Free at last, free at last!!!

Disclaimer: My in-laws are wonderful people. Kind, funny, sweet, generous. A lot like Scott.

We all understand that, right?

But two weeks of having to somewhat behave in your own house? Enough to cross your eyes and turn your synapses into tens of thousands of fleas inside your head, every one of them snapping their little torsos to and fro, hands on hips, like bad-permed women at a Kenny Chesney concert.

And I didn't even behave all that much. I still dropped the occasional f-bomb, still picked physical, pinching, shoving fights with Scott every single day (only now he could actually yell "MOM!!!") ((just before he took my wrists and bent me like a pipe cleaner)) and I still lamented about all the people I hate in the world, and what I would like to do to them.

The stifled areas of frustration showed up one by one. For instance, I had not realized just how much of the time I am either fully or most of the way disrobed in our house. I'm not some nudie hippie perv girl or anything. I don't rub myself against trees or full-moon-howl at my own menstrual blood. I just like to cool off after a hot bath, for instance, by checking my email naked while combing out my hair. Also, when I get ready for work in the morning, I run frantically from bedroom to extra bedroom to laundry room to find just the right bra, jeans, and so on. Putting all your clothes on while confined to one room is just a stupid, pointless way of living. It's like being in prison. Here I am, back here in the bedroom, getting fully dressed! Go ahead and slide my lunch plate through the slot in the door. Oh wait...my new cellmate Wanda tells me I have different lunch plans.

So I had to dig out a robe. I own somewhere around 8 robes, none of them purchased by me. Most are from my sister, who has a habit of giving robes as gifts to people who never wear them. Mostly to me, and to her daughter Michele. Part of the Christmas tradition in our family is to watch Michele open her gift and say "Oh look! Another robe I'll never wear!"

Finally the robes came in handy. The only thing I'd used them for before my in-laws moved in, was forming a little nest back in the corner of my closet when Hankie was sick and needed a place to curl up and hide. Hankie especially cherishes the incredibly thick, thick as a down sleeping bag, thick as your tongue after a night of drinking like Colin Ferrell, unbearably, oppressively thick red-flowered full-length robe. I tried wearing that one the first night I had to cover my Jezebel self for the in-laws, and before I could answer one email I had sweat dripping off me like R. Kelly at a Double Dutch competition. I opted for the less "Ice Station Zebra" design, a blue cotton robe, and begrudgingly got used to it like a house arrest ankle bracelet.


Did I mention that one should always throw that robe on before heading down the hall in the wee hours to go wee? Because there is the chance that your father-in-law's tall body with its bladder synchronized with your bladder, will meet you in the hallway and scare you so badly you nearly slop your dripper.

I'm too tired to say any more. The delicious silence in the house is wrapping around me like a sparkling opium cloud, and I must walk into it and find my animal soul.

P.S.

There were some good things about the visit. Like the night we got into a big discussion about rats, and Scott's mom said "Oh great, now I'm going to go dream about rats." And I had already put this in her bed. Her scream was so loud and gutteral that I thought she was giving birth. To a rat. In her bed.