I’m not happy. Not. Happy. Stan. And I’m especially not happy with you, Gran.
I thought this family was united, all metaphorically linking arms and skipping into the sea to start a new life in a dome home. The boat’s all ready to go, I got Melbourne’s best stainless steel marine fabrication on the case to make it the perfect carrier vehicle. Then there’s an emergency meeting of the McCann Clan, and it turns out that Jan, Stan and Gran are all going to stay on land.
Can you imagine? Such betrayal! And then Dan stands up, saying that their passion has sawyed him; he and his wife Fran are out as well, as well as their triplets: Bran, Lan and Tyran.
That just leaves me, Yan, Han and Xian. We’ve booked ourselves quite a large dome home, and I’m just not sure the four of us are going to be able to pay the rent all by ourselves, or perform the daily tasks that come with owning that sort of property. Someone needs to feed the fish, check that the rod holders are still functional, and scrub the barnacles off the surface of the entrance tube. Oh, and don’t even get me started on how Stan was supposed to be the one who did all the emergency marine welding when we were out on the ocean and couldn’t get them to the actual, professional marine stainless steel fabrication people. He did an apprenticeship with Old Man Gilligan that one time for two weeks. Old Man Gilligan unfortunately perished at sea when he mistook the fishing rod holder cable for his bootstraps, laced them up good, let down the cable in the middle of a storm (to catch the legendary Melbourne Storm Fish) and…um, well, you know. He will be missed. He will be avenged! In fact, a large part of why we’re moving under the sea is so that we can better plot our dark revenge against the ocean itself.
But that’s neither here nor there. I’m going to have to go find some great bait board experts, and use their…expertise. Ask them if a dome home can be maintained on a skeleton crew, you know? And of course, now we’re adding over half the family to the revenge list, so that’s even more of a time sink.
-Ann Azerbaijan McCann