Yesterday was a yucky day. I only got 2 hours sleep Friday night. Every once and awhile I just can't sleep. Fortunately for me it is usually around a weekend, but not always. I would lay down and when it was apparent no sleep was coming I would get up and do something so at least I was being productive. I don't know how many times I did this. My plan was to let myself sleep as late as I could Saturday even though I said I would go help with the garage sale I dumped my extra crap off at. Well, I would have been on time if I hadn't had given myself extra time to recover from the vomiting.

There are tons of extra people in our community this weekend. We are hosting an annual antique car race that always draws quite a few people. In conjunction, a our local farm and ranch museum hosted an antique tractor show that actually brings quite a few people as well. I have never gone to that but I guess it too is quite a to do. My neighbor laughs because she says that is where her retirement is. She and her husband own a local green house and he has a collection of about 100 antique tractors. I think it is an addiction rather than a collection, but who is splitting hairs. He had to relocate his business a couple of years ago so that he could have enough space to store the tractors. Luckily for us, he only has a couple at home, but his motorcycle collection is here and he has just started collecting cars as well. So, with the extra people in town they also have a big craft show at one of the parks.

So the point to this is, with everything going on, they thought having a garage sale before all the days events would start would be a good idea. Judging by the number of adds in the paper and the number of signs plastered around town, so did a lot of other people. Over all the number of shoppers was disappointing, however, we took over three pickup loads full and one load in my SUV and I left the day with only three boxes of crap left over. I was very pleased since my goal was to get rid of crap. Making money was just an added bonus, so I marked stuff really cheap. I didn't think about that until I got there Saturday morning and saw other people had contributed things in say the same category of crap and their prices were higher. Oh well, I guess my crap went first. It was cold and windy and I don't think that helped business. Of course there are always the die hard garage sale addicts out, but I think the weather deterred some of the more casual shoppers like myself.

I "helped" for about four and half hours and then I went to the craft fair. There wasn't much to do to help. I sat in the garage with people who were either old enough to be my parents or grandparents and worked on Tiger's baby blanket. I knew my mom was coming to town yesterday for the craft fair. She and a friend were supposed to be going together so I thought I was in the clear. Wrong. I get a parking place, stopped for an outrageously priced lemonade and made it only to the second booth before I bumped into my mom all alone. She had been looking for me and boy did she have things to show me! It is obvious to me that my needs have changed. I am totally looking at things in a different way. My mom kept trying to show me jewelry which has never been my thing, but even the many many booths of metal yard decorations barely held my interest. I looked only at baby and nursery type things. I didn't feel very good. It was still cool, but very sunny and I still can't squint my left eye. Even with my ugly sun glasses Mike bought me I still have trouble with light and my left eye. I very quickly got a headache. My back also starts to ache pretty quickly when I am on my feet for awhile when I don't have my support hose on, which I didn't. I didn't buy a thing, but I did manage to spend $19.50. What did I buy? Only three things. Lemonade, an ear of my favorite roasted corn, and an Indian taco. I have never bought one of the tacos before, so I don't know about that, but it seems as though the prices of the others each have gone up since last year. I love the corn, but there are two problems with it. Where is corn in season right now? Unless you have had it, you don't know what you are missing, but there is no corn like sweet corn that is grown in the rich black soil of Iowa. When corn is at its very best here it is never as good. The second lacking with my corn was that I put garlic pepper on it instead of garlic salt, since I got a salt lecture on Friday at my OB visit. I knew I was going to eat something else salty so I thought I would try the pepper instead. Not as good.

My plan then was to go home and rest for a little bit and then head back over to the garage sale like I had told them I would. My mom however told me that we were going to my house to get the crib set for the baby and then we were going to the fabric store to look at fabric for the blanket she is making and fabric for curtains. I told her I really wasn't feeling very well and she said it would only take a few minutes. Of course when she walked in my house she started touching everything and picking at things. She immediately walked over to a garbage bag on the living room floor (that has been there for a LONG time) and started digging through it. I has things I am taking to Good.Will, but I was waiting until after the garage sale to go because I hate going there and I only wanted to make one trip. She thought it was new stuff for the baby. I detest how she just starts digging, literally, in my things!!! So I snapped at her. Then she starts folding my husbands underwear. Oh by the way, we have only the one bathroom in our house, and she took it first. Pregnant lady, who had a 48 oz lemonade two hours ago and no bathrooms other than port a potties at the park, be damned.

I do love my mother. I do feel bad that I can't stand her so much. Many of my long term coworkers are very familiar with my mom both by stories and by having been blessed with her acquaintance. They find her humerus and are all glad she is not their mother. There are a couple of people who have lost their mothers and so I try not to complain about mine in front of them. One is pretty much my age and even though my mother drives me absolutely insane, I can't imagine her not being there, to do just that.

So she drags me, or rather I drive to the fabric store. I have a terrible headache at this point and am very crabby. The left side of my face was hurting something awful and the stupid fabric fibers are driving my sinuses nuts. Then I have start having the pains that the nurse says can't be contractions already, even though she tells me to sit or lay down on my left side and drink a lot when I have them and call the doctor if they don't stop in fifteen minutes. The pains where my entire belly tightens wrapping around my back and lasts for anywhere from 30 seconds to about two minutes. I plopped my ass down and put my face in my hands and just let my mother to continue to pass bolt after bolt of fabric in front of my face. It took her about twenty minutes before it dawned on her that I really didn't feel well and then she gathered up her things, got her fabric cut and paid for. It was still another twenty minutes at least before we were out of the store and one of the ladies working there pointed out to her how awful I looked and that I needed to get home. ????

I drove home. My mom built herself a damn nest on my couch and took my remote and said she was going to take a nap. So I sat in Mike's chair and did take a nap for a bit. Poor Mike got off work and came home to find me sleeping and my mother having taken everything over. He had to take his lunch into the bedroom to watch television for himself and eat in peace. I hate having food in the bedroom, but I obviously understood this time. When I woke up I took each of the whining dogs out and then went to the bedroom myself to feel sorry for my husband who couldn't even relax in his own living room. I told my mom that I was leaving because I had had to go back over to the garage sale. She just said bye from her nest. Mike called an hour or so later to let me know that she had left to go do more shopping and she would be back later. Of course she did come back. Mike was sleeping and she wanted to know if she should stay the night or not. I told her no and she came in and watched about two more hours of my tv before she drove home because we made her leave. It was 8 pm and we had to go check on Mike's grandma because his parents are out of town. We wanted to go earlier but we didn't want to leave my mother alone in our house, plus she had blocked both of our vehicles in the drive way.

I get so frustrated with her. You try to set some boundaries and she disregards them. She is condescending and critical. She doesn't like my husband or my BIL. My husband goes out of the way to say things that he know irritate and by now I don't care. He curses, gets very loud, and uses poor grammar and words she can't stand on purpose. He tells stories that he knows will make her mad. All of these things are on purpose and only fuel why she thinks he isn't good enough for me and why I shouldn' t have children with him. It doesn't drive her away though. It doesn't make her call first. My BIl is very different than my husband. He works too much though and leaves my sister alone too much in their giant house. He does work a lot and he does have to travel a fair amount. However, he provides extremely well for his family and my sister can do whatever she wants. She has been selling ca.bi for a couple years now I think because it is fun for her. She gets to go to meetings twice a year and he takes care of the kids while she is gone. She gets to go back to Texas a couple times a year at least on her own to visit her friends. He does leave for work early everyday before the kids are up so that he can take ever other Friday off to spend with his family. He does do family activities every weekend and many week nights. He does help drive his sons all over the damned city for their activities. He has taken at least one class with each of his sons so they had one on one time together. He is nice to my sister and makes sure that they have time together. He is a bit frugal, but buys her very nice gifts. I don't see how she can not like him and not be happy for her daughter. My BIL made my sister start calling my mom every Sunday about six years ago, even though she doesn't want to because he thinks she should still talk to her mom on a regular basis. They have paid for my mother to come to visit on more than one occasion and she hasn't even said thank you. As a matter of fact she complained about the trip to my nephew who was five at the time, while they were driving to Santa Fe because my mom wanted to go there. This was two weeks after my sister had her youngest. I'm sure the last thing she wanted to do was drive all over to entertain my mother. That is enough gripping, isn't it. She drives us nuts, but she is still here to do it, right and some people don't have that. My sister is lucky that she lives so far away. My mom has to call before she goes to her house.