Indoor Camping: Fixing Up the Fixer-Upper

Saturday, August 28, 2004

Blend This Family

We didn’t think about what it would be like when Jenn moved in. We didn’t think she’d stay. Who would? We constantly try to think up ways to escape this dump. Living in an unfinished house full of power tools and sawdust is the opposite of Yoga.

The only way you wouldn’t object to living in our little Kosovo is if you’re pregnant, homeless, your ex-boyfriend leaves you in a State where you know no one except your Dad, who you’ve only seen three times since you were eight. If it were me, I’d still object. If Jenn objects, she hides it well.

We’ve only got three rooms in which you could put a bed. One room is for us, the other two are for genetically-related teenagers. The teenagers reside in our little hell half the time, alternating weeks between here and their Dad’s also not completed house. This means Jenn spends weeks alternating between rooms, adding one more stress to the pile that is her life right now.

One week she lives in a fifteen year-old girl’s room full of scary pictures of other fifteen year-olds and other things only cute to another fifteen year-old. The next week she lives in a room with a large dry-rot hole in the wall and floor, skateboarder shoes and broken boards everywhere, and a bed which may or may not have bedding. There’s too much crap covering it and we’re not ready yet to do an archeological dig.

Both rooms have been expertly nurtured into ant farms because teenagers can’t figure out that if you leave sticky, gooey, chewy things everywhere, you’ll be awakened by an ant army platoon marching drills over your face. The ants have slowed their marching frenzy since Jenn’s arrival. That alternate cleaning week is changing their floor drill patterns. Now the ants have found the bathroom and a new stash of stick, gooey, chewy things. They’ve also found the mouthwash. It turns out we’ve bought the preferred flavor: citrus.

At first, Jenn was quiet. We had the skateboarder drive her around to apply for jobs. We hoped he might follow in some of these places and get a job, too, but hopes don’t always become reality, especially with teenaged boys. She found a job and had already worked four days by the time we returned from our Cali trip. The skateboarder hasn’t even put his dirty vacation clothes in the laundry.

Within a week, Jenn became the skateboarder’s assertiveness training coach. When someone, usually me, tells him to do something, she perks up. “Say no if you don’t want to,” she shouts.

“No?” he says.

“Say it meaner."

“Okay, no.”

“Good,” she says.

The skateboarder needs someone on his side. He’s had a little, very assertive sister his whole life. When he gives her rides, she and her friends are so annoying he has to stop the car. We tell him to make her walk home if she’s too loud. We tell him he doesn’t have to take it if she starts kicking the back of his seat because she doesn’t like the song on the radio. We tell him to tell her to shut up if she yells out the window “You’re HOT!” to guys walking by she doesn’t know, especially if they’re twice her age.

He tries. He stops the car. “Be QUIET!” he yells. He can’t do it. “Please?” he adds. She and her friends ignore him and he drives home, seething but quiet. They never stop.

Jenn handles things in a more direct way. The fifteen year-old wild child hangs around with her friends in a pack. When she’s in her room, they’re all in her room. She turns up her annoying teenaged girl music so loud and plays the same song over and over. This is even more annoying than simply listening to her and her friends chatter and giggle and scream.

One time she played the already overplayed Ashlee Simpson song over and over for over an hour late at night. “If she plays that song one more time,” Jenn told us, “I’m going to sit outside her door with a broom and swat her when she comes out.”

Now Jenn makes the skateboarder big vegan pizzas just for him if he gives her a ride to work. They act more like siblings than the genetically linked offspring.

We told them we had to go find a bookstore and relax somewhere with both carpeting and light fixtures. Jenn and the skateboarder came along, too. We all got things to look at and sat down. After about five minutes, the skateboarder said, “I’m bored.”

Charlie and I ignored him. He does this every time and eventually finds something to fold up and throw at Charlie. Then he goes back to looking at magazines and gets quiet again.

“I’m bored,” the skateboarder said again.

“I’m bored.”

“Why are you bored?” Jenn asked.

“I have this same magazine at home,” he said. “I read it twice already.”

“It’s time you looked at something else anyway,” she said. “Here, I’ll find you something.”

She opened up one of her magazines and starting thumbing through.

“Look!” she said, and shoved an open magazine into the skateboarder’s lap. “Boobies!”

The skateboarder smiled.

“What are you looking at, you tall, lanky bastard?” Charlie said. This is Charlie’s endearing nickname for the skateboarder, which he says like he’s saying, ‘you adorable little kitten.’

“Don’t call him a bastard, you bastard!” Jenn says.

The skateboarder’s smile gets bigger. “Yeah, you bastard!” he says.

“Good for you,” Jenn says.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Charlie says. “You’re not supposed to be ganging up on me.”

Jenn stuck her tongue out at Charlie. The skateboarder and Jenn both laughed, then went back to reading their magazines.

Charlie and I are thinking about taking Yoga.

A little help? [] 10:37:43 PM