the slave driver

With the holidays being over, the debate on the appropriate time to de-decorate the house comes up. Now if you’re superstitious (which at times I tend to be) you take that shit down before January 6th and pack that shit away till next year, never to be seen or heard from until the next holiday season. Now I figured I would take the tree down first, but the cats really do a better job at getting the entire tree down in 2.5 seconds so I figured, “what the hell, let them have it!” So the cats took the tree down:

My plan was to get all the decorations away before the sixth, but Mother Nature and Old Man Winter decided to be fucks and it’s been snowing here since Friday. Have no fear my superstitious friends, I unplugged all the outside decorations and we’re just pretending that the christmas tree trio with lights are just regular trees. I don’t really have an explanation for the christmas presents so I’m just ignoring them. I actually like having the house back to the normal state. Actually, I’m lying. I’m just happy that I no longer have to sweep the floors every 5 minutes because the cats had ripped off all the berries and fake snow from the christmas tree and half eaten christmas cards that they had managed to ripped down from our door frame. Fucking assholes!
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So my wife told me to not be a “slave driver” in 2017. Now I didn’t think that I was ever a slave driver in 2016, BUT I did what any normal wife would do and agreed. I’m not stupid I know the drill. I know what would have happened if I didn’t agree. Here we are a few days into 2017 and I’m trying NOT to do what I didn’t think I was doing to begin with so I’m kinda like:

I’m afraid to ask for some of the blankets for the sake of being a “slave driver”! In any event, in the last blog we discussed the horrifying event of cleaning Anthony’s room. We finally converted his room from a room that required a hazmat suit into a New York Giants fan room! Tam and I were on mission, we turned that room around like we were on an episode of “Flip This House”! Now that his room is nice and neat, he had asked me to hang some pictures of Odell Beckham and some other Giants player on his walls. I get all of Anthony’s pictures hung and my wife comes in and says,”yea, no. I think we need to rearrange the pictures on the walls!” I’m sorry… “we”? Apparently my placement of Odell Beckham versus action shots wasn’t good enough for the boss, so here I am taking down all the pictures I just hung!

But I’m the slave driver!? B’oooooooooookay! Here’s a resolution for you hunny…Don’t be an interior designer slave driver! He’s 9! Do you really think he gives a shit about feng shui or balanced pictures? This is a child that had growing organisms in a cup hidden the corner of his room…isn’t she pretty?! Lets not forget all the times I hear, “oh baby, I need you to hang this, can you make sure you make plans to pain the living room, when are you refinishing the floors, oh the basements needs to be your top priority”! But I’M THE SLAVE DRIVER???? Just the other day I come home and she tells me that I have to hang three decorative mirrors above the washer and dryer in our laundry room? I’m sorry, what am I hanging and where? For the love of marriage, why am I hanging mirrors in the laundry room? Who the fuck wants to look at themselves while they’re doing laundry? What purpose are these fucking mirrors serving, besides giving me a fucking leg cramp from stretching over a washing machine and dryer to hang them?! Then I have to hear, “make sure they’re centered babe?” Centered over fucking what? It’s a fucking laundry room, we don’t entertain down here!

Today it has been snowing all fucking day, which means we’ve been stuck inside all day with the animals. Now, I will pretty much repair, hang, rearrange, re-do anything inside this house, but there are three things I DO NOT do. One being cutting grass, secondly I don’t take out garbage or recycling and the other is shoveling snow. I mean, that’s what sons and a future son-in-law are for. Carlton went to start shoveling while Mike was at work, however the shovel was in our shed. Now I would have volunteered myself to go out in the back yard and get it, but lets be honest, I have no idea what’s living in our shed. Not to mention its dark as hell back there, the yard is about an acre and a half and I’ve seen possum, raccoons, fox, skunks and evil squirrels back there. If I went out there I would be all dramatic like this:

So I sent Carlton out there to fetch the shovel! What? He’s 5’8″ and about 200lbs of muscle from playing football. I told him I would go out there but I don’t know what’s in the shed. As he starts to zip up his jacket, he said, “what do you mean, like you don’t know what you have in the shed?” I respond with, “no, I know what I got in the shed, I don’t know who decided to move into the shed!” He looks at me like:

Meanwhile our daughter tells him to “be careful” as if he’s entering the fifth dimension from the Matrix. She then asks if he wants her to watch him from the window and he’s all like, “yea babe”. So now our daughter is in the kitchen with the blinds up, behind a window that’s cracked open just enough for her to say “you ok babe?” watching Carlton walk to the shed like:

The fuck am I witnessing right now?  What is she going to do from inside behind a glass window? Scream “help” and run into the living room?
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Needless to say, he survived the walk. Man, you would have sworn he was walking the fucking Green Mile the way he was acting and the snow got shoveled. When he came back in he was acting all cool like he didn’t just run his ass back in trying not to slip and fall in the snow with a shovel in his hand.
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Winter has finally arrived and I for one am good and over the snow. All I hear from my wife and kids are “look how pretty our yard looks with all the untouched snow on the trees”. When I look back there all I see is me laying in my hammock with a drink in one hand, no kids, no fucking cats, no dogs, just me….. slave driving my wife from the comfort of my hammock………..just kidding!