Robert and me…on the Littlefork River or is that the Bigfork River? I was bossy and he was tricky…

Robert and Marsha are arriving in Albuquerque today with a huge trailer full of furniture to claim the house they bought on-line. Since they’re known for their propensity to move often in their quest for the perfect house, climate, neighbors and dog-walking area, it’s a little hard to know if they’ll actually unload the trailer or not.

Once, many many years ago they decided to move to Albuquerque and Robert drove down to find work—leaving Marsha at her teacher’s job in Minnesota. He brought along a couch and a few other furnishings for the house they would buy as soon as he had the job. He stayed two whole days, we had a good time, talked, drank a little beer and then he decided Albuquerque just wasn’t going to work after all and took his couch and went home.

So the joke is this time they have three couches along, are retired and don’t want jobs, and own a house up on the other side of Tramway they’ve never seen. If it doesn’t work out we are going to take all of the couches to some hidden valley back in the Manzanos and burn them in a huge ceremony of … maybe a little like Burning Man called Burning Couches…it could catch on—OR they will just sign on somewhere as furniture truck drivers and get paid for identical work. That way someday they can afford the PERFECT place.

We are a little bit of a funny family. In some ways the typical first generation children of European immigrants—stolid, sensible, not very exciting people really, but stable—the no-drama immigrants of Scandinavia (Marsha’s family came from Slovakia so she may have a touch more theatrics in her blood being closer to Italy and all that…).

Robert and Marsha are my brother and sister-in-law by the way and I love them dearly. But they really are a little strange. In an appealing way of course.  Ahhh…I think they’re pulling up now…