You don’t choose your family and it’s too messy to kill them…

Unless you carpet your entire house with the same plastic that went on the couches in our for-show living room. Then you can bludgeon to your heart’s desire.

Really, I’m not that perverse. I was up late watching back-to-back episodes of CSI, but I can see how it would be easy to go from the Norman Rockwell family unit to The Manson Family. Especially with my family.

I do love them, honestly, but it’s overkill when your mother calls three times in one day to find out how you’re managing with your brother’s 67-lb. ball of afro. After the first call there is nothing left to talk about, but she wanted commiseration that my already-physically and emotionally spent brother has to add another item to the ever-growing list of responsibilities. In honesty, yes, he should have thought of the time constraints and the training involved in getting a dog, especially from puppyhood. But he’s trying his best and that’s all anyone can ask.

Like I said, you can’t choose your family. If I could, I would have traded my brother in for the next model when, at the age of 12, he hid underneath my bed and grabbed my ankles as I passed by. Already a child who envisioned monsters lurking around every corner, this was enough to set me over the edge. I actually peed on my brother’s hands, which some would say is punishment enough. I don’t think so.

My dad doesn’t get off scot-free either. He’s the one who told me about said monsters. He also told me that I sounded like a dying cat whenever I sang songs he didn’t like. Sing along to the radio station in the car? Not this girl. Try it and you would be subjected to Joe’s caterwauling – yes, he would actually growl, spit and cry like the neighbourhood cat just to prove his point. Sing a big band song, a song from his repertoire and there was nothing as sweet as your voice. Styx? Stinks, he’d say. INXS? Crap. Depeche Mode? Nothing I can repeat. His ears would bleed if he heard some of the music on my mp3 today: Green Day, Billy Talent, U2.

It could be worse. I could be kin to these folks (yes, that is a possum).

Or, I could have a little clarinet player floating in the head of another larger, more life-like clarinet player.

Or my dad could fall asleep in his recliner like this old dude. Nah, that’s my mom’s job.

Happy Tuesday, bloggers. We’re one more day closer to the weekend, Canada’s long August long weekend. Long live summer, or long live the summer whenever it does get started.