Do artichokes cause gas?

2004-04-04 - 8:25 p.m.

There's reality and then there's my aunt. The two have never met.

Yesterday I drove down to Stockton with my parents to help my aunt move to her new house. The original move date, by the way, was February 1st and I was scheduled to miss it because I was going to be in Disneyland. All I can say is thank God I didn't say no to Disneyland so I could stay home to help my aunt move. Anyway, this was just a cross-town move so it wasn't too big of a deal. We could make as many trips as necessary without it being much of a hassle. Moving is a horrible thing. Oh sure, getting a new house and being in a new place can be wonderful, but the physical act of carrying all one's possessions from one place and putting them into a big truck and then removing them from the truck and carrying them all to a new place is not fun. Even less fun is moving someone else's stuff, but hey, the more the less miserable so I was happy to pitch in.

At least I thought I was going to be until I got there. Prior to our arrival my dad asked my aunt to be "all ready to move when we get there." When he said this he thought he was asking her to be packed. You know, stuff in boxes, that sort of thing. Apparently, though, she thought he meant to be ready mentally. She had gotten herself all psyched up and yup, she was "ready to move." Only she hadn't packed a damn thing.

Nor had she cleaned anything.

In three years.

But she was ready.

I'm telling you, the computer was still on, there was a load of laundry going in the washing machine, and there were forty different flavors of non-dairy creamer in the fridge. I'm not kidding. Five bottles of each flavor, as a matter of fact.

To give credit where credit is due, my cousin was all packed.

While my parents and I packed up my aunt's stuff and the three of us plus my 86-year-old grandfather and my aunt's boyfriend carried it all out to the truck and to her car, my aunt moved her goldfish. First, though, this involved catching the fish. I swear this took her over an hour. Those fish were just "too tricky to be caught!" We're talking about goldfish here. And my aunt. Who works for NASA. Eventually, though, the fish got caught. I think she may have had help. She cleaned the tank and then decided that the fish were going to suffocate if she didn't put them immediately back into the tank. So she drove over to her new house with the fishtank and three goldfish in a cookie jar. The fishtank was the very first thing to be set up in her new house.

Meanwhile my 15-year-old cousin wondered around aimlessly. It's one of his specialties. Whenever I came across him doing this I would point to something and suggest all friendly-like that he carry it out to the truck. It didn't take too long before I stopped coming across him.

When the truck was full the guys drove the truck over to the new house to begin unpacking it while my mom and I went out to pick up something for lunch. We breaked for lunch, unpacked the truck, then went back to the apartment for another load. My aunt and my cousin stayed behind at the house.

To me that was an invitation to use the trash can liberally.

Hey, if she wanted it, she would've packed it, right?

By the end of the day I was getting pretty grouchy from having to pack all of her stuff which was all dirty from three years of accumulated grime. I had to pack all the food from the cupboards and fridge. I had to pack all the make-up from her bathroom counter. I had to pack her dirty laundry from the bathroom floor.

When we arrived at the house with the final load of stuff, neither my aunt nor my cousin came out to help us unload it. My aunt and her boyfriend, however, spent fifteen minutes unpacking the box of non-dairy creamers and putting them into the fridge in exactly the right order. As my mood continued to sour and as I was the only one moving any of the boxes (while my dad moved all the heavier stuff), I started piling everything in one pile, regardless of where it came from or in which room of the house it belonged. After it was all unloaded, my cousin emerged from his new room. He pointed to a few things in the pile and said, "These go in my room." "It's all you, dude," I said, "I moved it here by myself. Now, it's your turn." I really should've helped him move one of the things because it was very heavy and unwieldy and I had to strain pretty hard to move it myself earlier, not to mention the fact that my cousin is about as wimpy as 225-pound 15-year-old boys come, but I just wasn't in the mood. I felt a little guilty as I stood there and watched him struggle to maneuver it, but not guilty enough to change my mind and help him. It's amazing how motivating a little please or thank you can be. I suppose someday he'll learn about that.

The last thing I carried into the house was my aunt's rock. The thing is bigger than her head. I understand about having rocks with sentimental value. I don't begrudge her having one. After all, it was just one. Heck, I once took a football-sized rock carry-on with me when I flew back from Georgia. But as I mentioned, I was grouchy just then so I couldn't help but comment on it when I brought it in. All I said was, "Here's your rock," so I wasn't doing too badly. But that inspired my aunt to tell me about the rock. Did I mention my aunt works for NASA? She told me that she had this particular rock carbon dated. Yeah, and the guy who did the test for her told her that the rock was "over a thousand years old." I just about fell over dead. I pretended an appropriate amount of amazement at this fact and left the room as quickly as I could.