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Yesterday I busted all the way home from Florence, South Carolina. It was 12 hours and roughly 700 miles of driving. I pulled into my snowy driveway just after midnight.

I did make one little stop in South Philly - to grab a cheesesteak and say hello to a McJabroni. My kids were upstairs in his bedroom watching color TV and eating pizza for about 40 minutes when I went up there to check on them.

I nearly pooped myself when I noticed a GUN on the floor, a revolver, about 5 feet behind my TV-mesmerized 4.65 year old Princess. Yes it was loaded and NO it there was no safety on it or anything! (I had no idea this friend of mine, whom I'd know for 17 years had firearms.)

I have forced myself not to think at all about *what might have happened* because it may well have just been a moving car that they almost ran out in front of OR a swimming accident. Tragedy is always a split-second away and there's only so much any of us mortals can do to prevent it. Perhaps what kept them safe is the fact that I don't let them watch color TV AT ALL, that when they get the chance they're totally riveted by it?

Anyways so close to home (2 hours 35 min) there was no way I was going to live out of my bags/trunk for one more night. We hadn't seen Mom in 13 days either. The kids conked out before we left Philly but were both awake at midnight to greet their mother. Heck, everyone was up until 2am.

Not for anything, but I had to do the worst part of the driving at the end. It was dark, raining, and there was a ton of traffic in New York....AT 11pm/midnight!!! In fact the LIE was backed up completely at 12:05 am(!) and I had to take the *service road* home. There are dangerous potholes all over the highways too from the recent arctic weather. I held my breath every time I hit a big one. That was all I needed - a flat tire on the treacherous Belt Parkway or something, at night, with a packed car, sleeping kids, and at the end of a two-day 19 hour journey.

Of course my wife wanted to show me all the *improvements* she had embarked upon in my absence. But all I could see last night was the rearranged furniture, a freshly painted and wainscotted kitchen, and the tip of the polyurethaned floors she unearthed from decades-old carpeting. The house ranked of paint and fumes and was probably unsafe/unhealthy to sleep in last night.

Today I unpacked the car, my bags, I set up my PC, before setting out to shovel the piles of slush on our half-shoveled driveway.

The house does look good. Recall my first MIL moved out a month ago and took with her a lot of *stuff*. So at the moment we are essentially living in a large, unfurnished house. In fact there is no color TV anywhere except in our bedroom now. Want to come over for a radio Super Bowl party?

My wife told me it was *4 grand* to get the kitchen, our bedroom, the two bathrooms painted, a rug torn out, our bedroom and the hallway hardwood floors done, and shelves built in her closet.
Of course it's actually over 5k now and rising! She bought all sorts of new stuff too last week; hired cleaning senoras; etc. And now she's threatening to buy these new dining room chairs:

I flat out told her they were hideous and was informed that I *didn't know what was in* that I *wasn't hip*.

Okay. I'm most certainly hipper than she is.

Only one of us knows all the words to Justin Bieber's songs....AND IT'S NOT HER.

I told her I would put them on the blog and have my readership weigh in. Let'em fly.