Monday's entry, Part 1
2005-06-06, 11:32 a.m.

First, go visit the GroovyGuru and read this.

All done now? Great! So you have an inkling how our weekend went. Y�all bear with me, I have to split things up into two entries today so I don�t toast the D-land server. Yeah, Andrew, um, hi.

Last spring, we and quite a number of fabulous friends (to whom we are forever enslaved) helped move my mother and her 3 billion pounds of crap belongings from TN to SC. Now we are having to move some of it back, drop by drop, because transferring it to me is as close as my mother will get to jettisoning stuff. I held my ground this time and brought back only the things we need and/or can truly use. I deflected the pressboard furniture with skill and ease, but Hubby�s shields weakened under the assault of printer stands. I converted some power to his auxiliary (go go wifely wrath), and the cheapo furniture was rocketed back in place instead of into our truck.

Saturday, thanks to traffic, it took an extra 2 hours to reach Orangeburg. There was still plenty of time for Hubby and the Guru to take Old Flippy, their homemade boat, out onto the Edisto River and in the swamps. Pretty, mosquito-infested, Spanish-moss-netted, snake-crawling, fish-devoid blackwater swamps. The boat performed like a dream, gliding over sunken trees and through water less than a foot deep, without once sending them into the swift current. Meanwhile, Mama spent the afternoon preparing me for widowhood. She's still not too sure about their boat.

That evening, Hubby repaired and charged the AC in the alzabastardmobile. He thought the can of coolant was empty, so he yanked it off the valve, only to spray himself, the car, most of the garage, and my mother, with noxious oily stuff. This toxic moment was brought to you by the formerly overconfident and marginally observant, now totally humiliated son-in-law.

Our plans for the next day were simple: Awaken Sunday morning sometime AFTER sunrise; load one dresser with mirror into the trailer; disassemble the computer and toss it in the trunk; meet the neighbors at 11 for lunch; cram everyone in their respective vehicles, and head for home. Of course not.
Instead, here�s a Weekend With Mama, in 20 easy steps:

1. Get booted out of bed long before intended, with much muttering of �layin� up in bed wasting the whole day.� Fill out paperwork for GroovyGuru to purchase the oily alzabastardmobile.
2. �By the way, come help me lift this box.� Commence lifting big big box o�crap, while Hubby launches the computer into the car.
3. �By the way, maybe you can take these bicycles in the shed.� Commence digging in shed.
4. �By the way, let�s get all these photo albums out of this trunk to send with you.� Commence digging in trunk. Admonitions not to sell family photos in a yard sale. (The hell?)
5. �By the way, do you want the extra lawnmower?� Commence lifting 8,000 lb mower with dead battery and flat tires that is teeming with ants. Tiny biting ants.
6. March outside while muddy, sweaty, angsty, ant-bitten Hubby and the Guru are rupturing innards lifting the mower and I am drenching them all with really healthy bug killer. �What time are y�all gonna be done, so I can tell the neighbors when we�re going to meet them for lunch?�
7. More muttering of wasting time, when we stand still for a 5 second stretch in 90-degree, 500% humidity. You don�t move through this air, you have to scoop out a spot for yourself and pray the remaining atmosphere doesn�t collapse on you.
8. Lecture about �poor planning on y�alls part, you KNEW we were supposed to meet others for lunch, why aren�t you done yet?� More muttering.
9. In preparation for 350 mile trip, head to buffet and engage in carb-loading, ripe with tryptophans to add excitement to driving.
10. Go back to house to pick up the truck and trailer; �By the way, come get this stuff out of this closet.�
11. Stuff more bags of crap into trunk, enter car FINALLY ready to leave, 2 hours past original schedule.
12. Hubby enters truck, exits immediately in a panic, has lost wallet.
13. Tears house apart much to mother-in-law�s delight, finds wallet.
14. Somewhere between Exits 41 and 10, Hubby�s AC compressor dies in a big black undercarriage cloud of I�m-gonna-piss-you-off.
15. Somewhere between Exits 41 and 10, Hubby loses expensive new work-provided cell phone.
16. Hubby pulls off at Exit 10 and throws a public roadside snit.
17. Hubby sends the kids and me back to the redneck gas station at Exit 41 on a futile 62-mile round trip to find the cell phone, that was jammed down in his seat cushion the entire time.
18. Arrive home half an hour before GroovyGuru has to leave for work. He finds Hubby�s cell phone stuffed in the seat when they set off to return the Uhell trailer.
19. While they�re gone, I rummage through the photo albums and scrapbook we brought back. Discover scrapbook my father kept of every single item I did in preschool, and photos of me as a three-year-old with his handwritten captions of �Daddies Girl�. Commence total emotional collapse.
20. Deflate agitated Hubby and tuck him in bed.

So what are we doing next weekend? Going back to Mama�s. Obviously, we�re masochists.

Mama�s cousin had an arbor built in his backyard, and it is the most beautiful arbor ever built on God�s green earth, so she�s rekindled her plans to build one over the patio in her backyard. Significant Other is not going to be outdone, although he won�t admit it; he just quietly designed fancy scroll-saw work to be done on the ends of the overhanging boards.

And who�s going to build this arbor? Next weekend?

Ya guessed it.

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