Despite being currently unemployed and having no income coming in until next school year, my mom bought a $1800 chair (for just $1200) from Sharper Image, paid for my car (which I will of course have to pay her back for) and just yesterday bought a $149 particle board cheap Wal-Mart brand entertainment center for our already cramped living room.

The small living room now contains: One giant bookshelf (seven feet high by seven feet long) a couch, a love seat, a sofa, a chaise lounge, two computers, a TV, a DVD/VCR combo and a table. Oh yes. And my mom's Sharper Image chair which is larger than a La-Z-Boy with an ottoman. Needless to say there is no room for this entertainment center which is the biggest one Wal-Mart sells. We will likely get rid of the bookshelf (which I will rescue and put in my room to replace the two Wal-Mart brand particle board bookshelves.)

Now to my main point and the focus of my entry.

So we're bringing this heavy box in. My mom asks me to help. I press record on Outside The Lines and I go outside and see my sister taking pieces out of the box. I carry some in and return to talk to her.

"Why are you taking pieces out of the box?"

"Because it's too heavy too carry."

"Why don't you leave some of them in? You can use the box it came in and carry some of the pieces into the house. It'll eliminate trips."

I don't know what happened after this, but an arguement started which led to my sister saying, "Just go. We don't need your help." and me saying, "I didn't want any part of this anyway."

You'd think this arguement would end here. It didn't. If you knew my family, you'd know this.

I head inside and less than a minute later, I hear my mom yelling at the top of her lungs that I need to go out and help because they don't ask for me to do much. (By the way, that's my parents favorite line.) I go outside and my sister is crying. Crying. Crying because I said "I didn't want any part of this anyway." My mom makes me help carrying in the thirty or so pieces of this cheap-o entertainment center that my sister decided to dump on the ground because the box was too heavy.

Did I mention she's sixteen and crying about this?

So I carry it all in at my mom's request. Doing it my way is more efficient. Putting the pieces back in the box, I only have to make two trips rather than six or seven.

So we have this arguement, my sister tells my mom, then tells my dad, and everyone is unhappy because we bought this entertainment center that is a) too small for the wall b) looks awful and cheap c) was $149 that we don't have to spend d) is going to take all day to put together e) is not going to last as long as the bookshelf it will replace (my parents have had the bookshelf for nearly thirty years. Handmade and never has so much as cracked) f) is going to cause us to box most of the stuff from the bookshelf, as this new entertainment center won't hold half the stuff. We don't even have room to put this stuff with all of this in the living room.

Oh. And by the way, my sister can cry at the snap of your fingers. She'd make a great actress. Three minutes after the tear parade started, it had ended. In fact, by the time I had made my first trip inside with the entertainment center pieces, she had stopped crying and was cleaning the house.

And my final point:

My sister's boyfriend is a neat freak. Before he comes over, my sister cleans the most visible part of the house. He won't even let my sister put shopping bags in her back seat (he sits in the front with her) because it clutters up the seat. He'd rather her place them in the trunk where they won't interfere. Whether it be a box the size of a computer or a shoe box, it just annoys him.

I must agree with my sister on this. Which is easier to do. To open the back door and throw it in the back seat where you have easy access for when you get home or to unlock and open the trunk, pull back the cargo cover in her SUV, put the item inside, pull the cover back, close and then lock the trunk/rear hatch? They get along great but it's little things like this that annoy one another about each other.

And speaking of annoying one another, I'm going to help my family set up that damn overpriced piece of particle board that we will soon call an entertainment center against my will, but I stick by my original statement that I want nothing to do with it or at least as little do do with it as possible.

Besides. They don't ask me to do much.

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