Lights Out

I adore my father-in-law. He can do no wrong in my eyes, but he is not what anyone would call "handy" around the house. If a light bulb goes out, it stays out. When all the lights are finally dark in the house and no one can see anymore, someone who doesn't live there but can't take it anymore changes all the bulbs.  


My father-in-law had a guy he paid to do work around the house once in a while. Whatever work this guy did he did with one hand, cigarette in the other, even when he was up on a ladder.  

Last summer before we moved into their house, the fifty-year-old oil furnace in the basement exploded, leaving a dark smelly sooty paste on every surface of the house. Forced to move out of their house, they moved into Zia's house next door. With my sister-in-law and her family already living there, they set up camp in the family room on the pull out. 


My younger brother-in-law made an admittedly strange decision to spend one night there with the whole crew.  He slept on the love seat in the family room next to the pull out. He said his father wasn't afraid to sleep in his regular pajamas, which are tight and white, and you know what?  Sometimes, I fart all night long too.