I actually got nine and a half hours of sleep last night, which is kind of a miracle.  It also probably would not have happened if it wasn't for the beauty that is Benadryl.  Of course that nine and a half hours didn't start until almost TWO AM, but that is because my home is suddenly Grand Central Hostel or something. Currently I'm trying to decide if going out into the living room and saying "It's one in the afternoon, get the hell up already!" would be rude.  Of course, that's about all I've been able to talk about lately so I thought I would take a different road this morning.

Tonight we are going to see Dennis Miller!  I fell in love with Dennis Miller some time around my freshman year of college when I caught one of his appearances on Leno.  I don't agree with some of his politics, but I love the way he presesnts his point of view.  I know that tonight isn't going to be about politics–the man is, after all, a stand up comedian at heart, and I am really looking forward to seeing him live.

Yay! Dennis Miller!

I hate to be all down in the dumps and stuff but seriously? Today I just want my Mom.  I know that she'll be here in a week, but by then I'll be feeling better and have far more energy and be ready to have fun (let's just see if this Secret stuff really works).  To be honest, my life is not that hard.  I hate how I sound all "oh, pity me, I have too many friends who like to spend time with us." But seriously? This has been the last month for us (mostly me, but some us is in here too)

August 21: Will's Dad arrives in Oregon to visit his kids.  His first stop is Will's younger sister, C's house.  Because Will's Dad and C do not always get along, we are not sure how long he will stay with her or when he'll be up to visit us.  Will's other sister, M, stays with us for the night before heading home to the Seattle area Friday morning.  Stay up way too late listening to Will and M talk about WoW.

August 22: Will has to work a twelve hour day.  Grocery shopping in the evening where we load up on food because, again, we have no idea when or even if Will's Dad is going to show up for a visit, but want to be prepared with food he likes if he does stay with us.

August 23: Will comes home with news that his Dad will be here on the 27th and most likely staying until the 2nd.

August 23 PM-August 26 PM: Work my ass off to finish enough projects to pay for rent and give a little extra money to spend while Will's Dad is here.

August 26PM: Will calls with news that his Dad has cancelled our "portion" of his visit because M apparently had a tantrum over the fact that she wouldn't get to see him much and he wouldn't see her apartment so Will's Dad decided to cancel on us and go up to see her for a week instead.  But will try to see us for dinner before he goes back to Texas.

Rest of August 26PM: Try to comfort Will who is completely disappointed at being blown off by the member of his family he likes the best.

Late August 26: Get call that C's youngest is in the hospital with a really bad infection and is not responding to antibiotics.  M is on her way down to help out and will use our apartment as a crash pad.  Stay up until 2 AM waiting for her to arrive. Spend a couple of hours trying to figure out if it will be possible for us to drive down as well.

2AM August 27: Find out that C's son's really bad infection is not life threatening, but from a boil that errupted on his foot.  Baby will be fine, is just staying in the hospital overnight until his fever comes down and he can get antibiotics administered through an IV. M leaves for southern Oregon at 8 or so to go see C and spend extra time with the patriarch of the Farley family.  Find out that because the baby is not actually at death's door the way we originally thought, Will's Dad might come up to visit after all, but does not know when or for how long, making it impossible to take on any extra work because I don't know if I'll be able to meet any deadlines.

August 27 PM: Will's Dad calls to let us know he will most likely be in town on Sunday afternoon and will be staying until Wednesday morning.  Will is ecstatic that he gets to spend at least one of his days off with his Dad.

August 30: Will's Dad and M arrive without warning.  Find out they are both staying until Tuesday and then they will be driving up to M's house to pick up something that Will's Dad wants back from her and then staying that night with us.  M will head back to southern Oregon on Wednesday morning and Will's Dad will most likely be heading out sometime that day as well.

August 30-Sept 2: Entertaining, catering to and visiting with Will's Dad and M–show them around a little.  Try not to get into any sort of conversation involving politics, world affairs or humanity as it will likely lead to heated "debate."  Am stressed out to almost tears by morning of Sept 1.

Sept 2: Find out we need to get up at 5:30 AM on the 3rd to take M to a meeting point so that P, our brother in law, can pick her up and take her the rest of the way back down to southern Oregon.

Sept 3: 6AM: Find out Will's Dad decided not to take off yet and will be staying with us until Thursday morning. Will arranges schedule to have mornings off to spend with his Dad while he is here.

Sept 4: 10AM: Will's Dad says he is staying until Friday morning.  Am glad Will has morning off so I can do laundry and not worry about his Dad feeling like I'm ignoring him (not that he would, but I'm sensitive about stuff like that)

Sept 5: 8AM: Find out Will's Dad has decided to stay until Saturday morning.  Good thing Will already has the morning off.

Sept 6 8AM: Will's Dad leaves for Texas.  Will comes home from work that afternoon with a runny nose and the beginnings of a sinus infection.  I start taking extra Vitamin C and Echinacea because I do not want to get sick. Learn that M will be back in town and staying with us because her car is getting looked at on Tuesday afternoon.  Commence with flying around house to clean up because we think she'll be arriving on Monday afternoon or evening.

Sept 8 Early Evening:  Learn that M will be arriving the next morning and then spending the afternoon and evening with her friend.  Will spikes a fever and blows his nose so much it starts to bleed a little.  I go to bed with furry throat.

Sept 9: Will wakes up with sore throat and full blown cold.  Downs a Dayquil and heads to work.  M arrives, visits for a little while and then leaves, saying that she'll be back that night.  I try to get some work done.  E-mail clients telling them of unexpected schedule change and push back half of my projects until Sept. 11. M is back by 5:00.  We take her to dinner because her car is taking longer than expected and won't be finished until the afternoon of Sept. 10.  Will's cold starts to back off a little.  My throat is still furry.

Sept 10: Wake up with a cough.  Will is still achy and sniffly but goes in to work anyway.  Go to lunch with M and make the mistake of thinking "just a few more hours and then quiet! yay!" to self.  At lunch get phone call that our friend is having problems with wife again and needs a break.  He'll be at our place by early that evening and is staying until at least Sept. 15.  Talk to friend, confirm that he will be leaving on the 15th.

Sept 10 Early Evening: Friends arrive and the five of us go out to dinner (M stays to hang out for a while after car is finished).  Dinner is expensive.  Still have cough.  Will still has slight cold/flu/thing.  Send e-mails to clients explaining last minute schedule conflict and receive permission to push projects back a little, but still need to work on them even while house is full of people. M leaves for Seattle at about 10:30PM.  Stay up talking to friends until two AM as they are night owls.

Sept 11: Wake up at 8AM with coughm sore throat and no voice.  Will still sniffly.  Will goes off to work.  Around noon I take friends into downtown to Powells and Hot Lips and then we come home.  Gaming commences.  Will gets home at seven.  Gaming increases.  I try to get work done even with all of the noise.Go out to "dinner" at Dennys at almost 11PM.  Stay up playing fun new game (Scene It Squabble) until two AM. Again.

Today: Wake up at 8 with cough, sore throat, stuffed up head and fever.  Will is almost better.  Want desperately to go back to sleep but have too much to do.  8:45 Start first of six loads of laundry.  End up walking face first into a ginormous spiderweb that has been built across the doorway of the laundry room.  Force Will to examine hair and skull for errant spiders that might have climbed aboard when their home was destroyed by my giant not paying attention to anything because I don't feel well head. 9:45 Will leaves for work.  9:50 Ass explodes with such force that I am surprised CNN isn't immediately banging down my door demanding to know how it felt to be at the epicenter of the first explosion of the apocalypse.  Always knew that too much Vitamin C had an "I ate cherries" effect on intestinal system, but never realized it could blow someone's ass clear off their body.  Luckily I felt the early rumbles and made it to the bathroom in time or this could be an entirely different blog entry.

Today I took our friends into downtown on the train and we went to Powell's and Hot Lips Pizza.  We had hopes of hitting Voodoo Doughnut, but by the time we finished eating we were tired and sore from walking and really just wanted to come home and take naps.

Of course, because of our home's newfound "sure you can stay here" status (am not bitter. much), I'm behind in my work, so no naps were had by me.  Instead I've been working on writing stuff while our friends play Grand Theft Auto and Guitar Hero.

I like our friends.  I am glad that we are able to help out the one friend in his time of need.

But.

I am so tired of listening to the discovery channel and video game noise that I want to curl up in a little ball, smash earplugs into my ears and stay there until everyone goes home.  I am glad that my Mom is also a fan of the quiet so I know that her visit will be low key.  We'll have fun but it won't be television set at top volume fun.

I never thought I could learn to appreciate the quiet and now it's all I effing want.  Seriously.

Goddamn Murphy.  I was all "yay! my home will be my own!"

Today Will calls me to let me know that our friend (I've written about him before, he's been having marital trouble again) will be coming up and staying with us until Monday or Tuesday.  And he is bringing one of his friends with him (who, thankfully, I get along with) because he hates driving on the freeway alone.

Now, I feel badly that our friend feels the need to escape his own home and I truly want things to get better for him.  I would, however, be lying if I tried to tell you that my first reaction to this news of his visit was anything but "sonnuvabich" and the intense need to bang my head against a wall.

Right now Will is in the living room playing a game that involves much shooting while his youngest sister, M, sits at the dining room table playing WoW on a laptop and chatting (via the laptop's speakers and mic) with other WoW people.  My apartment? Once again? Is loud.

I'm sitting here fondly remembering the morning when the only sound was my typing as I worked on an article…and then watched some Grey's Anatomy on DVD.

What's up with all the spam?  Seriously! I've spent more time deleting spam e-mail this morning than I have spent reading the few e-mails that are legitimate!  Knock it off already!

Yours Irritatedly,

Me.

Remember when fall used to mean the start of a new school year?  Now that I'm an adult, fall means the start of the new fall television schedule.  I spent a little while last night looking at my version of porn the fall television lineup schedule and I have just one question:  Why are so many shows that I want to watch on Wednesday at 8:00?  Luckily a couple of them have encore presentations later in the week, so the choices are a little easier to make.  But so far, I do not have the ability to watch one show while Tivo-ing another.

I view the fall schedule like a challenge: can I fill up 8-11pm on all five days of the work week with television shows?  Sadly, there are a couple of shows so far this season, but I'm pretty sure that before long I'll figure out how to fill the time.

I also started watching the Daily Show again.  I watched their coverage of Wednesday at the Republican convention and was reminded of why I have a ginormous intelli-crush on Jon Stewart and his writers.  They are on hiatus this week, so I'll be able to catch a few reruns and this makes me a little bit giddy.

In completely un-related news, I have two things that I need to call special attention to:

1) Yesterday was my oldest brother's 39th birthday!  Happy Birthday Curt! Guess what? You'll be FORTY when I get married!

2) Today marked my good buddy Fiona's first full day of Kindergarten.  Fiona is my friend Wendy's daughter and she (Fi) and the first day of school is an important occasion regardless of which side of the Kindergarten door you are on, so I wanted to mark the day here on my blog.

Will's Dad left for his drive back to Texas yesterday morning.  His youngest sister is due to spend part of Monday and most of Tuesday (if not all) with us and then we will be company-free for a while.  Thank God.

After Will's Dad left I stood in my living room marvelling at the lack of sound.  Will's Dad is hard of hearing so he always turns up the television to top volume.  He also puts his cell phone on speaker, turns it up all the way and holds it to his ear.  Then, because it sounds to him like the people on the other end of the line are shouting, he starts shouting back.  I'm currently trying to figure out just how many cookies I need to make to offer up to my neighbors as apology gifts for our loudness over the last week.

I've been trying to come up with a way to describe the last week.  It wasn't all bad.  We took Will's Dad to the Aviation Museum in McMinnville, IKEA, Powell's, New Seasons Market, Voodoo Doughnuts, Hot Lips Pizza, and to a couple of movies, all of which he really enjoyed.  I think he might even like Powell's more than I do.  He also bought us the first four Harry Potter books in Hardcover from Powell's and a new bedspread that I've been coveting for months from IKEA.  It was good to show him how we can enjoy parts of the city without living right in it.

Where it got hard was trying to deal the different ways in which we approach life.  Imagine the stereotypical good ol' boy–racist, loves guns, hates towns with populations over 500, always has to be right.  Now imagine a stereotypical anarchist–hates all laws, wants to go live hundreds of miles away from everyone, wants to live completely off the grid, spends his time researching conspiracy theories, etc.  Now put them into the same person….who will not accept any point of view but his own as relevant or worth entertaining–and who thinks it is fun to poke at people and make fun of them and bully them in the hopes that they'll tell him he is right just so that he'll shut up.  His "debates" involve repeating his same points over and over in a louder voice until you give up and walk away.  Now imagine that this person can instantly change from laughing at something to deciding you're a worthless piece of crap in about two seconds for something that might have been completely beyond your control.  A tilt of the head (because of shower water that got stuck in your ear) can be taken as an insult.

Now imagine that person being in your home for a week.  I'm fairly sure that some of the things he said were just to piss me off in the hopes that I would take his bait and try to argue with him, but it was stressful nonetheless.  I was too scared to joke around with him for fear of pissing him off or having to endure a lecture on why I was wrong for whatever it was I said.  Instead I spent most of the week going "hmm" or talking about subjects so light and fluffy that I'm pretty sure my IQ has dropped a couple dozen points.

Will's Dad is not a bad guy.  He's just set in his ways and doesn't like how quickly the world is changing.  I get the feeling that somewhere inside he's hoping that if he just plants his feet and refuses to move or accept anything new that the world will turn itself backward on its axis just to accommodate him.  He doesn't like it when he doesn't have complete control over a situation and reacts badly when something doesn't go exactly the way he wanted it to go, which is something that we've all gone through ourselves at least once our twice in our lives.

Like I said, the visit wasn't all bad.  We went to some neat places and I am glad that he found so much to like in the area that Will and I hope to call home for the foreseeable future.  But I would be lying if I said I wasn't relieved to have our home back to normal for a couple of days.

I'd also be lying if I told you that I didn't spend the first few minutes after he left trying to decide which I wanted to watch more–West Wing (to undo all of the political crap I had to listen to) or Grey's Anatomy (as a healing measure after so many days of History and Discovery channel "boy" shows).  Finally I just decided to enjoy the quiet and then I took a nap.

Posting has been light because Will's Dad finally showed up for a visit and so all of my energy has been focused completely on keeping Will's Dad happy and entertained.  I have to keep this up until at least Friday.

Also? I've had a migraine since yesterday morning, my stomach is killing me and I am feeling openly hostile and stabby.