On never having a normal summer.

The odd thing about this particular summer is not that it's spent watching John and Phil act like panicky idiots because Lynn wants to prove that men are crazy and wrong and silly and stupid for taking pride in shared discomfort instead of whining piteously about it like she would. The odd thing is that this and the next are the closest Mike and Lizzie have to a normal summer at home. Sure, this summer is wasted by having to walk on eggshells because John is what Heavy Weapons Guy would call "a tiny baby man" who can't take being laughed at while the next is spent watching a short-tempered idiot girl land on both feet on Mike because she's too stupid to close her blinds in a neighborhood filled with idiot boys who want a peep show but they do actually spend time at home without someone screaming about surviving contact with her horrible children who want to devour her brain.

This sort of thing is why I miss aprilp_katje's "April's Real Blog"; that's because howtheduck's Michael would, if prompted, deliver a long-winded, distraction-laden and pompous defense of his parents' overweening need to deny him and his siblings a normal summer that would somehow manage to point out the flawed logic behind it. My guess is that he'd be made to say something like "The neighbors have an odd habit of saying that they prefer my having my children play with the junk I spread all over the lawn like some kind of farmer to having the shrieking idiot who used to live there screaming at children she just let wander around aimlessly until all hours" while at the same time not realizing that they're actually talking about Elly. This is because the Michael Lynn created would probably be saying the same thing for the same reason. He defends the stupid way Elly raised him in such a manner as to be an indictment of said method's pernicious uselessness.