out dime sized balls from the pool to his diaper. I stood up, probably with my mouth wide open. The streaker ran around the pool, he was at the other end now with his toys, I dropped the swimming diaper and stood by my mother.
I pointed to the bottom of the pool.
"No, that's nothing." Said the blind woman.
"Look at it mom, it's poop. Look."
"No, poop floats, doesn't it. That can't be poop."
(Forehead slam against wall)
"Look around, do you think we are in a toilet. Of course it's poop. Hurry up, it's rolling that way." I pointed towards the deep middle part of the pool. "And I'm not getting in." I did a stand still jump, trying to show her I was wearing work clothes.
She hesitated, she didn't want to do it, I ran for the net used to take out leaves and bugs. I handed it to her.
Mike jumped in, yes I repeat, Mike jumped into the fucking pool, on the other fucking side, and I knew that my mother would never make it to that side. I ran and jumped into the other end of the pool, heels and all. That mother instinct does not play, you have no time to think at all. I grabbed him and sat him on the steps, "YOU CAN'T DO THAT!" I yelled at him, not knowing who to clobber at this point. I would have preferred picking cotton.
"I sorry mama!" My heart melted. How do they do that!

Moving

I have moved in with my parents, not just me, my husband, the kids and the mother in law, too. Three households consolidated into one. We all packed and moved to the country. Maybe not exactly the country, but a house on five acres of land.
The house is kind of Brady Bunch, but with nursing home residents.
It's a nice house, 80's style and an efficiency on the side, which is where I reside with my husband and the two little ones. The main house is where my oldest, my mother in law, and my parents live. I try to stay away and leave them be.
As time goes by I am realizing that I have just moved into a commune, minus David Koresh and plus the creed "Honor thy father, pray for thy mother."
My dad calls the shots, even in my room. We all had to be out of our houses by the first of the month, and that gave me exactly 2 days to pack it and go. I have lost my toothbrush, pillow cases, and the screws to my bed, I am sleeping on the mattress on the floor for the time being, the kids snug in the middle. Yes, a king bed accommodates us all.
We have a pool that is confusing, how could both ends be shallow and then a six foot dip in the middle? Our backyard resembles Grand Central Park, the house is small, the backyard is gigantic, the house even came with a golf cart to ride around the property. Mike has daily tours in the morning and afternoon.
The mosquitoes feed on us like a Chinese buffet just served with crab legs.
I drive an hour from work now, to and from, and play Pandora the entire way.
Once a day I break something and every night I have a glass of Moscato. The days are long, the work is endless.
I am still living out of boxes and waiting for my closets to get assembled, we purchased them from Ikea, so assembly is required. My husband is putting them together, they should self distruct in about a month.
I am back on my writing bug, and am trying to establish a nightly schedule for the blog alone, then when I can write away and work on my unfinished work in progress.
All in all, it's gorgeous. I enjoy sitting outside immensely.
I sit outside on my laptop and my mother sits next to me, she mimics the night sounds, she has tried to talk to crickets, owls and whatever other nocturnal creature that makes it impossible for me to concentrate. I stare at her and wait for the communication to end, it's like listening to whales gossip.
She sees me typing, but just like when I am on the phone, they just don't see it.
I have learned that my mother believes that me drinking Monster energy drinks scare her, she believes that I may kill my parents. I think she is confusing Monster with Four Loko. I have invested in a couple of four packs and drink one daily.
This whole moving in has caused us all to re-evaluate the purposes we have in life, the greater reason to live is to annoy each other to the tenth degree.
At the dinner table, my mom sat with a pad of paper, similar to one you would write a love letter on. She stared at instructions to an appliance in Korean and began "Dearest Wany", that's my mother in law, she then proceeded to pick and choose symbols, like the hieroglyphic code Egyptians used, and wrote my mother in law what she called a love letter, using various drawings of these symbols. My mother in law is out at the casino, we are only 15 minutes away now, and when she returns she will have a letter waiting for her on her pillow.
The pamphlet was an instructional on rice cookers.

I must be related to the fat kid in Goonies

For a minute there I thought this iPad was "The Shit!" Then I got comfortable and it went to shit.
Since I haven't blogged, had no laptop, or any real kind of Internet connection except for my phone, and this is only when it wasn't a glorified nanny for my 2 yr old, I have been up researching writing, the characterization, the POV (point of view), plotting methods, you name it, I have looked it up. The one problem I had was those voices, those characters were all me, I was recreating images and scenarios for my own life, there is really no need for imagination with the people I deal with on a daily basis. So I finally decided to go back to blogging, because when I don't write I feel empty. This all started with the iPad gift by my adorable husband, who took the original iPad he gave me and filled it up with nine different Angry Bird apps, sports and fighting jet apps, and a number of absurd apps that Diego added on, as he too was given full reign of my original iPad, as this toy kept them quiet, I did not complain, recently Mike D also jumps on and logs into Netflix to watch Dora and Scooby Doo, also invading my iPad with Pocoyo apps. I was given the original on Feb 12 as an anniversary gift, and maybe spent an hour on it.
Monday I got the new one, I hid it as best I could, determined to not allow it to fill with testosterone based apps. Needless to say, I don't hide things well, on Tues and Wed I came home to Diego on their iPad on the bottom of the bunk bed and Mike on mine under the covers, my mother in law didn't realize there were two, and assumed there was one, both boys playing with it well hidden. (and I though asians were the smart kids in class you could cheat off of)
Last night I decided to start, for the fifth time, to write a manuscript, this time a mommy memoir, not the kind that Jesus saves you and you are all inspirational with butterfly kisses, the kind where the day starts you off looking normal and ends with you looking like a homeless sucking out of the bottle for the last drop.
I talked to Miguel, who ok'd an app purchase and I downloaded it, it didn't appear, this was well after midnight. I went to bed thinking nothing of it. Today I sat in bed, downed a BFC Green Monster and began to think and plot out a memoir. I searched for the app and found it, went to download it and an error message came up "App already purchased", I went to install it and an error message came up "App not available".
I call my Verizon tech guy (my husband) who sits and pushes buttons and gives me that look.
"Don't look at me like that, I didnt do anything!"
"No, it's not you, it took fifty engineers from MIT to put this thing together and you touch it, and look..." He shows me a screen where the battery connection is showing like it's unplugged, "you had nothing to do with this!"
He walks away with the iPad in hand. A two year old and a ten year old, spend countless hours and theirs is working fine, mine takes mere
hours and it's off to be disassembled and put together, alas I get the Frankenstein iPad after all.
I hide under the covers, like Mike, and log on to Facebook, maybe with enoght prayers they could save me. I think of Chunk from Goonies, and realize I am missing the plaid jacket, otherwise we are twins, we eat with joy and break things by just looking at them.
I hear the fridge open and a bottle of pills, I am now pulling out the big guns asking for saints to come together and get the sacred St of Mac to fix the fucking oversized calculator.
Half an hour later, 3 Hail Marys and 2 Our Fathers, my husband walks in and drops the iPad in bed.
"What did I do? Did you fix it?"
"I can't begin to explain, much less understand what you did. But I had to shut the whole thing down and upload everything from scratch, but your app is in there."
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!". ( And a special shout out to the St of Mac)
I open my iPad and there is my writing app, able to bring tears to my eyes, if it weren't placed right between Angry Birds and Angry Birds Rio Editon.
***if any part of this blog is misspelled or not written correctly it's because the iPad will not let me edit blogs once I hit complete***

X Neighbor

If you have ever been by my house, and you probably haven't, but if you have, you would have noticed an older lady in the neighborhood that regularly walks dogs. They are all different dogs, some chi-waw-waws (can you believe I can't spell it) then yorkies, labradors, and even some canines that sit in a stroller. The woman is obsessed with dogs, I imagine she has tons of peanut butter stocked in her pantry. She strolls by, I wave, she waves back, that is the extent of our relationship. Juno and my mother in law have since changed that forever.

My mother in law buys in bulk at the Korean market, kinda like Sam's Club, but with items I don't eat and can't pronounce. Lots of noodles, things that once lived in the ocean, and vegetables foreign to me, roots and worm like foods, she says noodles, I still won't taste them. She came home one day, before picking up the kids from school and daycare, the car loaded with her delicacies, including bottled water, three cases to be exact. She opened up the kitchen and began to unload, naturally Juno sprinted off into the free world.

After unloading and with one case of water left, she closed the hatch of her car, oversized for her sixty pound frame, and held on to the case of water, the dog lady was doing her rounds. My mother in law held the case of water and watched as Juno began to get friendly with the dog that was being walked, butt sniffing had turned into horseplay between the two beasts. The dog lady held on to the leash and was being yanked forward and backwards, Juno doesn't do leashes, so he was free to roam and tease the dog being walked. The dog lady played tug of war and looked to my mother in law, " Help me!". My mother in law unwillingly dropped the case of water and began chasing Juno.

This story is all here say from my mother in law, and my mother. My mother in law could not catch Juno, he ran, dog lady regained her
composure, began to walk and Juno would come back in full force. "Do something with your dog?" dog lady screamed at my mother in law, well that just did it.

"You no see I try, you no see!" My mother in law was furious, she chased him around some more, and was out of breath. Juno took off but came right back. "Get that dog away from me. You aren't doing anything?"

I am sure that the words after that comment were not audible to anyone, just as I am sure she spit and hocked some of the words, because that is just how she curses. My mother in law responded, "You no see me try, you estuping ole lady, you estuping, I no cay if he bite you, I no cay!" And with that she took her water inside and left the dog lady outside to fend for herself. She immediately called my mother, who immediately called me at work.

"Mom, where is Juno now?"

"Oh, I don't know, she left him outside and locked the door. She is mad at him, and won't let him into the house." I cringed and inhaled deeply, wondering if animal control would be knocking at my door or issuing me a ticket for improper free roaming dog. I called my mother in law who cursed at me and told me about the estuping lady, she hoped Juno had rabies and would give the dog lady some doggie style love.

I have since waived to her as she walks by, and I am now an invisible person to her, she won't even look at me, but as long as she is roaming the streets, I know she is safe and hasn't been hacked into some Kim chi in a jar, fermenting in my back yard.

I'm back...kinda

Today I got an iPad, my laptop died and I haven't been able to blog. Writing is like breathing, for me blogging is like breathing, I feel like I have just been revived. Wish it were more like mouth to mouth with Johnny Depp, but an iPad will do just fine. I need you guys, the ones who read me, if there are any of you out there. I don't think i got any message with i miss you, where were you, or did you finally end your miserable life? But for those who do read, were the blogs too long, or ok, i would love any feedback, is anyone out there, i actually think most of my blog hits are by mistake, but so much has happened since I last blogged, let me know your feedback. please!


Now back to blogging.