We were originally going to drive up this morning and help my mother unload furniture into her recently finished cabin in Duchesne, Capitol of Nowhere. A couple days ago, however, my mother called and said that my sister’s husband, Steve, was going to help take care of everything by driving up with them in their moving truck last night. After that phone call Jon asked if I thought Steve was gunning for Son-in-Law Of The Year, that by going up last night Steve was preventing Jon from earning any points toward the Avon Fortune.
I looked at him stunned and then pointed out that Steve has to unload a 36-ft truck filled entirely with heavy second-hand furniture, by himself, and now we don’t have to. Shouldn’t we be paying Steve to gun for Son-in-Law Of The Year? If my mother willed us the Avon Fortune in exchange for helping unload all that furniture I’d use it all to pay a professional moving company.
Instead we’re driving up this afternoon to help install things? And hang things? I think my mother is just using the invitation to come help her as an excuse to see Leta because while we’re good at installation and hanging, we have a hard time getting around to it. It took us almost two years to take the tin foil out of Leta’s windows and almost the same amount of time to hang our first picture on the wall. Besides that, my mother is somewhat particular about the arrangement of things and I can’t imagine the Avon World Sales Leader letting mere mortals decide where to put her ceramic roosters.
We’re only staying for one night, and we’re going to use this as a test run to see if we can spend more than a couple hours in Duchesne without being hunted and killed by the locals who would then have our heads stuffed and hung above the fireplace. When my mother was deciding where she wanted to build a cabin I asked her why she was even considering Duchesne, what the hell are we going to do other than clip our toenails and see who can flick them the closest to a cup across the room? She couldn’t even believe that I could ask that question because didn’t I know? They’ve got a bowling alley! WITH TWO WHOLE LANES!