LuLu and Shady

I've wanted to talk about these two particular characters for quite some time now but wasn't quite sure how to go about it since, how shall I put it, they are family...not immediate family mind you but still in the same garden where our family tree flourishes so it's family all the same.  I am changing the names to protect the guilty, innocent, the dizzy and the dotty but let me say up front that my garden spot would be so very boring without LuLu, Shady and all their kin watering it with their antics from time to time.

LuLu isn't from around here, she hails from a small village across the "big pond".  She met her husband "J.D.", a deep-South redneck, who'd hopped a freighter for parts unknown looking for fortune and adventure (and not necessarily in that order) and their paths happen to cross like Bogie and Bacall (or Bardot and BillyBob.)  Neither could understand each other's language but the language of amour needed no translation and so love and marriage commenced.  She also couldn't pronounce her "J's" very well and "J.D." came out "Shady" and the name stuck.  I think they've been married close to 50 years so I guess they've learned to communicate even though sometimes you still have to listen close to what LuLu says in order to understand what she is saying.

Right now LuLu is in the proverbial doghouse thanks to her generosity which she unwittingly extended to some younger members of her family who still live across the "big pond".  She invited  one to come for a short visit and instead, wound up greeting six of them at the airport with three being children under the age of ten.  Shady is not happy a bit and I think that if he wasn't so concerned about them destroying his entire house that he would just check in to a motel for the duration of their visit.  Oh yes, and they are staying for a month!  Within the first few days one of the two year old twins had already thrown something down the commode and stopped it up necessitating an expensive call to the plumber.  Then they threw coins in to the swimming pool and practically tore up the filter.  More than one of LuLu's favorite antiques has had to be rescued from their grasp.  Their mother's solution has been a double harness with a long tether in order to keep them from running any more amok than they've already run, at least when they go outside. Shady just shakes his head and keeps threatening to move in to a motel while LuLu just keeps cooking and cleaning up the house.

Now LuLu weighs next to nothing.  She loves high heeled shoes and how this little woman teeters around on them without falling down is a mystery to me.  So when her daughter drove by the house last week just to see if there was any evident carnage from the twin cyclones she was rewarded with the sight of seeing LuLu holding on to the reins of their harness for dear life, being pulled along like a chihuahua on a jet ski and doing her best to keep her balance in her best high heels.  Those two miniature steam engines had pulled her down the steps, out of the yard, across the street laughing like banshees and she wasn't strong enough to stop them.  I wish I could have seen that.

Now LuLu just cooks and cleans and marks days off the calendar while Shady picks up toys off the floor.  I think he would leave town for the next few weeks just for some peace and quiet but he's afraid that they'll burn down the house while he's gone.

Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who uttered so astutely that "fish and visitors both smell in three days"?