Tales from the Steppes

2005-05-25

12:15 p.m.
I'm driving in my car, I turn on the radio

Saturday morning I was awoken by a phone call from my older sister, saying she was in town and wanted to get together. Since Honey (yes, that is her real name, my mom must have been on drugs) lives in Belgium and I don't get to see her very often, this was definitely a happy thing. We both had plans for Saturday so we settled on her coming over Sunday afternoon, as I had already invited friends over and she had never seen my house.

But then the question of our parents came up. Honey was not going to call them and let them know she was in town but did want me to invite them over and just not tell them she was coming. This gambit had a high hosing potential. At least for me. Chances were good that before we were done, someone was going to be pissed at me. I should have just said no, thus assuring that she would be the one pissed, and been content that I had done the right thing and refused to play this game. But I am a sucker and closer to my sister than any other relative right now, so I agreed to do this. Strangely enough, my parents both accepted and actually showed up, so I was off the hook.

At least as far as I know. There may still be a lecture in my future.

Sunday started off fairly badly. I convinced the SU to go help Hosanna paint the ceiling of her new condo, as she has no clue what she is doing. Seriously no clue. She bought a semi-gloss to use as a ceiling paint. He was going to help for about an hour and then come home, so I could go grocery shopping and run some other errands. After 4 hours had passed, I gave him a call to see what was up, only to find out that Hosanna's car had gotten towed because she did not get a parking pass for the complex. Since she had driven him up there, he was stuck until her brother brought her back with the car. Not good.

Since the Mongols and an Honorary Mongol were all over at the park playing (in an effort to escape from any more cleaning tasks), I went grocery shopping and left them to their own devices. This might seem like a bad idea, did I want my house burned down?, but the reality is there are a number of balances built in to it. It is the equivalent of tying the tails of four ferrets together - they will not get anywhere because they can not agree on anything. Since the score was 2 older girls to 2 younger boys, I knew there would be no ganging up 3 on 1. The boys might do something disgusting to the girls but the girls have brains on their side and would exact a terrible revenge. And there is the tattling factor as well. The temptation to tattle on each other is greater than any reward gained by joining in the badness. Getting a sibling in trouble is far better than eating illicit ice cream. So I left for grocery shopping, confident in the knowledge that soon the park would resonate with the sounds of "Awwwww, I'm telling."

After both the SU and I got home, we were frantically trying to get things ready because it was 15 minutes before the Theoretical Time of Invitation. Now, all of my friends know that I am generally running a bit late because they are too. Shit happens and it generally isn't that big a deal. When it counts, I am on time. Even though my parents have known me longer than anyone else, they still have not caught on to this. I don't know why and it would be impolite to ask. So it was that at TTOI-15 I committed a great stupidity, which took nearly an hour to clean up. It being a sunny day, I thought I might put the umbrella up on the outside table. It didn't seem to fit quite right in the hole in the table and the SU pointed out that it was missing a piece. I thought I would give it a try anyway and all seemed to be well until a breeze came along, causing the umbrella to tilt. Breaking the safety glass tabletop into shards, which fell into the grass. Fortunately, everyone was late, though not as late as it took to pick up the mess. And we didn't get the fence sections back in place, which we were supposed to be doing during that time, so the SU needed to get help with that while I was doing other hostessy things. Oh well.

It was good to visit with my sister and even my parents seemed to enjoy themselves. They actually stayed for 2 1/2 hours, which is a long time for them to visit. Perhaps they fear that they might become liberals if they stay much longer. I know that sounds like an awfully cheap shot but they are the ones who have stated that their passports aren't good for this side of the river. It is hard for me to keep my eyeballs from rolling in my head when the say such things. But whatever. They made sure they left early enough so that even if there was a horrible traffic jam, they would still get home more than an hour before it got dark. It completely makes me laugh. My parents are in their early 60s but seem determined to act like geezers before their time.

Fortunately there were enough people around for the afternoon so that my mother could not buttonhole either my sister or I to complain about our father. She is now talking about leaving him and going off to do something, but she doesn't know what. I have tried to walk the line of being supportive but not taking sides on this one. She certainly deserves to be happy, as does he, and if this doesn't work, it's ok. She has no responsibility to any of us at this point in time. But this is apparently the wrong response, as far as she is concerned. I have tried being sympathetic, but not offering of advice, but there is a limit to how long I can maintain that. My hope is that the situation will resolve itself relatively quickly, one way or the other.

But now, I have a hot lunch date with the Darkwing Duke.