Villa de Loon

By Tiber

Dad decided we could make some money by having a garage sale – not exactly a common event here on the estate.

Mom agreed to it but worried that the cars would rust. Someone finally thought to explain to her that a garage sale did not actually mean selling the garages.

Dad contributed his “Complete Book of Medieval Maces,” to sell, not because he didn’t want it but because “I’ve read it so many times, let’s let someone else enjoy it.”

Iris Nell donated her Kitty Xylophone. She’d decided as a child that animals needed to make music too and while you’re probably thinking that no cat ever actually played the Kitty Xylophone, it turned out that one cat loved leaping on it so much that Dad finally stomped on it and broke it.

Duncan and Honor decided to part with the old “candy dispenser.” When the triplets were little, Duncan made this thing that looks sort of like a three-lined fishing pole. You could tie candy bars to the lines and dangle them from a distance. This way, you could treat the kids without having to get too close to them and risk losing a finger.

The triplets are just as vicious now but since they’re older, you can just throw food at them and they can snag it in mid-air with their teeth.

Our sales were slow.

It was warm out and Erin’s skull-shaped snack holder kept oozing fruit roll-ups out of its mouth like a bloody, lacerated tongue.

The only thing we sold was one of Mom’s vermouth misters from an old martini set.

The girl who bought it spritzed it on her head, evidently thinking it was hairspray or something. I almost stopped her but, hey, she may get more dates this way and frankly, we needed the money.

By Tiber

Well, this weekend, we saw the fulfillment of another one of Dad’s money-making ideas. He decided months ago that our whole family and staff could perform some “Shakespeare on the Estate” and then we could charge admission.

The bonus would be that we’d be bringing some culture to the area as well.

I managed to get out of performing by saying, legitimately as it turned out, that someone would be needed for crowd control.

Mom’s only contribution was to tell Dad to pick one of Shakespeare’s lesser known plays to give the audience something new.

Of course, when you have an extremely famous author and one of his works is rarely staged, there may be a reason for that.

Nevertheless, Mom’s advice was taken and Shakespeare’s seldom seen “Titus Andronicus” was chosen.

My younger sister, Erin, took one look at the character named the “Queen of the Goths” and was hooked. I should have explained to her that there’s a big difference between the real Goths and her own version of teenage Goth but it probably wouldn’t have mattered.

The evening had barely begun and already the “dramatic” acting was so bad that the audience decided they were seeing a comedy and settled in for a relaxing evening of family fun.

Unfortunately, before they knew it, this play then zooms off into betrayal, kidnapping, murder, adultery, rape.

Dismembered limbs were flying everywhere and a couple of the characters actually end up in pies.

I’ve heard of unhappy audiences hurrying for the exits but we had people begging me to shove them into Dad’s old Revolutionary War cannon so they could be shot off the property.

We had parents throwing their children over their heads in tag teams to get them to their cars faster.

It’s really bad when your attempts to bring culture to a community backfire so much, that stores soon report a drop even in the sale of yogurt.