Porphyrogene!

Now, as previously admitted, I Like my husband Very Much and would squish him all day if I could.  But there are times when he is clueless.  One of those times occurred on/about my 23rd birthday. 

I could tell he was cooking up something because either he is very bad at hiding things from me or I am a crafty mind reader.  I believe it is the latter.  Regardless, he was being sneaky and I wheedled from him the fact that my Mom and Brother were coming to visit for the weekend directly before my birthday.  I was Oh So Excited.  Then somehow I got (read: water tortured) out of him that his Grandparents were going to "stop by" on their way to somewhere.  His Grandparents live 4 hours away.  The idea that they would "stop by" is somewhat ridiculous.  Even though I’m a particularly gifted mind reader, I do enjoy surprises.  I just so happen to have a disease wherein I cannot restrain myself from asking probing questions/snooping around/trying-my-hardest-ever to figure out what’s going on… It’s like Tourrette’s.

My Mom and Brother picked me up from work and insisted that instead of going home we go to the nearby Botanical Gardens… Immediately.  Okay, so that wasn’t fishy.  Neither was it fishy when, after telling them that it would be closed, driving there, and finding out it was closed, they decided the best idea would be to Sit. And Stay. And do… Nothing. For a while. Ahem.

*sniff* Herring? Salmon? 3-day-old Tuna?*sniff* DEEEFinitely Feeeshy.

Then after some terribly un-covert cell phone conversating, they decided quite suddenly that it was Time to Go Home.

We walked in the door to my house and there were Kyle’s Parents, Grandparents, Brother, Sister-in-Law, and our Nephews, with my Mom and Brother bringing up the rear.  Quite the gathering really.  It was very touching.  Love surged… Tears welled up…

And then my brother-in-law, mid-hug, told me "YEA! So we’re here to tear apart your bathroom! Excited?"

Yes. That’s right folks. My husband had coordinated a Birthday Surprise for me wherein our closest relatives trek to Pittsburgh from 4+ hours away and then demolish our ONLY BATHROOM.  Without warning me.  Without talking to me about it.  And Me without the ability to say no because after all… they all came… for MY birthday… to do us this FAVOR… from HOURS away… And I am left feeling as though I am screaming as the camera backs away from planet earth at light speed and leaves it a tiny speck of nothing admist a swirling shrinking galaxy in a swirling empty universe.

His parents and grandparents bought me a porch swing for my birthday though.  So I spent most of that weekend trying to become One with the Swing.

My most relaxing moment was when I had a cup of coffee in one hand, an Amish Donut in the other, my brand spankin’ new pink ipod nestled in my lap playing some Guilty-Pleasure pop while I sat on the Porch swing in the wee morning hours… as in 7:00 am on a saturday.

I understand 7:00 am is not that early…. If you have kids… or a job… or, I don’t know, a purpose on saturday morning.  But My saturday morning "purpose" was to get out of the bedroom because they were going to tape sheets of plastic up a la Outbreak, to "confine the dust" (HAHAHAHA) and they were going to start ripping down walls… and ceilings… and fixtures… and anything else that you might need to roughly define an amorphous space as "a bathroom".

Now… The men in Kyle’s family are infamous in their slow deliberations on What To Do Next.  They stand… all heads tilted to the right, debating what the course of action should be.  There is much rubbing of chins and scratching of foreheads.  Then there will be a flurry of action.  Do Not Be Fooled.  The Flurry of action is NOT the same as Action.  The Flurry occurs when one of them gets excited about what he thinks should happen but is soon quelled by the others bringing up a million other options and ideas… S.l.o.w.l.y.  

This deliberation period will re-occur many times through their workings. Often it occurs just before they’re about to do something Important such as… Build supports for a load-bearing wall.  Often when it occurs, it occurs just before they find something Wrong that they missed before and now must debate for the next 20 minutes. 

Despite this predeliction for un-lively debate, they did manage to rip apart my entire bathroom, rendering the sink useless, the Tub/shower-area useless, disappearing the walls, and sugar-coating the house in dust before they left.  De-WICIOUS as my nephew would say.

Oh… did I mention that we do, in fact, have a second shower? It’s in our basement.  If you are unfamiliar with what a Pittsburgh Basement Toilet/Bathroom is… be glad.  For the following 2 months I showered in our unfinished basement, out in the open, from an exposed pipe on the wall while I got the eerie feeling that not only were Kyle’s power tools watching me (saws, hammers, drills and all), but the mildew and toxic mold on the walls were also ogling.  I swear… sometime in those last couple of weeks, the left wall mold winked at me.  I’m pretty sure the bottle of tilex I dumped on it just made it stronger.  I now avoid the basement whenever I can due to the fact that I believe human attention just makes it cheekier… and I could honestly live happily-ever-after without cheeky mold. Yea. Ignoring it is the way to go.

Big Company Incorp. decided to cancel mandatory overtime hours for Kyle and *gasp* let everyone go home at 2:00!!! So he was home by 3:00 and we were out the door and chuggin’ away towards New Jersey.

We got there late. Soon after, I fell upon the queen sized air mattress and passed out.         … Because watching someone else drive for seven hours is tiring, man.

Thanksgiving day was fairly uneventful.  Drink coffee. Eat. Drink coffee. Walk around in a daze. Eat. Drink coffee. Play video games. Eat. Reluctantly allow Kyle to take the coffee away from me… but really only because my hands were twitching so much I couldn’t keep a good hold on it.  I suppose no American Thanksgiving (Because there is a Canadian Thanksgiving, did you know?) wouldn’t be complete without 4 extra pounds of food [= food that can NOT - even if you had an equal number of stomachs as that of a cow - be consumed in one sitting] per person that the meal was prepared for.  My personal allotted extra food was measured in Stuffing, some Yams, and these delectable seasoned oyster crackers… I’m pretty sure "seasoning" is a loose term for "crack".

One of the highlights was watching my family casually enjoy a couple of the games on the Wii.  They liked it, it was chill and fun - they were generally cool (as in not hip but rather cooly indifferent) about it.

On our 6 hour drive to Kyle’s family the day after Thanksgiving, we saw Kyle’s Grammy and caught up with her after not having seen her for a year.   No, no. I’m just ignoring that nagging voice that’s telling me the difference between Kyle seeing his Grammy 6+ times a year and not seeing her at all — is me. It’s not me. It’s just that he’s married now… to me. And he’s living in Pittsburgh… with me.  And YES FINE, I’M AN EVIL TEMPTRESS THAT KEEPS HIM IMPRISONED IN PITTSBURGH WITH MY FEMININE WILES.  Wow, felt good to get THAT off my chest.

Kyle’s Family’s Thanksgiving was up at the Cabin so this was our third time there in one month.  This trip was particularly interesting because of the Wii.  My family treated it all "this is fun - but I’ve seen better".  Kyle’s family has hardly ever been exposed to such technologically enhanced fun.  They’re more the "Kick-the-can" types, or "let’s go outside and play soccer", or "Board games are fun!" types.  So you can see why the wii took them by storm.  You can see why it isn’t surprising that Kyle’s Father and Uncle played Wii Golf for little over 2 hours.  You can see why Kyle’s mom and my Sister-in-law had an out and out battle for Tennis champion.  Although, I must admit that the highlight of the evening was, in fact, watching Grandma play wii boxing.  To get the whole picture, she’s probably shorter than 5 feet, and she’s a pacifist.  She held the wiimote and the nunchuk like her life depended on it, and with her torso leaning towards the TV at a 45 degree angle, punching till her arms were fully extended, her fists were 2 inches from the TV screen and we feared that at any moment she would actually take OUT the TV, she kept up a streaming commentary of "PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH, GO DOWN, DOWN, DOWN, ARRR, PUNCH, PUNCH," *insert unintelligible scream of blood lust* "PUNCH PUNCH PUNCH…" etc.   When it was over she reverted to her normal self, being all "Oh, that was nice dearies.  My, my, I think I’m going to go to bed now.  Good night loves!"

The video we now have of it is spectacular.

I’m now all driven out, all Thanksgiving-ed out, and I need a nap.
Yell "GRANDMA LOVES THE WII" if you’re with me.