Columbine and Aspen

Listen I know you guys are busy. It’s the holiday weekend, you’ve got company. You gotta fix burgers, the charcoal won’t light because the air vent is rusted shut on the bottom of the grill and no matter how much lighter fluid you squirt on it, it just flashes and flares up about 20′ in the air and goes out. Aunt Pheeb and Uncle Skid are probably over and Aunt Pheeb’s been in the peppermint schnapps a little too deep and she is bound and determined that this is the day she’s going to erase that tattoo of the Mexican cutie from Uncle Skid’s backside, but she can’t find a place to plug the angle grinder in, and Uncle Skid knows that he better double buckle his pants and stay out of sight for a while.

Aunt Pheeb brought along their dog Arlo, who thinks he’s a retriever but is really a Chihuahua/pit bull mix and he just ate all the new Angel fish the kids bought with their lotto proceeds and they’re mad. They’re trying to string him up but he’s back under the Hudson so far they can’t get at him. He’s bitten the tips off of two of your new $700 graphite fishing rods they’re using to poke him out of there.

Uncle Skid is hitting on the next door neighbor and has promised to show her his tattoo if he can just climb over the fence. Her husband just came out and now Uncle Skid is running around with two fingers stuffed up his nose making muffled noises about how to stop the bleeding. Aunt Pheeb is laughing so hard she fell over that rickety lawn chair you weren’t going to use this year and knocked over the table with all the potato salad and stuff everybody brought and that was enough to get Arlo out from under the car. Some of the women are trying to scoop the potato salad and the jello surprise back into the bowls and keep Arlo from getting his feet in the baked beans. This is tough because Arlo always stands in his food bowl when he eats.

Your significant other has mentioned earlier that she didn’t want to host the party again this year after what happened to the gazebo and that firemen’s elbow, but you said “Hey it’ll be fun. We won’t invite Aunt Pheeb and Uncle Skid this time.” However you forget that it doesn’t matter if you invite them or not. They’re going to be there and now you’re getting those glances from her that say “Wait until I get you alone…you’ll never host another party again if I have to… etc”

I realize that these are just a few of the minor things that happen before the party gets in full swing but I though you could take a moment out of your very busy day to look at some thing pretty. It’s a flower. A Columbine to be exact, although that doesn’t really matter, it doesn’t make it any more or less pretty knowing its name, and you won’t remember it anyway the way you’re draining that keg, it’s just something useful to call it. They often grow around and in front of Aspen and that has a tendency to make them even prettier, so stop a minute, go inside to your computer room and put the chair under the doorknob and check it out. Take a moment to reflect on the fact that there are other pretty things in life besides your family. It’s going to be a long weekend.

P.S. I think it might be a good thing if you lock Arlo in the tuff shed for the rest of the afternoon now that’s he gotten a taste of those baked beans. You’ll thank me later.