Oh No...Not Again

I came home from work today to find out that my sister Penny has been missing all day. Trevor and Sandy said they saw her at the watering hole around 10:00 am., and that was the last anyone saw of her. I had a particularly rough day at work so the last thing I wanted to do was to have to go out looking for Penny... again. Oh, I showed Stan my sketches for the Geranimal knockoff line and he admitted that they were much better than Steve's but said that he had already promised Steve the account so so I'm outta luck. I'm amazed that Stan would let politics get in the way of producing a successful garment line. Apparently Steve's recent efforts have made the Garanimals fiasco look like high art. So I gotta come home to this. Yuck. Knowing Penny she'll probably show up the second I go looking for her. Its happened before... poor kid. Penny is 10 years older than me but the thing is is that she's dumb as they come, and I don’t mean that in a cruel way at all. She just is. And the thing about these little disappearing acts of hers is that they scare the living shit out of me every time. I love Penny more than anyone else in the world and I make no bones about it. Honestly I don’t know if it’s her low intellect or her basic character that makes her so sweet , but she has gotten herself into some really dangerous situations because of it. I remember a few months back mom let Penny go for a quick stroll with baby Pete. After they had been gone way too long Trevor and I set out to go look for them. When we found them, she was lying next to a dying puma cub singing to it and trying to hold its head off the wet ground. The animal was clearly on its way out and doing the sad hyperventilating quickstep breathing thing that dying animals do. It had no idea she was there. Baby Pete was just a few yards away dancing and noodling around with his trunk thinking that Penny was singing to him . The irony was breathtaking. Another time Trevor and Rachel spotted her chatting it up with a deadly asp. They begged her to back away as quietly as she could but she was so busy with her childish questions she didn't hear them. In hindsight, The best question was: Where's the rest of your body? It seemed that she was under the impression that he was the talking disembodied trunk of an elephant. That should have really pissed the asp off but it turned out to be Donald Craft, the guy who runs the food cart downtown during lunch hour and he had somehow figured out that Penny was Carl's kid. (my dad too, obviously). If it had been anyone else, she would have had it. I'll be glad when this little episode is over...