All Aboard Andi's Dream Ch. 05

"That's my truck now," said Paul as he set out plates and coffee cups for his brother and sister-in-law.

"You got Ernie to sell you The Great White Whale?" John was shocked. Ernie loves that truck.

"Ernie needs a new hip and refuses to admit it, shifting that four-on-the-floor got to be too painful so I got him a special 'Old Friends' discount on a new Maverick but only if he'd trade in his old F-150, which I immediately bought from my dealership."

"Sweet!" John then held his coat out to Yi, "Be a dear and hang this up for me."

"No." Yi never looked up from her conversation with Macy, who sat down next to her.

"No?"

Yi finally leaned back and stared him in the eye. "You heard me. I'm not your nanny, I'm not your maid, and I sure ain't your momma, and you're tracking snow all over my clean kitchen floor. Grab a mop!"

Macy whooped with laughter and gave Yi a high five "Vas-y meuf!" (You go, girl!)

"Guess she told you," said Paul as he sat down next to Andi.

"I don't have to come here for this kind of abuse," muttered John as he mopped the footprints from the floor. "I can get it in the comfort of my own home."

"Oh, come sit down. I'll even let you bring me some coffee," scolded Yi.

John brought the coffee carafe to the table and topped off everyone's cup before sitting down. "I can't believe Ernie gave up his truck."

"Momma's kissy truck," giggled Sandy, which made Madeline giggle.

Andi saw what was happening. "Please don't start..."

The twins started singing at the top of their lungs, "MOMMA AND POPPA SITTING IN A TREE..."

"Thank you so much for teaching them this Yi," groaned Paul.

"K - I - S - S - I - N - G"

"It was no problem, really," said Yi as she sipped her coffee.

"FIRST COMES LOVE, THEN COMES MARRIAGE..."

"Take the batteries out," groaned John as he covered his ears.

"THEN COMES BROTHER IN A BABY CARRIAGE!"

"That was so amusant," laughed Macy, "so plein d'esprit." Macy clearly had never heard the children's song before.

"I can assure you darling, it's neither amusing nor witty, not when you grow up hearing eight-year-old girls singing it over and over," said John with a glance at the giggling twins.

Paul leaned over to John and quietly asked, "Who was it that the girls always used to harass you about? Was it Crystal?"

"Crystal Tailor? Oh lord no, I would have loved to spend some time kissing Crystal. It was Alicia, Alicia Cuomo." John shuddered at the thought.

"The one who looked like she was run over by an ugly truck? Sorry, dude."

Meanwhile Macy looked confused, and Andi tried to explain it to her. "That's an old rope skipping song that little girls sing to keep time with their jump ropes." But this appeared to confuse Macy even more.

"I don't know jumping ropes," she shrugged.

"They don't have jump ropes in Canada?" asked Yi, amazed.

Macy didn't answer. She merely looked embarrassed. Finally, John said, "Yes, they do have jump ropes in Canada, but not for little black girls."

Yi was shocked. "I thought Canada was such a friendly country."

"No, Canada is a polite country. Friendly differs completely from polite," said Macy softly. "There are many ways of telling people to go to hell yet remain polite, and Canada is exceptionally good at all of them. And I wasn't a little black girl, I was a very tall black girl, a full head taller than the next tallest girl. Taller than all the boys, so my opportunities to skip rope and sing songs with other young girls were nil."

Andi was shocked. She had heard Macy talk about her unhappiness with the modeling industry, but like many Americans, she thought Canada was a land of peace and love and free healthcare. Sandy and Madeline appeared at Macy's side and peered up at their new aunt. "It's ok Aunt Macy," said Madeline in a sorrowful voice as she patted Macy's leg, "you can skip rope with us all you want."

"Uh huh!" affirmed Sandy with an emphatic nod of her head, "and you can teach us how."

Macy looked down at her nieces, their blond heads bobbing up and down like little bobblehead dolls. "Ok, but I was hoping that you would teach me how. I don't know how to do it. Maybe your mommy can teach the three of us."

Andi just shrugged. "I don't know how either. I didn't do a lot of girly stuff. I was into softball and bowling."

Yi looked around the table. "Seriously? I'm the only female here who knows how to skip rope?"

Just then Lucy's voice could be heard from the mudroom, "I know how to skip rope!"

The twin's sad faces lit up with they heard her voice, and they dove under the table, scrambled underneath it, then dashed into the mudroom shouting "Auntie Lucy!" Soon Lucy and Gus emerged from the mudroom, each carrying an excitedly chattering 5 year old girl. The twins weren't sure what skipping rope really entailed, but if it included singing at the top of their lungs, they were all for it.

"She's got a professional grade jump rope," grinned Gus. "it's a marvel of engineering. Ball bearings in the handles, non-slip grips, Kevlar reinforced rope, it's even got Bluetooth, it's got everything!"

"It's for training," explained Lucy. "I use it a couple of times a week."

"Does it sing songs when you skip rope?" asked Sandy as she hugged Lucy.

"No, I'll need some little girls to help me with that."

Madeline's eyes popped open wide and her expression took on an aura of someone who had just had the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything pop into her head. "We know a song!" she gasped as she leaned far out in Gus's arms. "It's momma and poppa's kissy truck song!"

"Yeah!" chimed in Sandy, whose head bobbed up and down furiously.

"ENOUGH SINGING TODAY." Andi put on the Mom Voice of Doom. Once the twins were startled into abeyance, she continued more calmly. "You can sing it when you're skipping rope, or when you're alone with Miss Yi, but this weekend that's enough."

"Ohhh Kayyy," moaned the disappointed girls. Then Sandy looked up, "Can we sing it at croaky?"

"When God lets daddy and me have a baby, yes, you can sing it at karaoke." On a couple of occasions, Paul and Andi have taken the twins to karaoke at The Cricket House and the girls loved it, they wanted to get up and sing but they were disappointed to find out that the Cricket House karaoke machine didn't have the Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round.

"Yay!" The girls squirmed to the floor and started tapping their thumbs and index fingers together like little snapping mouths and sang at the top of their lungs "Bay-bee shark doo doo doo doo doo doo, bay-bee shark doo doo doo doo doo doo..."

"ENOUGH!" The Mom Voice of Doom came out, but it came from Macy this time, surprising even John. The twins stopped their singing in mid doo and stared at their aunt in wide-eyed surprise. "Take Wonka outside and play!"

Without a word, the twins dashed for the mudroom and scrambled into their coats, boots, and mittens and were out the door in record time. Andi smiled at Macy and said, "You're going to be a great mom someday." And with that, the friends gathered around the table and discussed their plans for the upcoming storm. Only in Western New York could a potentially life-threatening blizzard be considered a chance to throw a party.

"Gus, Lucy, do you folks care to join us?" asked Paul.

"I'll be there," said Lucy. "I was on duty for the last three storms, so I get to sit this one out. I want to do some Nordic skiing and maybe some snow shoeing, and Andi says your place is perfect for some cross country skiing."

Gus wasn't as enthusiastic. "I don't know. I've got a few contracts open that I'm way behind on. If I can get out of my driveway, I'm going to have to put in time on those jobs."

"If you can't get out, are you going to sit alone at home?" asked Andi, concerned for her friend.

"Oh, heck no," grinned Gus, "I'll fire up my snowmobile and come visit you."

"Will you have room for all of us?" asked Lucy.

"Plenty of room!" smiled Andi. "There're four cots and a bed upstairs, so you, Gus, John, Macy, and Yi will all have a bed, while Paul and I will be downstairs on the couch keeping the fire stoked." She added a saucy wag of her eyebrows on that last part.

"What about the twins?" asked Yi.

Paul studied his coffee cup. "Traditionally, they end up in bed with us, regardless of where we put them down for the night." Andi nodded in agreement.

"Ok then," Yi laid her clipboard on the table, "I drew out a menu that should take us to Friday when AccuWeather says this will all be over. I'll just modify it to add two people."

Paul picked up the clipboard and looked over the menu and the shopping list. "Close, but..." and he handed the clipboard to John, who looked at the menu.

"I see what you mean," said John, who handed the menu to Macy.

Macy only glanced at it for a second then with a sigh and "Quel dommage, it's a pity," she handed it to Andi, who looked at the menu intently.

"Guys, it's not her fault. No one told her about the stew," Andi pleaded.

"What stew?" asked a thoroughly confused Yi.

"No stooo?" shrieked Sandy from the mudroom.

"Then I'm not going!" yelled Madeline as she, her sister, and Wonka emerged from the mudroom soaked to the skin.

Andi and Yi sprang up and started pealing the soaking wet coats off of the little girls. "What happened to you? Did you fall in the hot tub?"

"It's raining," grinned Sandy.

"How long were you out in the rain?" asked Yi as she pulled off Madeline's soaked Sunday school clothes.

Madeline shrugged. "Till it stopped being fun."

Andi was obviously flustered at her daughter's lack of common sense. "What is with you two? You never would have done this in Denver."

"We didn't have a dog in Denver," pouted Sandy. "Wonka likes the rain!"

"It don't rain in Denver!" added a shivering Madeline, "and we had to go up the mountains to find snow." Her protests continued all the way up the stairs as Andi and Yi led the twins up to a warm bath to warm their cold little bodies up.

Not long later the twins came downstairs in fresh flannel nightgowns, their skin glowing pink from the hot bath that Andi and Yi gave them, hoping to stave off a cold. "Poppa!" they called as they saw Paul appear at the bottom of the grand staircase. "Guess what!"

"Now don't tell me... let me guess..." Paul put on a show of intense concentration. "You took a bath?"

"Yeah! In our own tub!" cried Madeline.

"It's so much better than your big old clunky tub," called Sandy. "we can get in and out of our tub all by ourselves!"

"Yes they can," sighed an exhausted-looking Yi as she trudged down the stairs behind them. Both she and Andi were carrying the girl's soaked clothing. "They got away from me twice."

"You were alive in the 70s," said Andi with a smile. "Was streaking really a thing?"

"Sure was, in fact you could say I was practically born naked," said Paul as he took the wet clothing from Andi and Yi. "We have a warm fire in the library, I'll take Frick and Frack, and we'll deal with this laundry."

"Thank you darling," said Andi, as she gave Paul a kiss that Yi thought contained more passion than the situation called for.

"We have to go to the library now?" asked Yi.

"Our library," corrected Andi, then seeing the confused look on Yi's face, she asked, "Haven't you seen the library yet?"

"You have a library?"

"I guess you haven't seen it. How did we miss that on the grand tour?"

Andi led Yi into the 50s living room on their way to the Library and Yi stopped. "Wait, I haven't seen this room before either. This room is so... so..."

"So, Paul?"

"Yeah, but he's not near old enough for this... stuff."

"I thought that too," said Andi. "I almost pitched the entire room away and claimed it for my office until John stopped me." She stroked her hand along the ugly 1940s style sofa. "It's the living room they grew up with. They were dirt poor and living in Tiorunda, that's a really run down area, but John said it made their mother happy because they survived the bad times while living there on furniture they bought as newlyweds. So, Paul made this living room for his mom, who spent her last days here. I can't ask him to give this up. And the girls like to watch their cartoons in here."

"This old thing works?" Yi eyed the wooden console TV with its bent rabbit ears antenna suspiciously.

"Looks can be deceiving," said Andi, as she picked up a remote control. With the click of a button, the front of the TV opened up, revealing that it was hiding a modern flat screen television mounted inside. As if by magic, the twins appeared. Wordlessly, each grabbed a pillow off of the couch, tossed them on the floor, then laid on the floor as Andi selected one of their favorite reading programs.

"I can totally dig the vibe in here," said Yi. "If you need an office, you can use one of my closets,"

"Don't let Paul hear you say that you have a closet available, or he'll start making plans to put a train layout in there or something. Come on, let me show you the library." Andi led Yi into the adjoining library.

Yi looked in awe at the carved bookshelves and ornate fireplace. Comfortable chairs had been pulled up around the fire where John, Macy, Lucy, and Gus sat, and the coffee was set up on a side table. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling, and Yi noticed some shelves were filled with fake books to give an appearance of a well-stocked reading room. A series of lower shelves were cleared out for Sandy and Madeline, for their collection currently in Denver. Already several tomes by Dr. Seuss were populating a "twin level" shelf with Green Eggs and Ham taking up a place of honor between two ornate bookends, one a locomotive, one a caboose, ready to be called to action at the whim of a twin. "Is this their favorite book?" Yi asked.

"It's their favorite Poppa book. Even though they can read it themselves, they like the way he reads it to them," Andi answered.

"They can read Green Eggs and Ham?" Yi was astonished. "They're not in kindergarten yet!"

"They can read most of these books, but they've been slacking. The two of them don't like reading and didn't do much reading at all in Florida, so they are going to have to get back on schedule. They prefer math to reading." Andi grabbed several books and placed them on an empty shelf. "That should be enough for our storm party."

"Wow," said Yi with sincere admiration. "You'd make a great Asian mom."

"It all starts with reading. Once you love that, there's nothing that will hold you back. Couple that with math and the world is yours," said Andi, as she added a second-grade level math book to the stack.

"You sound like my mom." Yi continued to peruse the shelves and noticed a lot of historical studies of military, railroads, and a lot of farm equipment manuals. "Paul reads like my dad reads, too. What do these guys have against the twenty-first century?"

"Gotta know where you've been before you can see where you're going," said Paul as he entered the library from the kitchen. "Where are the kidlets?" He was holding a Minnie Mouse and a Daisy Duck mug, both filled with hot chocolate.

Andi walked up to Paul and stood close enough to feel his warmth. "In the living room watching Reading Roundup, wanna go mess around?" she looked up at him with a sly grin.

"You know we have a room full of guests..."

"They can wait their turn." Andi stood up on tiptoes and gave her husband a kiss while Yi rolled her eyes and took the hot chocolate out of Paul's hands.

"Get a room guys!" she muttered as she carried off the hot chocolate.

"This is a room," grinned Paul as they broke their kiss. "And we haven't checked this one off yet."

"I got plans for this room," sighed Andi, as she led him over to the fireplace. "It's got this awesome Goth vibe to it; it gives me some interesting ideas."

"We can go if you guys have plans," grinned Gus.

"Oh, my plans need a dark and stormy night, thunder, lightning, drippy candles, and silk rope," grinned Andi, and she sat down on Paul's lap as he reclined in a wing-back chair.

John covered his ears. "I can't hear this! La la la la la!"

"Maybe we should go," laughed Gus as he made to stand up.

"No! I want to hear this!" grinned Lucy, "I've known Andi for years and this is the closest to kinky I've ever heard her get!"

"I would like to hear about Yi," said Macy and she leaned forward conspiratorially.

"What about Yi?" asked Andi. "She's about five foot eight, Korean-American, too damn skinny, especially for a chef. Have you ever seen a skinny chef? Should we trust a skinny chef?"

"No mes amis, I mean Kenny Johnson!" Macy insisted in a stage whisper. She looked over at the living room door to make sure Yi was still engrossed with the twins. "He came up to me after church today and asked me a dozen questions about Yi. Is she going to be here for long? Is she seeing someone? Is she into white boys? I think he's got a thing for her."

"No!" gasped Andi.

"Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that" said Paul.

"What did you forget to mention?" Andi sounded pretty indignant.

"When we went to the feed store to pick up the chicken feed yesterday, Kenny and Yi were kind of checking each other out. I tried to get them to talk to each other, but they were both stuttering and stammering like they were at their first freshman dance."

"And you didn't think to mention this?" Andi was shocked at her husband's lack of candor in affairs of other people's hearts.

"I can picture Kenny getting all tongue tied," said John, "But Yi? She must have it bad."

"We have to take Yi shopping for several items this afternoon. Do they have anything we might need at the feed store?" asked Macy, "Kenny is working there this afternoon."

"Shoes," said Paul as he sipped his coffee. "You need some too," he added, giving Andi a squeeze.

"I have all kinds of shoes, and when we get back from Denver, you're going to be buried in shoes," Andi insisted.

"You need touring shoes for cross country skiing. I've got three pairs of skis, so you and Yi can ski with us, but you're going to need shoes. Might as well get some new snowshoes while you're there. Mine are too big for you. Yi will need touring shoes, snowshoes, and a good pair of mukluks. Those hiking shoes of hers won't keep her feet warm," said Paul. "Get her a proper parka as well. You should be able to get those all at the feed store."

"Touring shoes?" asked Andi.

"They're like hiking shoes, but they clip into the bindings of cross-country skis," explained Lucy. "What kind of bindings do you have on your skis?"

"Turnamic, so they will both need an NNN style boot."

"Nice," smiled Lucy, "are you coming with us Macy?"

"I have all the Nordic gear I need; I am Canadien, no? but I want to see Kenny and Yi," smiled Macy as she rose and gathered her purse.

Andi stood, then bent and kissed Paul. "Can you get the girls packed for the cabin?"

"As long as we have socks, I'm good to go," he replied. The twins went through more socks than he could believe, and their socks turn up in the oddest places throughout the house. They showed up in strange places on Andi's Dream, and the girls rarely wore socks when they were on the yacht. "How about if I set out the clothes, then you can double check my work before we pack their backpacks?"

"You are such a wise man," she smiled and leaned in for another kiss.

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Unlike most of Andi's shopping trips, this one didn't leave Springville's village limits unless you count a trip to the Walmart on the edge of town. There, they plied Yi and Andi with heavy socks, thermal underwear, and ski glasses. For Yi, they got a decent parka, a ski jacket, scarf, several hats, mittens, and gloves. For the twins, they found warm socks, thermal underwear, and Mini Mouse boots. They also stocked up on snacks and soft drinks, which Yi, for the life of her, couldn't bring herself to call "pop" like everyone else in Western New York.