They came to visit my mother-in-law.

Though Babushka has often threatened to call the authorities herself (usually to report me for crimes against humanity), this visit was instigated by our next-door neighbors. They appear to have lost patience with Babushka’s behavior toward their dogs. These are the dogs who used to bark for several hours at a stretch until shortly before Christmas, whereupon they stopped barking so completely that I feared they were being muzzled. Well, the dogs have to go outside sometime*, and they have a habit of leaping and yelping whenever they’re in the backyard and my belle-mere emerges into our backyard.

Despite the six-foot fence that separates our yards, Babushka feels sufficiently threatened by the dogs that (as I recently learned) she throws things at the fence and/or yells obscenities to scare the dogs away.

On Thursday, the neighbors filmed Babushka in action.

On Saturday, Babushka filmed the dogs and their masters in action.

This morning, Dino Spouse got a call from his mother asking for interpretation assistance in her unexpected conversation with the police.

*Said dogs are labradors, who are possibly the least scary dogs in existence. That being said, we have never seen the dogs being walked, just allowed into the backyard occasionally to relieve themselves (or, depending on your point of view, deliberately terrorize my mother-in-law). I’m pretty sure that’s not a good lifestyle for large dogs, and it probably doesn’t bring out their best qualities. Though for all I know, they may be stealthily loading the dogs up in their SUVs for treks to walk in babushka-free areas.

Tweenbot: Yeah, give me five bucks! (Thinks.) Let’s make it rain up in here!

Hocoblogs @@@

I think I’ll put my coat back on, speaking of temperatures. Damn it. Brr. Ow. Brr.

*Tweenbot is getting a break from being grounded tonight. He’s been under house arrest for three weeks because of his lousy behavior and academic performance at school. It seemed like a good idea to me at some point to remind him of the sweet taste of freedom, but now I can’t remember why.

Now that I have no reproductive innards to play with, the homunculi who once terrorized my gut as stray endometrial tissue (the “sea monkeys” of yore) have decided to colonize my urinary tract instead. I went to the ER Friday night with what I was sure were kidney stones. The CT scan said otherwise. So I have decided that these are zombie sea monkeys.

While we wait for TV zombies to return, Dino Spouse and I have taken to watching French movies on the above-mentioned Netflix. Mostly crime movies from the 70s and 80s. The plus of this, other than new sources of linguistic interference from my long-buried French, is that I get to ogle young Gerard Depardieu (and old Gerard Depardieu) and, for good measure, Jean Paul Belmondo. I swear, the first ten minutes of “Le Professionel” made me swoon.

*We signed up for Netflix when we got a PS 3. It has not lived up to all our dreams – for example, no “Shaun of the Dead” – but we have gotten fair entertainment value out of it.

Apropos de rien, we have the loudest dishwasher in the world.

“Why are we doing this?” they groaned.

“Because your father and I have the financial management skills of dope addicts and I want you to learn better habits than we have,” I explained again.

“Well, if we know you suck, why don’t we just do the opposite of what you do?” Tweenbot has never been the same since his discovery of logical argument at age 10 or so. “That way we don’t have to take a stupid class.”

“You know, you’ll start out that way. You’ll be like ‘now I’m going to do things my way’ and that’ll be cool for a while. Then you’ll hit your mid-twenties or so or get married or have kids and then you’ll start being like ‘OK, now I see what Mom was thinking,’ and then pretty soon you’re 40 and slavishly imitating your parents’ misery.” Silence.

Mouse joined us because Dino Spouse is working overtime in ur takses and my belle-mere is – well, at least she isn’t screaming obscenities. She has opened her door a couple of times and spoken civilly to various family members since taking to her chambers yesterday afternoon. My feeling of doom yesterday morning was somewhat warranted, it turned out.*

* Choose your own adventure! Read the snarky coda to this story or the serious coda to this story. Or, since I lack the technological wherewithal to code subposts or whatever from this phone, here are both.

Snarky coda: I offered her some fresh baked bread and expressed my regret that we hadn’t done anything for her birthday. She accepted and explained – quite calmly – that she hates her birthday because she’s 67 and living in a strange house where no one loves her and she works like a house slave. Then she went into her room and shut the door.

Serious coda: I really do feel bad about her birthday. Casino holiday notwithstanding, it still kind of makes me want to throw up that I forgot and didn’t get her any cards or warn the kids. Who wants to feel forgotten?

Operation Dino Freedom is not going to be easy. Dino Spouse says that his mom takes the idea of separate residences as the ultimate rejection, and he insists that we’re not financially equipped to fund two households. He is right. Yet I get a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I think about this for too long. I recognize this feeling as my flight instinct turning over, trying to start up the engine.

I don’t feel good about this, not at all.

Granted, she had her big birthday present already – her son took her to Atlantic City for a long weekend – but usually we would have marked the occasion itself with cards or something. I am shocked that I forgot until my husband reminded me last night.

Crap.

I have never once made it to the Art Night in Oakland Mills, though I always hope to. What I would love would be a crack at a high school art and/or home ec classroom for a few hours. I like painting greenware at the Pottery Stop. It would be fun to sit around doing artsy stuff in an environment where I’m not expected to buy anything. To give them their due, the Pottery Stop people are unobtrusive and friendly, and don’t mind when I sit and watch my girl paint.