What's "Up Chuck"?

“Well this should be an exciting weekend.” He said with a bit of sarcasm and a smidgen of dread. Susan’s sister and her husband are coming for a visit. They will be here around five this afternoon. What is there to dread about their upcoming visit you might ask? Well, how about I tell you…. Before I met Susan, her sister Julie was married with one child and living in South Carolina. She and her husband were both working for the same company. From what I understand she was having an affair with a married man, Rob, who also worked there. Well, at some point, right before I met Susan, Julie got a divorce, so did Rob, and they moved in with each other. Susan’s mother was not happy about this at all. The first time I ever met Susan’s mom coincided with the first time Julie brought Rob, and his kids, to meet mom too. To say that Rob didn’t make a good impression would be an understatement. Their mom disliked him from the minute he walked through her door, and despised his kids (who she referred to as hellions). It sort of worked to my advantage in a way. Her hatred of Rob helped her to not focus on the fact that her other child (Susan) could soon be marrying a divorced man (me) who also had two kids. Of course I am nothing like Rob, so surely she would have come to love me anyway, right? :) The whole time they were there at the house Rob sat around and did nothing but drink beer, letting his kids run around like wild animals. When Susan and I took Julie and Rob out to a restaurant for dinner they pawed each other and made out in the back seat like teenagers. Having barely known these people a couple hours it was a little disconcerting to have practical strangers dry humping in the back seat of my car. Susan was embarrassed and so was I. As time went by Julie and her son moved to Georgia with Rob (he was transferred from S.C.) and his kids and eventually married him. Their mom continued to be extremely mad about this and did everything she could to try to convince Julie to come back to Tennessee. About three or so months into it she just about did. Their mom, at Julie’s request, arranged to have some men she knows drive a U-Haul truck to Georgia to load up all of Julie’s belongings and bring it all back to Tennessee. All this occurred while Rob was at work and when he returned home that evening he found an empty house and an absent wife. Well the separation didn’t last long. Within a couple weeks Julie had given in to Rob’s pleas and she came on back to their home in Georgia. She slipped out of mom’s house to return to him one day while mom was at work. Mom was furious when she found out! She claimed she would cut her daughter off and never have anything to do with her again. Her mother had paid for the move as well as the storage facility where all Julie’s furniture was stored and insisted she be reimbursed for her trouble. This took a while, but eventually Julie got all her stuff back. All seemed well in the months that followed. Julie and Rob appeared to put the past behind them and they went on with their lives as well as they could. Susan, the kids and I even went and visited them at Thanksgiving last year. We had a nice time and I actually found myself getting to like Rob, once I got to know him. I had heard nothing but bad stuff from Susan’s mom so I wasn’t sure how I would take to him. He was a much different person than he had been on the first time we had met. So now that you know some of the back story, allow me to bring you to the present. About two weeks ago Susan’s mother began telling Susan how Julie was going to be leaving Rob again soon. Of course the woman says this all the time. It has been her goal for two years now to break them up. Susan and I took this news with a grain of salt until last week. Julie and Rob are vacationing at his parent’s home in S.C. and she had called last Saturday to briefly talk with Susan. In the few minutes she had alone, without Rob in the room, she confirmed that she was indeed leaving Rob and already had her plan in place. As Susan listened to her talk her tone suddenly changed when, obviously, Rob discovered she was on the phone. To quickly change the subject she told Susan that they were thinking about coming to visit on their way home. We doubted that this was the going to happen and assumed she was just saying that to keep Rob from sniffing out what the real subject of the phone call was. Well, last night we got a call from Julie and she said they would be here today. My weekend is shot. My plans of fishing with Snagley tomorrow will again be put off. Instead of spending the day in a boat trying not to smell Snag’s noxious intestinal fumes, I will be spending time with Julie and Rob and trying not to act like I know what’s going on. This should be fun. Supposedly Rob has no idea that divorce is in his near future. Can you say “awkward situation”? Susan is a lousy actor and can’t lie worth a damn. I just hope she doesn’t get a little too much drink in her and blurt it all out. Geeze, wouldn’t that be great?! I am so not looking forward to this weekend….