airbnb review - memorial day 2020

The one for the logbook

Thanks again for letting us make memories here. They were mostly good, but checking out at 10 am is the worst, so in thanks we’re helping you (and most definitely your next guests) make one too. We’re known as the Southards, but you won’t be able to track us by that name for much longer. Much like the countless guests you allow through your house to pay this mortgage off, we’ll be in the wind.

I’m Houston, by the way; self-proclaimed ringleader and proud terrorist of the group. Me, I’ll change my name if I ever get married. My girlfriend, who’s likely watching me as I write this, and I have discussed a fair number of fair ways of naming in an age of marriage equality (LOL, as if). We thought about me taking her name (EQUALITY!), or hyphenating (DUMB), or flipping a coin, as an homage to co-author of Freakonomics, Steven Dubner, but ultimately we (I, because I’m the man) decided we’d make one up. I keep joking it’ll be something like DRAGONSLAYER, but at this point I’ve said it so many times it’s actually starting to have a nice ring to it.

My sister, Mariah, she’ll be married off as a piece of property to her oneday Fiancé Anthony Carlson, because that’s what marriage used to be about (Make Marriage Great Again!), at least until the Roman Catholics got ahold of it and gave women their first few rights (YAAAASSSS GAWD) and will then be known as Mrs. Anthony Carlson, or, if she’s lucky, Mariah Carlson.

My cousin, Duncan, he’s got the goiter, what we know now as a thyroid issue, which was throughout the times treated by ingesting burnt seaweed. He’s large and in charge and not-so-secretly harboring a strong desire to wear short dresses. His body decided his hormones weren’t quite right, so they went bonkers. Now he’s finishing the job by fully-transitioning (YOU’RE SO BRAVE, SWEETHEART, WE LOVE YOU!) Duncanica Scott, due to the name’s Scottish roots and then finally amended to Duncanica Thot, because it’s ever so cute.

My other cousin, Tyler, while he’ll too soon shed himself of his Southardly surname, he’ll be the sole Southard amongst us to turn it into a phrase. Yes, Tyler is going to the seminary, something he might equate with a certain bodily fluid, but that he’ll quickly realize is something much, much worse. Tyler will study to preach the WORD with his new bible. We think it’s the New Testament (something Jesus who believed in nothing but the Hebrew bible aka Old Testament aka the Jewish Torah, would have considered absolute sacrilegious blasphemy to preach) but all we know for sure is that it smells like the same leather his pastor used to make him rub on his boots before mass. A story for another time. Tyler will go on to bring the word of the Christ, not Jesus (DISTINCTION) to the masses, and henceforth be known as Tyler the Breacher.

Funny, for a family who claims to be godly, not a single one of us has a name from the Bible, which is interesting, because, exhaustingly, almost everyone else I know does. But that’s the thing about names, isn’t it. They’re fleeting, wrapped up in lore made up after the fact, and, when it comes down to it, not vested with the power we give them.

With that, please, for as long as this house still stands (or at least until you see this and rip it out of the logbook and smash the dislike button on my Airbnb profile), let this house be blessed by the Carlsons, the Dragonslayers, the Thots, and The Breachers.

Sincerely,

the ones once known as the southards.