This House is For Lovebirds Only

My mom hates the house we live in. It was built by my grandfather; it's where my dad and his four brothers all grew up. I'm pretty sure when they were teenagers my uncles grew pot in the room my parents now sleep in. We moved in eight years ago to stay with my grandmother, who had Alzheimer's. Now that she's gone, there's really no reason to stay, except we don't really have the money to move out.

For maybe a decade now, it's been my parent's dream to move out to the lake. We own a piece of land - just the land, with nothing on it - and my parents have been vising and revising a house plan since before this millennium. But my dad has always told my mom it wasn't time to build. The economy was bad, or there wasn't enough money, or it was senseless since after 2012 there wouldn't be a planet Earth.

(I was on the phone with an AT&T operator last week talking about my cell phone plan; it lasts until the end of 2011. She asked me if I wanted to extend it, and I told her I didn't really see the point, since the world was ending the year after. She actually laughed. Then I told her Mr. Trumbo was my father, and to call me Cass - but then I had to explain that Mr. Trumbo was actually my father, and I wasn't the primary account holder.)

Maybe two weeks ago my mom got a plumbing bill she didn't recognize. She took it to my father, and when he told her not to worry, she became suspicious. She investigated - that's where I get my mystery solving gene from. My mother. As it turned out, my dad had been building a house for two months without telling her. The plan was to have the entire framework up by her birthday in early May. When she asked why he didn't tell her, he said, "Because you didn't ask."

For Easter we took a picnic lunch out to the lake. My brother Harlin and I set up a card table on the concrete slab that will eventually be the dining room, and my mom laid out dishes on a 2x4 she used as a buffet line. We ate lunch in a windy breakfast nook with a beautiful view of the lake, and then my mom made Harlin and I compete in an Easter egg hunt. He is a senior in high school, and I am about to graduate college. It was relatively harmless until my mom said, "There's only one egg left." While we were looking for it, Harlin stole an egg out of my basket, so I slapped the basket out of his hands and stomped on his eggs. I now have Reese's cups all over the sole of my nice birthday shoes.

Before we left, my dad took us around to each room and explained what would be installed. At the end of the tour my brother and I looked at each other, and then I let him ask the question we were both considering. "Where's our rooms?" he asked. "You don't have any," my dad said. "This house is for lovebirds only."