What follows is an e-mail from my uncle to my mother.

He’s an inlaw, married to Mother’s younger sister for a few centuries. This particular uncle is like all the others, blood or not. Remarkably capable, intelligent and manly men with an absurd sense of humor, an abundance of optimism and the ability to do just about any damn thing.

Despite most of them being clueless Republicans, my mother’s family are medal contenders for the Olympic coolest group of people competition. Some are stranger than others, but all are people I’m very lucky to know. Eleven siblings all married at least once as well becoming successful engines of procreation.

I’ve participated in the binding and torture of my cousins and I’ve purposely been electrocuted by an uncle. To single any of them out is just foolish. So many colorful people. Reunions are the most impossibly organized chaos anyone could ever wrap a brain around. They involve things like cooking omelettes in plastic bags and cousin Rod wandering around with endless amounts of Patron. Fill your ziploc with your favorite ingredients and hand it to stoic uncle Jim. He doesn’t say much but hands you an omelette ninety seconds later. Take a pull off Rod’s bottle, it’s tasty.

Find cousin Derek and see if he’s started drinking yet because if he has, you can too.

There will be huckleberry pie and ice cream.

An existential yet delightful surreality.

Every goddamn one of them is nuts and I’m sure they think the same of me.

Here we go:

“so what’s your summer schedule.. any date when your going to be here??
Sharon went to Spokane Tuesday,, and come home yesterday, thinks she likes the idea of shopping with your Sisters.
say’s her back is out and needs to see the chiropractor but i think it an excuses to head down..
DD had dentist appointment yesterday so she was in Spokane also.
Skip and Mitch stopped by on the way back from working up north.. then DD got here so they went over and seen her place.
Skip is going to help her put the cedar on the front deck ceiling.
Diana was here Sunday and stayed, then over to DD’s and decorated and stayed Monday night. Brian Orr was over Sunday and we had dinner at DD’s while we were setting there two bear run by the back window.. don’t tell Shirley !!!
we had a moose and coyote go by last week..
Every thing is nice an green course with all the rain what else could it be.. oats looking good.
i made deck for Dawn’s side door and took it down two weeks ago, and yesterday i cut the step risers so will take them down today and get the steps started.
Dawn is off today, getting ready for graduation tomorrow night.
Brian will finish the steps tomorrow , he is off.
Went in Tuesday and helped Carey install the upper hydraulic cylinder on the excavator.. was a heavy mother.. weighed 700 lbs.. had to use 2 chain hoist and 3 come a longs to jockey it into position, was never so happy when we got the top pin in.. was afraid the damn thing was going to spin on our jury rigged stuff and drop in the hole.. but its done now and Carey is finishing the basement dig..
as soon as this gets done the builder is putting in the footings.
he is having everything done but the electrical,, were going to do that. think we will take the MH up and stay for a few days when we do.
guess Scott is coming over this weekend to do Steve’s plumbing rough in.. just hope he don’t meet some of his old gang and get to partying.. DD kind of worried about that. he’s been doing pretty good on the coast.
headed up to Rice tomorrow with Russ. he is building a road and were going to use the cat to load a disc i bought. he also bought an old plow.. so will try to load that also. have to get done so we can get to the graduation by 7 but found out Sharon has some other stuff she wants to do also , so might have to hurry..
have an old laptop that i got running with radio last week, set it up for Tudor and Ken to use. Sharon took it in when she went down, but couldn’t get it to working. i will check it the next time i am there.
Ken has been doing some scraping at Jakes,, been taking old sign stuff apart and selling the silver, brass, and copper. guess he was getting a pretty good price on the silver, but took a sample into another place. then sent it out for assay and found out it was worth twice as much as he was selling it for.. so he lost a few bucks. but still has some to sell so is changing buyers..
Sharon said he even has Tudor doing some stuff and is paying her.. quit an operation..
Well that’s about it, have to get my oatmeal on and get ready to head out
See ya
Tell Doug hi, and were working on a list of things we need done when he gets here.
talked to Jim yesterday, they had a good day at the store opening,, they got another load of inventory in and its blocking the esle so they were headed down yesterday morning to stock it.”

Drinks for my friends.

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