The Queen's New Throne: Therapeutic........

just typing that word caused me stress. It doesn't look right so then I have to look it up in 3 different places just to make sure I have the right word and spelling.

Yes, I need therapy!

So, my friend Diane tells me that blogging about everyday things would be.......THERAPEUTIC!

Might just be worth a shot.

I'm really looking forward to this weekend since last weekend was a complete disaster. Ok, not a complete disaster since I was with the family and we did have a nice time at the water park.

But it never fails that when I plan something in my head......it never happens. This is what I refer to in my life as........drumroll......Lori's Law. I know, original.

Lori's Law happens a lot and I can pretty much predict that it's going to happen. Whenever I get my hopes up, that's my prediction meter.

We planned on going to the mountains for a nice family weekend. My sister in law offered her mountain home "any time, just say the word". So we said the word and evidently, we had the wrong word. What isn't fair is that she said the word before we did and I think that's not fair cause she owns the house and makes up the "word". Turns out she and her husband, who live at the shore, needed a weekend away in the mountains and guess which weekend they picked?

I know it's their house and I know they were being nice offering it but does it ever fail that when we pick a weekend, organize it all, arrange days off, the whole thing gets screwed up?? Maybe it was partly our fault for not asking sooner but we had work vacation schedules to deal with AND they never go up there so we figured, because they said it, that we could just pick any weekend and go.

We thunk wrong again! So now we are stuck with 3 kids who are totally thrilled to be going to the water park and we are not about to tell these kids that we just aren't going. Now, the other sister in law lives up there and has plenty of room, but she has these 2 dogs that they don't train so these 2 dogs attack you, constantly. I mean if you sit on the couch, they jump up on you and start humping your head. And not much gets done to stop this except the "Simmy, get down" yell. Or my favorite....Dewey, stop doing that!....from across the room. Um, I really don't think they are listening. I always wonder if I let my kids do that to them when they come to visit, would it be ok for me to just yell from the kitchen??

Needless to say, the husband does not like to stay at that sisters house. And besides, we wanted to be alone, just the 5 of us, at the house so it was like we were on vacation.

Our only other option is.......his father's house in the mountains. Yes, they all have houses in the mountains and down the shore. And we still can't get the hell away for a weekend! His father's house is a combo of a museum and a monastery. There are holy pictures, plaques, statues and tons of other things all over the house. The big 16x20 framed poster that has Jesus and then in rainbow letters under it "Jesus, I love thee" is my favorite. Hey, I'm catholic, I get being religious and faithful but this is just going over board and completely hypocritical. These religious people will not spend one minute of their precious time with their children or grandchildren. They never visit, not even for birthdays, they never come to things when invited, they would just rather be up the mountains, each sitting on separate floors watching TV. And most of the time, on the first floor, the TV has mass on. Might as well be dead, then you'd be even closer to Jesus in my opinion!

Needless to say, we were very uncomfortable and unwelcome. We had to stay in our bedrooms the whole time because my FIL and stepMIL both were using the "living rooms" in the house. Living rooms....ha! Those rooms haven't seen any "living" since the old man bought the place in the 90s.

We opted to spend the entire day Saturday at the water park. We left there at 6:30 to come back to the lake at the development to have a "family cookout". When we got there, they had already been there for 40 mins. We sat down to eat, talked for about 15 minutes and then all of a sudden, the cleaning up started. Evidently, it was a 2 hour limit on the "family fun cookout" and we missed the most of it. That's when the husband turned to me and said "how about we go back to the house, pack up and sleep in our own beds tonight!" I've never loved that man more in my entire life.

When my husband told his father that we were just going to head home and do things at home the next day, he replied "Oh good". Okie dokie then. And the next morning at breakfast is when we decided that we would never be going back to his father's house to stay again. I seriously have to look into a few hotels up there and treat the family to a real vacation!

So, I'm REALLY looking forward to the next two weekends.....and we have nothing planned. I just want to relax, sit on the couch with my feet up, lay in my bed, sit on my deck, leave the dishes till the morning, not make the beds, watch the tv, play a game with my kids, park where ever I want without being told I'm doing it wrong, not have to live out of a suitcase and travel bag, and be totally FRIGGIN HAPPY!!!!

It's called LIVING people, try it!

Damn, Diane was right!