Like this:

Now that we’ve pretty much settled into our own place, I got a decent job, and Yes Dear doesn’t have to work out of the house anymore, things sound pretty good, right?

Well, not quite.

Unfortunately the one major drawback of living out here is rearing it’s ugly head – her family.  Or more accurately, our proximity to them.

More specifically, they see her as just another person to help them out run all over the place, doing errands for them and picking up and watching kids, all because she very conveniently doesn’t have to work anymore.

As if taking care of house and family, particularly an almost-two-year-old (AJ) isn’t enough.

She grudgingly agreed to come out here because the job situation was better than it was (and still is) in Georgia, and to help take care of her parents.  But it’s been a source of tension because she really didn’t want to come back to Arkansas and live so close to her family again because of past issues.  And unfortunately, some of those issues are still present.

The guiltiest party tends to be her sister, who has Yes Dear watching the kids most of the summer.  JJ during the day, and the twins in the afternoon after their day care.  We love having JJ over, but he is the type of child that you need an occasional break from lest he drive you crazy.  The twins are OK for short periods, but on the days that SIL is late getting off from work (and doesn’t call to let us know she’s running late), or decides to run a million errands after work (once again without warning us), they can quickly get to be a handful.  Add that to the days we’re also watching niece Stevie’s kids, and you have a small house full of overenergetic children that we can’t let outside due to the 105 degree heat.

Yes Dear did start charging for her babysitting services, but payment is sporadic and barely enough to keep gas in the cars to run them around.

Then there are her parents.  Their health is going downhill fast, and so is a lot of their mental agility.  Yes Dear often has to run them back and forth between doctors appointments and various other errands.  Part of that is payment for the fact that we’ve been using their truck because both our vehicles have been sporadically running.

And they don’t appreciate a damn thing we do.

Today, Yes Dear came home almost in tears because her dad told her that she “doesn’t do enough for them”.  As well as a few other things, basically acting totally ungrateful towards anything we’ve been doing.

So we took them back their truck, gave them the keys, got the part we could hardly afford for one of the cars, and got it running a few days early.

Then my wife said to hell with them.  They have their own vehicle, they can now do their own running around, and take care of their own damn needs.

We so need a vacation.  Or at least to turn off the phones, lock the door, move the cars across town so nobody will think we’re home, and just spend our own time to ourselves.

Anybody got extra cruise tickets?  Or freq flyer miles to Hawaii?  Germany?  Antarctica?

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