Brother from another mother

Doing this painting job in the daytime has given me time to hang out with my wife's little brothers. It's nice to hang out in a crowd that isn't going to accuse me of being immature.

At lunch the other day I was asking her brother, Eric, if he was saving any money this summer. I asked, "...Or are you spending it all on your X-Box?"

Eric said, "I haven't really saved any money. But me and Adam (the younger brother) bought our X-Box TOGETHER. And he actually paid for most of it."

And this line of questioning brought the details of their financial situation to light. I recapped the situation to Eric, "...So Adam paid for MOST of the X-Box, buys ALL of your games, puts MOST of the gas in the car you share AND has MORE money in the bank than you?"

Eric stared at me but didn't respond. I continued, "And he gave you his tomato so you could put it on your sandwich and then you COMPLAINED about it ("There's KETCHUP on this tomato!"). You should be ashamed. Taking advantage of your little brother."

It probably doesn't read funny but Adam had several bursts of laughter over the next couple of minutes over that conversation. A small reward for being generous. Later that night, my wife was talking to her sister. Her sister is debating whether or not she would like to marry her boyfriend. The sister said, "There are just a lot of weird things about my boyfriend. Sometimes he embarrasses me."

To which my adoring wife responded, "LOOK WHO I MARRIED."

My wife told me that Eric jumped into the conversation at that point, saying, "I'm glad you married Emmett." And then he related the "tomato" story to her. Apparently he likes it when people keep him in check.

My wife's cousin also paints with us. He is entertaining. He's one of THOSE kids. For instance, we were leaving the restaurant and we all got refills on our drinks. I guess there is some new health code where they just give you a whole new cup instead of refilling the one you already have. Adam told the cousin, Daniel, "Take the straw out of your old drink and put it in your new drink."

Daniel became defensive, "Duh, Adam! I'm not stupid... oh shoot! I just accidentally threw my straw away." He threw the straw away WHILE he said it. It's funny hanging out with him.

I've been calling Daniel "Pig-Pen," because he wears the same clothes to work everyday and the clothes are completely saturated with drywall dust. Daniel sat on the black leather seats in my car for two seconds and then stood up again the seat was almost completely white. At lunch today, daniel coughed and a giant cloud of white dust billowed up from his shoulder. I just said, "See. You're Pig-Pen."

Yesterday morning, the shop that sells us all of our paint was having a free breakfast for all of the contractors they sell to. For some reason my father-in-law really wanted me to go so I had to wake up an hour earlier than usual to eat with the crew.

While we were eating, Daniel dropped his toast. He said, "Whoa. That's weird. I just dropped my toast facedown on my lap and it didn't even get any jam on my pants."

I said, "That's because your pants are so dusty that it's impossible for them to get any dirtier. You dropped your toast on them and all you did was get the jam dirty."

Maybe it's only funny to me. That's okay.