No One Wins When Grandma Leaves

LETS GO IRISH!!! LETS GO IRISH!!!  I am literally crawling out of my skin, waiting for tonight’s game.  Ten hours away, and I am cleaning my house like a nervous wreck, just to stay busy. OK, OK, on to the blog…

Just say the word, and you are guaranteed to get a reaction, usually a negative one. I tell someone my mother-in-law is visiting, and they have nothing but sympathy for me.  I tried to get away.  I literally moved across the country. (sarcasm)  Yet, there she is in my living room.

It used to be worse.  She owns season tickets to the WI Badgers and drove into town every week to visit.  She would leave Sunday, saying, “Okay Craig, I’ll see you on Thursday.”

This visit was new for me, though.  This was her first visit since I had quit my full-time job.  Three days before she got here, I had (what seemed like) a three-page, to-do list.  Before, the only opinion I cared about was Tammi’s.  Now, on top of all the other judging our in-laws do, I have to worry about the F-ing baseboards.  I care about baseboards getting dirty as much as I do the apocalypse.  They are both gonna happen at some point, not much I can do about it.  Yet, here I was making sure, as Glenn would say, everything is clean and nice before she got there.

A wonderful visit was had by all.

And then she left.

And I got my ass handed to me.  We had all gone soft.   For the past seven days, the boys had lived under a soft shell of the former rules.  Even I, a six month seasoned veteran of stay-at-home Dadhood, collapsed under the weight of Grandma leaving.  Here I’d been taking two-hour naps every day.  I hadn't slacked off on the chores, but since I had cleaned the house top-to-bottom prior to her arrival, honestly, there wasn't much to do beside maintenance.

While she was here, Tammi woke me up one afternoon with the sound of disgust in her voice.

“Why don’t you get up?”

“Why can’t I sleep?  The house is spotless, one boys asleep, and the other is watching cartoons.”

“Fair enough.”

It’s not the day she leaves that is so bad.  We all kinda steel ourselves for that day.  I start telling G, just a few days after she arrives, how many days until she leaves.  Even though the day after she leaves is never fun, we begin to ease our way back into older habits.

It’s the evil second day after she is gone that everyone starts to miss Grandma.  Once finally awake, I realize how few chores have been done, and that the boys are running roughshod over me. 

SHIT.

Timeouts for EVERYONE! Why? Because, I can’t get my crap done if you two won’t stop screaming at each other every five minutes.  If your mother comes home and realizes how little I have done over the past two days, then I’m done for.  Important life lesson: Shit rolls downhill.

Sorry boys, but no one wins when Grandma leaves

Seriously, come on Irish! I have rooted for this team longer than any other.  My early childhood is full of memories watching football with my dad on Saturdays.  What would the odds be that I cry, if they win?  They last won when I was 8, and I have been a football fan ever since.  I’m not going to wake up the boys (on purpose) instead I’m going to record the game, and watch it again with them in the morning, if they win. 

LETS GO IRISH!!! LETS GO IRISH!!!