The Surreal Life...
rats, that title is already taken
Chuck and I were sitting in the family room last night....just kicking back and watching our favorite reality show. And the TV wasn’t on.

Cue theme song...
I got me a van, it’s as big as a whale
and we’re headin’ on down
to the Crap Shack.
I got me a Chevy, it seats about 20
So hurry up and lend your mother some money.

Sign says...stay away fools,
‘cause chaos rule at the Cr-a-a-ap Shack!

oooh...litter on the highway
litter on the front porch
litter on the hallway

The whole shack shimmies!
The whole shack shimmies when everybody’s
Movin’ around and around and around and around!
Everybody’s movin, everybody’s groovin’ baby!
Folks linin’ up outside just to get down
Everybody’s movin’, everybody’s groovin’, nobody’s cleanin’ baby
Funky little shack! Funk-y little shack!

In tonight’s episode, Mom is sulking resting on the couch after realizing her efforts to get the house in order are not just not being realized, but are being thwarted. Mom has a good sense of the transience of material things. But she is occasionally overwhelmed at the rate at which things continue to deteriorate.

This reverie is broken by the clatter of various family members and their friends roaming about the house. Bridget takes center stage with a lively description of looking out the window while at work and seeing the local constabulary peering into the family van and taking copious notes. Rick excuses himself to the office to call the police and explain why a van with a lot of computer accessories etc marked as belonging to a local high school was in The Yuppy Puppy parking lot. Bridget continues her tirade about the humiliation of driving such a ‘ghetto’ looking van...and with the pro-life bumper stickers. She can only imagine what the police thought.

There is a lot of computer equipment in the living room, too. We all know it is part of Rick and Chuck’s charitable computer project to get technology into the hands of schools with limited budgets. Mom and a few of the other kids think it makes the whole place look like a loosely organized fencing operation. Twenty-six years of parenting have left our mater familias with a gift for thinking six steps ahead. So Mom is encouraging everyone to help tidy up...so we look clean when the police show up with a search warrant. And for heaven’s sake let’s get the dry-erase graffiti off the white board in the school corner. This doesn’t need to be a DCFS matter, too. (And Mom works on vacuuming the snow from the “winter” village, so word doesn’t get back to Martha Stewart in prison that some people are so very disorganized. Martha knows people. People who know people on the outside.)

Chuck retires to his personal Crap Shack - which is looking so much better after an afternoon’s work - to relax from cleaning and shoveling. (It was snow that he was shoveling. His room isn’t that bad.) And to escape his enervating little brother who has taken up the affectation of walking about the house with a shillelagh.

Mom decides to watch some amusing TV familes, such as the Bluths or Simpsons. But only after doing another load of wash so that Dad has a good pool of normal clothes to draw from when he dresses to attend Martha’s yearly IEP meeting at school. Mom has missed too much work in the past week and can’t afford to sit through a yada-yada-yada session at school. Martha isn’t too dismayed. Mom went last year, so everyone knows that Martha’s mom isn’t imaginary.
Cue theme and closing credits....
Hop in my van,
it’s as big as a whale
and it’s about to set sai!
I got me a car, with computers for twenty
So make sure you have some ID, honey....