How to Make a Day Suck

Wow, what a sh*tty day today turned out to be!

And for once, I hardly did anything wrong, so the thought of a day going that far south without my intervention kinda freaks me out.

Ya see, in an effort to structurize our lives, my wife likes to make charts and lists for us to follow, lest I deviate a smidgen and throw my existence into utter chaos. So, barring any medical emergencies, kidnappings, hangnails or other unforeseeable mishaps, Saturday is my day to take the lead in daughter-care.

So, a few days beforehand, she brought up the idea of us going to the zoo. I was like, “Yeah, super. Let’s do that this weekend!” ...figuring, you know, that she, like, knew how to get to the zoo and stuff. Turns out, she didn’t have Clue #1 as to how to get there (awesome!) and just kinda told me to map out our day, figure out what zoo we’d go to, get directions and make damn sure we were there at the ass-crack of dawn. Now, I'll pause from typing for just a sec to pat myself on the back because my life is chock full of awesomeness.

Okay, time for a fun fact: I hate mornings.

Always have.

Probably always will…

...but for my little girl, I’ll drag my dead ass out of bed at 5:00am and play games with enough sweetness to give Barney diabetes. This particular Saturday, however, I woke up to the wonderful sensation of my daughter slapping me in my eye orbit… at 10:00am!

Normally, when my daughter wakes up, it’s like five in the morning, so my wife will shake me and say, “Ariana’s awake.” That's the groggy dad's cue to turn on the fun machine and jam-pack her first two or three morning hours with books, games, giggles, hugs, food and everything else a growing girl needs.

Fine. No problem. Happy to do it.

But my wife woke me up at 10:00am, so my first thought was, “Wow, my wife actually did something nice for me by letting me sleep in a bit! This is sure to be a great day!”

Holy sh*t was I wrong!

Yes, she did let me sleep in, but then she went straight to blaming me for letting the morning go by without going to the zoo!

“But…. you let me sleep.”

Now, according to the woman to whom I swore I'd spend the rest of my life with no matter what, the whole day was somehow shot and I was the a**hole. Apparently, the world heads off for bed at 11:00am now? Well obviously, with my reckless late slumber, I'm clearly at fault here, right?

“But…. you let me sleep!!!”

She said, “Well, you said you were gonna get up early.”

I said, “Yeah, because I knew full well that if Ariana’s early morning screams didn’t do the trick, your foot up my asspipe most certainly would!”

Meanwhile, my wife was up early, so while I appreciated the extra Z’s, I really didn’t get why she didn’t just kick me out of bed like she does every other friggin’ Saturday. But undaunted, I was now up, amped and ready to see some vicious, caged beasts of the Serengeti.

Here’s where the real fun begins.

The night before August 18th (...which would be August 17th for the thought-impaired), my wife got a call from the mother of an old friend of hers. Before I go on, I should mention that we’re going to Brazil for my daughter’s first birthday party and my wife was nice enough to invite her friend’s little daughter.

So my wife's friend’s mother calls and asks if she can bring other people to this party. Now if you wanna split hairs here, this woman wasn’t even invited to the party - technically, her granddaughter was. So, it seems a bit forward on her part to not only assume she can come, but that she can also bring along a few other ass-clowns.

But, to my wife’s credit, she's always been cool about stuff like that, so she’s like, “Sure, the more the merrier.” My mother-in-law (...herein referred to as “Dalva” because I’m tired of typing out “mother-in-law”) got pissed because apparently, this same woman did one thing to piss her off, back in like, 1991 or whatever, and she never learned to just let it go. I won't get into what happened, but trust me when I tell you that, in my opinion, the "offense" was really not worth sixteen years of bitterness.

So, Dalva is still holding this grudge, but instead of putting things into perspective, she decides to freak us all out with acts of mental instability. Last night, my mother-in-law cried for like twelve hours solid, then today, my wife nearly canceled our zoo outing because her mother was muttering quasi-suicidal phrases or whatever.

You know. "Goodbye, cruel world" type of melodrama.

She claims to be this devout Catholic who loves the church and everything about it, yet she harbors long-standing grudges, intense jealousy and an apparent need to throw herself pity parties and otherwise hold her breath when things don't go her way. This is coming off as kinda harsh and I don't mean it to be, but it's tough to sugar-coat some of the behavior I've witnessed from her over these past couple of years.

Now with this last minute zoo cancellation, I already had my daughter strapped in her car seat, so I was mentally preparing myself to make this trip a solo endeavor (...just me and my little girl), because if I go to the trouble to map out an entire day, pack every essential baby item and someone pulls the rug out from under me at the eleventh hour.... f**k that.

You can watch me drive off into the sunset.

However, Dalva also had a last minute change of heart, decided to go to the zoo after all... and all four of us climbed into the car.

Now, if you have a chance, look up the word “fun” in the dictionary and you’ll almost certainly see a picture of the four of us in the car on our way to Dorchester’s famed Franklin Park Zoo.

Either that or you’ll see a picture of a man shredding his eyeball with a cheese grater and an olive fork dipped in lemon juice, because in my mind, the two experiences deliver about the same levels of giggles and pure glee.

The deadly tension between Dalva and her daughter made a nice little topping to the “Pissed-Off Commuter Traffic Nightmare” sundae I was trying to finish off as I dodged cars driven by drivers who might have actually had sh*ttier lives than me at the time.

So, we get there, grab our cameras and, yes, the missus and I are having a grand ol’ time, pointing out animals to our daughter. Meanwhile, Dalva’s got her “Goin’ to the gallows” face on, but we're just kind of ignoring all that. Bear in mind that all of this negativity stems from my wife's sole act of granting permission to a woman to come to our daughter’s first birthday party and bring a couple of friends.

This party isn't even happening for another four frickin' months!

Speaking of our little bundle of joy, she’s awesome, but she’s 8 ½ months old now, so Ariana intermingles smiles and cries with giggles and whining. This is partly due to her growing attachment to her mom, partly due to her desire to play with daddy’s expensive gadgets and partly because she’s still teething. Yet, she loved the animals and stared at them with a wide-eyed fascination.

Plus, we actually got to witness (up-close) a butterfly emerging from its cocoon! How awesome is that?

In that regard… and that regard alone… the day was a success. After all, these trips aren’t about the amount of fun we adults can have, but about expanding the young and thirsty minds of our children.

My wife was eager to leave because she had things she wanted to get done in our house, so we packed it in not long before five. Dalva looked about as happy as a poison oak and erythematous syphilis double-header... and my wife’s patience was wearing thin. Naturally when this happens, I tend to catch hell, but fortunately for me, she kept the husband-bashing to a minimum.

At least until I got lost coming home and unknowingly went down a restricted street.

This street, which gave no indication that it was restricted, wound up getting me into hot water with the Boston Police. Five cops are on the sidewalk chatting… at a spot right after the street goes from being publicly accessible to restricted. So, Joe Dragnet comes sauntering over to me and b*tches me out for driving on this road. Bear in mind, a car that was right in front of me went through this same street without catching sh*t from anybody, but I get pulled over.

I looked in my rearview mirror and three other cars made the same “mistake” that I made. I said, “What about these guys behind me?” He said, “They’re wrong too... and we’re ticketing them. License and registration, please.”

Naturally, my first thought was of the, “You gotta be f**king kidding me!” variety. Neither my wife nor I noticed any such signs or indicators that this road was restricted, but she was still kinda pissed at me for getting tangled up with Dunkin Donut’s finest.

In typical self-righteous fashion, Doughboy comes back over to me and hands me a “warning,” telling me that it’s normally a fifty dollar citation and that I should be thankful for his clemency.

I'll take this moment to express my appreciation for his humanitarianism:

“Hey, Numbnuts! How about a few f**king traffic cones or a “Do Not Enter” sign if you’re serious about keeping us dangerous criminals off of this street? Maybe you can spare a few bucks from the “Dig Up My F**king Streets for No Reason Whatsoever” fund and buy a few festive orange cones! How about that?”

I really loathe cops sometimes.

Anyway, in a last-ditch effort to smooth out the jagged shards of our day, the wife suggested we go to church that evening instead of waiting for Sunday. Everybody agreed, so we went.

Did it work?

Not really.

It did, however, seem like it was starting to work and that Dalva might actually get over this earth-shattering “Birthday Invitation” incident, but by the time the mass was over, she was every bit as quiet and sullen as she’d been for the entire day.

My wife’s response?

Complaining to me that my radio channel-surfing was preventing our daughter from falling asleep at 9:00pm. Bear in mind that I had the radio on the first volume setting so that turning it even one notch below would have muted it.

Yet, that’s what was keeping her up.

Not the seven micronaps she took throughout the day as she sweltered in the “Fun Car.”

No, it was me... the Radio Whisperer.

So, to eschew more ridiculousness, I turned off the radio and hoped that my oxygen inhalation wouldn’t be the other thing keeping her up. After all, lungs are f**king loud with all of that ridiculous breathing they do all day and night, aren't they?

I undoubtedly come off as a total d*ckhead with this story because I’m sure it looks like I’m just bashing my mother-in-law for sh*ts and giggles. The truth is, however, that this has become a noticeable pattern with her and Dalva's entire world seems to crumble over the slightest little thing.

Quick Side Story: Wanna hear what I did the last time she put me on her sh*tlist? I washed a cup for my daughter. Yes, you read that right, so I’ll retype it and let it sink in a bit before I continue.

I WASHED A CUP!

This simple act on my part earned me almost a full week in Dalva’s dog house. And she wasn’t just pissed at me. The pisstivity was academic. No, she initially responded to my reckless act of aggression with a sobfest in the bathroom. Later that night, my wife talked to her (…on my behest because I wanted to know who I unwittingly murdered to earn such a response) and as Dalva responded to her, she loudly mixed her words with high-pitched sobs.

Let me back up here to remind everybody what set this all off:

I WASHED A CUP!

As it turns out, she had already washed it and filled it with water for Ariana. Earlier that morning, I had seen this exact same cup filled with water that’d been sitting there for days. As a responsible father, my instinct was to dump the water, wash the cup and refill it with fresh water for my little girl.

Somehow, in some cosmic way, Dalva interpreted that act as me saying, “I don’t trust you enough with my daughter’s overall health and well-being.” My response was simple and staggeringly true:

“My bad. I didn’t know you’d already washed and refilled the cup.”

This explanation should have EASILY quelled any doubts as to my intentions, but my mother-in-law cried... and cried... and CRIED. Yet, believe it or not, I trust her completely with caring for my daughter because I’ve seen her with Ariana and she’s amazing. The care and love that she gives my daughter should be filmed and used as educational videos for nannies.

Seriously. She's that good. And when she's with Ariana, Dalva is perfectly calm, at ease and emotionally fit.

Yet, every so often, Dalva will wig out on us and it’s so hard to get inside her head without a compass, a roadmap and a secret decoder pin. Yesterday was about how my wife wronged her, but God only knows what tomorrow might bring.

For all I know, I might wind up inadvertently sending my mother-in-law into a tsunami of tears by scratching my earlobe.

Oh, hey look! Satan just sent me an e-mail:

__________________________________

Subject: August 18^th

Hey, Bill:

So, how’d you like the day I sent you today?

Satan

__________________________________

Re: August 18^th

Satan:

The butterflies were cool. Everything else bit. You suck.

Bill <")))><

P.S.: Jesus kicked your red ass, you know it, so deal with it, give me back my rainbow and stay the hell off of my television!