There's An Echo In Here

I'm sitting here in the comfort of my own home, upstairs in My New Office®, typing on a nice computer hooked up to the Internet via cable modem, listening to iTunes, drinking coffee brewed right here in My New Office®, with creamer I got from the dorm fridge behind me on the countertop in My New Office®.

It's raining outside and getting a little dark already, and I'm cozy and warm and totally non-bored here inside the house, with too many choices of what to do.

And, what are my parents doing? They're sitting in an empty house about fifteen minutes from here, with little more than two fold-up camping chairs, a couple of cardboard boxes as end tables, a lamp on the floor, a cooler in the kitchen, and an air mattress in the bedroom.

Now, they could be doing this because they are essentially boring, dull people with absolutely no sense of adventure or, well, hobbies. But that's not entirely true. They're really sitting there all alone because:

1. I have work to do here (an article to write and a song parody to compose), although obviously I'm not doing it at the moment.

2. They're stubborn and they realize we'd all drive each other nuts if we were in the same house on a rainy day for too long. (Think CAT IN THE HAT.)

3. They're waiting for the Allied Moving Van people to show up with all their stuff.

If you chose number 4 (all of the above, not pictured), you're absolutely right.

Apparently my parents drove all the way from Las Vegas to Beaver County, Pennsylvania, but their stuff decided to make a detour through Maryland first and may not be here until Saturday. This fits perfectly with my mother's ongoing battle cry of "What's our last name again?"

There is evidently some sort of family curse based on the sole two letters of my maiden name (Au) that accounts for every "Murphy's Law" type of occurrence in our lives (although our name isn't Murphy, so I don't quite get the connection but my mother does and that's ultimately what matters when in this type of situation and by the way where was I?).

I have experienced this curse firsthand and so know it to be empirically verifiable fact; however, I also know that I personally liked being an Au for the 25 years I was one legally (20 before my first marriage and 5 between the first marriage and this one). So, either I so overly enjoyed being an Au that it offset the family curse, or the curse's targets just aren't big enough things to dwell on.

This, from someone who dwells on everything. Yeah.

So, with all this belly button lint collecting on our mutual contemplation of the situation, my parents sit in an empty house in the rain, and I sit here blauging on their wretched existence fifteen minutes away from me. Something dreadfully weird and unfair about that, but not enough to get up and go over there for.

After all, as of last night, they have the cable and internet guy scheduled to come tomorrow ... but the TV and main computer are somewhere in Maryland.

They have a toaster oven, microwave, and coffeemaker, but no refrigerator. My dad was outside pulling up fencing around the back porch area, getting grimy and dirty, but they have no washer or dryer yet.

Joker (their weird dog-like cat) is bored to tears and keeps trying to find a comfortable spot on someone's lap in the camping chairs, which just ain't hap'nin'. He stares out the windows and wonders where all the cactus went that used to be out there. Indoor cats are really easy to figure out.

My parents' new hobby until their stuff shows up seems to be driving around looking for Bush/Cheney signs (so they know which neighbors to borrow things from) or going to Wal-Mart to buy brooms or window-shopping at Lowe's for kitchen cabinet handles.

Really, their lives sound infinitely more interesting than mine at the moment, which consists of gulping down coffee, listening to Linkin Park and Frou Frou, and staring at the article specs for an upcoming Chicken Soup book I hope to contribute to.

Did I mention it's raining?

I'm starting to think my parents' stuff---wherever it is---is having more fun than I am. At least it's off somewhere seeing the world ....

Linda