It’s nine-thirty in the morning on a Football Sunday.

Crap. Snow is falling and the sidewalk looks slick, so we struggle into long underwear and hiking boots. It’s finally time to help my boyfriend’s brother move his stuff out of my boyfriend’s house and into his new place. We are not happy to be pressed into service on a slushy, cold, Football Sunday, but at least he’s leaving. We had told him in advance that we’d help until the noon kickoff.

By the time we get to E’s place, Brother has started piling random crap in the back of the U-Haul in no practical fashion. There is slush all over E’s floors, clothes on hangers are strewn around the living room, half-packed boxes lay open in the dining room, and Brother is flinging things haphazardly into a laundry basket.

“You said you were packed,” I say accusingly. “You didn’t use any of the good boxes I brought you.”

“I am packed. And I had these boxes,” he said, gesturing to a pile. “Those can go, by the way.”

I already want to curse him because seriously? He’s had months to pack. He’s had the key to his new place for over a week and hasn’t moved a damn thing. He waits for a snowy weekend when he knows everyone would rather be at the bar for the games. He ASKED for good boxes and I brought him some, the nice ones with handles and lids.

And now I am carrying a Crock-Pot box held together with duct tape, with a block of knives poking dangerously out the top.

I lug it out to the truck and hop into the back, pushing things around to make space for the couch, the chairs, the big television, and all the other stuff he’s been storing in the basement since he got kicked out of his old place and had to move in with E five months ago. It will be so good to have him gone, I tell myself as I shuffle and stack, just deal with this for one more day, one more day…

“Everything’s out of the upstairs,” Brother says when the truck is about three-quarters full. “Let’s go.”

“You still have a bunch of boxes in your room,” E points out.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t decided about those. I might give that stuff to the Salvation Army, I dunno. But why move them twice?”

“Because they are taking up space in MY HOUSE,” E says flatly.

“Whatever.”

“We’re not making a trip till this truck is full,” I announce, so we troop down to the basement. I start grabbing things and Brother stops me on every other item – not sure about this, might give that away. It’s classic Brother, never making decisions, waiting till the last minute for everything and still blithering, expecting everyone to sympathize with poor him.* Five months of tension finally snap, and out comes The Crazy.

“What do you mean you haven’t DECIDED?”

“I just need to think for a day or two if I should keep that – ”

“You have had MANY days. You had Saturday. And Friday. And all last week while you had your new place. And all the last five months while you kept talking about moving out, to pack properly and make these decisions. Do not call people to get up early on a Sunday and help you when you haven’t done your part! You are wasting our time, so get your shit together!”

I storm off with a box, not caring if it was meant to go or not. It was going.

I felt bad for a little bit. But good GOD, he was on my last nerve, after everything he’s done to E, his own little brother who took him in, and after everything he’s done to take advantage of both of us – up to and including opening MY Christmas presents and eating MY food while he gambled away his paychecks and borrowed money because he was broke  – E and I used to practically live at his place, and lately we haven’t even slept there because Brother has made it so miserable. It was that bad.

We finish loading the truck and drive to the new place. I carry an armload of his on-hanger shirts upstairs and lay them on his bed.

“You can hang those up,” he calls

“No, I’m making that your ‘deal with it’ pile,” I say, stomping out to the truck to get more. I could have brought them all in one load if they’d been in a box.

E and I schlepped back and forth angrily for another hour. We were late for kickoff, we were wet and hungry (who asks for moving help and doesn’t have pizza or beer?!), and when we left, Brother asked when we’d be back.

I told E later that I felt a bit bad for yelling. “Don’t,” he laughed. “He deserved it, and it was pretty funny. He kept looking at me like I could somehow shut you up, and I just smiled and said ’she’s right, dude.’”

I think I secretly hoped that he would change, that maybe if he heard from someone other than his dad or his little brother – who has fought with him all his life and told him this a thousand times – that he’s a rude and irresponsible bum, maybe it would make something click. You know, confirmation from a third party. But I realize now that I may as well have been yelling in Welsh, for all it was worth. E explained to me that his brother is like a dog: he hears loud noises and sees angry looks from humans, but he cannot associate them with his actions.

“How was moving?” E’s best friend asks when we get to the bar. Said friend is familiar with the horrible living situation, of course.

E tells my story.

And I get a slow clap.

———————-

* There were actually several other instances where he treated E and me like total crap that day, but they make the story too long. Trust me. He deserved this.

E’s job at The Very Nice Restaurant affords him a certain number of perks, including free nights and major discounts on food and services at several Very Nice Hotel chains, including the Ritz-Carlton, the Four Seasons, and some others all over the world.

On the advice of several of his coworkers, we went here:

Let’s get something out in the open right now. My family grew up going on camping trips for vacations. I’m totally good in a tent with a sleeping bag and eating food that’s been cooked over a fire or on a little camp stove. So, try and imagine my eyeballs when I saw that we got to stay here:

Here’s our hotel, smack in the middle of this beachside lineup.

Suffice to say, I felt a little country-come-to-town wandering around that place. I was constantly asking E who I was supposed to tip (anyone who arranges things for you or gives you something you asked for) and who I was not to worry about tipping (anyone who brings you something you didn’t ask for, or anyone who assists you while you are in a bathing suit and obviously do not have money).

I took advantage of the free steam room and the seven-headed shower in the spa, enjoyed the complimentary L’Occitane bath goodies every day, and got an amazing pedicure. We had one meal at the restaurant and one meal with room service just because we were feeling lazy. But beyond that, we really skipped out on all of the fuss and were just our normal, beer-and-burger kind of selves.

Except the Bud Light was $7 per bottle and the burger was made of grass-fed, free-range, pilates-doing, inner-peace-having cow, and cost $18. Plus tips.

Seriously? We actually stopped at the grocery store before we got to the hotel and loaded up on bread, cheese, lunchmeat, hot dogs, yogurt, fruit, beer, soda, and chips. We even brought the mini George Foreman grill down there with us so we could make hot sandwiches in the room. Even at the Four Seasons, and even with 50% off at their restaurant, we’re still cheap.

There were red flags on the beach much of the time, but we had some beautiful sunshine, enough for good walks and a 20-mile bike ride down the island.

This pier was about a ten-minute walk down the beach from our hotel, and it goes out to where the water is about 40 or 50 feet deep. We saw  a school flying fish being chased by barracudas – tricky to photograph, but so gorgeous. Here’s my attempted shot of the flying fish – look in the lower left of the picture.

The Four Seasons is on an island between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intercoastal Waterway. We had to go over a drawbridge to get pretty much anywhere, and for some sort of growing-up-landlocked reason, this totally thrilled me.

The ocean side was full of hotels, and the waterway side was lined with huge homes – some probably bigger than the hotel – where the supa-rich docked their supa-expensive boats.

It can be an expensive town. Even the taxis are Lincolns and Cadillacs. No, not just the Four Seasons club car. I mean the TAXI you wave down on the street. And even it has complimentary candies and bottled water.

We took a day to go deep-sea fishing, and although it started out kind of gray-ish, it ended up sunny and perfect (minus the first hour, in which I was uncomfortably – but not barfy – seasick). Here’s our little boat:

And here is E reeling in a freaking 7-foot sailfish.

Flickr Video

That was completely amazing. We ended up letting the fish go (as you can see) because we weren’t going to eat it, sell it, or mount it. That pinkish thing in its mouth is actually the fish’s stomach! Sailfish, I kid you not, will spit up their own stomachs to rid themselves of a hook if they can, and then gulp it back down once freed.

There’s your trivia for the day.

(And no, I didn’t catch anything.)

Aside from the bike ride and the fishing, we really spent most of the time just wandering the shore searching for coral and shells, laying around by the pool if it was nice or in our room if it was not. We only did one night out on the town and it was okay, but we chose to spend our last night in Palm Beach eating a delivery pizza  and watching movies instead of going back across the drawbridge.

It was just better that way.

Neither one of us could get more than two bars of cell service while we were on the island. I didn’t even get to read my guest bloggers’ posts until Saturday because we chose not to pay extra for wifi in the room. Although it was pretty frustrating to feel so disconnected at first, I have to admit that it was kind of sad to look down at my phone at the airport and see all the bars lit up again.

And, in keeping with the frugal nature of our swanky trip, I didn’t buy a single souvenir.

But I think I’ve got the best one right here anyway:

And that was our vacation.

E and I are headed to Palm Beach, Florida on an early flight on Monday. Vacation!!! And we get to stay FOR FREE in one of the Very Nice Hotels, courtesy of his job at the Very Nice Restaurant. How freaking sweet is that?! It means we have extra money to blow on deep-sea fishing, and golf and the spa… mmm, spa. Spa with a hefty discount.

*happy*

Oh, and say what you will about the cold snap in the South right now… It hasn’t been above freezing in St. Louis for over a week, so THIS is looking pretty good to me.

As long as I don’t have to wear long underwear on vacation, it’s all good.

And while I’m gone, you’ll have a wonderful series of guest bloggers to entertain you! Three lovely ladies will be posting here in my absence, and you simply must come by and see what they have to say.

Have a happy week!

“Honey? Where’s the other present your mom sent me? You said there were two.”

“Yours are the ones with the red ribbons.”

I dig in the box. I opened one gift yesterday, so there should be another red ribbon somewhere. Instead, I find an unwrapped set of very cute pajamas.

“Did you open my present?”

“No, why?”

“Cause I don’t think these size small PJs are for you, and they’re opened right here by your t-shirts.”

“I didn’t open anything of mine. What t-shirts?”

I hold up the Life is Good shirts with a cyclist and a football player. E grabs his hair and curses under his breath and I know who did it. It’s the person whose presents aren’t even in that box.

It’s been a stressful two weeks dealing with my boyfriend’s older brother. Bro moved into E’s place this summer after he couldn’t pay his bills anymore. He was fired because he refused to conform to a simple rule, but he wouldn’t let The Man tell him what to do. Nor would he sign up for unemployment, because that’s for losers. Noble. So he took over half of E’s one-bedroom apartment and has been living on a waiter’s tips and a sense of entitlement.

He doesn’t even try.

It’s only gotten worse since he moved in, and these last few weeks we have been DESPERATE to get him out. But it’s a double-edged sword because E is thoroughly convinced that Bro is just going to make a financial mess of himself again and land on the doorstep some night, drunk and stoned, demanding to move back in. And E, with a deep resentment barely overridden by his sense of fraternal obligation, will let him. And they both know it.

But Bro has finally found an apartment and put down a deposit. He’s got the keys. I very kindly (read: pushily) provided him with a dozen of the sturdy boxes we use at The Hospital and told him that if he needed more, I’d hook him up. He packed five of them and has moved exactly one.

In the spirit of Christmas and the love I bear for my boyfriend, GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT.

Quit slacking and mooching off him. Don’t whine to us about how poor you are when we know you blow all your money on your vices, legal and otherwise. Quit leaving a mess everywhere. Open your own damn Christmas presents. Don’t eat the food we bought for ourselves. Stop turning the furnace up to 75 and not contributing to the gas bill. Quit waking us up in the morning because you want to talk about nothing. On that note, quit keeping us up at night because you’re drunk and want to talk and sing Miley Cyrus songs.

E and I sleep at my place a lot now because he just can’t stand being at his own apartment anymore. I love having him over, but that’s just stupid and wrong to feel pushed out of your own place like that. He is so stressed and angry and it hurts my heart to see him like this. It’s not that E hasn’t tried, both nicely and occasionally in anger, to wake Bro up to what he’s doing. But it’s all a joke to him. E wouldn’t REALLY throw him out, right? Ha ha ha!

We are ready to cut him.

My badly sprained left thumb (volleyball, yet again) has made typing pretty painful last few weeks – the brace doesn’t help. Typos abound; this is pretty much the millionth draft of this post. But from here at the Rams game, at halftime, I feel like there is something I MUST say:

E, if you ever propose to me, in a stadium, under any circumstances, I will say no.

Men of the world, take note.

(But I very badly want to be on a Kiss Cam. Just once. Are those things mutually exclusive? Just wondering.)