Space Invasion

My in-laws are coming to visit.

If marriage were outlawed, you know, only outlaws would have in-laws. Why has no one ever seriously suggested this solution to the gay marriage issue? It's unquestionably wrong, unfair, and ridiculous to deny marriage rights to gay people yet allow them to Hollywood spouse-hoppers and reality TV participants. I think we should ban marriage altogether. There would be an awful lot of children born out of wedlock, which would upset the social conservatives; but hey! No more divorce!

My in-laws are not face-leeching, shrieking alien monsters. In fact, they're rather nice people. The only problem with them coming to Austin to visit is that they will very likely expect to be allowed into our apartment.

How clean isn't my apartment, would you like to know? Well, suffice it to say I take after my mother where housekeeping skills are concerned. Mom routinely had the dishes stacked so high in the kitchen sink that you couldn't see the faucet. Mom generated new forms of alien life in the back of the fridge. When I had to do a high school science project where I carefully cultivated mold on a moistened piece of bread stored in a warm, damp, dark place for a week, I ended up turning in a slice from the loaf in the pantry instead because it was much more luxuriantly shaggy.

When my parents moved to their townhouse outside DC, Mom unpacked the boxes in the entryway and put items away from there. She unpacked the shower curtain, but the townhouse had glass shower doors on all the bathtubs. The shower curtain sat, wadded up, in the middle of the entrance hall floor for months. After the first couple of weeks you didn't really notice it anymore.

"You really need to clean your apartment," urges one of my best friends back in Corpus, who has a beautifully appointed, tastefully decorated, spotlessly clean home. What he doesn't have is a teenaged daughter who is so staggeringly untidy that I once found crushed eggshells in one of her dresser drawers. I wonder if he'd like one? She does give backrubs and foot massages, and she likes a lot of the same TV shows he does.

But there's no time. My in-laws will be here tomorrow, and at this point I'd be humiliated for my apartment to be seen by vandals. The toilets are so filthy that the cats won't drink out of them. And I'm certain there are a few new life-forms taking shape in the back of the refrigerator.

I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.