Upon Avon

I went home last night to do my laundry, a task that was long overdue, and was once again amazed by my crazy, yet lovable family. I guess everyone has quirky relatives, but I swear that my family always has something bizarre going on.

When I struggled through the door with my laundry, my heavy backpack, purse and piano bag (I always bring my entire library of sheet music home to tickle the ivories), my brother was polishing off a bag of Doritos, an ugly Western quilt that I knew my mom had not picked out was set up on pegs in the living room and fifty million Avon catalogues were spread all over the countertop.

Before you think we're peddling Avon, let me explain. After I waded through the laundry room (my brothers and sister can never quite make their clothes into the hamper) and started my laundry, I realized that a) my parents were gone, which explained my brother's rapacious appetite for junk food and b) the lady in my ward had dropped off her weird domestic projects for my mom and sister to work on.

Don't get me wrong — this lady is a sweetheart, and we like her. But she has the unfortunate habit of bringing over things that need to be mended or quilts she wants done since my mom and sister are great at that sort of thing (I, on the other hand, swam in the shallow end of that gene pool). The problem is, she pays my sister in Avon products, and there's only so much Avon you can handle. Each time I go home, there is a collection of new lotion, body wash, old lady perfumes, cheap chapstick and weird High School Musical memorabilia (apparently it didn't do so well last season). And the quilt that dwarfed the entire living room was another project; thus, we could have started a forest fire with the Avon catalogues.

Occasionally, my sister actually finds something nice in there and she even gets stuff for me when she's feeling particularly generous. But most of the time, I just start laughing when the pile of beauty products and other crap we don't need just gets bigger and bigger and my sister tries to pawn it off on me.

So this time, I sat down with my brother to eat that bag of Doritos and flipped through an Avon catalogue or two. The bubble bath isn't looking so bad anymore.