Flies: The Return

I couldn't resist using this image from one of my favorite Simpsons Halloween Episodes.


If this sounds like the title to some stupid movie, you're only half right. It's not a movie but it is plain old stupidity brought into my house by none other than MIL. Of course, you're not surprised. She was the reason we had a fly problem 2 summers ago.

Today, when I came home for work, 5 - yes FIVE - large flies were flying in erratic circles around my bedroom. There's nothing to draw them in there though I suspect because the sun beams through those windows in the afternoon, they thought they were trying to get out. I immediately lunged for the bug spray under the kitchen sink, while MIL looks on in utter confusion. I tell her there are flies in the house and dart back into the bedroom.

Soon, I've sprayed them all dead. One of them was as hard to kill as Stripe, the most evil of the Gremlins. He must have been the fly leader.

After bringing the flies to their doom, I put the spray back under the kitchen sink and I ask MIL why there were flies in my house. She stares at me like I've asked her to compute nuclear physics off the top of her head. And she just stares. I'm sorry but how do you not notice you've let 5 flies into someone's house? Would you leave them there or would you get rid of them? If you're MIL, you let them have a fucking party. Why not put out some fruit for those little fuckers to munch on while you're at it? That hideous, stupid zombie. And let's even play devil's advocate here. Let's say the old gal didn't realize there were FIVE FUCKING LARGE FLIES zooming about our small apartment. Why wouldn't she say anything at all? I bet she summoned them to make me crazy as payback for the "mysterious" disappearance of her stained mini-troll dress. I should have sprayed her instead.

Rags To Rags

Last I checked, we are not impoverished. We are not living on the street. We might not be the richest people in the world, but we have many things to be grateful for. Food. A nice home (albeit in an old neighborhood). Clothes. And if you're my daughter, Raelynn, you have the nicest clothes in this house.

Raelynn has so many nice clothes. I must admit, I'm a little envious. She's gotten so many adorable things thanks to her aunt and uncle and from her Papa and Mimi. And we buy her nice pretty stuff too. Despite having a closet full of lovely clothes though, MIL keeps insisting on buying shit like this. Or this. Or THIS.

And now, she's gone from rags...to rags...

I know...you're looking at it and saying so fucking what? Aside from that it looks like a miniaturized version of what an old lady would wear to church on Sunday, it's not so bad. Oh? Please, come take a closer look...

If you look more closely, you'll see that bow-thing is shredded and this is stained. Is this used? Did another demented elderly relative give this to MIL and she was being nice dressing her in it? No, no. She had to have done this herself. So did she buy this stained and frayed like it is? Or, has she been sneaking it over in her hag-bag, nestled between the potatoes and luo bo?

I don't even know what to do anymore. I am so tired of her shenanigans. I just want to shred this into strips and shove it down her throat. I let those 2 pairs of green pants with the stars slide. But this? COME ON. Even if you did buy it new and it's now like this, this is the kind of thing you throw on the kid when she's eating mangoes...NOT the nice, new clothes in her closet. ARGH!

I almost threw it out the window. I really had to stop myself. For one, because it would have fluttered down below Raelynn's window, which is on the same side of the building as the entrance. The troll would see it and just pick it up, put it back with the produce and garbage she carries with her in her bag and carry on her merry way of pissing me off daily as she clomps her goat-faced-self up the 6 flights of stairs. I thought about throwing it out our bedroom window but I know one of the other old bags in the building would see it and think we dropped it by mistake, returning it dutifully to us. Why couldn't they just steal it for their grandchild?

Since I found it crumpled and lurking in the crib with 3 fucking blankets (it is SUMMER...why in fuck my daughter needs 3 blankets to take a nap during the summer is another fucking mystery), I accidentally-on-purpose dropped it through the slats in the crib on the side facing the wall and there, it conveniently fell right into our extra baby bathtub. I doubt the old cow will look there, and if she does, I can be all "oopsy poopsy." Take that, cow!

Look Before You Drink!

My husband is in the good habit of taking water with him wherever he goes. He loves to use this thing:

Unfortunately for my husband, our toddler daughter very much enjoys using anything that belongs to Daddy. She likes to get into my stuff too, but Daddy's stuff is absolutely irresistible to her. His phone. His keys. His bag. His computer. His plate of food. Yes, everything that is Daddy's is Raelynn's too. Especially this water container. Sure, she has her own cup, but she refuses to drink from it when Daddy's cup is around. Here it is with the top off...

 And just like any active toddler, Raelynn also loves to put things into other things. She'll drop bits of her dinner into her soup. Or her cup. Or your beer, if you're over having dinner with us. Once she scared me half to death by putting one of her toys into my snow boots. I nearly jumped through our ceiling until I realized it was just a toy.

It doesn't take a genius to see where I'm going with this, does it?

The other day, poor Jeremy started to drink from his water and nearly choked as something flew into his mouth from the bottle. THIS thing:

 Check it out with no flash below...

Thankfully, he has such a great sense of humor. As he pulled this out of his bag to show me what he damn-neared swallowed, I burst into hysterical laughter. This is a piece of a toy drum Raelynn has that she (obviously) broke. But then she broke the plastic down further into this strip. I could have sworn I'd thrown it out, but her idiot grandparents must have let her take it from the garbage...how nice.

At least this incident serves as a reminder for us both (mostly for Jeremy though) to look before you drink. Lord knows what she'll try to shove in our beverages next!

Double Vision

Last week, I came home from work and discovered MIL had bought Raelynn a new pair of pants. No, not these vomit-inducing pants. I suppose when you give someone a pair of pants like that, anything else you bring them looks like haute couture. Here is a photo of the pants she bought:

Yes, they're screaming green with stars on them. But I actually kind of, sort of, slightly dig them. With a white, or even a black shirt, they'd rock. Of course, Raelynn's only plain black or white shirts are long-sleeved and we are well into June now so that's not going to happen. She also has a pink shirt with some bright green in it which actually worked together. But for the most part, these seem an odd thing to match. Not that people here actually match shit. At least not our part of the city. I think I once mentioned before that my friend Andrea called our part of the town "the part of Qingdao that time forgot." It's so true. Go downtown and the women are dressed nice. Go here and you want to run for cover.

Anyway, it's hard enough to match a pair of pants like this. So why, why, WHY would anyone ever buy 2 of them? That's right. MIL bought not one but TWO pairs of these:

During winter, she bought Raelynn 2 pairs of plain black pants. I didn't bitch. Why would I? Black pants for toddlers are a wonderful gift. They go with everything. Having 2 of them is fantastic because while one pair is drying with the laundry, you can wear the other pair. But 2 pairs of THESE?!? Dear Lord! And wouldn't you know...that old bag duh through our laundry basket to wash one pair of these the other day. AGAIN!!!! But wait...she put a pair of Raelynn's socks that she'd worn and dirtied BACK INTO THE CLOSET AGAIN! It is a complete mystery to me what the fuck is wrong with this woman. Why can't she leave these in the laundry basket? It's not like it was overflowing with clothes. And even if it was, WASH THE WHOLE FUCKING BASKET OF LAUNDRY YOU CLOWN! And the socks! At least she's not washing just one pair of socks anymore but MY GOD, put them in the fucking laundry basket! YEESH!

Found: Engrish Snack In My Kitchen

The other day, I discovered a package of Chinese cookies that look a bit like mini-Nilla wafers. Remember those? Well, these don't taste as good. But they're not completely disgusting. I've been working hard on working out and shaping up and so to me, those aren't worth the calories. But Raelynn likes them. MIL had brought them for her.

And in grand MIL tradition, she had opened the package and neglected to close it properly. My husband does the same damn thing. I see where he gets it from. I grabbed the package to close it up better and that's when I noticed there was English on the front. Once I read it, I realized, "Hey, that's not English. It's ENGRISH."

They were aiming for European taste, but instead, they got "Europen taste." Europen? Is that a pen for one Euro? It should be. Maybe it's a pen that has traveled all over Europe. Or most likely, some inept cretin was in charge of the packaging and didn't know European from Europen. The dumbasses are taking over indeed.

Return Of The Yuck

At the end of March, I posted about something horrible and yucky my in-laws put into one of our kitchen cabinets. You can check it out here, and if you don't have time to read the post (which isn't actually very long) you should at least take a gander at the accompanying photos. Well, today, the yuck has returned! Only, it's not in liquid form this time.

And for that, I'm a bit grateful because the last yuck I found we still weren't really sure what it was. We mostly suspect it to have been tea and for our sanity, we choose to believe it. Today, before I started dinner, I was unloading our dish rack which was looking a lot like this, actually...

Do you see the small, white bowl? Well, there happened to be one just like that on the rack today. And I went to put it back in the dish cabinet on top of the stack of other small, white bowls just like it.

Only something was wrong. I saw something strange in the top bowl so I pulled it out and put it on the counter. That's when I noticed there was something inside the bowl underneath that one too...

This substance is more easily identifiable than the original yuck. It's dirt. You know the culprit, don't you? MIL! Naturally. This is no mystery. Neither is the fact that it's dirt. Where the dirt came from though...that is certainly more mystifying. I am going to venture a guess that the old troll used these bowls to put some vegetables fresh from the market...spinach perhaps. Maybe she set them in there so as not to make a mess on the counters? No...that's too organized for her. Now I'm stumped. Here's a closer look at the dirt in the first bowl:

It's a good thing I look before I use any of our dishes. I'd hate for this to wind up in my food. Or Raelynn's food. Jeremy claims I'm over-reacting about this so I wonder how he'll react when I toss it in his breakfast for him in the morning. I think he'll change his mind quite fast, don't you?