Get Ready to Suffer

It's Saturday morning. The Mrs., who is a very light sleeper which causes her to be awake roughly 50% of the time she is in bed and supposed to be asleep, went back to bed this beautiful morning, leaving me to watch over first MaxieC then HannieC as well for literally hours. All by myself.

I used to be a very light sleeper, but then once we had HannieC, who was herself known for not sleeping at all for the first three years of her life, I quickly learned how to be a very heavy sleeper. So when The Mrs. makes me watch The Childrens in the early morning hours, I have devised a method to do so where everybody is a winner.

First, HannieC generally sleeps in quite late these days as she's heading into her difficult teenage years (she is advanced in her bad attitude development compare to her peers). So that leaves me with MaxieC. MaxieC like a few things in the morning. First, he likes to watch TV. Second, he likes Ritz crackers with spray cheese. Finally, he likes a sippy cup filled with ice water. The Mrs. likes to deny him his first two loves in life, the same way she likes to deny me mine. She thinks it builds character. But with The Mrs. asleep, we hit the tube, load up a plate with crackers and cheese, and get a cup of ice water for the little man. Then he plops down on the couch, where he will sit until one of the three runs out.

For my part, I lie down on the love seat and go to sleep. Every half-hour or so, MaxieC wakes me up for more crackers or water or to change the channel. This will go n from 6am until 9am if properly executed.

Now, if The Mrs. is the one who is up, she will not let the boy watch TV for that long or eat that many crackers, so he spends most of the time screaming in unhappy rage. I am a heavy sleeper, as noted earlier, however listening to the boy scream in rage for 2-3 hours in the morning wakes even me up. This makes The Mrs. very happy, as she is happiest when I am not. I'm still not sure of the dynamic there. I'm not sure if my unhappiness is actually what makes her happy, or if it's the camaraderie of watching me suffer when she is also unhappy that makes her heart go all a-flutter. No one likes to suffer alone.

That's why we have marriage, after all.

I wonder if I'll get to do any painting in the guest room today. Probably, since I hate painting so much. I need to go buy some more blue tape so that I don't have to spend forever cutting the bizarre edges around all the trim and window casings. Masking tape is a crutch for the unskilled, but I'm feeling lazy.

I may get the floaty pond heaters installed this weekend, too. Bought them last week, but I never put them in. It takes a couple weeks below freezing for the ponds to ice up, and we've only had one day and a couple nights.

I'll definitely need to hit the liquor store today. I'm almost out of beer, and you can only get full-strength beer in liquor stores in CO, and they're not open on Sundays. There's a liquor store right next to the hardware store, so I can get blue tape and beer in roughly one stop.

Well, they're not right exactly next to each other. Like, there's a gun store in between. And a sheepskin store. And a bike store. They're kind of actually at opposite ends of the same strip mall building. Overall, not a bad strip mall, though.