Right now, I am so tired of being sick.  Every time I eat, the cramps start somewhere deep in my intestines.  Sometimes I sweat and I shake, other times it just hurts.  I am not going to the bathroom like I used to, and I lie awake in pain all night.  And the gas…the gas is awful.  Half the time that is the cause of the pain, but it won’t go away.

I have an appointment with a gastroenterologist on May 5th.  It was the soonest they could get me in.  I just hope my intestines don’t eat themselves from the inside out before then.

My sister in law moved out on Thursday and got married on Friday. She announced the engagement on Valentine’s Day. I hope this isn’t the mistake I think it will turn out to be. Honestly. I pray. Given her situation, I wish she’d fallen under the spell of a US citizen, but I can’t judge that. I wish she’d given us more notice instead of just throwing us into a financial black hole. M took the car from her (his car) and is going to sell it when we return. I have a bonus coming on March 14th. I have vented until I am blue in the face trying to make sense of the entire thing, but I can’t. She didn’t even tell me she was moving out; last I knew she was staying here until we came back. We weren’t invited to the wedding and when I got upset that no one told me she moved out (MIL told my husband, I expected him to tell me) my MIL said that my SIL was embarrassed. I would be embarrassed if I was marrying someone that everyone thought was controlling, but I can’t imagine sneaking out the back door with no “see you, have a nice life” or anything. My family wasn’t overjoyed that I married young (they’re over it) but I was never embarrassed about it. I also can’t imagine not at least inviting your mother, who is in the same city. My MIL is lonely, and I feel so sad to see her with no one. We try to spend time with her, but she gets we’re married and want to spend time alone too. I feel like she is hurt, but can’t be mad at her daughter because that would hurt everyone even more. I found a way for my mother to be at my wedding, and she lived 1300 miles away. It was important to her. And I can’t believe, no matter what anyone tells me, that being there was unimportant to my MIL. It was important that she be there for her youngest son’s wedding (my husband). My parents didn’t speak Spanish and she didn’t speak any English, but it was still important for her. So, I won’t buy it that it was not important this time. I will buy that my SIL knows we disapprove because hey – he told her if she ever cheated on him he’d break both her legs and put her in the hospital. My husband got upset and confronted the asshole. He came into our apartment ONCE in two years. He must have picked her up when she left on Thursday, and apparently he waited downstairs, like he was waiting for a delivery, not taking a young woman from her family. No, he didn’t violate us, but the whole lack of respect in this entire situation kills me. Manners have been thrown out the window, respecting the people who have done so much for you has been forgotten…and a part of me is still scared for her. Scared that he will find reasons other than her cheating. But I can’t do anything about it, and I wanted to at least maintain contact with her, but with her sneaking out the door like she would return in a few hours – I don’t know if she’ll allow that. Or him. The person I knew a year ago is gone, replaced by someone I do not understand. Someone bizarre, and it as if she is a puppet on strings.

I need to talk to get it out, but I find myself talking about it constantly trying to find some sense in the madness. But I do not find any sense, I only find myself in a maze filled with dead ends. I can’t get out. Mirko asks me not to be mad at her; I am not. I am just sad for her, and wish she could have found a modicum of respect (if not for me, for him) in herself. And the ability to respect herself. Or I wish her puppeteer could have found some. I am just hurt. Her entire family realizes she is acting bizarre, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I should accept that and move on, but when things don’t make sense to me, I have such a hard time.

Have not finished much in the way of knitting. I am still working on the baby blanket for Ana. I hoped to have that finished, but I hate baby blankets. I’m almost done with the Monkey socks in Artsy’s Prom Dress v2.0.

Most importantly, we live for Peru on the 27th. Spend 5 days in Lima, about 5 in Cuzco, then come back to Lima for the rest of the trip. I have never been so excited. We have three suitcases full of gifts, so that means lots of room for yarn on the way back. Glorious, glorious yarn.

Some drinking and pictures. I’m the fat white one on the left. Duh.

MIL, Mirko, me.  We can tell who the family lush is.

I do not know what that crap under the tree is, and at this point, I don’t care.

Living proof he’s not as normal as he says.  Before going to Jimmy’s mom’s.

This was after like, 6 drinks, so I have no idea what I’m doing.  Or why.   I think I’m making a kissy face.

Frank and Mirko.  Frank is the one Mirko blamed for “getting [Mirko] drunk”.  Mmhmm.

Christian and his girlfriend…I think her name is Zabrina and she’s Colombian and calls me sweetie.  I don’t like it.

Looking pretty rough the next day.  Please ignore my pregnant looking stomach, I have bad posture.

HAPPY NEW YEAR’S!

So we wind up at an Argentinian steakhouse, where we ordered a parillada for two for 39.95.  It was enough food to feed a whole damn family!  I was originally treating him to dinner, but since the Peru/Paraguay soccer match was on at the restaurant, we wound up staying and watching, so we’re splitting the cost.  Almost 60.00 total, with tip.  We just won’t go out next weekend   It was a TON of food, and worth the money.  It was absolutely FABULOUS.

And, the baby blanket from hell – I thought my fourth ball of the orange would finish up the orange and I could work on the border, but it looks like I’ll need another ball of the orange.  One week to go…if I’m not at desired size with the orange by Wednesday, I’m starting the border and just giving them a small blanket.

booty keep bouncin’ booty keep bumpin’…

I am halfway done with the orange pinwheel baby blanket from hell.  With aqua trim.  It wouldn’t be so terrible if it didn’t seem so neverending…and if it didn’t have to be done in two weeks.  As I have been moaning and groaning about for the last week, my husband opened his big mouth and told the mother- and father-to-be that I am making the baby something.   Now there’s PRESSUUUUURE!

We went to Miami to go to the Peruvian Consulate last week.  It sucked, but I got a lot of knitting done.  We had to rent a car-the first one we returned because it had something wrong with it, and the second one kept turning itself off at stoplights in downtown Miami.  Fun.

In a little over a week, I have to go back to working late material at work…in a room full of team leads, who get paid more than I do and know less about late material.  My chance to prove I’m smarter than them?  Psh, I already knew that.

Really want to start Secret of the Stole.  Must keep knitting orange baby blanket….

I’m so dwelling right now.

I went to visit my parents last week, for only 4.5 days.  I am sad that I live so far away from my mom, but we had fun. On Saturday, there was a cook out – I drank too much and went to bed dizzy.  On Sunday we got up early and went to the race track up in Saratoga, then went to my favorite restaurant where I got spaghetti with meatballs.  The next day my mom made me strawberry shortcake and we went to a yarn shop in Greenport – on a dirt road, in someone’s big shed.  That was exciting, but it’s a good yarn store (Country Wood, zip code is Hudson, NY) and I bought two skeins of Zitron Trekking XXL.  Then the next day, I had lunch with my parents up in Saratoga again, because we went to visit Saratoga Needle Arts, an excellent yarn shop on Broadway.  I bought some Sockotta sock yarn which I don’t really like but I like the colors, and two skeins of malabrigo which I am making a scarf out of.

THEN!  On Wednesday, there was a smackdown on the front lawn of the neighbors diagonally across the street of my parents – this is the neighborhood I grew up in, always very peaceful and quiet with some quietly strange weirdos, but we just ignored them.  Back story:

Judy owns the house.  She works feverishly from home to make enough money to pay the bills, since she has a massive gambling problem.  Her husband Henry left her a few years ago after he had an almost fatal heart attack, to shack up with a woman half his age.  Amanda is Henry’s daughter, but I guess she splits her time between her mother’s and stepmother’s houses.  Then Jill, Judy’s sister, moved in, to presumably help her pay the bills since her gambling problem is so horrid – refinanced the house to get more gambling money, etc etc.  Then Craig, Jill’s son and Judy’s nephew, got out of jail, right around the time I left – July of last year – and moved into the basement with his girlfriend and her two kids.  (The girlfriend is supposedly “good looking” according to my dad, but I told him that doesn’t mean anything, she’s still a piece of trash if she is with him.)  Craig was a small time drug dealer, and violated his parole, and had to serve out the whole sentence.  Mike is Judy’s son, Craig’s cousin, the manager of a local Dunkin’ Donuts, so he’s a loser but a lesser caliber of loser than Craig.  He has a few kids, had the oldest one when he was still in high school, and is on his second wife, who is a hideous BEAST.  (As in, terrifying from far away.)  I think altogether, he has three kids.  So they live there everytime they get evicted, which is often enough.

So, I think we’re up to a potential 11 people in a two bedroom house with one bathroom.

So Wednesday morning, we look out the bay window in the living room and Mike and his wife are on the neighbor’s front lawn, which is weird since these neighbors HATE these people.  Craig, drug dealer-user-alcoholic extraordinaire, is staggering and stumbling around on the front lawn, and is trying to get back into the house but they’ve locked him out.  Ory, across the street neighbor, is telling him to get away, this and that, Mike’s wife is walking toward another house on the street, we can’t figure out what the hell is going on.  Craig gets into his car and peels off. We’re leaving for the airport, the police K-9 unit comes, and we are clueless.

On the way to the airport, we stopped to eat, and our neighbor, Nancy, who had just gotten home when this unfolded, calls my mom.  She had the kids (how many and whose, we aren’t sure) and took them to Pizza Hut – she tries to be friendly and winds up in the middle of family issues, as you can tell.  Craig beat up his aunt, drug and alcohol related (and I am not talking about some marijuana, something more major), and was threatening to come back and blow up the house.  Everyone in the neighborhood was warned to stay inside and lock the doors and windows, an all points bulletin was put out for him.

So last night, I ask my mom what happened – they got him, of course, but his aunt wouldn’t press charges.  She’s a pushover with a gambling problem and needs 11 people in her house to pay the bills, apparently.  Mike wanted to press charges but because he technically doesn’t live there, they told him he couldn’t.  So, then we find out that the girlfriend is 2 months pregnant and she’s obviously getting abused, with bruises and cuts and all kinds of crap that everyone in the house just ignores.  Apparently the original situation started with the girlfriend in the bathroom refusing to come out – he got pissed and somehow beat up his aunt?

So how many people have to get attacked, how many people have to be abused, before someone wakes up and says NO?  I don’t know, and I will never understand it.  I will never understand allowing your attacker back into your house.  Never.

Classes started this week, and accounting may or may not kick my ass.  It’s online, which inherently makes it easier (I guess?) and my Comp II class is for three hours every Wednesday.  I am online under the guise of homework now, so let me share a poem I found in my textbook while using the bathroom:

The Masque of Rhyme

Adding my pee to the sea

of rhyme, it’s time I admit sameness

is a bit of a hoax.

Yes, my body lies over social oceans

like yours and slightly like Rover’s,

except he barks to speak and we

speak to bargain and intermingle.  All’s

translation in love and war.  Do you

hear the joke about the marriage of

true mind to impediment after impediment?

That’s what we call ‘language,’ at

least around here.  What rhymes with ‘rhythm?’

‘Mythic’?  You have to squint to

hear it.  Squint and scatter letters to

the five senses, shake off circumstance, and

find yourself in words: squatting amid

ashes while the wicked affluent legislators

dress for the ball.  Your feet ache

and stink.  The thought-track wakes and thinks:

novelty again, the same old novelty.

It’s almost worse than royalty.  My biographic

food in the glass shoe–fate

or deja vu?  The rhythm of

days produce chill, stupor, and after considerable

training, a bunch of personal pronouns.

It’s Thursday, history’s late as usual.  Meanwhile,

some sort of sexual traffic jam

has been goading us all into public

revelation.  Offstage, Fact slapped Value on the

butt, and said, Break a leg,

make a killing, show these suckers

where to suck.  And Value answered, Don’t

be Vulgar, Fact, unless you’re speaking personally.

As for me, where the bee

sucks, there suck I, a mean-er,

a be-er, an arriviste tooling down that

divided highway heading where none, they say,

ever returned.  And when I don’t

come back, say I told you

everything about yourself except the future, lie

alone in our bed of roses

whence, they say, poems arise, to amuse

the students when we’ve gone to prose.

I’d say more but you hear

those stuck horns blaring: that’s been

my cue ever since I remember.

-Bob Perelman, 1998

M bought me my book for my Comp II class – hopefully I will have it in time, but if not – you rarely need your book on the first day, so we’ll see.  I already have to (most likely) miss the third class – planned my trip to NY before I knew I wouldn’t be able to get into any of the online classes for Comp II — before I even knew I’d have to take Comp II, but that’s another rant altogether.  It’s three hours every Wednesday…hopefully I will be okay.

Still trying to unpack the new place…our bedroom, anyway.  M broached the subject of us getting a studio apartment maybe next year – just the two of us.  I can’t say I am unhappy about it – overjoyed is more like it.  It’s hard…but we’ll see.

I hope my needles are not lost.  !!! *cries*

The old landlords are being complete assholes – they’re retaining the deposit because the apartment isn’t “clean” enough – my ass, it’s not. I was on my hands and knees cleaning, then they called M today and told him it needed to be cleaned tonight – they want to show the apartment tomorrow and they’re old people, and oh they want it clean, blah blah blah. Give me a break. They pulled out the refrigerator in front of my husband and said, oh you need to clean BEHIND it. It’s a bunch of crap. I’m getting mad about how we are being treated, and M is already mad, so we’ve been fighting about stupid crap. Tonight I fell asleep in the bathroom before he got home…for some reason when I am very upset, lying on the floor in a pitch black bathroom calms me down.

He told me we are going to go to TGIFriday’s for dinner tomorrow though – we haven’t been to a sit down restaurant other than fast-food lately – too many expenses. Hopefully things will settle down soon.