First, I know I don't come around much anymore. Sorry about that, but I really need to vent somewhere so I don't feel like a total beotch. We will be driving up to Iowa tomorrow to spend the holidays with our family. I was giving us a good two weeks this time so that we'll maybe have time to see everyone.

Now here's the vent. We always stay with our best friend Ben because he's a simple bachelor, his house is simple and fairly easy to childproof, he's clean, and has room. Recently he's gotten a live in girlfriend and I guess her great grandmother died the other day so she isn't feeling up to an invasion which is what I'm calling it because that is what we do. We have three kids, it's an invasion. So that leaves us at the inlaws.

Don't get me wrong, I love them to death. We both do, and they're the best grandparents I could have ever hoped for for my kids. They really are awesome. However, they are filthy people. We had to stop staying at their house because it was just too much. It reeks of animal urine which they say isn't that bad, that's just us being nitpicky. Our feet turn black from walking around on their carpet. Again, we're just a couple of neatniks, it's fine. Their downstairs bathroom is totally unuseable because they did a crappy job on their renovation and it now snows in the bathroom in the winter which leaves us with the only other bathroom, which is also filthy and full of mold and they didn't put the stops on the faucets which means you have to turn the water off just right and gage yourself if it's still leaking. The last time we were there it was 20 below outside and there were flies. Did anyone bother to investigate this? Of course not. So we did and lo and behold, his dad had been throwing his candy wrappers behind the couch like they would just dissapear if he did that and maggots were living there. Ugh. So we're going to get into town and totally insult them by bringing along our shampooer in the guise of "gift" and cleaning their effing house. Well, I say them but I really mean his mom. She gets pretty insulted when we do that which is also why we stopped staying there, but she's also more insulted that we prefer elsewhere. Last year she tried to guilt trip us into staying with them with the "it'll ruin christmas" argument. She half asses everything she cleans. An example is she was staying with us a few months ago and was trying to "help" with laundry. I cloth diaper and I keep a basket of dirty diapers in the laundry room. She needed a basket, so she folded all my clean laundry and piled it on top of the dirty diapers. Why? I ask you, why?!?

Why can't Ben's girlfriend just stay at her parents while we're in town? I know, I'm being totally selfish. I do plan on taking showers over there, though. I'll just do it when she's at work. And probably our laundry, too. I know she doesn't much like us because she's a nice mousey little good christian