The One Where I Could Have Been Buried Under the House

So, we have this big house project going on. My contractor is my dad. The savings is tremendous but the other result is that I have to do things that I normally would avoid. For example, when we were working on putting in the concrete forms I had to help. I was hoping that my contribution would be going outside to deliver cold drinks and then making a mad dash back to the air-conditioned house. But it didn’t always work that way. There were times that there was no one else around to help and I quickly learned that delivering cold drinks was risky business.

I would be trying to hand over the drink and then I would get the order.

My dad- “I need you to go over there and hold that.”

Me- “Hold what? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

My dad- “You know that thing (insert technical jargon like oh, I don’t know, two by four?) while I go measure that other thing (more technical jargon, or as I like to think of it; blah, blah, blah.”

Me- “I still don’t understand. Do you mean you want me to get in the hole???”

My dad- “Yes.”

Me- “Uh, I don’t think that’s really girl stuff. Is there any way I could just make you a sandwich instead?”

My dad-“ GET IN THE HOLE!”

I reluctantly got in the hole, doing what I was told but the whole time I couldn’t help but think that it was kind of like the second crime scene.

The One Where My Mom Could Have Been Arrested

I wrote recently about the visit from my family. Here is the rest of the story as promised (or threatened, take your pick).

When I saw my parents drive up, I went to the back porch to open the door for them. The girls ran out the door, all excited about the visit. I elected to wait inside the house, on the back porch due to the hornets that had been hanging around. It took longer than it should have for everyone to climb out of my dad’s little convertible. I was growing a bit impatient waiting with the baby on my hip. I then noticed a couple of flies bouncing around by one of the windows. I picked up the flyswatter and started whacking. I paused briefly with the baby perched on my hip, still armed with the flyswatter, realizing that I had officially entered into white-trash territory. What better way to start off a visit with the family?

After everyone had dinner and settled in, we went outside to enjoy the cool evening air. Initially it was just my mom, my sister and I, but my dad soon followed behind. He does not like to feel left out. Despite the fact that he had been sound asleep in a chair inside the house, he felt compelled to relocate to a chair outside the house to make sure he didn’t miss anything. He immediately fell asleep in his lawn chair, slumped over and snoring. He would wake up every now and then with no warning, mutter something and drop back off again. It WAS irritating, because we had to filter what we said in front of him and it just wasn’t as much fun.

We got into ‘the groceries’ and things livened up pretty quickly. My mom rarely drinks but when she does she is hilarious. In fact, the last time I saw her drink, she had a total of one beer. After drinking that ONE beer, she then proceeded to tell my ex-husband, “You’re so handsome.” Then she drank out of the ashtray.

So back to current events, Lynne started talking about a guy she has an interest in dating.

Lynne- “I would like to get LAID sometime. What’s wrong with that for Christ’s sake?”

That was the point that my dad started stirring in his chair and it was obvious to everyone that he had heard Lynne. That in turn set my mom off in a fit of giggles, due to my dad’s prudish nature. We continued drinking beer and laughing, while he continued snoring/listening. Then Lynne decided that she had to go to the bathroom at the same time my mom felt the need. Lynne, being the younger and faster of the two, was already IN the bathroom before my mom made her way out of her chair. She had no intention of walking to the second floor bathroom due to her bad knees or general drunkenness. Therefore she did what any rational 64 year-old would have done. She went and peed in my yard.

Everyone in the house had heard the news about my mom peeing in the yard. At one point William asked me if it was true. He didn’t believe Claire and Katie when they told him. I confirmed that she had indeed, well, peed.

William- “OH MY GOD! Grandma PEED in the yard? That’s disgusting!”
The next evening everyone got ready for bed a little earlier, still tired from staying up late the night before. My mom walked into the living room wearing her pajamas. Claire looked at her a little surprised to see her in pajamas.

Claire- “So, where did you change? Behind a tree?”

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (or visit from the parents, part one)

My parents, sister and nephew all arrived for a visit a few days ago. They live quite a ways away so it’s always a big event when they come. This year they were all squeezed into my dad’s convertible. Now that my dad is in his mid-sixties, he has developed the idea that he is a major chick magnet, driving around with the top down while sporting a pair of gas station Ray-Ban knock-offs.

The first night they were here he insisted that I go for a ride with him. Lynne, being the good sport that she is, came along for the ride. She told my dad that she needed to run in to the grocery store to get juice. What she REALLY wanted was beer. My dad does not drink and frowns upon others drinking. This presented a bit of a problem with sneaking a 12-pack of beer into his car. Lynne asked the checkout girl to cover the box with another sack hoping to disguise her purchase. We were discussing the potential risk as we made our way back to the car.

Me- “What will he say if he sees the beer?”
Lynne changes her voice in a funny imitation of his- “You don’t need to be drinking that. And I’ll say, “Oh yes, I do. It’s either that or pills.”

My dad has a tendency to be overbearing and opinionated to put it mildly. It is bad enough that my mom has to be on Xanax to travel with him. My sister keeps a bottle of Ativan handy but my dad is the one that really needs to be medicated. I would be lying if I said that it never occurred to anyone that drugs in his Dr. Pepper just might be a good thing…

After hiding the beer in the back seat by my feet, we resumed our cruise around town. It had been a while since I had ridden in a car with my dad and I had forgotten that he has really turned into a bad driver over the years. He hits the gas then takes his foot off. Hits it again enough to cause you to fly forward and then lets off quickly and throws you back in the seat. He repeats this process maybe 8-10 times per city block. My mom says that he does this all the time. She has taken to exaggerating the motion of being thrown forward and backwards when she rides with him. I think it’s pretty funny but it would seem that he doesn’t.

Frankly, it’s beyond me that my mom even gets in a car with him after all she’s been through riding with him. He is very aggressive while driving and will engage in really dangerous behavior. He has been known to flip people off, slam on his brakes to punish tailgaters, etc. He’s also a bad tailgater as well.

He once pissed of a semi driver on a two-lane highway while my mom was in the car. The semi driver had some of the same personality traits as my dad and attempted to run them into a ditch to get even. This angered my dad so much that he had to catch up with the guy to try and get his license number. My mom was so scared that she was crying and begging him to let her out of the car.

There was also the time he was dropping my mom off in front of a casino and she got caught in her seatbelt. Her door was open and she was hanging by the belt and he started driving off, dragging her right along. She was screaming and at some point started calling him a ‘stupid son-of-bitch’. That made him really mad and he called me that night. All I can remember for sure is that his version of the events didn’t include any wrong-doing (or attempted murder) on his part but he was really pissed about my mom swearing at him.

Back to more current events, imagine if you will, riding in the little sports car with my dad driving. I think you now understand that he is NOT a good driver. We are driving down the street veering towards the curb as he messes with the radio. He then asks if I know of any good radio stations in the area while I desperately wish I could name one that he could be happy with. Since I didn’t know the right answer, we continued bouncing between oncoming traffic and the curb until he found an oldie’s station.

Once he had the music he liked, he proceeded to see just how loud he could play it. It turns out that he can play ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ much louder than anyone in their right mind could tolerate. We then lurched along to the music despite Lynne’s attempts to reason with him.

Lynne- “I hope you know that there is NOTHING cool about playing “The Yellow Rose of Texas” really loud in a convertible with the top down.”
Dad- “Why not? I like it.”
Me- “Good Lord. Lynne, I’m getting into your groceries.”

Not Necessarily Fun for the Whole Family

I have a serious aversion to car trips. This can be traced back to my early childhood memories of the family vacation. The vacations of my childhood were really not vacations at all when I think back to it. They were more like ordeals to be suffered with my sister and I both trapped in the backseat of a car for days on end with a father determined to poison us with second-hand smoke. Like most families, the “vacation” took place in summer. My father enjoyed the after-market air conditioning he had installed in the family car and kept it set to “meat locker”. I would always ask if we could please roll a window down just a little bit and he would respond with,” No. We're running the air conditioner”. This was accompanied by both a frown and a tone of voice that suggested that, possibly, you weren’t a terribly bright child after all. I didn’t have any better luck when I would start up with,” Well, could you not smoke then?” That was simply not an option. We were in the smoking section, like it or not.

The worst family vacation did not have just the whole “trapped in a car with all the windows up” element. It gets even better than that. We were traveling in my dad’s truck that did not have air conditioning. Did I mention that it was summer? Four of us on a bench seat in an old truck with no air conditioning, legs sticking to 1970's vinyl seats. With temperatures high enough that highways would buckle from the heat and road crews would have to block off sections of highway, we set off on “vacation”.

This was really not a vacation at all even though my dad persisted in calling it that. Somehow he convinced my mom that it would be fun if we all went along on this little journey to hell. He had volunteered to help my uncle Kevin move to South Dakota and since it was going to be so much fun, he wanted us all to go, you know, to share the fun. As far as I know, crack did not exist back in the early seventies, but for some reason my mother was in agreement with this crazy idea.

We followed behind my more sensible uncle, his wife and my baby cousin, all traveling in a nice air-conditioned car. We were jammed together like sardines and sweaty ones at that. It seemed like an incredibly long drive to get to Rapid City but we finally made it. I remember that we stayed at a motel with a pool, which is always a plus when you are a kid. Uncle Kevin and his family stayed at a more expensive place, because for them, it had to be a Holiday Inn at the very least.

We didn’t see a whole lot of my uncle on that trip, despite the fact that moving them was the reason for the trip. We did eat at the same restaurants for most meals and the most interesting thing about that was watching Uncle Kevin’s wife feed the baby. She was breast-feeding, which at seven years old, I had never even heard of. To add to my fascination, the woman had no inhibitions whatsoever and did not make any effort to be discreet. She would have her boob out in plain sight right there over lunch! Then after lunch it would be back to the truck to listen to my dad complain about the boob being out in plain sight right there over lunch!

After the truck was unloaded at my uncle’s new place, we set off to see South Dakota. My dad insisted on driving through the Bad Lands, which is South Dakota’s own version of a desert. We came close to suffering heat strokes but that didn’t stop us. We continued on with our “vacation”. My mom became ill right there in the Bad Lands, miles away from civilization and was forced to suffer through diarrhea with nothing more for privacy than a big rock. It amazes me to this day that she didn’t call a divorce attorney after that one.

Next on our agenda was the mandatory visit to Mount Rushmore as well as the drive through the Black Hills. I remember the Black Hills being heavily forested and seeing deer for the first time. South Dakota is also home to the donkeys known as “The Begging Burros” that roam in the state park. Evidently they just wander around looking for food or even better, people with food. So, naturally, we had to stop to feed them. Finally, something fun for kids! They were so incredibly tame that they would just all walk up and gather around to see what kind of treat you brought for them. My mom, my sister and I were having fun with the animals and ignoring my dad saying that it was time to get in the car. For God’s sake, we were finally doing something fun and he was ruining it. We continued petting the donkeys and feeding them, until we ran out of food. Uh-oh. My dad continued nagging about how it was time to get in the car, blah, blah, blah. Then the donkeys were noticeably displeased that the food was gone. My dad forced us all into the car but there was a little problem. He was still out there with the donkeys. Mad donkeys. That rapidly progressed to my dad being chased by mad donkeys…

When he finally was able to make his escape, his mood was not at all improved by the fact that we all thought it was funny. REALLY FUNNY. Like so funny that even though he was back in the truck and furious, we still couldn’t stop laughing. The more we laughed the angrier he became. This made all the boob complaining look like little league. Now he had something to talk about on the long, long ride home. And he was smoking.