My Infamous ‘One Last Thing’

Evidence that Julie can roll with the punches like a champ.’ This photo illustrates the pinnacle of my ‘one last thing(s)’.

Early Monday morning, Vinny was hunted down by a dog that looked like a cross between a pit bull and a Holstein cow. Thank God the owner overfed his dog. Vinny is fast anyway, but his little legs were in turbo-charge as he fled from the breakaway “pit-heifer.”

As the chubby canine lumbered after my pup at a decent speed despite his size, I sounded like a lunatic. The owner was yelling, “Lemmy!” (what kind of name is that anyway?), while I was screaming at Lemmy as if he could be reasoned with, “Noooooo, Lemmy, please don’t hurt him!” 

Once I realized there was plenty of yardage between chubby Lemmy and my scrappy Vinny, I switched from panicked bystander to a cross between Forest Gump’s Jenny and a cross-country parent cheering her little freshman trailside, “Run, Vinny. Ruuuun!”

As if he heard me, Vinny wisely turned on a dime and shimmied under a wooden privacy fence to avert capture.

This whole time, I was sprinting at vampire pace to reach Vinny. Lemmy’s owner was faster than I was, but his recovery was awful. Once Vinny ducked under the gate, the man stopped dead in front of me, crouched down, and heaved like he’d just chain-smoked a pack of Marlboros. “I. Don’t. Think. Lemmy. Wanted to hurt him,” he wheezed. “I think he—he just wanted to say hi.”

That assertion was so ludicrous, I nearly kneed the dude in the forehead. Instead, I responded, “Yeah. Probably. Lemmy sure looked and sounded like he wanted to give Vinny a hug.” 

I rolled my eyes and exited stage right—still at vampire speed.

On the other side of the gate that my whip-smart dog shot beneath to save his own life, as if he knew it led where Lemmy couldn’t follow, Vinny came barreling toward me. I dropped to the sidewalk so fast (and without bracing myself) that I may have chipped my coccyx. I didn’t care. I scooped my little muppet up, and he snuggled into me. We sat together, heart rates slowly normalizing—me with a fractured tailbone, him with his head pressed sweetly into my chest. 

After Monday’s dog drama, I sat down to write this week’s story about a horrid yet hilarious habit I used to have when my siblings visited me. No matter what, there was always “one last thing” standing between us and whatever plans we’d made. Unlike Vinny, though, they couldn’t shimmy under a fence to escape.

And these last-minute must-dos weren’t simple errands like stopping by the grocery store to fetch a carton of eggs. They were labor-intensive or involved events so bizarre we still talk about them today.

For starters, I’d made a deal with my landlord of the garage apartment I rented that I’d till his backyard in exchange for a discount on my rent. If you’ll recall from last week’s story, I perfected procrastination to a science in my younger years. Some habits don’t easily die. 

When my sister arrived in town, ready for margaritas and live music, I handed her…a hoe. My ‘one last thing’ was tilling a quarter-acre yard before doing anything fun. 

The soil was basically compressed limestone, so we broke through exactly nothing—unless you count the sprinkler system, which we later destroyed in under a minute once we got wise and rented a tiller we had no idea how to operate. From the moment we heaved that beast in and out of Julie’s Suburban and fired it up, it was pure disaster. 

The tiller had one speed. Possessed. Its torque was somewhere between a longhorn and a Boeing 747 at takeoff. We managed to knock part of the picket fence down, but then ‘fixed it’ by leaning the slats back into place so it looked fine. Well, it looked fine as long as you didn’t, you know, look at it. 

To this day, nothing makes me laugh harder than picturing Julie’s entire body vibrating with restraint as she attempted to wrestle the runaway tiller. 

And then there was the time my baby brother, Jason, came to visit, and I realized I had absolutely no clean clothes for the weekend. Four loads of laundry would’ve taken forever in my sad little single washer, so we had no choice but to haul everything down to the neighborhood laundromat.

As luck would have it, the circus was in town—and most of its characters were doing spin cycles right beside us. One carnie cozied up to Jason and proudly flipped through a glossy magazine of all the guns and knives he owned. Jason did what any sensible person would do—nodded politely and paired socks at record speed, likely wishing he had one of those knives to sling at me.

On more than one occasion (it didn’t matter which sibling was in town), we couldn’t go to dinner or do anything really until I made a product return for some cash. Twice, I returned pots and pans for dough; both sets were Christmas presents from my parents. The first, an actual gift. The second was a pity replacement after one of my siblings casually mentioned to Mom and Dad that I had exchanged their initial gift for spending money. Our snack budget at the cinema literally depended on whether Bed Bath & Beyond accepted gently used cookware for currency. 

And how could I forget that time Jerrod visited me in college when he was barely a teenager? I’m pretty sure my checking account was overdrawn, and I could only scrounge up enough change to purchase marshmallows for snacks. The good news? I was able to afford a bag of both the large campfire-sized and the tiny hot cocoa ones. We ate whipped sugar and gelatin to our heart’s content one night. I’m pretty sure we both went to bed with a stomachache. 

Speaking of bed, Jerrod had to sleep in the dark attic since I lived in a house with all girls, and I guess we had a “no boys allowed” rule? (I can’t honestly remember why, but OMG). As if that wasn’t bad enough, when Jerrod woke in the middle of the night having to pee, he had to go in the only thing he could grope around and find—an antique metal dairy jug. 😳

I have no idea how that kid doesn’t hate me. 

There was also that time I dragged Julie along to interview a well-known female artist for a story I was writing. Thank God we had to make it fast, one, because I was up against a 5:00 PM deadline (shocker), and two, because we had tickets to Esther’s Follies that night.

The artist spent the entire interview hitting on my sister. To this day, I’m still impressed at how Julie—being hit on by a woman for the very first time—handled it with such poise, deflecting the flirtation without a single eye roll or gasp. Julie was a good sport. But if looks could kill, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have made it out of that studio alive.  

Then there was the crown jewel of all of my “one last things.” (Julie always got the doozies). 

When she arrived in town this time, instead of handing her lawn equipment, I informed her that my friend Adam was having open-heart surgery and I needed to be there. Surprise! I needed to be at the hospital at 5:00 AM the next morning so I could see him before he went under—and I really wanted her to be with me. She didn’t even blink when I gave her the news and requested her company. She just sighed real loud (like Napoleon's brother, Kip) and suggested we go now to purchase coffee and a muffin for tomorrow, because there was no way there’d be anything open that early in the morning on our way to the hospital. [At least one of us knows how to plan].

Julie didn’t know Adam from Adam, yet hugged him like they were lifelong friends before he was wheeled away on a gurney the next morning. Julie then settled in with me, Adam’s entire family, and a few other close friends as we anxiously awaited news from the doctors. Julie laughed with us, cried with us, and offered her beautiful words of encouragement and hope as we all endured 12 long hours with intermittent updates from the medical team. Every time I would catch her staring off or fiddling with her cuticles, I was certain she was either cussing me out or praying, ‘Why, dear God, did I agree to be related to this woman?’

But don’t you think for a second my sister just rolled over for all of my last-minute shenanigans. When we finally got to bed that night, my best buddy called to say they were rushing to reopen Adam due to complications. I shook Julie awake and told her we had to head back to the hospital. Without even opening her eyes, she shot back, “Nope. Hard pass. You’re on your own, Florence Nightingale.”

Looking back, I don’t think those ‘one last things’ were just procrastination or bad timing (though, yes, they were also those). They were moments when my siblings and I crossed into each other’s worlds and carried the weight together.

Well, to be fair, they crossed into my world. They carried the weight of what could have easily been perceived as my typical last-minute mayhem. Instead, every preposterous occurrence I dragged them through was embraced with acceptance, and today serve as memories that elicit belly laughter from all four of us.

But, I guess it’s also no surprise that my siblings still flinch anytime I say the words, “Before we go…”