The Book Of Duh

This evening, I realized it's been 2 weeks since I've written a new post. It's not for lack of material, just lack of energy. This year, I have 20 hyperactive kindergarteners in my class. I'm pooped, and I have an active toddler to come home to. Most nights, I just want to veg out. But tonight, I realized I have to write something. My 2-year blogiversary is coming up and I can't have so few posts per month, can I?

And as I sit here typing this, my husband is innocently shattering my concentration by loudly eating fried rice. I turn and glare at him. How can you make THAT much noise eating fried rice? He's scraping the plate with every spoonful, unaware of the nerve-jangling impact it has on me. And the chewing! Dear GOD! THE CHEWING! I love Jeremy so much but sometimes in moments like these when I'm not actually looking at him while he's eating, I have to turn and look at him to make sure it's really him and he hasn't been replaced by some extraterrestrial bone-gnawing beast grinding skeletal remains into a powdery dust. It's a culture thing though. It's just how people are here. Take his parents for example. If you sat around the 3 of them eating together, you'd drink as much beer as I do in their presence too, I promise you this.

If you've read my blog before though, you know that most things my in-laws do are extremely irritating. I could let most of these things go and not give them another thought. But added together, they become unbearable to me. The last few weeks since I started work, I've come home to messes, dirty dishes put away in the cabinets with the clean dishes, vile smells that have nothing to do with baby diapers, unsafe objects within Raelynn's grasp and a whole host of other irksome treats.

But the thing that sent me seething and spluttering with curse words from around the world was the destruction of books. More specifically, the books we have for Raelynn. What caused me to foam at the mouth was that we'd already had this problem before when one of my idiot in-laws allowed Raelynn to destroy a very nice pop-up book that my brother and sis-in-law had sent us from Singapore. In addition to having my husband tell them more curtly not to touch the English storybooks, I moved the books out of Raelynn's room and into our room. We have a built-in bookcase in our room and I just tucked them onto there. I figured they'd be safe from the unwashed fingers of the morons, but I was wrong.

Last week, Jeremy and I came home and found Raelynn prancing around with 2 of her English board books. Don't even say it. Board books SHOULD be ok. But not with our kid. She has actually taken bites out of them. And destroyed the spines. I didn't know you could do these things to board books but apparently you can when you are being supervised by 2 of the dimmest people around. I didn't hide my annoyance either. I yelled in English but was careful not to say anything that would anger Jeremy. Calling his mother a fat toad to her face would not be in my best interests. He, more calmly, began to interrogate her on the matter. I didn't catch all of what he said, but I did hear him tell her to please not touch those books and to keep away from the book shelves.

But of course, do you think my in-laws fucking listen? No they don't. Which is why I have a hard time respecting them. Don't touch my personal shit, especially if I have asked you nicely not to do so already. A few days later, after MIL left, I noticed Raelynn's Beauty and the Beast: Friends Are Sweet book on one of her high-up shelves in her room. I know I didn't leave it there. I stalk over to it and snatch it off the shelf. I leaf through it and find some more tears on some of the pages AND that the pages had been taped back to the spine of the book. Oh fucking lovely. Really. Thanks for fucking listening and not touching my shit. You can't even read English! Why are you touching this book?!? WHY?!? This is why everything we ever have that starts off new instantly looks like shit when these 2 fuckwads come over. The new mop? Within one day looked like it had been used to mop up mud in a landslide. The kitchen sink? After having the repair guy fix the loose faucet, the very next day, that old cow-faced zombie knocked it loose again. All the coloring pages my precious angel did that I put away for safe keeping in a place my in-laws shouldn't be digging in? You guessed it...all over the floor, half of them torn to shreds. Everything they do is so totally DUH! UGH!!!!