More Family Dirt

This is NOT Mahonri, though the resemblance is uncanny. I believe this guy purchases his own household goods, for the record.

Now that it's time for me to do what I must do and no longer procrastinate,  I have a slew of topics  to address -- I have a request about to write more about my looney Mormon relatives,  someone in  the Duggar family is always doing stupid,  one of the extended Kardashain/faux Kardashians  has dropped the last name of Jenner in favor of no last name at all, and Joan Rivers is in grave condition but possibly improving,  I'll address the other topics at a later date. but tonight I will talk about family since there is actual family news.

My cousin Marthalette, daughter of Mahonri the kleptomaniac/common thief, and dad's sister Marthalene, known more for her general idiocy and singing voice that sounds more like a garbage truck when it's compressing the trash than like an actual singing voice, is pregnant with what I believe is her seventh child. It's tough to keep track, as she has at least two sets of twins, and furthermore, all Mahonri's and Marthalene's children and grandchildren look so freakingly similar that it's a virtual impossibility to know which Mahonri/Marthalene  spawn from which any of them sprung.  Their offspring all have big faces, humongous teeth, and dark hair, which is unusual in my dad's family, where dishwater blonde to dusty brown is the reigning shade for anyone (myself in this group, I readily admit; my lighter shade of blondeness is courtesy of chemicals)  who doesn't rely on Lady Clairol or her counterparts to brighten things up  a bit.

As I said once before about Mahonri, and it pertains to his entire clan, including his wife (?!?!?!?), they all look amazingly like Osmonds, except like the least attractive Osmonds imaginable. Take maybe a young Jimmy Osmond, darken his hair, uglify him by a few hundred degrees, and you have a member of the Mahonnri/Marthalene clan.

The look seems if anything to be getting stronger into the next generation. I don't really want to live forever, but if I did, the reason would be to see just how strong is what I refer to as the Mahonrilene gene that produces their trademark look.  I'd love to see how many generations it might continue if allowed to follow its natural course, or I'd even like to practice a bit of eugenics, as in perhaps mating a few Mahonrilenes with actual Osmond decendants to see what the outcome might be. Alas, I'm not going to live forever, but if I record it in my will, perhaps my descendants and their descendants will follow the familial line so someone will be kept apprised in the interest of science.

One of the objects that most frequently disappears from relatives' homes when Mahonri visits is toothpaste. I'd never given this matter much thought except to hide my personal stash of toothpaste after every single tube in the house was once stolen and I was forced to brush my teeth with baking soda the next morning because my dad refused to make an emergency trip to a store just for toothpaste. Now that I think of it, though, it makes sense. The collective family has roughly four times the tooth surface per person to cover as compared to the average person in the average family. The money to pay for the extra toothpaste, were the toothpaste to be obtained in the manner most of us procure our toothpaste, which is to purchase it in a store, would make a serious dent in the family budget. Mahonri works for the Church Educational System, which would indicate to anyone who knows such things that, unless he's in the upper echelons of leadership, which he decidedly is not, he's no Bill Gates.. Hell, he's lucky to even have his job teaching high school seminary after he was caught stealing a crate of disposable douches behind a big box store somewhere in either Sandy or Draper -- I always get those two cities confused.  I think the church used mental illness as a justification for not giving Mahonri the axe. They weren't far off on the mental illness diagnosis, though the verdict is not yet in as to whether his stealing is related to said mental illness or to a disinclination either to use effective birth control  or to find a second job or a higher-paying first job.

Marthalette believes two things about birth control of which I'm aware. Number one --and I'm not sure if she clings to this belief any longer -- is that douching oneself with Coca-Cola (not Pepsi, not Shasta, not store-brand soda, not RC cola, which is still sold, oddly enough, in some parts of Utah. (I suspect Royal Crown, Inc. just took the stock that was bottled in 1983 and didn't sell elsewhere and brough it to central and rural Utah to pawn off on the indiscriminating population) but Coca-Cola immediately after the wild thing has been done. There are certain details to which I was not privy; I don't know whether Marthalette took her douche bag with her on her date, either pre-filled with Coca cola, or  filled it with a freshly opened can immediately after coitus, or if she simply riushed home after her date to take care of business. Either way, her earliest stabs at the Coke douche method of birth control were unsuccessful. She conceived child number one around her sixteenth birthday, long before any wedding vows or even marriage proposals were exchanged.

I'm not sure marriage proposals were ever exchanged. I think it was more of a matter of  Mahonri kidnapping the prospective father at shotgunpoint at six a.m. the day after the home pregnancy test came out screaming positive. You know how those things usually tell you to wait either two or three to five minutes before checking the indicator? (I know none of this from personal experience, but I always kept my ears open when classmates were discussing their pregnancy scares in the minutes before the professors showed up.) The very second a drop of  fluid hit the dipstick, a plus sign appeared. Marthalette was probably out of her first trimester by the time it occurred to her that her clothing was getting a bit tight, that she hadn't been paid any recent visits by the hemoglobin fairy, and that  her method of birth control perhaps needed, at the very least, a little tweaking. And, as I was saying before I digressed, the closest thing to a proposal was when Delbert chose not to  jump out of Mahonri's 4-door pickup as it traveled 70 mph down the highway to the courthouse to pick up the marriage license, and then on to the bishop's living room for the 9:15 a.m wedding. I'm told the ceremony was quaint to say the least.

Mahonri boldly walked in and emptied the little dishes of after-dinner mints from the counter by the register of every Golden Corral and Chuck-a-Rama in the county  to serve at the reception that evening, along with the wedding cake Aunt Elyse threw together using borrowed cake mixes and cans of frosting from everyone on her block. It gave a whole new meaning to the term "dump cake."

The invitations were xeroxed "Come as you are. No gift registration. Please bring cash as your gift. Bills only" on duplicator paper stolen from the church. My younger male cousins ran all over their little town and the groom's equally un-gated community of residence ringing doors and handing the flyers out to the unsuspecting residents.

To make a too long story not too much longer (sorry Jaci; even when I think I have a short topic, it burgeons out of control if it pertains to the family), six babies later, Marthalette is once again enceinte.(I love dragging obscure words from the cobwebs of my mind.)  For all we know, it could be twins again. For that matter, triplets is far from an impossibility.

I've already purchased my shower gift. I wouldn't be invited if the Mahonrilenes thought there was the slightest chance I might show up, but they know I can't travel to Utah in October. For that matter, why would one hold a baby shower in October for an expectant mother due in February? My guess is that they'll hope we all forget about the October shower, and they'll throw another one in January and expect us all to spring for another truckload of gifts. But back to the shower gift I've already purchased.  I went to Costco and got a carton with ten tubes of toothpaste. The kid  or kids probably will not be born with teeth, though  I wouldn't bet the mortgage on it, but the teeth'll come in with a vengeance before we know it. (Did I mention that the Mahonrilenes were also the biggest biters in the family?) I also got a thirty-two pack of toilet paper, not because the baby needs it, but because  it's  gift for a member of his immediate family of another item Mahonri could just as easily steal, and it will make him angry. Making Mahonri angry makes my day, week, month, and year. . perhaps even decade.

Disposable douches were on sale. I seriously considered buying a bulk package, but anyway one views it, a box of disposable douches is a rude gift - wedding shower, baby shower, Christmas, birthday, Groundhog Day, or otherwise. Few things are beneath my dignity, but giving someone a gift of disposable douches is where i draw the line.