Adam in Suburbia - Straw Hats and Gardening Clogs (Patreon)

Unbeta'd/Unedited. The newsletter has hit the group chat. Noah: Code Red!  Thomas: What? What’s wrong?  Noah: He’s learned Canva.  Zane: W

Unbeta'd/Unedited. The newsletter has hit the group chat. Noah: Code Red! Thomas: What? What’s wrong? Noah: He’s learned Canva. Zane: What? Noah: Adam. He’s learned Canva. Avi: What’s Canva? Noah: It's like graphic design for dummies. Avi: That tracks.Asa: Yeah, nobody’s dumber than Adam. Noah: Not the point. The point is, he learned it. He wrote the community newsletter this month. THE WHOLE THING. Like, it took him the whole day. He sat at his laptop and, like…concentrated. He had notes. Thomas: Isn’t it a good thing? He’s learning a skill.Noah: Is it? Is it, really, Thomas? Zane: gasp Did you just call dad Thomas? Felix: This is bad. Noah: That’s what I’m saying. This has gotten out of control.Aiden: How bad can it be? Its a newsletter. Noah: They let him write an old lady’s eulogy!?!?!?! 💀⚰️Asa: What?!?! 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Avi: Pics or it didn’t happen. *pic*Felix: I aspire to have someone call me a heinous bitch in my eulogy one day.Zane: I got you, babes. Felix: I like the bullet pointed funeral highlights. Archer: Classy.Avi: OMG. This is hilarious. I nominate Adam to write every eulogy ever. Zane. You should call your friends at the news and beg them to give Adam a full-time job. Is there an official eulogizer or something? This is the best thing I’ve ever seen. Felix: Avi. Noah is clearly upset. Take this seriously. Noah: Thank you for understanding, Felix. At least someone doesn’t take this as a joke! Felix: Of course, babes. But I do nominate him to write the family newsletter from now on. Also, I kind of want to live in this neighborhood. Noah: You say that now…but you don’t know what it's like here. It’s like stepping into some alternate universe where the weirdest things become high stakes. Men lose their minds here. I’m not kidding. Maybe there’s like, lead in the water or…I don’t know, black mold? Can black mold make people start using the word casserole in casual conversation? Archer: Noah, you sound a little, uh, stressed? Noah: Stressed? Of course, I’m stressed. Remember that chili cook off that happened at the annual Mulvaney Media employee picnic in the park last year? Remember how cute and fun it was? Thomas: Yes, it was wonderful. Noah: Right? We gave out cute little ribbons and everyone laughed and had a great time? Remember? Thomas: Yes. Noah: Here in Serenity Grove, chili cook-offs aren't fun. They’re a fucking blood sport. I literally saw one of my neighbors attempt to spike another neighbor’s chili with Visine and when she got caught she said it would only improve the recipe.Avi: Fantastic. Archer: I’m inclined to agree. Noah: You don’t get it. When another contestant heard he said the other neighbor did her a favor because then she could explain the explosive shits on the Visine unlike last year’s mystery meat chili. Asa: I’ve never been so invested in a conversation before. This place sounds amazing. Avi: Baby, can we please move to this neighborhood? Noah: It’s not funny!!! 🤬🤬🤬 For the annual bake sale, Harper Kerrington accused her own sister-in-law of hiring a pastry chef instead of baking her own oatmeal raisin cookies and then threw her in the pool. Atticus: It happens to the best of us. Felix: Anyone who brings oatmeal raisin cookies to a bake sale should absolutely be tossed in the pool. Gross. Noah: Claude arranged a garage sale last week. Thomas: Claude? Noah: Yeah, Claude, our catty gay gardening friend. Claude worked very hard on our garage sale, color coded signage, paid ads in the newspaper, three–three–permits. Even called it an estate sale cause we’re, like, rich or whatever. Do you know what my husband did? Archer: I’m fucking sat.🪑Tell us. Felix: I wish I had a glass of wine, right now. Zane: I wish this was a television show. Archer: The Real Househusbands of Serenity Grove. Noah: Anyway. After Claude worked so hard on our ‘estate’ sale, Adam convinced our neighbor, Marjorie, to sell her ‘cursed’ dolls and he sold little vials out of a box that just said, ‘for your enemies’. No explanation. Just ‘for your enemies’. And he sold out. Thomas: What was it? Please tell me Adam wasn’t selling poison at an estate sale. Noah: It was tap water. When I asked him why he was selling vials of tap water to our neighbors he said 🤷 Avi: Adam does hate tap water. Noah: He doesn’t even let our dog drink it. Archer: I’ve never loved my brother more. Noah: This isn’t funny, Archer! Adam had a forty-five minute conversation with our neighbor yesterday. Zane: Well, that sounds nice. Noah: About grass. Our grass, to be exact, Zane. He said it wasn’t the right shade of green. That it was too yellow-green and not green-green. He said we can’t have puke colored grass. Felix: Puce? Noah: Puke! He called our grass baby puke green and said we would be the laughing stock of the neighborhood, then he stood outside and talked to our neighbor—a neighbor who Adam, just last month, Adam threatened to pluck his eyes out and use them as olives in his nightly cocktail—He asked that guy how he got his yard that green. And he told him. Thomas: Well, sounds like he’s mending fences. Noah: When I asked him why he was talking to the neighbor he threatened to blind just last month, he said, with total seriousness, ‘because he’s a grass dad’.Zane: A what? Noah: A grass dad. Felix: Like weed?Noah: I fucking wish, bro. I’ve never wanted to get high more in my whole fucking life. Jericho: No, like the dad who cares about his lawn. There’s like barbeque dads, tool dads, sports dads. Oh, garage gym dads. All suburban dads find their calling. Then they become the guru of that subject in their suburb. Atticus: I’m not sure I want to know how you know this.Felix: Freckles, I don’t know how to tell you this. But sometimes, late at night, while you’re sleeping, my brother goes online and looks at listings in Adam’s neighborhood. He longs to be a tool dad. Atticus: Jericho? Is that true?Jericho: 🙅🏽🙅🏽No, freckles. Felix: No? Then it must be some other brother who texts me listings of houses and talks about living side-by-side with our kids in the ‘burbs. Jericho: What did I do to you, didi? Why are you dragging me into this? Atticus: So, it’s true? You go online and look at real estate. Without me? Avi: Oof. Careful, Coe. I know a trap when I see one. Jericho: Freckles, it's not like that. Well, okay, sure sometimes, I go online and I look at the listings, but I’m just looking. I like our penthouse. It’s…good. Nice. Functional. Lucas: Yikes, even I didn’t believe that. Jericho: Who cares if you bought it for that backstabbing, golddigging bleach blond fake tit twat-weasel? We’ve made it work. Atticus: Tell me how you really feel. And I didn’t buy it for her. Felix: A yes, the elusive twat-weasel? The most cunning of all the weasels. Jericho: Babe, it's just a few house listings. It doesn’t mean anything. Zane: Why is Jericho acting like Freckles caught him looking at porn. Aiden: Freckles caught Jericho looking at porn? I stepped away from this conversation for two seconds. Thomas: Good lord. Why do you people keep adding me back to this chat? Noah: Because someone needs to control your children! Thomas: That’s your job now. I’m retired. Aiden: You want my husband to make his son-in-law stop watching porn? Wasn’t Jericho in a porn? Atticus: I’d rather he was looking at porn than…this. Married all this time. Two children. And you’re secretly dreaming of the suburbs? Without even telling me?Jericho: I just like to look at the pictures. They have nice…yards. August: Don’t feel bad, Freckles. I also like to look at the listings in Adam and Noah’s neighborhood. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to take the kids to live somewhere with a real backyard. Lucas: Really? You never said anything before? August: Well that was before baby number four.Atticus: Baby number four!?!?! Aiden: Oh, God. Great, now Tommy is crying. See what you did? This is how you announce Cricket’s pregnant again?Zane: Cricket’s pregnant again?!?!Felix: She didn’t even tell us. Are you guys trying to start your own soccer team? Archer: More like a psychic detective agency. Lucas: She’s not pregnant. Yet. We’re just…in the early stages. Noah: I don’t even know what that means. Mac: Lucas and August are moving to the burbs? What did I miss? Noah: You missed the whole point of this conversation because it's been hijacked. This is about me and my husband who has lost his mind. Yesterday, he spent the whole morning potting daisies with Edna Forsythe. Lucas: Who? Noah: Edna. Forsythe. Zane: You keep saying that like we should know who she is. Noah: She’s the seventy-six year old former FBI agent that retired in our neighborhood. Yeah, that’s right. FBI agent. He likes to help her pot her daisies while picking her brain over how to solve a murder. Because he still believes our neighbor was murdered by her ex-partner over blue roses. Zane: Damn, plant lesbians are intense. Noah: Not partner as in wife, a partner like the guy she was making hybrid roses with. The guy who now grows a toxic plant in his yard. A plant that Adam believes he used to merc our neighbor over something that happened years ago. Zane: This place sounds amazing. We need to start hanging out at your house more often. Thomas: Maybe you should all move to the suburbs. Maybe we all should. Aiden: See what you started, Noah. Noah: Me?!?! I’m a cautionary tale. The sexy psychopath I fell in love with has been replaced with a stepford husband in gardening clogs. Yes, I said gardening clogs. And a straw hat. And not just clogs and a straw hat. Nope. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt on a fucking Tuesday. Outside, for all the world to see. Felix: No! 😳 Like…ironically?Noah: No. At first, he called it a ‘disguise’. This morning, he matched it to his clogs and his gloves. Felix: Well, at least he hasn’t lost his ability to accessorize. Lucas: I say we plan an intervention. This weekend, maybe? Zane: The four of us will be there. We’ll bring the kids. August: We could just all bring the kids and see how they do free-range?Atticus: Might as well, seeing as how my husband is apparently fantasizing about a white picket fence without me. Jericho: Never without you, Freckles. Atticus: We can grill? I can grill. Jericho: See you could be a barbeque dad. ♥️Atticus: Don’t you heart emoji me. You and I are gonna have a big talk later. Noah: Wait, are you coming to help me or house hunt?Thomas: Why not both? Felix: Family barbeque/intervention?Noah: Oh, God. It’s spreading. Zane: Relax, pookie. There’s safety in numbers. Felix: Zaney is right. When the Mulvaney’s roll up it's like a carnival caravan. We outnumber these weirdos. Noah: You say that now. But then you…become them. I’ve already lost one Mulvaney. Go on, save yourselves. Archer: Well, as long as you’re not being dramatic or anything. Noah: Easy for you to say. You’re safe in Nevada with the real psychopaths. I’m here with the pod person who abducted my husband and replaced him with a…grass dad and part time PIFelix: Adam Mulvaney: Plant Detective. Archer: Noah, I promise you the spoiled, selfish, narcissistic lunatic you fell in love with, is still in there, somewhere. Noah: I fucking hope so. I refuse to live with a man who wears gardening clogs. Zane: As long as he’s not wearing them in the bedroom…Noah: God, no. The bedroom is still….Yeah, no the bedroom is great. At least when he’s naked, I can sometimes scrub the image of him in those ugly fucking shoes from my memory. *Thomas has left the chat*Felix: Okay, Dad’s gone. Is he still an animal in bed? Like for real? Like pull your hair, spit in your mouth, freaky or has he totally succumbed to the geriatric set? Atticus: Jesus Christ. Noah, I beg of you, please don’t answer that. Noah: Moving to the private chat. See you all this weekend. Avi: Should we bring our own clogs or…Noah: 🖕