Cause of Death: Vacuum Cleaner

It's funny- I was actually going to write a post last night about how life was great. And although it still is, today's events were definitely a bit annoying in comparison. I guess I should've known better than to jinx it? My father had gone for so long without making any remarkably asshole-ish move, that it'd only figure he'd do it today.

Warning: this is going to be a stupidly long post (including some backstory!), that's really just for me to remember this. I apologize in advance, and offer these slightly better posts instead c:




As I might have mentioned before, I'm going to visit Japan next year on a two-week tour. This is incredibly exciting to me, because 1. I get to travel via planes, 2. Japan is awesome, 3. I'll be seeing lots of really cool and intriguing and amazing stuff and 4. I think it'll be a very intellectually and personally enriching experience.
Wow, I ought to write travel pamphlets or something.

Anyways, Japan. Super awesome, and very exciting. But my passport is going to expire before the trip, so a few months back my Mother began the paperwork necessary for a new one. Unfortunately, this paperwork requires particular legal documents that were not only being withheld by my Father, but were locked in an ominous black filing cabinet in his now mostly-bare house. Bareness, of course, courtesy of my mother and sister, who were able to make $300 by selling some of his stuff on Craigslist.

It's important to note that along with various pieces of furniture that we sold, we also took the yellow Dyson vacuum cleaner from the house, as the one that came with our rented condo mostly just makes concerning wheezing noises and emits a funny smell. Hardly any "cleaning" is completed with the thing, which I'm fairly certain was first bought in the 90's. So of course, we took back our shiny, more modern one, and delighted in having dog hair-less carpets for the first time in months.

Of course Daddy-dearest immediately noticed one of his toys had gone missing, and demanded for us to return it. We all indulged a laugh at that, as for the past 15 years, I've never seen him so much as glance at our cleaning supplies. Obviously, we were going to be using the vacuum cleaner much more often than he- and seeing as to how he's got his fancy, government-salary job, he clearly had the money necessary to buy a new one.
So we ignored his childish text message and continued to marvel our new, clean carpets.

But anyways, my Mother needed the legal documents that he was currently burrowing away. I forget when exactly that fact was stated to my Father? But it eventually culminated into today: My Father issuing the ultimatum that we had to return the vacuum cleaner in exchange for the legal documents.


. . .let me try to make this situation abundantly clear to you. My father, a grown, educated man with a degree in Psychology, demanded that his ex-wife of 21 years give him a vacuum cleaner in exchange for their 2 daughter's birth certificates and social security cards.
Please, just try and let that sink in for a minute.

Even though we needed the documents, we decided we wouldn't be all meek and timid and decided to go to his work with the vacuum cleaner. So my mother, sister and I all went to the VA where he worked, ducked through the rain and rolled a bright yellow Dyson vacuum cleaner into the lobby of a government building.

The only thing to make this situation more absurd, was the fact that the security guard (old acquaintance who would love the treats my sister would bring in for the office potlucks) came over, pulled my mother aside, and told her that he'd been informed that if he saw her, she'd be legally trespassing and would have to leave the premises.
I shit you not.

So then we all rolled the vacuum cleaner back out the lobby, stood by the front door and called my father a few times to ask why, exactly, he felt the need to have a security guard protect him from his "scary ex-wife".  Then we loaded the vacuum cleaner into our car through the pouring rain and went to the old house to drop off the vacuum cleaner, as he'd so abruptly instructed in a recent text message.
(my sister and I tried to pick the lock on the filing cabinet while we were there- no such luck.)

Then we all went to our clubhouse (Panera), ate pastries, and marveled over the pathetic dick who was my father.


Which leads to this evening, wherein my mother was told "The documents are in the cinderblocks by the driveway. Leave the garage opener there as well; it won't work after this evening."

My father left social security cards and birth certificates in fucking ZipLoc bags, pressed between two cinderblocks in the middle of our driveway. 

He also oh-so-courteously informed us that "due to our disrespectful behavior", we would no longer be able to come and go to the house as we pleased. We would need to inform him beforehand, set up a "mutually convenient time", and then go to the house as he supervised.


Of course, the idiot has forgotten about my sister's house key, which easily enables us to come and go whenever we goddamned please, regardless of garage door openers.

I neglected to mention this, however, in the note I scribbled and left pressed between the same cinderblocks, which thanked him for his sincerity and carefulness concerning our important legal documents. Then I signed it "your sarcastic EX-daughter", got back into the car and drove off with my mother and dog.




I pray to all the deities I don't believe in that my father becomes the first person to die by vacuum cleaner, and is killed by the suction of that stupid thing.