The War Overseas

No, not that war. Another war.

People keep telling me I look really tired (which is really true) and they assume that it's because of the baby. This is incorrect. Actually, we've all settled into nice routines, Me, Myne Wyfe, & My Son. It's the in-laws that wear me out.

There are lots of reasons. Mostly, they're idiots. If they read this (which I doubt), I am unapologetic. Most exhausting of all is how deeply racist they all are. I really lucked out with Myne Wyfe, apparently. She's the sane, good-looking, intelligent one of the tribe.

(Examples of racism: My sister makes an offhand comment that there's a lot of crime in Washington D.C.. Mother-in-Law's first comment is, "So there's a lot of black people in the area...?" OR, My sister points out that the caretaker of our apartment building is rude to her. Mother-In-Law: "So is she Mexican?")

It's lazy racism. She's just stupid. For example, although black people and Mexicans are apparently evil (I forgot; we apparently are in danger of terrorism here in Minnesota because we have a lot of people from Africa and Simolea here.) she goes on and on about how Italy and Italians have a "different and unique culture," (because she's Italian). THey are just different. It's not bad. Just different. Different culture. Were that she allowed other cultures to have differences too.

Anyway, apart from this, we get a lot of telemarketing calls around the house. Lord knows why. For the past few days, I've been angry enough (translation: really wants to put an axe through someone's face; anyone will do) that I've gotten through my phone phobia and started taking telemarketing calls. I'm not mean. I doubt I'm capable of being mean. But I'm not nice, and I feel better for a bit.

Three calls, the past two days, have been from some unknown name and weird number I didn't recognize. I didn't think anything of it. I would answer them. Some deep, accented male voice would say. "....Hello....? Renee...is there....?"

"Nope," I would say, "Wrong number. She's gone for a bit." and then when they started stammering, I'd hang up. Take THAT, outsourced telemarketing bastards!

This morning, after the third call from this same deep voice, my wife looked at the number.

"That's an Italy number," she said. "Probably one of M-I-L's relatives. She gave out our number to everyone."

I have therefore been rudely hanging up on some Italian relative of Renee's whom we've never met, who probably doesn't even speak English (the last time one of her relatives called from Italy, he babbled at us in Italian for thirty seconds and we hung up in confusion).

I'm a teensy bit guilty-feeling about this. Mostly, I'm enjoying it.

Excuse me, I have to go sharpen my axe.