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I talked with dad today briefly, and I don’t know how we got on it, but we started arguing about me voting for Barack Obama. And I DID vote for Obama – I refuse to be someone like mom that will vote for someone but not publicly announce it, as if afraid of making the wrong choice and being blamed for more problems. I mean, everyone that voted for Bush for the past 2 elections doesn’t admit that they had something to do with all of the problems we’re messed up with now, so… why will I have to take any blame if all of my dad’s crazy warnings come true?
And they are crazy, by the way. Not only crazy, but I really couldn’t make sense of why he said McCain was a better candidate – just like on Fox News, he came up with a lot of jibberish but REAL SUBSTANCE was definitely lacking. He even rambled a little about being stuck in a forest, and running through and running into trees or something…
He did say a few things that really pissed me off though. For one, he said (and I don’t know about these “figures”, but that isn’t really relevant anyway) that 90% of blacks in America are voting for Obama just because he’s black, and they would vote for him even if he was threatening to sell all of their babies. What the hell does that mean? And right after dad said that, he claimed over and over that he wasn’t racist.
If Hillary were in the election, would dad claim that all women voting for her were simply voting for her because she has a vagina?
Ok, the other thing he said was that he has so much experience because he’s been here for sixty years, and I obviously couldn’t have any original thoughts of my own (not his words, exactly), but I’m just “buying into the party line” of Barack Obama. I don’t quite know how those two things correlate, but I do know this: Martin Luther King, Jr. was leading the Montgomery bus boycott when he was only 26 years old. Thomas Jefferson helped draft the Declaration of Independence when he was only 33 years old. Isn’t it believed that even Jesus Christ (a human!) was only about 30 years old when was crucified, and for years prior to that, he had preached peace, love, and understanding across the areas he travelled?
So why on earth does age automatically qualify my dad to know more than me about why John McCain is supposedly a better candidate than Barack Obama? Why on earth wouldn’t my dad let me finish any of my sentences?
I’m tired, and rambling, and whatever. Going to sleep before I find out who won.
Craig’s parents came over last night to watch Connor for a while so that we could go out for one last “fling” before Elly is born. We were hoping that she’d be motivated to arrive, especially since we were walking a ton, eating Thai food, and doing whatever other silly crap that they say can help start a labor. None of it worked, not that I really thought it would, but that’s not the point of this post anyway. Needless to say, I am still as pregnant as ever. My right foot is swelling up like a stuffed pig now too, so maybe that’s a good sign? A sign that she’s moving down, and blocking off circulation in other places rather than just in my left foot?
I have been really on edge lately in anticipation of this baby. Mostly I’m anxious about what we’re going to do with Connor when we go into the hospital for the delivery. If it happens in the middle of the night, it’ll be fine – we’ll just call up Rachel and Amanda, have them come over and sleep at our house, and Connor hopefully won’t know anything even happened. Even if it’s a rough morning for them, he’ll have slept fairly well for the evening, and by that time my mom and whomever else we call can be at our house to provide him with more comfort, etc. That situation would be ideal.
If it happens in the daytime though, we might be screwed. Connor’s life will be thrown all out of whack, and I don’t want it to be a traumatic event, y’know? Our options are: if it’s happening quickly, I call my mom, my sister, and Rachel, tell them all to come to the hospital, and whomever gets there first can take Connor at least into a waiting room to be out of the action. If we have some time, I can call my mom and dad, and hopefully they get to our house in time to have me, Craig, and my mom go up to the hospital, and then my dad and Connor can stay at home until the “coast is clear”. We can even call Craig’s parents at that point and tell them to go to our HOUSE, not the hospital, because if my dad is around, I know at least some reasonable childcare will be happening and his parents won’t be at the hospital to bug the shit out of me. My dad will make good food for him, give him normal amounts of candy and junk for any grandparent, and insist that he goes to bed before it’s a stupid hour. His parents can be contained, controlled, and out of the way of me – because if they show up at the hospital before I’m able to shower this time, I will throw a placenta at them.
Ok, so blah blah blah. Like it matters, anyhow. New babies throw everyone out of whack, and all of this planning is bound to make me crazy, let alone extend this pregnancy even further into the future (too much stress) and it’ll all get screwed up in the end, anyway.
Back to last night. We got Thai food, it was yummy, we went downtown and walked around, shopped a little, went to Old Navy and bought a few things, went to a chocolate shop and ate a yummy chocolate fondue, walked a bit more, went to Blockbuster, came home. It was 11:00 p.m. CONNOR WAS STILL AWAKE. Not just mumbling in his bed, trying to fall asleep with the lights out. To me, it looked like they saw our lights shining in the window, and Craig’s dad hurriedly took Connor upstairs while Craig’s mom shuffled around turning off the TV and turning down the music, trying to make it look like he’d been up there for a while. She was basically panting when we came to the door, and Connor was upstairs yelling down to me that he wanted me to read him stories. DEAD GIVEAWAY – he hadn’t read ANY full stories yet. They just started bedtime. He’s four years old folks, and he had not napped during the day. On a day when I’m being relaxed about the whole bedtime thing, with those circumstances, Connor would still be asleep without any fuss at the latest by 9:30 p.m. With a nap during the day, I might stretch that to 10:00 p.m., and that’s only because sometimes when I’m not paying attention, we can be out pretty late, and then winding down takes a little longer. Still, he’d CRASH by 10, and it would actually probably be harder to keep him awake.
Craig’s parents though – those fuckers are totally retarded. And y’know what? It REALLY irritates me that I had to come home last night and STILL PUT MY KID TO BED. It wasn’t a night out, y’know? It wasn’t “carefree” – my mother-in-law acts like she’s doing us a big fucking favor, but in reality she just created more chaos, and I still had to be the responsible adult and put the child in his bed and… that’s not fair! Life’s not fair. So I came in the house, went upstairs, did what any fucking normal adult with any fucking BRAINS would do and turned off the lights, closed the windows, put my child in his bed. I kicked out the dog, the cat, and the grandpa, read three pages of a book, and he was OUT LIKE A LIGHT.
But Craig’s parents had already left. His mom was so afraid of how mad I would be that she was gone in three minutes. Craig insisted that he was trying to “educate” her on how stupid it was that Connor was still awake, but she didn’t listen anyway. She never will. When she explained how the night went, she said that apparently they had gone out to eat, went to the mall, and when they finally got back to the house it was already 9 o’clock. So, instead of getting pajamas on and getting ready for bed, they turned on the Wii and proceeded to play video games for an hour. Then they asked Connor what time he normally goes to bed. This is what gets me – they treat him like he’s a baby ALL THE TIME, except for when it matters – they’re seriously asking a four year old child what time he goes to bed… and he doesn’t even quite understand the concepts of YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW, or NOW yet? Of course, Connor gave an answer that he would be expected to give – he said something silly that a tired slap-happy little kid would say!
“I go to bed at all times, whenever I want to!”
OH REALLY? Oh really. They believed it.
Craig’s mom said that when she tried to get him to get into his pajamas, he cried and complained that he didn’t want to go to bed, so she just gave in and let him play a bit more. She gave him candy because he wanted it, let him play the Wii forever because he wanted to, let him run around like a crazy man because he wanted to.
And the thing of it all is, I know this is just a part of being a mom, and having stupid grandparents involved in the care of my child. I know that many many families have this situation – old stupid people that forgot what it was like to be a parent are taking care of a young child, and they can’t bring themselves to be strict, or even REASONABLE, because it’s too hard to see a little kid cry. My parents don’t have a problem with it, because they can allow Connor to be nuts and give him candy and do dangerous crap – but they still get a carrot stick into his mouth every once in a while, and still savor the calmness of nighttime with a child asleep. Because my parents have been that way for the entire time Connor has been on this earth, I think they could manage getting Connor into his pajamas and sleeping at a normal time without him crying! But Craig’s parents, the only people we definitely have nearby for when Elly decides she wants to be born, are totally fucking retarded, so factoring them into the plans is just something we cannot do! We’ll go to the hospital, I’ll push a baby out, we’ll be awake for 24+ hours, and then when we come home we’ll have to rewire Connor back into reality, because he’s sure to be on a crazy sugar buzz and very little sleep.
I hate them. I truly do – I don’t see their use. And that’s mean, but I don’t care. I’m just so sick of complaining about them; they’re so stupid I can’t stand it anymore. There are a lot of stupid people in the world, and it’s fine for them to exist because they generally don’t interfere with my life. When they do though, I’m entitled to do something about it – but not with Craig’s parents! I have to stand here, hands behind my back, and let them fuck around with my life whenever they want to.
Fuck.
