Oh yeah

I don’t know how I went so long without mentioning this, but Kelly has a hot tub now. She’s still living in a basement room of the same broken-down house a few blocks from the freeway, but regardless of the permanence (or lack thereof) of her living situation, she went out and bought a hot tub. It was essentially her first act of adult independence.

The tub sits in the back lot, next to the cars and underneath the spreading branches of an evergreen. You can see the flow of traffic on the freeway while soaking, and people walking through the alley often do a double-take or actually come say hello and then ask do we need any crank? Not right now, thanks. Yes, we are sure. No, no speed either.

I’ve enjoyed the hot tub, which I’m fairly certain is the only one within five blocks in any direction, on two occasions now. Last night, right after I had gotten back from Gig Harbor (more on that in a second), Kelly and I chatted in the tub for a while, and a few weeks ago we had eight people in there, all of us swilling beer and playing the cheers game loudly enough to earn a complaint from the neighbors, whose bedroom window is unfortunately less than six feet from the tub. The cheers game, for the uninitiated, is a fun drinking game which realizes that the purpose of drinking games is to get drunk and cuts away all the fluff. Basically you just go in a rough circle proposing toasts, after which everyone “cheers”es in the middle of the circle, drinks, and the process repeats. If you can’t think of anything to toast right away, it doesn’t matter, because someone like me will conveniently cut in line and say something like “cheers for not being able to think of a toast!” or “cheers for cutting in line!” It’s really a great game.

What’s more interesting than how we’ve enjoyed the tub, however, is the story of getting it into her back lot. She bought it used from a family in Redmond or somewhere (it was really early) and I was one of the people she convinced to help move the thing. I’ve participated in enough of Kelly’s schemes by now to understand that when she says to be ready at 10, she really means noon, and when she says it will take an hour, she really means 4 – and yet, every time I manage to be surprised regardless. Such was the case moving her tub a month or so ago, which I likewise cannot believe I’ve neglected to mention for so long. Kelly hadn’t actually seen the tub she was to buy; but Connor had, and said it was a good one that could fit perhaps four people. This turned out, of course, to be incorrect. We did know from the owners themselves that it weighed around 450 pounds and we should have at least four big strong guys to lift it. Kelly had recruited three guys, and while I was certainly the smallest there, it wasn’t by that much. “We’re never going to be able to lift this thing,” I told her while riding in the truck. “Sure we will.” “Can you lift 115 pounds by yourself?” “I don’t know, probably.” “No! You can’t! I can’t, so you definitely can’t!”

Eventually I gave her enough doubts about the operation that she called her excellent friend Chris Hartman to come help us. He’s a very helpful guy, and between the five of us we managed to lift the tub onto the flatbed trailer easily enough. We strapped it from back to front with the one tie-down we had, then wove an elaborate tangle of nylon rope around it which, while ostensibly holding it tightly to the trailer, was largely cosmetic. There were many hang-ups, but no actual disasters. At the end of the day, Kelly took us all out to lunch at Dick’s, but when it came time to pay had to borrow fifteen dollars from me. Oh, Kelly. If this story paints her in a less-than-flattering light, it’s only because I’ve let it go so long that all the happy bits have melted away from my memory.

On that note, I almost lost my mind this quarter, but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to know the details, as well as how I barely managed to reclaim my sanity. My being in Gig Harbor was the symptom of this madness, not the cause, so you can quit crossing me out of your will, Dad.