10 fights to break up between my kids.

9 rooms to clean.

8 bills to pay.

7 phone calls to make.

6 days of laundry to do.

5 hours til dinner. 

4 pets to feed.

3 beds to make.

2 kids to bathe. 

1 husband calling, needing a "favor." 

0 time to myself!

You know you've got them.  Everybody does.  It's just that no one wants to admit it.  You don't claim them as part of your family.  Those weirdo's.  The freaks.  The ones that if you see them in Wal-Mart, you turn and high tail it the other way in hopes that they don't see you and try to talk to you.  So to save yourself the embarrassment from having to stand in a public place and have a conversation with them, you begin to play this cat and mouse game, going up one isle and down the other, standing behind the feminine hygiene products or hiding in the bathroom, etc. 

But what do you do when they show up at your house?  You cannot escape them.  You are at their mercy until they decide it's time to leave.  That's what happened to me today.  I am still having cold shivers go down my spine as I relive every excruciating minute. 

Don't think of me as cruel or heartless.  I just can't help it.  There are some people that I just don't want to be related to.  And don't tell me that you love every distant cousin you've ever met because you know that's not true. 

For me, nearly every member of  my family is an embarrassment in some form or another.  But for most of them, I deal with it, and don't judge them.  But then there are the chosen few, the ones that I will swim an ocean to avoid.  They are the reason that I rarely attend a family function or birthday parties. 

One of the chosen few showed up at my door earlier today.  I put on my fake face (thinking to myself Holy crap, why are they here and why did they pick today when I'm not wearing a bra?) and smile and tell them to come on in.  They start looking around and notice my 56" telly and my nice shiny hardwood floors.  Nice place, they tell me.  It feels like they're casing the joint.  I explain to them that I was just trying to get the baby to lay down for a nap, hoping they would take the subtle hint and leave, but no, instead they decide to throw the kid around and get him wound up.

Then it comes out.  My uncle (who I do claim) told me that my cousin (the son of another uncle, not his kid, the one that I'm embarrassed to claim as family) needs a job.  And that he doesn't just need a job, he needs a job DESPERATELY.  The kid is 22 years old, and he needs someone to get a job for him?  Crap, why can't he just go to McDonalds and sling some beef around, why are they at MY house?  So I tell him that I don't know anyone that needs any help at the moment, but I'll keep him in mind if I hear anything.  Which is a lie, because I'm totally not reccommending that loser to anyone I know for fear that they would hate me when he turns out to be the biggest loser they've ever hired. 

So then the cousin tells me he needs a job so he can fix up his sisters car that she's not using so he can have some wheels.  Hmm, so you don't have a car, I ask him.  Nope, he doesn't even have a LICENSE!!!!!  Ok, so how is a dude that lives an hour away going to get to work everyday if he has no car and no license?  Taxi cabs don't run here.  There are no buses he can take.  What a waste. 

Somehow, the conversation turns into something awkward, I'm not sure how it came to pass, but next thing I know, the kid is telling me his life story, blurting out info that I don't even wanna know.  His "stepfather" (he used air quotes) that he lived with for six years who's in a wheelchair and turned himself into a woman........

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!

See, THAT is why I don't claim them.  Why in the world would you go around telling people that you haven't seen in fifteen years that kind of information?  They didn't ask for it.  They don't wanna know.  Ok, so it's not their fault that their cripled stepfather had a sex change operation, but it IS their fault for giving me nightmares about it.  I am not their shrink.  If they need therapy, look in the yellow pages. 

Believe me, that's not the worst thing one of my excommunicated family members has ever told me.  In fact, I have this really disgusting story that my cousin's father told me one day when he popped round.  (**If you do not wanna be grossed out, please stop reading**)  He was here for hours and wouldn't leave.  My eyes were beginning to cross as he went through every detail of his life.  Then he begins to tell me about his step son, the kid of his second wife's who he doesn't like.  Well, that's bad enough, to not like a kid, but nooooo, then he has to go and tell me WHY he doesn't like the kid.  Apparently, the 13 year old kid doesn't wipe his ass.

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!

My eyes uncross and I shake my head trying to figure out WHY he would tell me something like that, but he just continues with his story.  Yes, I'm serious, he says.  The boys mother has to go to the bathroom with him to wipe his ass. 

Just kill me now.  Someone please tell me I'm adopted and that I'm not linked by blood to these people for the rest of my life. 

I decided I was slacking in the kitchen.  With hubby gone all the time and not getting home until late, he eats on the road, and I normally fix crap like chicken nuggets for dinner. 

But I'm a good cook, and I was missing showing off my kitchen excellence, so I put it into high gear today, and was determined I was gonna cook something good!

The day starts off with a grocery list a mile long.  I high tail it to town, grab the grub stuffs that I need and zoom on down the road to get home and start hopping. 

About a quarter of the way home, the tranny starts slippin in my car.  Hmmm, that's weird.  I'll have to get hubby to check out the fluid.  So I look down at my gages to make sure there's no warning lights on, and I notice that my gas gage says I have half a tank.  Weird.  I just filled up like ten miles ago.  Crap, I bet I got some kinda leak going on.  Next thing I know, friggin AC dies.  WTF?  It's 100 degrees outside and now I'm smouldering, I gotta open the windows.  No can do.  Freakin electronic windows won't work.  At this point, I'm hot and mad and trying to get hubby from my cell phone (which doesn't work cuz I'm in the middle of nowhere), to tell him my ass is gettin a new car. 

More tranny slippage, another look at the gages and I see my tack isn't working.  To my untrained mechanical eye (who hasn't even bothered to look at anything or even stop the car), I'm figuring I have some major computer malfunction.  The radio dies.  The car putters out.  I gun the accelerator, and it sputters back to life.  But only for another two miles or so.  Eventually, the car completely dies, I barely have brakes and the power steering goes. 

I get rescued.  The guy tells me it's my alternator.  Whatever that is.  He gives me a jump to get some juice to my battery, tells me to put down the windows, turn everything off, no radio, no ac, no blinkers, nada.  He follows me home.  Thankfully everyone knows everyone, so it's not like some serial killer now has my address or anything. 

I unload the groceries, talk to the hubby (who already knows whats goin on because my hero already called him and has ordered a new alternator).  I load the kid into hubby's truck and go up the road a couple of miles to a crab house to get the crabmeat I need for my yummy kitchen cuisine.  I go in, get my stuff, talk to the lady who owns it and leave to take the meat home.  I get home and remember that I forgot to give the lady her check.  OOPS!!!  So I head back up there, give the check to this dude that works for her and start leaving.

The woman is running after me, chasing me down.  Why is she running, shouldn't she be working?  OOOOOH, I'm an idiot, she wants ME!  So I stop to talk to her and now all of a sudden she's having a problem with some of her workers, they were about to throw down!  She didn't speak Spanish and they didn't speak English, so it was SuperFots to the rescue!

I put on my serious face and busted out in some Spanish, yelling at everyone for fighting at work.  Six Mexican ladies all started blabbering at me at once in some hyperforce rapid espanol.  An hour later, I had scared the bejeezus out of all of them and told them that if they couldn't get along they were all gonna be adios, cuz the boss lady wasn't having none of it.  Of course, I was only saying what boss lady was telling me to say, so please, no comments about how much of a buttinsky b!tch I was being. 

Ok, back on the road, for my second trip to town.  I'm rollin about 80, way behind schedule.  Nothing will get in my way, I am determined to make a delicious meal for my family!!  I am unstoppable!

A record breaking one hour and ten minutes later, I have been to the auto store and back home again.  Yes, a record.  It takes an hour and a half round trip under normal circumstances.  Any time you can cut twenty minutes off your trip and stop to pick up an alternator along the way, you're doing pretty dang good. 

I'm in the kitchen, I'm cutting and chopping.  The baby pulls a chair up to the fridge, and throws all the magnet letters into the floor.  I am undetered.  I continue stirring furiously, mixing and measuring.  The baby pulls out all my pots and pans and hides in the cabinet.  I ignore him.  He sees that I am ignoring him and goes for the gusto.  Trash bin is upside down. Drats, that little brat just trashed the place.  I cleaned it up, and next thing I know, baby has the cleaning supplies and is spraying everything with carpet cleaner (including himself).  Another mess to clean up.  Two hours later, I have produced a Maryland style Vegetable Beef Crabby soup, a Creamy Crab soup, and Hot Crab Dip.  All very yummy stuff. 

My next trick will be Pinapple Upside Down Cake, a specialty of mine that leaves my hubby drooling.  Except I have no eggs.  Twice to town and I come home with no eggs?  I am truly slipping.  So it's a trip to the local store (which doesn't have much but DOES have eggs). 

I have some special crabby deliveries to make while I'm gone.  Gotta feed my hero.  Without him I may have very well been stuck on the side of the road for days.  Ok, so that's not true, but I'm sure it would have felt like days. 

So it's Hasta la vista baby as I head out on my next eggs-capade!

Wow, no more energy drinks for me, I am way too hyper!

Think about it.  No matter which show forum you're on, nearly everything you comment about is a spoiler. 

There are the spoilers for things that haven't happened/aired yet.  A lot of people try to avoid these so they'll be surprised when those things do happen.  And yes, they should have "spoiler" in the thread title.

But lately there have been a few threads that have "spoiler" in the title that don't actually have spoilers in them.  Why?  Because the thread starters are trying to be super polite, as if to say, if you haven't seen any of season 3 yet, this thread will spoil you.  But isn't that a little over the top?  Where exactly do we draw the line?

On some boards, topics about previews and promos get deleted because they are technically spoilers.  When the network advertises the upcoming episode on national tv for all the world to see, why is talking about that promo taboo?

Likewise, another incident that happened to me.  I watched a show and a few days later commented on something that happened in that episode, and I was told that it was a spoiler.  It turned into a whole debate about what a spoiler is.  For the editor of that show, talking about what happened on an episode that aired three days ago is a spoiler, because some people tivo it, and haven't watched it yet.  So my question was, how long do we have to wait to talk about it to assure that everyone has had a chance to watch it?

Some people, for example, have watched all of seasons 1 and 2, but they're waiting for season 3 to come out on dvd so they can watch it all at one time.  The season 3 finale aired in May, yet the dvd doesn't come out until September, a week before season 4 airs on television.  So do we have to wait until season 4 airs before we can discuss season 3, just in case someone missed 22 episodes?

Honestly, there are people out there that are just starting to watch a series thanks to tv dvd sets.  But exactly how polite are we supposed to be to those people?  Even those lame character elimination threads have the threat of spoilers because some characters weren't introduced until later in the series.  Simply asking who's your favorite couple could contain a threat of spoilers.  Perhaps a particular couple didn't hook up until the 117th episode.  Are we not supposed to say that's our favorite couple because someone has only watched the first 88 episodes?

I'm not wanting to be rude, and I'm not trying to be an ahole.  I know that some countries are just now finishing up their seasons, and that's understandable.  But for those of us that saw the episode three months ago...how exactly are we supposed to handle that?

As Metalhead said, when does it stop being a spoiler?