My sister Krishelle house-sat for me while I was in the Baltics. And by "house-sat" I mean "killed all of my flowers and broke my A/C."

Periodically throughout the trip, this text exchange would happen:

Eli: Hello.

Eli: Hi.

Eli: Hello???

Eli: Are you there?

Eli: HELP ME I'M DROWNING IN MY OWN TEARS!

Krishelle: What do you want?!

Eli: Oh, hi. Since you seem to be awake, how is everything going at the house?

Krishelle: You know it's 3:00 AM here, right?

Eli: Yes.

Krishelle: The house is fine. Stop asking. I will let you know if it burns down.

Eli: YOU THINK IT MIGHT BURN DOWN?!

She kept insisting everything was fine and that I needed to delete her contact from my phone and that I simply must stop texting her pictures of Tami, etc. But somehow I knew I wasn't getting the full story. And I really started regretting not exchanging phone numbers with the Perfects when I first met them because I know they would have given me the real story if I could have texted them and asked how things looked over there.

Also, I wish I had written down the Perfectss/s/s/'s's's'#''s's'ses names when I first met them because every time I call Mr. Perfect "Joe," I'm 5% less sure that that really is his first name. And I've called him that 742 times so I'm now negative 3483% sure that that's really his name. I did not do the math for that.

I waited with unease until the end of the trip. And then, while on my last layover, I got a call.

Krishelle: Hi. Just fyi--most of your plants are dead and the A/C doesn't work anymore and some of your stuff is broken and I haven't been to the house in five days OK BYE!

To be fair, Krishelle would likely challenge the above quote as not exactly what she said. But that's exactly what I heard.

After significant flight delays, I pulled up to my house at about 2:00 in the morning and surveyed the damage.

This is what my yard looked like before the trip:


And this is what it looked like when I got home:


You guys! You can't even tell that that's the same place!

Krishelle told me that it was unseasonably hot and something about global warming and that she did everything she could. Well, within reason. She also blamed the broken A/C on an elderly Colombian woman named "Herminda" who doesn't speak a word of English and can't defend herself (this is true).

Ok. I know. I know. It is not easy to house-sit for a very neurotic person. She, or anyone I could have possibly chosen, was destined to fail the moment I handed her a key and made her swear a blood oath. The A/C unit is older than all of your grandmas combined so it was destined to break anyway. And last year at this time, I killed all of my flowers when it got unseasonably hot. And I am very grateful to her for taking care of things while I was gone. Blah blah blah.

BUT. If you can't irrationally trash your own family in public forums THEN WHAT THE HELL ARE FAMILIES EVEN FOR?

~It Just Gets Stranger