Damn This Wind

We have been having a horrible windstorm (70 mph gusts) since around 10:00 yesterday morning. The highway has been shut down since 11:00 am because the dirt blowing around is so thick that you cant see 5 feet in front of you. Since the highway is shut down, there are semi trucks and RVs parked on every street on both sides. It is close to impossible to drive down the main roads. All us locals are having to use the back roads. It sucks. And it gets worse.

Well, as I was going to bed last night, I happened to look out the kitchen window into the back yard. Our trampoline had flown around the laundry room, over a 4-foot fence, over a 15-foot crab apple tree, over another 4-foot fence, and into our neighbors side yard. It was sitting on its side against their house. I stood there for a few seconds in shock. After I composed myself, I made Hubbs get off his ass to come look.

After he saw that I wasn't kidding, he called our neighbors to come out and look too. They were amazed that nothing was busted and their DirecTv satellite was still intact. Between the 4 of us, we got the trampoline off its side (it is straddling the fence, half on our side and half on their side) and secured by tie-ing it to the fence and are going to deal with getting it back where it is supposed to go as soon as the wind dies down.

Ugh. I would have never thought that the wind would get so bad that our trampoline would go flying through the air. I would bet that it weighs 200+ pounds. We are SO lucky that no one was outside when it happened and that nothing was damaged. I am going to order trampoline anchors this morning so it doesn't happen again.

At least we get to go pick up our new car today?

New Car

Well, we bought a new car today.

We went to see an Impala and ended up with a bright red Dodge Charger.

The Impala was what we had decided on but then we found out the Charger was only $1k more. That was the end of the Impala.

I FINALLY have a fun car again.

I am SO not sad to see the HHR go bye bye. The car place is giving us the payoff amount ($7k) so we wont have to roll anything into the new loan.

Even better? We don't need a co-signer. Hubbs and I brought our credit scores up enough to qualify on our own with a decent interest rate. AND we are going to pay it off early. Right now we have $8k in credit card debt (down from $40k+ a few years ago) . Since Hubbs is working again, these will (hopefully) all be paid off in 4 months. Then we are going to start making higher payments on the car to get it paid off in 2 years, maybe less.

Stressing Out

Bobblehead is having dental surgery in a few hours, so here I am, at the butt crack of dawn and I am stressed out. He is only 2 and already has 3 cavities. We brush every morning and every night before bed and they still have cavities. Monk Man's teeth are worse.

Our pediatric dentist says that they just have soft teeth but I still feel like shit about it. My stupid mommy guilt makes me feel like there should have been something I could do to prevent it.

So he has his appointment at 9 but we have to be there early at 7:30 for paperwork and other stuff. That means I have to leave town at 6:30 to get there on time. The procedure is scheduled for 2 hours and then observation for however long it takes for him to wake up. Then that horrible hour drive home.

And somehow I have to figure out a time to go to the town on the other side of us to get Monk Man's birth certificate today too. Kindergarten sign ups are Wednesday and he needs an actual birth certificate. We only have a certificate of live birth and they won't accept that. I don't get it at all. It was good enough to get on State assistance but not good enough to get into school. Stupid but whatever.

Ugh. This is going to be one long ass day. Keep us in your thoughts today!

Small Appliances

How do you all store your small appliances?

I have a hall closet that I am trying to organize. It is my project for the rest of the week and weekend. Eventually I would like to be able to put our extra sheets and blankets in it instead of them being stacked a mile high on my dresser. My problem is that the hall closet is full of the small appliances that I don't have room for on the kitchen counter.

This is what all is in the closet: Belgian Waffle Iron, George Foreman Grill, hand mixer, small crockpot, electric can opener, electric griddle, a bunch of cookie cutters, a double boiler, a toaster, a Fry Daddy, Iced Tea Maker, another deep fryer, toaster oven, an electric cheese grater thing, bread machine, large crockpot, stand mixer and a spare coffee maker.

We use about half that stuff at least once a week, about 1/4 of the stuff once or twice a month and the other 1/4 just once in a while.

All of my kitchen cabinets are full of stuff we use (almost) every day. The cabinet above my stove has my glass baking dishes. Next to that are the plates and bowls. In the corner top are my "good" dishes and cups. In the corner bottom are my pots and pans. In the top cabinet next to that are my cookbooks. Above my sink is cereal and assorted breakfast stuff. Under my sink are dog treats, dish soap, baggies, trash bags, chips and canning jars. Top 2 cabinets next to the sink are my Tupperware type stuff, round in one, square in another. The last 2 top cabinets have liquor in them. The bottom last cabinet has mixing bowls and the long BBQ grill utensils like tongs and flippers.

I guess I *could* put some of the things on the kitchen counter, like the toaster, the can opener and maybe the George Foreman grill. I just hate how cluttered it looks and how it takes up the counter space. It is bad enough with the microwave and the good coffee pot there right now.

I would LOVE to be able to put in an island to store it all in but then I wouldn't have room for the kitchen table. Is there any way that an island could be used as a dining space? I honestly have no idea because I am not really in to that kind of stuff.

Help!!!! Links to whatever you suggest are very much appreciated. I am off to Google some things.

28

Happy Birthday to ME!

It's 9:30 P.M.

and I should be getting ready for bed.

But what am I doing? Listening to Billy Idol and painting my kitchen.

Well, painting with primer and not the whole kitchen, just where the stove is going tomorrow.

The old stove got taken out and I almost threw up when I saw what kind of yuck I was dealing with. There was so much gross under the stove it was embarrassing. I was hunkered down with my teeny broom and dustpan sweeping up the dog food when I noticed the mouse poop. Barf. We haven't fed the dogs in the kitchen in over a year so I have convinced myself that the poo was from then. The floor got bleached and then I scrubbed it with 409 and a toothbrush. My floors are now cleaner than they were when the tile was installed.

And the walls. OMG the walls were just as nasty. The areas I can reach are clean but behind the stove is another story. It was so bad that after scrubbing with 1)Vinegar, 2) 409 and then 3) a Mr Clean Magic Eraser, it still looked horrible. Some spots I had scrubbed the paint off and other spots were stained.

So I decided to primer it. It should be dry now.

Off to put a 2nd coat on the walls and find a mouse trap. Just. In. Case.

I Broke It

So...............I broke my oven.

*snort*

Ok, everybody show me your surprised face!

The last time I used it, I baked a cake. When I tried to use it Thursday night, it wouldn't work. The pilot light comes on but the gas can't get to the flame.

Friday night, I kept turning the knob and listening for the gas to hiss but nothing. Plus I kicked it a couple of times, just in case kicking something that was broken would magically make it work again.

Saturday was crazy busy with T-ball opening day crap so I didn't even think about the oven.

Sunday I was craving Baked Mac & Cheese so I broke down and called my dad. He came by, got his old ass on the floor, opened up the little oven thing on the bottom and said......"The gas isn't getting to your pilot light."

No shit dad! That is what I told you over the phone. LoL

He says that it would cost more to fix it than to buy a new stove since there isn't anyone here in town that we know of that fixes appliances.

Today, my parents met me at the furniture store and I picked out a new stove. I told the store owner to put it on Hubbs' account but my parents insisted on paying for it.

My old stove was at least 7 years old but probably closer to 15. We got it used from a family friends estate sale. It was plain and hillbilly. There were only 3 knobs on it when we got it, 2 burners and the oven knob. We ended up losing 1 of the burner knobs years ago. Plus the back two burners didn't work. It was defiantly time for something new.

My new stove has a self cleaning oven, a timer and a clock, plus a simmer burner. The self cleaning oven and the simmer burner are tied as to which feature I am most excited about. Oh, and it is white! Not off white and black like the old one or avocado green like what was in there when we moved in.

How lame am I to be SO excited over such a simple stove? I really can't wait for it to be installed tomorrow because I am TIRED of the microwave and the crockpot.

The bad thing is that as soon as the old stove is moved out tonight, I get to start scrubbing the walls and floors to get all the yuck off. I had other plans for tonight: sitting on my ass in front of the T.V. But at least it is something that I can cross off my spring cleaning list.

Back To Work

Hubbs left yesterday morning to chase his job. Luckily he got into a depot that is only the next state over instead of all they way across the country. He has to do 14 unpaid training trips but after that, he will be getting paid the big bucks again.

Hooray! The boys miss him terribly already but I keep telling them that Hubbs will be able to come home every 5-7 days. And even better? It looks like he will be able to work there for as long as he wants to. I guess it is a huge train yard and the pay isn't all that great so nobody really wants to work it if they can hold anywhere else. But not so great pay is much better than unemployment.

Busy Busy!

Has it been a crazy ass week for anyone else?

I am so overwhelmed but VERY happy it is Friday again.

Monday: Typical Monday, busy as hell. People dropping off cars, picking up cars, renting cars, towing cars, ugh. Plus all the phone calls with all the stupid questions that go along with the car business. I was lucky to get half of my lunch break. I was running around all day. The wind was awful. I am talking about 30-40 mph winds. ADOT shut down the highways.

Tuesday: Got to work for 30 minutes before I get a call from my mother. Bobblehead is barfing all over the bathroom again. I need to come get him. Awww, do I have to? I would much rather be at work than at home cleaning up puke. Hubbs had to go to the "Big City" an hour away so he could get a physical. He is thisclose to getting back to work. I am SO happy. He promised to go there and hurry back so I could get back to work. Well, that didn't exactly happen. He got home around 4:15 so it was pointless to go back to the shop. Shithead.
Monk Man had his first T-ball practice Tuesday afternoon. There was no way I was going to miss that. So I dropped Bobblehead back off at my moms house and took Monk Man to practice. It was downright freezing. Monk Man found out the hard way that you can't pay attention to where the balls are if you are dancing around the outfield. He got hit in the cheek with a baseball.

Wednesday: Bobblehead is better so I get to go back to work. Yay! Both bosses are gone so of course it is busy as hell again. It is almost an exact repeat of Monday. Bleh. I think spring is finally here. It is nice and warm outside again.

Thursday: The morning was non stop craziness. I finally escape for lunch and found a stack of estimates to enter into the computer waiting for me when I got back. I re-entered so many estimates that my eyes burned the whole afternoon. The (only) good thing I can think about it is that business is FINALLY starting to pick up again. My bosses have been soooo stressed about business lately.

Friday: Friday must be my lucky day. I had another stack of estimates waiting for me when I got to work this morning but the parts arrived just at the right times to give me a break from the computer when I needed one. Right before I get to go to lunch, the boss calls me into his office. Aw crap. As it turns out, he has noticed how much I have been doing lately, how I have been busting my ass to make things run smoothly for everybody, how business is finally picking up, how I have the parts here when they are needed.....etc.
I GOT A RAISE!!!!!
I went from $8.25/hour to $10.00/hour. I couldn't be happier. It is a little sad to admit this but, this is the most I have ever been paid per hour. With the exception of when I was a waitress and make a ton of cash because, well, cash doesn't count.
AND, I found out what my mom got me for my birthday. I turn 28 in a couple of weeks and she has been on my ass about what I wanted. I honestly couldn't think of anything. I told her that we needed a new mattress. LoL Anyway she called me this morning and asked if I would be happy with a new camera instead. Of course I would be! It is this one. A Samsung S860, 8.1 mega pixel digital camera. I have a shitty Kodak Easy Share but as I have complained about before, it eats batteries like crazy and I have been thinking about saving up for a nice one.
So yay for Fridays!

My Friend

There is this guy that I am friends with. His name is Jesse. I have known him my entire life. We went to church together. We went to school together. We graduated together. But after graduation, we went off to do our own things and lost touch.

Well, right after I started working at the body shop, he was in town on leave from the Coast guard to visit his dad and just happened to stop in to see my boss. I was SO surprised to see him. We have run into each other a few times and talked on the phone a little since then. Now he is a friend on Facebook and his status update yesterday made me proud to be his friend.

His status said that he has decided to do a fundraiser to raise money for breast cancer research. I don't have many details other than he is going to ride his bike a crazy long distance (like across the country) and it will start sometime in September when he gets discharged from the Coast Guard.

His mom died from breast cancer when we were 9. I can still remember how frail and tired she looked right before she lost her battle.

Anyway, he was asking for suggestions on how to get it all started and tips to make sure the fundraising goes smoothly. He also wants to write about the whole process from the beginning. One of his sisters suggested creating a blog or website to help spread the word about what he is doing as well as somewhere to record his experiences. I suggested he create a paypal account for it and get that paypal donate button/widget. I also told him that I would do whatever I could to help him out, whether it be going to the local businesses to ask for donations or building him a blog or helping him get a non-profit thing together. Anything.

If anyone has any suggestions or advice, I would be happy to pass it along to him.

RNC at the Strip Club?

Republican National Committee spent $1,946 at titty bar.

Wow. That is a shitload of money. Totally unacceptable!

Really, who thought that would be a good idea?

For what it is worth, I would be just as flabbergasted if the Democratic party (or anybody for that matter) did that. I have decided to not be affiliated with ANY political party. They all suck right now, in my opinion. But that is enough about my ideas on politics.

I am a fan of strip clubs and even I can say that it was a very bad decision.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when this was discovered. Deep down inside, yes, I am drawn to drama. Especially when it doesn't involve something I did.

Semi Slacker

I had grand plans to make fondant (thanks for the other recipe kimbosue!) this weekend but I got distracted.

I FINALLY got my moms old bread machine. It has been sitting in one of her closets for years. She put it in the closet when she got her new one and hung on to it, just because. She has offered it to me a few times but never could find it when I came to get it.

So my sister was looking for something else and came across the bread machine. Thankfully she remembered that I wanted it and grabbed it for me.

Anyway, I made 3 loaves this weekend. The first loaf didn't turn out very awesome. My brain didn't register that 1 tsp salt was 1 teaspoon salt, not 1 Tablespoon. Gag. That loaf went in the compost without a second thought.

The 2nd and 3rd loaves turned out much better. The bread is a little heavy and thick but they taste amazing slathered in real salted butter (not margarine)!

I was actually making the 3rd loaf when Hubbs got home from his weekend adventure at the lake. Picture me, in the kitchen, wearing my semi-girly apron, shaking my booty to pop music (*cough*Lady Gaga*cough*), and measuring flour. For some reason, he considered it one of the strangest and most funny things he had ever seen me do. He was laughing so hard he couldn't breathe.

Normally I don't like to be in the kitchen, am not girly, and despise pop music. Shaking my booty was the only "normal" thing I was doing. Maybe knowing all that, combined with the whole "she's in the kitchen, lets hope no one gets food poisoning" thing was what was so funny? He won't talk about it so I may never know for sure.

Maybe some time this week I will get around to making a practice cake.

He's Baaaack

Months ago, I posted about a pain in the ass customer hitting on me and using his backward ass slang. Dunno if anyone remembers or not.

Well, Mr. PITA is back. He JUST walked in the office. When I told him that the boss was delivering a car to another shop and would be back in about half an hour, he walked over to my desk and asked "Well, how bout I jus stan heah an watch ya?"

Translation: Well, how about I just stand here and watch you?

I said, "Um, no. But you can have a seat right over there if you want to wait."

Ugh. Then he asked what I meant by no. Hello stupid! You are old and creepy. You think you are hot shit with your old ass hanging out of your sagging pants, just like the gang bangers. If I had to guess at his age, I would say late 60s. He used to work with my dad and his grand kids are my age.

If he was paying cash instead of going through an insurance claim, I would totally have asked him to leave. Why does it make a difference? Because if the customer complains to their insurance company, we can be dropped from their referral program. And we jump through too many hoops to get into their referral programs for me to screw it all up by going psycho on some asshole.

Good News Finally

Hubbs has found out that he can hold a railroad job again. Hooray! He still can't work out of the local yard yet but can work out of a yard an hour and a half away.

Anywhere is better than nowhere. LoL. So that means we can start adding $$ to our sad little savings account and start paying off our debt again. Plus we will have our health insurance back. Yay for no more State Funded help!

He took off to the lake with a few friends this weekend so I am at home alone with the boys until Sunday. I needed something fun to do so I am going to practice my cake making skills.

Monk Man is turning 5 in May (OMG) and wants a Sponge Bob birthday. And he REALLY wants a Sponge Bob birthday cake. That is what I am going to attempt to make this weekend. I think I am going to try a sponge cake (boxed if I can find such an animal) and cover it with home made fondant.

This is the recipe I am going to try:
To make your own fondant, melt 16 oz. of marshmallows, with 2 tbsp. of water in the top of a double boiler. Stir until the marshmallows melt. Sift 4 cups of confectioners' sugar into a large bowl and pour the melted mixture in, stirring the mixture until it forms a ball. Turn the mixture onto a clean flat surface, covered with additional confectioner's sugar and knead until the fondant forms a soft, but firm, ball. Add additional sugar until it is no longer sticky, up to 3 more cups. Wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for at least 24 hours before using.

Super tough thing to try. Never worked with anything other than tub frosting and even that comes out looking like shit. LoL I will post pictures (good or bad) if I can find the camera.

Oh, and one other thing...........The bathroom has 2 coats of paint on it finally. Now all that is left is painting the ceiling and the trim white and finishing the tile/grout work. Almost done!!!!

Momma on High Alert

So the last few days I have been noticing an older (like 1980s) blue Chevy van driving around the neighborhood. I normally don't pay attention to the junk driving down our street. But this van was driving around and around and around. Plus it looked like the stereotypical child molester van. Cardboarded up windows and all. So yeah, I noticed it. I had just guessed that they were new in the neighborhood and were lost or something.

My next door neighbor, Kari (also my current BFF) came by today while I was feeding the boys lunch to tell me to be careful because she and Mark had an "encounter" with this van and the dude driving it.

She is a big bad biker chick and doesn't spook easily so I am totally taking her advice.

She said that while she was in the gas station yesterday, she saw this creepy guy standing at the door, watching her walk around the store. When she got in line to pay, he came and stood behind her. Her cashier was slower than the other one so the creepy dude was checked out before her. She watched him walk over to the van. She watches him watch her walk across the parking lot and get in her Blazer. When she gets out on the street, he pulls away from the gas pump and follows her all the way home.

Why she went home instead of the police station when she figured out he was really following her is beyond me. At this point in her story I interrupted her and asked WTF she was thinking because now he knows where she lives. She said that she wasn't scared for herself, she was scared for me and the boys.

When she got home and all locked up inside, she called Mark and told him what was going on. Somehow he saw the van parked across the street from one of his friend's house. Mark pulled up behind the van and looked inside. He says that the whole van was full of kids toys. The creepy dude comes out of the back yard of the house he is parked at. When Mark starts to walk up to him to find out why he was following Kari, the creepy dude takes off running.

So instead of chasing him, Mark gets back in his truck, calls the police and tells them what has happened so far. The police run the license plates. The information from the plates comes back clean (not stolen, no warrants, etc) but the police have already heard about the creepy dude.

As it turns out, there have already been 12 individual women that have called the police about this creepy dude. They also said that he is probably targeting not only women but little kids as well. That makes sense because of all the toys in his van.

BUT, then they said that there wasn't really anything they could do until he actually does something.

Wait, hold on a minute. Since when does following a woman home (numerous women) not count as DOING SOMETHING????? Is he going to have to break into a house or snatch up one of our kids before something is done to him?

Heaven help the man if he shows up at my door or sneaks in my back yard. I have a 9mm handgun and I sure as shit know how to use it. It is a Star something and it looks just like THIS one.

So other than having a gun and knowing how to use it, keeping the doors and gates locked, not letting the kids play in the front yard, not letting them play in the back yard alone, and being aware of MY surroundings, what else can I do to protect myself and the kids?

FWIW, I don't think I am getting overly worried about this. We are a small, tight knit town where everybody knows everybody else. We try to look out for each other. Non-locals stick out and word travels fast when something isn't 100% normal, like this creepy dude. Plus there is that mommy intuition that I try to listen to whenever it rears its head.

Bored

I am bored as hell today. I have already blogstalked, read all my forums, checked my emails and cleaned out my purse. It is only, what, 2:30? I am stuck here until 5.

Ugh.

Under Control

I have got to get my home under control. I figured this out while I was tearing the living room apart looking for a Wii controller that had working batteries.

Ugh. We have junk everywhere. I have brand new dishes in the bedroom. I have boxes of clothes to be put in the yard sale (as soon as it gets warm enough to have one) sitting in the living room. I have half of our camping stuff in my pantry and the other half in my gardening shed. The bathroom Mulligan has come to a complete stop for the time being. The door is back up, btw.

Hubbs has decided that we don't have a "stuff" issue, we have a space issue. He wants to buy a house and use the trailer as a rental.

What? You want to move out of the trailer that we own free and clear and buy a house? Get a mortgage?

I told him that he was going bat-shit crazy. Especially since he hasn't worked in 16 MONTHS!

His response was, "Don't you want new furniture?" Duh? No new furniture. Especially if it comes with a mortgage. Dummy.

I would LOVE to have a house. And we could totally get a house for cheap cheap cheap right now. But I don't want to have a mortgage. Ever. Did I mention he has been furloughed for 16 months?

It is very realistic to pay cash for a house here. A decent 3-4 bedroom 2 bath house runs around $50-75k. If we ever get out of credit card debt, the car paid off and his ass back to work, we could easily save up $75k in about 2 years. My goal is to save up enough cash to have BIL come from Colorado and build us our house. He owns his own construction company and builds AMAZING houses for the rich people in ski towns.

So my answer to the stuff/space issue is to tackle 1 room every weekend. That would include:
1) Pulling every single thing out of the room
2) Deep cleaning-walls, floors, vents, lights, closets
3) Addressing any issues (like socket covers, burned out bulbs, holes, paint) immediately
4) Organizing junk into 4 piles: keep, throw out, yard sale and donate
5) Find everything in the keep pile a home in the room
6) Take the throw out pile to the dump, box up the yard sale pile and take the donate pile to the local donation places

And then move on to the next room. It doesn't sound like much fun but I think if I stick to it, I can get it all done in 2 months. And then all I have to do is maintain it.

That makes a lot more sense than buying a whole new house. It would be psuedo-moving. If I make Hubbs help he might realize just how much work moving really is.

T-Ball

T-Ball sign ups are tomorrow. I already put a notification in my phone to remind me. Plus, Monk Man overheard Hubbs talking to someone about it. There is no way in hell he is going to let me forget to get him signed up.

The only problem is that he doesn't have the required Birth Certificate. When he was born, the hospital gave me a Certificate of Live Birth thing instead of a Birth Certificate for some reason. I have never been given any problems about using it and I am keeping my fingers crossed that I can continue having no problems about it until I can find the time to take a day off to get the real thing.

To Add Fuel To The Fire

On top of all that nonsense I posted about earlier.....

I get home and Bobblehead is still in the same damn diaper I put him in this morning. How do I know? They use Pampers and we use Parent's choice (because I am a cheap ass).

This is such bullshit. There are 5 able bodied adults there. There is no reason that he should have to sit in a wet diaper all day. Someone could have changed a diaper. It isn't even the first time this shit has happened either.

Ugh. Time to look into daycare (that we can't afford) for him now too I guess.

Toxic Family

Like I don't have enough issues to deal with anyway, now here is all this mess!

Monk Man is sick. We had been giving him breathing treatments all weekend and the cough seemed better this morning. He didn't have a fever or anything, just a cough, so he went to daycare.

The daycare lady texted me, saying that he had been coughing non stop since I dropped him off and she was afraid it was going to make him barf. I sent my mom over to pick him up since I am swamped at work and she lives right next door.

He wasn't at my mom's house an hour when she called and said that I needed to come pick him up. I told her I was the only one at the shop at the moment so there wasn't anything I could do. I made the mistake of asking what the hell was going on because, after all, he had only been there for less than an hour. How much trouble could he really be causing?

As it turns out, he wasn't the one being a shit head. It was my dad. My father was picking on his 4 year old grandson. Again. This time, every time Monk Man coughed, my dad would start screaming at him to cover his mouth or run to the toilet. Then he would go on and on about how he "doesn't want fing god damn barf all over the floor because the kid is being a baby". THAT is the exact wording that I heard come from his own mouth while I was on the phone.

Umm, excuse me? What did you just say to/about my son?

Being fed up, I bluntly told my mom that she just needed to take the boys to my house because I wasn't putting up with that bull shit directed towards my kids.

Seriously, if you want to be an asshole to your own kids, fine, that is your choice. But don't EVER be like that to mine and let me find out about it.

Ugh. I am so pissed off right now I could go over there and just punch him in the face. What kind of person treats a CHILD like that? It isn't like Monk Man can control it. He has a cough!

My dad didn't used to be like that. I don't know what the hell his problem is but it had better stop right now if he wants to see his grandsons.

Monk Man LOVES my dad. And my bitchy sister. He worships the ground they walk on and they both treat him like shit. It has gotten worse and worse in the last few months.

He begs to be able to go to my mom's house instead of daycare. This morning was bad. He kept crying "I wanna see Papa!" I asked him why he would want to go somewhere he was treated so badly and hugged him.

Anybody have any advice before I start punching people?

Of course there is the obvious answer, don't let Monk Man over there. But when neither of us can leave work, what else can I do?

The easiest (really, it is) option would be to pack up the family and move to where Hubbs could hold his stupid railroad job and I would be able to stay home with the kids but that isn't really possible right now either.

I need a drink.