Old West

Living with my parents is nice and all- there's a reason I did it for 18 years- but sometimes it gets a little bit draining. Under stress, they suffer from paranoia and obsession (complementary!) and I am cross and flaky. Also, they persist in being inside the house. What's with that?

So I went to visit friends. I expect they'll be a lot of this in the coming months, because my unemployment check is ridiculous. I could probably pay rent with this baby.

Cuervito and Cuervita have a very nice home in the middle of the arctic tundra. It was so cold that the deer came and huddled under the dryer vent at night. It was so cold the gasoline wouldn't vaporize in my car and I couldn't leave if I wanted to. It was so cold that I stopped pretending to be tough and admitted I was cold. I was going to help them move but there were circumstances, so we sat in front of the fire and read about population dynamics.

We also went to three craft fairs! I was looking at some rocks (I like rocks) and a man with only one visible tooth was enchanted. Apparently, more young ladies should like rocks. More young ladies should ask about where certain rocks come from. After the better part of an hour, I escaped with two fistfuls of free pretty rocks from all over California (and a sedimentary rock supposedly from the Sierras, but probably from some Devonian deposit in the Midwest) and a set of tips- a la Hints from Heloise- on how to polish and display said rocks to advantage. There's a fatal flaw in my consort specific sign language- no one else knows the sign for "extricate me from this situation" no matter how decisively I curl my pinky finger at them. On the plus side: I got rocks this time, instead of pamphlets on becoming a Seventh Day Adventist.

We went out for breakfast with the only other South Texans in the tundra- they are delightful people although I suspect we agree on practically nothing. The husband and Cuervito usually circle around each other like Scotsmen on a battlefield, listing relatives and hometowns, hoping to find a common link. I think there's a very small chance of anyone getting bisected by a claymore here- but I hesitate to say that it's a cultural thing, this search for a shared relation. However, I do know that C's cousins have instructed me to invite handsome single uncles and cousins to my wedding, but they are uninterested in handsome single friends.

PS, I expect to have many temporary cousins for about a week.