Chapter 30: Anniversaries

We are coming up on Memorial Day, and that day marks the one year anniversary of when I moved into this house. The will make it the longest period of time I have lived in one place since I graduated high school, six years ago. Of six years of developing the habit to pack up and move about every 8 months this is a strange sensation. Yet, I don’t feel the need (right now) to pack up and move. I was talking to a friend yesterday who is getting ready to move with a friend from church to a new house and it got me to thinking that I don’t have to live with these girls until a life changing event occurs. Sometimes you just move, and you can live with any one you like. It feels weird. Granted, moving out to live with someone else from church would create a bit of drama, and I have to admit, right now there is no one I would rather live with then these three girls.
It’s not that people aren’t trying. Well, most people aren’t and mostly that’s due to the fact that I still don’t know that many people in the ward. My sister-in-law is certainly trying but I think she’s overlooked one important little factoid, I can’t stand her or her two daughters. I love my brother, I’m not too happy about his choice in a wife. I don’t think she married because she was in love, I think she married because it’s her survival instinct. The children? Well, she doesn’t really want them, that’s just her idea of what’s supposed to happen. She doesn’t pay enough attention to them, but she “dotes” on them because that’s what the perfect mom would do. Dotes…not showering them with attention, but buying them whatever their hearts desire. She takes them to get their pictures professionally taken every stinking holiday. But she won’t stay home with them, she’d rather put them in daycare and work then take care of them. She has a two year old who I’m pretty sure has never had her diaper changed by her mom. She hasn’t gone outside to play with them since she’s been here, and the one time she went on a walk with them (and my sisters and cousins) she was on the cell phone barely paying attention.
One big mistake that she has made is that she doesn’t realize how vindictive my sisters and I can be. We out number her, we have sharper tongues and we aren’t afraid to use them. I’m not afraid to smack my niece, I haven’t done it, but if one of my nieces ever hits me or hits Burrito or my nephew one more time I swear I will walk right up to them and slap them across the face…or at least spank them. Their mom gives them options and to me with children there are no options…there is “do”, and they will “do”. What my sister’s and I hate the most is how she treats my brother. Any girl would be lucky to have a guy like my brother and she overworks him and abuses him and doesn’t care that she has a good thing and one day she may lose it. I hope one day she does lose him. She pays no attention to the fact that he is exhausted. He works all day, when he comes home she bosses him around the moment he tries to just sit down, and where is her lazy ass? On the couch. Watching T.V. or napping, she is so much like Thorn that it’s unbelievable, and the women in this family don’t like to put up with Thorn and we don’t like to put up with this sister-in-law either.
And still, she tries to get me to move in with them when they finally get their house. I have a dog now and she was asking how my roommates like him and if they are going to let me keep him and she told me that if they didn’t I could always move in with them. Hell no! I don’t like her daughters touching my dog. So the other day she asked how it was going and I said that all my roommates really like him and even Motor Mouth said she didn’t have a problem with him and she was going to be the hardest one. She seemed disappointed. I doubt because she actually likes me and wants me to live there because while I may not be good at reading people I can read right through her, I know she doesn’t like any of us girls. She’s just ticked she won’t be getting rent from me.