Disclaimer: Usually I manage to write this blog without using the type of potty mouth that I show in real life. I have a feeling that if I try to censor myself in this entry it will end up reading like the edited for tv version of Pulp Fiction – “Beep! Beep! Beep, the beepin’ Beep, Beep, Beep.” Leave now if you are delicate. You’ve been warned.

So my weekend went downhill after the Asian Festival. The husband and I went to do some trail mapping. He dropped me off at one point on the trail and went to pick me up at the other end. I immediately got lost. The trail is pure mud. I would get back on the trail and then get lost again. This goes on for a while and then my cell phone in my back pocket starts ringing. I juggle computer equipment and manage to get the phone out without falling in the mud just to hear the husband say, “Where are you?” I believe my answer was something coherant like, “I don’t know where in the hell I am!” I ended up taking a shortcut but I don’t know where. All I know is I missed several landmarks that I saw on that trail before. One was a large pond. That doesn’t just get up and move away. So, that section will have to be redone.

Now I’m cranky. I get to the car. We drive home. On the way I ask the husband if the evil mother-in-law (known as EvilBitch in my real life vocabulary) had a plan for her life. She’s planning on selling her car to get money to move away. I’m confused because I think she needs a car to be able to move away. The husband doesn’t answer. I ask if he isn’t answering because he doesn’t know or if he just isn’t listening. His response was, and I quote, “I don’t care what the fuck she does as long as she doesn’t do it here.” Ok, end of discussion I think.

Then I’m in bed that night (Saturday) minding my own business at 11:30 PM. EvilBitch and the husband are in the living room. The husband asks, “Do you have a plan for after you sell the car?” I am not really surprised. I often ask him questions that he infers are the stupidest thing ever but then he broods on them and determines that they are in fact profound. Turns out she doesn’t have a plan. We had assumed that she was going to buy a cheap car and use the rest of the money as a start of her moving away fund. She said that doing that would be stupid because that would take about half the money that she will get for her car. The husband tells her that she can’t do anything without a car. She tells him that he should have told her that before. He said that he assumed she had a plan. It starts to get very ugly out there.

We have an old truck that we used to use to pull the trailer. It needs extensive work to make it drivable again. When EB’s original car got repossessed (whole other story) the husband offered to get the truck running for her. She said that would be ok but then separately asked me to give her my car and I would have to drive the truck. She just couldn’t imagine having to drive that truck. End of that plan.

Last night she decided that we should get the truck running for her. The husband told her it would take too much work. Good for him. I’m still in my bed cheering silently for him.

Then he told her that she should get a part-time job in order to save money for her going away fund. She freaked out. She said that there was no way that she could save money on a minimum wage job. He told her that she doesn’t pay rent or utilities so she could save it all. Besides, that’s $5.15 an hour more than she’s making now. She said that she’d spend it all on gas and couldn’t save anything. He said that we could continue as we are now while she was working. She could save the money she made and could “continue begging” him for gas money. That one made her mad and made me cheer. Truth hurts bitch! There were a whole bunch of other reasons why she couldn’t get a job – no proper clothes because they are in her storage boxes that she can’t get to (they are in the garage – I’ll get them for you). The husband’s answer to that was that if she planned properly she could get a job where they gave her a shirt to wear. What if she had an interview for a real job that she had to go to but couldn’t go to because she had to work? His answer – either switch with someone or if it is just impossible, quit. This went on for quite a while. Then she said that it would take her 6 months to save enough money to leave on a part-time salary. The husband told her to work for 3 months and he would match her savings. Her response? “Why don’t you just give me that 3 months worth of money now?” She’s lucky I wasn’t out there because I would have started putting her shit in the driveway right then at midnight.

The weird thing about the conversation was that it had happened before. Except I was doing the husband’s lines and he was doing EB’s. I guess he really is fed up with her.

Now we are up to Sunday morning. I head out to go mapping. I drive an hour to get there and the system won’t work. I drive back home to have the husband fix it. As I drive in my driveway I see the Deadbeat Contractor in the front flower bed with a weed-whacker. I fly out of the car and see that he has killed everything less than 2 feet tall. I tell him to stop because there are plants there that I want. He informs me that there weren’t any plants – just weeds. He’s standing in the wreckage of my forget-me-nots with lots of little blue flowers on the ground around him. I repeat that he needs to stop and leave before I become totally hysterical at the destruction. I run inside and try to console myself that I got him stopped just halfway through one bed.

The husband pulls up to him on the lawnmower because he sees me storm off. D.C. tells him that he thinks I’m mad. The husband comes in and yells at me for yelling at D.C. I tell him that I didn’t yell – I just told him to stop. The flower beds have been a bad issue between the husband and I for years. He knows nothing about plants and assumes everything is a weed if there aren’t huge obvious flowers on it all the time. Large fight insues as I get totally hysterical.

I finally calm down some and walk to the kitchen. I look out the window and see that D.C. in fact did not stop weed-whacking but continued through the bed taking out all my daffodil foliage, a lot of hostas, and all my periwinkle ground cover. Total scorched earth policy. I thought I was hysterical before but now I came totally unglued. I loved that periwinkle and this year it was finally taking off well. The husband can’t understand why I am so upset over some plants.

I’m glad I came home when I did. The next bed he would have reached contains a Japanese maple seedling and ground cover roses. I would have probably torn D.C. limb from limb if he touched those.

I call my mom. Those were divisions of her hostas that she helped plant here that were just demolished. She gives proper gasps of horror.

After getting assurances that D.C. will not be allowed to weed-whack in any other beds and also explaining to the husband what I mean when I refer to a flower bed, I leave to go map again. This time it works well.

Then I decided that I deserved a treat so I went to see Madagascar. It was good. On the way home a radio station was playing their top 500 songs of all time. It sounds like they had plugged in my iPod and were broadcasting. Made me feel like I had wonderful musical taste. Of course, they were only in the 170’s. So maybe I’m only a bit cool. But I sang really loud and danced while driving. I feel a bit better. I averted my eyes from the slaughtered bed when I came home. I’m trying not to face it right now.

Then I tried to post this. The internet was denying knowledge of my website even though I was composing onsite. So I had to save it all and come back to post it this morning. Much more swearing followed.