Yesterday morning I get a text message from the Boyfriend (okay he's a character in today's tale too)
Him: what are you up to?
Me: I'm at the farm cleaning my mother's house
*long silent pause*
Me: I should explain, she's not dead or anything. They're just on vacation and we, umm, kinda had a party at their house while they were gone. And now I'm cleaning. Long story.
This past weekend Hitter and I headed to my family's farm. He had come up with a brilliant birthday present for my dad. See, Dad has these model trains. He has some that were his toys when he was a kid, bought another train when Bro and I were kids, and he's picked up quite a few in the last 5 years or so on ebay. (I refuse to capitalize the b, deal with it. even though spell check won't deal with it. ebay has red squiggly line, eBay doesn't. dammit! now I capitalized the b *sigh*) Anyway he used to get the trains out once in a while when Bro and I were kids and just run them around the floor at the bottom of the pool table, and then packed them away for a long time... until the grandkids came along. Then he got serious, bought some plywood, made a table, bought a whole bunch more track, made a real layout with a rail yard and a mountain and some buildings and a cattle yard and a whole crapload of lights and signals and stuff (as opposed to just running one loop on the floor)
Spell check doesn't like "crapload" either. Spell check is an asshole.
So the top of the table looks really nice with all the fancy stuff he's bought and wired up and tra la la. However, underneath it was pretty redneck. He had the plywood sitting on top of an old 1960s dining room table, with one piece of 2x4 at either end to make legs.
Yeah that's stable. I forgot to draw the plywood sagging on either end and warping in the middle. I'm all about encouraging my readers to use their imaginations. You're welcome!
And his electricity! Oh my stars! When he was wiring all the lights and signals and stuff, he just ran all the wires to one place, wrapped the wires around each other, and stuffed them into the holes of a power strip! Holy crap. I'm pretty sure that's not up to code. But it's also not the point of this post.
So Hitter's brilliant idea was to build real legs and supports for the table... so the grandkids won't accidentally knock it over (I'm honestly surprised the air conditioner vent over the table hadn't blown it over. or that dad's never bumped into it in a drunken stupor and ruined it all) and the plywood will quit sagging and warping. Hitter knows how to build train tables, we have a layout too. He gets a bunch of lumber and mostly created the legs at home, he had to wait and do the framework after we got there, and then we loaded them up and headed to the farm this past weekend. The biggest reason we chose this weekend even though Dad's birthday isn't for a while yet is cuz of the parental unit being on vacation. We wanted this to be a surprise. And now my dad has nice legs!
they're even better in real life
I should have mentioned earlier, my mother is an immaculate housekeeper. At least the parts that show. I honestly think she vacuumed the living room carpet the very last thing before leaving home, because there were perfect sweeper lines in the carpet with nary a footprint to be found.
("nary"?)
So Bro and SIL and I were joking about how Mom is totally going to know someone was in her house. I mean before we left, I vacuumed the carpet, mopped the linoleum, washed our sheets and towels, re-cleaned the fridge, and she's still going to be able to sense our presence. We even brought home the trash we accumulated this weekend! She's still gonna know. So rather than try to hide the fact that we were there (plus, seriously, they're gonna notice the new train table legs) I left a note that was all
Dear Mom and Dad,
We were in your house. Please don't be mad! We tried to leave the house as we found it. I cleaned as well as I am capable, I hope it's enough. I'm a pretty terrible housekeeper. We just came here to give dad a birthday present.
Love,
Hitter, Me, and Muppy!
(Muppy is also a terrible housekeeper. He didn't help clean at all. In fact, he barfed on the carpet)
(do you like how I guilted them into not being mad because we had such good intentions... I mean who doesn't like a birthday present?! I stopped short of mentioning the fact that it's my mom's fault I'm a terrible housekeeper)
How is it I've typed a small novel and still haven't gotten to the point of the title? And I thought this was going to be a short story. Well as I said, the framework for the tables had to be built at Mom and Dad's. Which led to a whole lot of sawdust going into their basement carpet and all over everywhere. Of course I had to clean that up, it'd be pretty shitty to show up and make a whole birthday present but then leave the mess for the birthday boy to clean up. Right? Anyway, the afore-mentioned dining room table that had been the main support of the train table suddenly found itself free from its train prison, but covered in sawdust. I searched my mom's house high and low for cleaning supplies, and failed miserably. More text messages, this time between me and SIL:
Me: do you have a dustpan and broom I could borrow? Mom's house is so clean I can't find any cleaning supplies
SIL: yeah I do, do you need it now? I think she just vacuums everything
Me: nah, I can wait till we see each other at lunch. and she vacuums the linoleum too?
SIL: seriously, you know her. she's nuts.
Which led me me vacuuming the top of a dining room table. I also vacuumed my socks, while I was wearing them. It was a weird weekend.
And why in the hell does vacuum have two u's? What a stupid word.
To top off the really weird weekend, Hitter is home today. Guh. I wonder if I could just sleep all day. Maybe drink heavily.
Oh and speaking of Hey Fuck Off, there were more revelations of how incredibly stupid and hypocritical my parents are. For instance: they have a toilet that sometimes sticks in continuous flow mode... I mean wide freaking open, sounds like there's a broken water main. And it's been like this for YEARS. I know this because one time three years ago I went up to house-sit for them when they were on vacation and when I showed up after they'd already left, the toilet was running. It doesn't happen all the time, but some. Dad is too lazy to bother putting a new flapper on the toilet, but he yells at Mom for using too much water when she's washing dishes. And he lectures Bro and me about not taking good enough care of our houses and stuff. This is the same guy who had so much siding missing from the outside of his house that you could see the framing and some of the insulation was missing. Plus there's that whole electricity thing I mentioned above. And their garage door is screwed up. There's no tension spring. I've asked him two or three times if maybe the thing would work better if he got it fixed. He tells me it's not broken. I quit arguing. Not worth it. Have I ever told the story about the carbon monoxide leak?!?!? Fucktards. I told Hitter on the way home that sometimes I kinda wish I was an orphan. Dad isn't the only idiot either, as I mentioned above, my mom is an immaculate housekeeper... in the parts that show! Don't open a closet though...
this was supposed to be an overloaded closet exploding... but I got tired of drawing crap. See? I don't even like clutter in my artwork!
And even funnier was when Hitter was in the kitchen and busted out laughing... see, my mom is pretty short. I mean I'm kind of on the short side of normal, and she's shorter than I am. Dad's no amazon either. I think he's under 6 feet. Neither of them can see over the top of the fridge. So neither of them think twice about how it looks to someone who is 6'4" and can see the top of the fridge and the half dozen mousetraps all in a row up there. No, they aren't being stored. They're baited and set. Because there are mice. All over the damned house. But instead of plugging up the holes in the siding and walls and floors and roof and trying to keep the mice out, let's just leave around a couple hundred mousetraps.
I told Hitter if we ever inherit that house and actually want to move back to the farm, we're leveling the damned thing and starting over. It'll be cheaper than trying to fix everything that's wrong with it.
You know what? Now that I think about it, I'm a better housekeeper than she is. I mean my house may not be quite up to the same immaculate standards in the parts-that-show, but first of all we do a much better job of maintaining stuff, and secondly my storage room is WAY cleaner than hers is. I think housekeeping skills should be judged by the parts that don't show, not the parts that do.
I hate people who only care about appearances. Hey Fuck Off.
This post is out of control. I should stop now. I should have stopped about an hour ago.
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