21. Sarah
SARAH
The kids’ Peanuts show was showing the credits when I went inside, and I needed to dust. I was also internally raging anew, this time with a focus on a new target: Doran and Kaelor's parents and sister. The nerve of those people! Not even bothering to come up with a polite lie to excuse their non-attendance, and outright saying, “Oh, that’s a two or three day trip each way, and if the only reason we’re going is your wedding, we don’t feel it’s worthwhile to spend that amount of time traveling”.
We own a freaking rooming house slash inn, for Pete’s sake!
They could have stayed longer, gotten to know their new grandkids and me, reconnected with their son and brothers, taken in some of the local color - like the Tyridium dance thing at Bob’s joke wall.
Or just enjoyed a respite and borrowed the flitter and explored the countryside, maybe us joining them on picnics.
I wasn’t sure who deserved the Biggest Tool of the Universe award most - my parents, his parents, or his sister, and so I didn’t upset him about it by showing how absolutely pissed off I was about his family’s contributions to the “How Shit Can We Make Today” event. I was going to clean.
“Okay, boys, I’m going to go to the kitchen for a moment. You two can turn that off and follow me, and I’ll give you what you need to help me.”
“Bob, turn off the TV!” Evan yelled, and the wall reassembled its surface molecules so it was simply a wall.
“What are we going to be doing?” Matt asked as they trailed behind me obediently.
“We’re going to do some tidying up.”
“Aw, man! Chores!”
“Once we’re done, we can bake cookies. Sugar ones, and you two can decorate them.”
“Yeah!”
It would make a mess in the kitchen again, and I’d have to colour icings but that was okay.
“So, deal?”
“Deal,” they agreed.
Entering the kitchen, I opened the laundry cupboard and took out the laundry basket.
“Now, Evan, you take this and bring me the sheets off your bed and Matt's.”
“I can do that!” he said, looking happy that I hadn’t asked him to do anything difficult. He took the basket from me and raced away.
“No running in the house!” I reminded him. He had to have heard me, as his footsteps slowed and I didn’t hear any loud thumps from him thundering up the stairs.
“What am I going to do?”
I went over to the replicator and had it make me some Swiffer mop cloths, asking it to imbue them with a bit of lemon oil to add some shine to the floor and leave a pleasant scent behind. Then I placed one on my old Swiffer mop and handed it to Evan.
“Just go push this around on the floor in the living room and dining room, okay? Go up and down, not round and round, and try not to miss a spot.”
“Okay,” he replied gravely. “I’ve helped Daddy sweep before, so I can do this.”
I smiled at him. Sweeping and pushing a mop were two different things, but using a Swiffer wasn’t rocket science, and I knew he’d do just fine.
Besides, the floors only needed a freshening up, as I kept them cleaned, and the guys all wiped their boots before entering the house.
I’d do a proper mop job the day before the wedding, anyway.
Next, I replicated some textured dust cloths lightly imbued with lemon oil so the dust would adhere and not simply spread around, and went to work wiping down surfaces in the living room.
I paused what I was doing when Evan came back downstairs with the requested laundry, taking it from him and setting the load to wash.
“Okay, now go bring me the towels and washcloths you've all been using,” I told him, handing him back the basket. He nodded and scurried away, so I returned to my own task. I’d barely gotten the coffee table done by the time he returned.
I put those on to wash as well, and now that Matt was also done, I changed his Swiffer mop cloth after placing the old one in the recycler unit in the laundry cupboard and sent him to Swiffer the upstairs hall and their rooms. To Matt, I handed a small broom and dustpan and set the task of sweeping the stairs.
“Start at the top,” I instructed.
Laura began fussing then, needing a change, so I attended to that and gave her a piece of melba toast and a sippy cup of diluted apple juice in her high chair while I replicated what we needed for my sugar cookie recipe.
I set the ingredients out on the counter and, after wiping the high chair and Laura off once she’d finished, settled her down for a nap in her crib.
I wasn’t surprised to find Matt had finished his task and forgotten to seek me back out, instead racing some of his matchbox cars around.
Evan had taken it upon himself to take the Swiffer and managed to change the cloth, though he’d left the other one discarded on the floor, and Swiffer the stairs by standing on a step and swiping the one immediately below him.
He’d started at the bottom and worked his way back up to the top.
“Are we done yet?”
“For now,” I agreed. “Go get Matt and meet me in the kitchen.”
After replicating two small aprons, I helped the boys measure and mix the dough and roll it out.
All I had were Christmas cookie cutters, but two of them were a gingerbread man and a woman, so we used those.
It was hard to stay mad with happy children and the smell of vanilla and warm cookies in the air, and I felt myself relax at last.
“Okay, I’m going to check on the laundry now,” I said. The sheets were finished, but the towels were doing a final rinse and spin. “Okay, while the cookies cool, let’s go hang these out.
I’d hung laundry out before, at Grammie’s before she’d moved to the condo she was moving out of now, back when she and Grandpa had owned a split level ranch in the suburbs.
The boys had never done it, and Evan used the kitchen stepstool to help me hang up the sheets while Matt selected and passed out the colorful clothespins, insisting each thing had to have matching pins.
The towels finished while we were out there, so a quick trip back outside was made to hang them up as well.
I’d bring them in, mist them lightly with some water from my spray bottle, and put them in the dryer for fifteen minutes to fluff them up after.
The cookies were not yet cool enough to decorate, so I went into the playroom and fetched out my kids’ battered old Candyland game and played with the boys while we waited.
Of course, I got stuck in the swamp, and Matt won, with us continuing the game to find out who’d come second. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t me.
We’d finished decorating the last sugar cookie and set them aside on the cooling rack for the icing to set when I saw the time.
I quickly loaded the dishwasher, sent the boys to wash up, and set myself to boiling some eggs.
I replicated some cooked and shredded chicken, cooled, boiled, and drained pasta seashell shapes, and a bottle of ranch dressing as I fancied a pasta salad for lunch.
When they all returned from work for lunch, including Doran, who’d been busy out back all morning, the boys regaled them with how they’d cleaned “the whole house”, hung out laundry, and made cookies.
I was a mere footnote in all of these activities, which made me laugh; the amusement echoed by the other adults.
Best of all, everyone ate the pasta salad without complaint and I was glad I’d made enough for everyone to have seconds.
Now this is what a family is supposed to be like. They might be friends who are currently paying guests, but really, they’ve become part of our family. And not an asshole in sight. If Doran's family and my parents can’t get the memo, stuff them. We’re better off without them.