Full House

     Friday night at The House of Wickid usually involves dinner, wife going to work, kids going to bed, and me sitting on my arse playing video games late into the night. Today however, I have had a change in plans. The Washington Fair is going right now at the Fairgrounds in East Bremerton. For my West Coast homies, tickets are a dollar so go out and have some fun. I would normally not be going because my beautiful one will be at work tonight and I really don't feel like going. I'm still 100% after my surgery, but I got home from work today to find out that I was volun-told that I was taking the kids to the fair tonight. Now, I'm normally not one to put a bad vibe on fun, but I really didn't want to go tonight. I am for all intents and purposes just a driver tonight because its the other people in the house that want to go. Between my mother in-law, my second oldest sister in-law, and her friends coming over, my house has become too crowded for its own good. Hence the title of this latest edition of The Arena.
     This post will provide back story and details to the reasons behind my "Full House." I wish that I could say that I was talking about poker, but unfortunately I am not. It started in February of this year while I was out to sea. I got an email from my wife stating that we would be having a visitor coming in March. She went on later to detail that the visitor wouldn't be a visitor, but instead be my mother in-law who was getting evicted from her house. I love my mother in-law I really do, but sometimes she does things that make you question her intelligence. Things like going out to the local shows and spending money on things that should be left at the store. Not to call the kettle black, but we do the same thing however, we only get excess stuff that we NEED and USE. My pantries used to look like a mini grocery store because we had a stock of things that we used quite frequently. I'm talking about those things. I'm talking about things like cover charges to get into shows, going out to do things after she tells me she has no money. It's things like that that drive me up the wall. I told my wife that I didn't have a problem with her coming to stay with us until we got back to Washington. The plan WAS to have her stay with us until we got back to Washington and got settled in. We used her to help out with the boys and to help us around the house. She even assisted on the drive across the country in the van with my wife by helping out with the kids. For the final two months I was in Georgia, things were great. I didn't expect her to immediately move into a new place once we got back, but I did expect her to be actively looking for a place to live that wasn't with me. Again, I love my mother in-law, but there is only so much I can take. We have been back since mid-May and it is now into the end of August.
     Not only do I have my mother in-law living with me currently, we also have my second oldest sister in-law, Meagan, staying with us too. This happened by pure accident. She would come and visit and stay for the weekend, then head back to Olympia and go back to work. It was nice because I only had to deal with her on the weekends. She isn't a complete pain in the ass, but she is a pain in the ass none the less. She would come to our house around supper time on a Friday afternoon, eat, hang out for a minute or two, and then head out to go hang out with her friends. Nice and easy visit that was low maintenance. It was nice to only have to ask her if she was going to be home for supper and get declined instead of having to make sure that I have made enough food to feed her. I guess that she ended up getting suspended from work because she didn't have enough money to take some sort of test or something that she needed to do to continue doing her job. She pays rent for an apartment in Olympia and she has other bills, so I understand the lack of funds for doing something like that. Now, I am no whiz when it comes to budgeting my own money, I let the wife handle that. I was usually hardly at home so I had no idea what money went where or when it needed to be paid. I don't even care that I don't know all of this. As long as the bills are paid and there is food in the refrigerator, I'm golden. Again, the pot and kettle comment comes to your mind. I know it does because I've analyzed this whole situation myself as an "outsider" so to speak. So, now I have my mother in-law and Meagan living with us. The good news about Meagan is that she is soon to be leaving to head back to Olympia because she has another job that her friend is helping her get and she will be able to live on her own again. She has a college degree, you would think that she can handle herself.
     Last weekend I wrote a post about early morning flights. Don't remember the title, but I know that it is there. I wrote it for Christ's sake. I had to take my mother in-law to the airport so that she could head down to Arizona and pick up my oldest sister in-law, Jamie. Now at this point, my mother in-law was supposed to be in her own place and ready to bring Jamie back to Washington. This obviously didn't happen because I am staring at Jamie sitting on my couch and her movie collection is sitting in front of me in 9 different milk crates. I have a "man cave", but it doesn't have any of the normal things that you look for in a Man Cave. So now I have three extra people in my house that don't need to be here. It has made things hard for Damen because he has been overstimulated with everybody in the house. It was easy for the time that my mother in-law was gone because things weren't being used all up and no one taking the blame for them.
     In one week we can go through about three gallons of Almond Milk. Since you can't buy those in the gallon size, I have six half gallon milk cartons sitting in my fridge pretty much at all times. When it is only me, my wife, and my kids, the milk lasts forever and a day. The kids are the only ones that drink the milk and they only drink milk at meals. Well, Lucas drinks milk most of the time, but we are working on weaning him down to three bottles/cups of milk a day. Mom doesn't really pitch in for much in terms of groceries unless we ask her for something while she is on her way home from work, or if she asks us. I don't really task her with too much at home except to give me a hand in putting children to bed. Now I have to come up with a move out date for everybody so that I can focus on calming my wife down, who is losing her mind with everybody being here, and get the kids onto a school routine since school starts in about two weeks. Needless to say, things have been very difficult at The House of Wickid for the past couple months and it is starting to take its toll on me and the family. I guess tonight while I am out at the fair, I will get a chance to talk to my mother in-law and find out her plans of getting out of my house and getting the rest of the "baggage" to go with her. It should be fairly easy since I see her complaining on Facebook about not being able to do things like she's used to doing. I can't say for certain if it was her fault or not that she got herself into this mess, but I do believe that she is somehow involved in the reason why I am harboring her at my house.
     At some point I will get my home back and it will be quiet and calm again. I am ready to have a clean house instead of cleaning my house and feeling like it isn't clean. I'm ready to have a wife that isn't so angry all of the time and ready to have my time with her when the kids are asleep. Things have been hell, but we manage through it. Time to go put laundry away, change clothes and see if I can find a way out of going to the fair tonight. I was planning on video game time with my uncle, but I may have to put that on hold until tomorrow.
     Until next time, from The Arena.......


Wickid