A circle.
You’d think that between four adults we could figure out the basics of a circle. I mean, isn’t that the first shape you learn in kindergarten? Or maybe earlier now. I guess there’s all sorts of entrance exams for kindergarten now. When I was a kid (oh my god, did I really just write that sentence? And yes, I have gray hair’ when did I become a pain in the ass know-it-all adult? This is depressing.) you just had to know how to tie your shoes and control your bowels. That’s it. They needed you to know how to make a simple bow knot and have a common understanding that there is a time and a place for letting loose with the big poo, and the time and place is when you are in a bathroom, on a toilet, with the door closed, and not, for example, on the Show And Share stool, following the words ‘Watch this!’ Now the kids in kindergarten have to know the whole bladder thing, how to tie their shoes, the alphabet, how to count to twenty, their address (complete with zip code), the president, the time and temperature, and quite possibly the preamble to the constitution. Which I can only do by singing the Schoolhouse Rock song and I am thirty years old.
Don’t laugh at me. You probably have to sing it too.
So’ a circle.
Ward and June asked us to help them put together their swimming pool. Their several thousand dollar swimming pool.
And we then found out that it would be us’ and them. That’s it. Esteban and myself’ two people who have not yet mastered the concept of picking up after ourselves. I mean, I think that possibly Esteban thinks that the toilet roll magically appears upon the dispenser when that last little bit of toilet paper has been dispensed.
Actually, no, that’s not true. Esteban never actually uses the last ten or so squares of toilet paper. He will leave that there. Because he’s courteous? Oh no’ it is so that he does not have to assume responsibility for replacing the roll with a fresh one. And he would feel guilty leaving an ugly brown cardboard tube on the dispenser, possibly clinging to a hopeful little shred of paper, so small that nary a tiny bug could find adequate quilted comfort with which to wipe their weary tiny bug ass.
Oh, I know that bugs do not wipe their asses. Work with me here.
So’ the circle.
We felt pretty obligated to help them with their pool. I mean, Ward does single handedly accomplish most of our household renovations around here. What is more, it was my seed of manipulation that sprouted the entire pool bonanza in the first place.
I am no help whatsoever. My main talents in life are making sarcastic remarks and looking cute. Sometimes even at the same time. I also make one hell of a mean falafel. There are good falafels, there are great falafels, but do not underestimate the power of a MEAN falafel. With one mean falafel, the world is your oyster.
Or bean patty.
Esteban took off for his parent’s house early, not wanting to watch me trifle with my hair. He knew that I was going to be bored during the ‘two men, four hands’ stages, so he wanted me to have my car. Fine. Then I realized, as he sped off into the crisp morning that my keys were locked in my car.
Fine.
I called June and Esteban then sent her back to my house with the keys. Then I got my keys and said, ‘Ok, I’ll follow you back.’ She gave me a quizzical look but didn’t argue. Thus, the two of us traversed the 15 miles back to their house.
That’s when I found out that the bulldozer was still digging the hole for the pool and hauling several dumptrucks full of dirt off and away, and my talents (the inexplicable ones’ not the falafel making or the being cute) were not expected to be needed for several hours.
(insert look of painful wasted Saturday morning and early afternoon here)
Ward and Esteban sat out on the deck and watched the guy work. I think it was the presence of so many life-sized Tonka toys. They were riveted to that spot. When I’d stop out, they’d tell me what the guy did, as though they were awed by it. That’s because it was really a beautiful ballet of testosterone in action, I suppose.
Finally, I announced that I was going shopping and June spouted that she would like to go with me.
Fine.
She hopped into the Monte with me and proceeded to restrain herself from telling me how to drive. I’m not complaining. I would have had issues if she had piped up. She makes Ward drive like a beleaguered old man, which he does because it’s easier than arguing with her. She even complimented me on an aggressive little swervy maneuver. She’s making progress.
Anyway, then she was complaining about how hard my car is to get in and out of, and we were right by the Lincoln dealer, so I swung around to show her the Lincoln LS that I liked. While we were pulling out, a very handsome silver fox was pulling in and totally scoped us out.
June said ‘Oh look at that weirdo. He might be an axe murderer or something.’
I shrugged. ‘Maybe he thought we were cute?’
That is how she is, though. Two weeks ago, she was trying to get in contact with Esteban to tell him about the family event that we ended up blowing off, she kept calling our house and not getting an answer (because I was out doing Weetabix frivolity’ such as, er.. um’ scrapbooking.) and was frightened that we might have had carbon monoxide poisoning and were lying there stone cold dead.
I’m not even embellishing. Those are the words she used ‘lying there stone cold dead.’
I countered, ‘Well, maybe we had won the lottery and went to Disneyland’ and she scoffed. She actually scoffed. I had never even heard someone scoff before. I was never really certain that such a reaction existed. But there it was. A June scoff.
This is just proof right there that men do not marry their mothers.
She wanted to go to a local mass merchandiser store for some plastic pool serving ware, so we stopped there. Then I mentioned that I wanted to see if they had any more $7 t-shirts, because last year, I purchased something like 12 of them and they were my entire summer wardrobe. I went to the Curvy Chica department and she went to the Non-Curvy Chica department with the cart.
Within five minutes, I loaded up with three solid color t-shirts (white, salmon, and sort of a honeydew), a striped blue one, a v-neck taupe, a stretch workout black one on clearance, and a very strange taupe sweater thing. I then went with an armload of cheap clothes in search of my mother-in-law, really anticipating her surprised exclaim when she took a look at my haul. That’s probably wrong, but I was really looking forward to her disapproving tone or shock at how frivolous I am.
I found her with a similar armload and a guilty expression.
Ok, so there are some minor similarities between us.
Gah.
We returned to Chez Parent to find the heavy machinery had evacuated, leaving a large circular hole, roughly two feet deep, and Ward and Esteban measuring and sinking cement blocks down as footing for the pool. Then the base ring and the columns would sit on these cement blocks, but they had to be exactly perfect. Everything was based upon this one big ring that they had yet to put together.
I piped up. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if you just assembled the ring and marked where the blocks have to go?’ That was immediately met by masculine scoffing because I have ovaries and cannot possibly understand the intricacies of the pool assemblage.
Twice. I had been scoffed twice in one day.
So, several hours later, they had measured, excavated and sunk 16 cement blocks. They measured for the last one and it was far too close to the original block. They put together the ring to see where they screwed up but EVERYTHING was amiss. It was all wacked.
It seems they should have put together the ring first and then used it to show where to place the blocks. They started to speculate how to fix it. They measured the circle. It should have been 24 feet. It was 24 feet and six inches.
They shrugged that off. ‘That’s because we’re measuring crooked.’ I piped up and said that due to the properties of a circle, it should NEVER be more than 24 feet across if you are measuring with a straight tape, which they were, but they pshawed me.
For those of you who are keeping track, that’s two scoffs and a pshaw.
Finally, I fled into the house. June was ticked. Esteban offered them $500 to pay someone to put in their pool. Ward was laughing, which is what he does instead of telling everyone to go to hell. Then I volunteered to drive out to Duvall to get High Maintenance Burgers at the hick bar.
High Maintenance Burgers are very very wonderful. They are greasy and gooey and taste fabulous. And it’s a hefty drive almost into the Door to get them. Driving fast with a little Nine Inch Nails playing sounded really good after standing outside in 40 degree winds, listening to the Esteban clan argue geometry.
Thus, I went for what ended up being a 90-minute excursion to get burgers. I even paid for them, because I didn’t want any argument about where I was going. If June had paid for them, she’d have wanted me to go somewhere else, some place closer, and I wouldn’t have been able to retain my sanity.
I returned with burgers. Everyone sat around and ate, our faces red with windburn, a somewhat egg shaped foundation in the backyard, and familial contentment restored.
Never underestimate the power of cholesterol.
But I now understand why pools are kidney shaped. Those mofos start out as being round and then two guys say ‘fuck it’ let’s go eat a hamburger.’
