My parents called me today, bored as usual. Their phone calls usually last for 90 minutes or more, and this was no exception. My mom lost her invitation to her brother’s wedding and made me read mine out to her so she’d know when and where it was. Sheesh.

Then she put my sister on. That was weird. My sister had a joke:

This guy in a wheelchair has cold feet so her asks his friend to go upstairs and get his slippers for him. The friend goes up there and tells the guys wife that he was told to sleep with her. She says he’s a liar and the friend says he was told to sleep with both her and the daughter. He yells downstairs, “Both of them?” and the guy says, “What’s the point of fucking one of them?!”

My response to that mess was a big, huge, “What?!”

She gave the phone back to my mom, who said she had to go to work and gave the phone to my dad.

He talked about the boats and cars as usual. They bought a winch and rigged it so they can use it to put the pontoons on the boat up and down. It’s been tested in the yard and works great, but so has all the “inventions” before this and they didn’t stand up so hot to real-world conditions. With any luck, this one will work and we won’t have to manually crank those things.

The crankshaft on my sister’s car broke while she was at McDonalds in the Drive-Thru. She was right in front of the box so they had her calling in all the other people’s orders until a tow truck could get her out of there. When one finally did come for some reason they only moved her car out of the way and she had to call another one to bring the car home.

My uncle is still pretending to hunt for a job and spending all his unemployment on booze. He’s still using the excuse that he goes to the Legion for the wings, but none of us are stupid enough to fall for that crap.

My other uncle and aunt (siblings, not married) have moved about a block away from him so he’s got lots of drinking buddies now. Oh joy. It’s their stupid encouragement and dependence on him that has him in this situation in the first place.

The man has made $18 an hour for 20 years and is completely broke because his siblings mooch so much off him. It’s sad that he’s ended up an alcoholic to deal. You think he’d know better after their childhood. Oh well. I can’t let that bother me anymore. It’s his own fault for so many reasons and it won’t change until he helps himself.

Something funny: my brother has a clubhouse in his VW van. It’s not driveable so it sits in the yard and he’s got a TV and stereo and heater and whatnot all set up in there for his friends to come over and hang out and get high in.

My parents don’t so much care about that. They have a “use substances responsibly (legal or not)” speech. What they care about is that he’s got an extension cord plugged into the house to power all his crap in there. So they’re mad about that, not so much that everyone is hanging out in there.

My brother has also been through three dirtbikes in the last week or so, since he’s got this buy-sell-trade thing going. People give giving or selling him their crappy bikes, he’s been getting them running and selling or trading them for another.

Lesson: highschool auto class is not a waste.