Midnight Vexations

I recently spent a wonderful week on the east coast; visiting my family members, far from TOG confined on the west coast with no one to buy his wine or ask him for periodic updates on his always fragile health. Now, these trips away are always problematic. TOG generally finds a way to reach out and - to use an expression an old friend once used to describe a sour and vexing way to spoil someone’s day - piss in my cornflakes. Once he even made me cancel a family vacation the night before a trip because of an academy award-worthy panic attack.

He did the cornflakes thing again this trip. But first a bit of a backstory.

I doubt if he’ll ever top his best several years ago, which paradoxically began with a phone call to the very same place I stayed last week. He called to inform me that his mother’s poor dog Sandy had gone out into the back yard, laid down, and died – several years after he should have been mercifully put to sleep because of all the untreated ills and neglect he had suffered. I was told that morbidly obese dead dog was too heavy for TOG to lift in his (TOG’s not the dog’s) debilitated state, so he’d have to wait several more days until I returned home to help him move the body, which would presumably be easier to lift once the process of decay was well underway. I told him where the wheelbarrow was, but the problem was too insurmountable since the dog was downhill from the wheelbarrow, and besides, then what: push it uphill? Where?

Then, to add some used kitty litter to my corn flakes,  and to reassure me that he and his morbidly obese mother would survive until my return and rescue, he said they were grieving by solemnly drinking my best sherry and remembering what a good boy Sandy had been. Which to be fair, was easier than it would have been to dig a hole next to the dog, roll him in, and say a few respectful words. I had to explain, using very short words and brief sentences that he needed to dispose of the body before I returned. He finally did by calling some guys from the yellow pages. But my sherry was never replaced.

Which brings us to my recent trip. These days, we text instead of speaking on the phone. And he can't reach my sherry.

TOG: Sorry.

Me: Que?

TOG:  Deadbeat Younger Sister (DYS) in CA. For divorce. She has a lawyer but likes your opinon. Now she has your cell phone. S o r r y.

WISIMH:  She must have got my cell phone number via ESP. The passive voice is to be loved, isn't it? DYS hasn’t lived in CA for > 15 years. She left her husband, who I will call by his real name because it’s more evocative and descriptive than any pseudonym I could invent while sober: Tex. Tex lives in a run-down rusty trailer filled with guns. DYS lives in the woods somewhere in MO where she hides from Tex and UFOs and Obama and cares for her morbidly obese adult daughter with Lyme disease.

Me:  WTF. Thanks.

Me:  Seriously.

TOG: Price of fame. Beauty and brains I knew there was a reason I married you.

WISIMH:  So I could provide free legal advice to your morbidly stooped dysfunctional family who apparently have no shame about leaving me holding all the responsibility for family legal matters while they spend their welfare checks on box wine/diet soda and cheese crackers/twinkles? What is wrong with you people when it comes to using reason, common sense, good manners and simple kindness?

Me:  What the hell K. I’m on vacation.

TOG:  (Crickets. Very, very eloquent crickets. Almost like they were saying "HA, pissed in your cornflakes, bitch!")

When I got home, there were two voicemail messages from DYS which I (no shit) didn’t return. Then, at 11:00 PM on the day I returned from vacation, while I’m sound asleep in bed because my internal clock was still tuned to east coast time where it was 2:00 AM, I get a text:

DYS:  would u be willing to give “serve” Tex his “D” papers this weekend? the lawyer said it would be easier & cheaper if i could get anybody over 18 just t

DYS:  (separate text) o say “u r served” than to try to find him at (his place of work). Hes coming to get more stuff this weekend what do you think?

WISIMH: Well, yes, of course: cheaper. Holy Son of God on a fusion powered aluminum pogo stick, do you people have no shame? Not to mention a rudimentary ability to spell or use proper grammar? Or any awareness of the time zones in America? Or recollection of the fact that you didn’t have a word to say to me for the 20+ years I cared for your mother while you conveniently left the state?

Me:  (With remarkable  restraint I modestly consider to border on saintly self-control) Sorry but no. I’d prefer not to get involved.

DYS:  ok thats ok  TOG is really looking forward to his bathtime   I dont blame him  how was your trip?

WISIMH:  This is how TOG notifies me that he wants to visit here to use the bathtub, and also how they both remind me they’re in communication and he told her about my trip. I don't blame him either: he has trouble using his words. And do you know how hard it is to text without having autocorrect learn to capitalize the letter “I” or apostrophize contractions, or put in a period when you skip two places and then automatically capitalize the next word?  Me neither, but I think you have to work at it. You have to admire such a commitment to stoopidity. Not to mention wanting to chat.

Me:  Good but returned to some major electrical problems in the house, Plus, I’m on east coast time and it’s the middle of the night.

DYS:  oh no   what happened   my place looks pathetic too

WISIMH:  Which may be almost as pathetic as I already consider you and your entire self-serving and devious family. Furthermore, now that I’m fully awake, I strongly suspect that the service of process request was merely a foot in the door to getting more free advice and possibly even a place to stay away from your even more pathetic gun-filled trailer with Tex.

And if you think I’m going to reply and continue to chat, you’re dumber than I even suspected and that’s saying something because I already think you’re dumber than a cellophane bag of dried mushrooms.