Chapter Eighty-Eight: Siberia House

“Okay,” Sowbug said.  “Done.  Done, done, done.”

“I think it looks great,” Lois said.  “And I still wouldn’t want to live there.”

“Amazing house,” added Dandelion.  “Bad location.”

“I’m sure somebody will be willing to live here,” Mo said.

“Yeah,” said Earthworm. “Somebody.”

Sal and Dan were at the other side of the house.

“That last piece should be over here,” Dan said.

“Nonsense,” Sal said.  “The last piece should be over there.”

Neither of them noticed that the workers all quietly left, ignoring Dan and Sal.

“I suppose if someone wanted to live at the commune desperately enough, it wouldn’t be such a bad place,” Sorrel said.

“I suppose not,” said Sowbug.  “I guess there will be some folks willing to live in Siberia.”

“Yup,” Lois said.  “Siberia.  Well named.”

                                                                    *

“We are not calling it Siberia House,” said Sal at the Wednesday Commune Meeting.

“For once we agree on something,” Dan said.  “I don’t want it called Siberia House either.”

“Well,” said Patsy, who was facilitating the meeting, “we make decisions by concentrating, so we can’t decide on anything unless everyone agrees.  It seems like most people want to call it Siberia House.  What do you propose?”

“I think we should name it after Luna, who started this commune,” said Dan.

“Absolutely not,” said Sal.  “As much as I love Luna, I don’t think we should name our houses after people who live here.”

“Oh, my,” said Luna.  “I totally agree with that.   I don’t want a house named after me.  It’s like I was dead or something.”

“Okay, Sal,” Patsy said.  “What do you think the house should be called?”

“I think we should call it Together House, since we built it together and we’ll be living in it together.”

“I won’t be living in it,” Mo whispered.

“Shh,” said Lois.

“That’s the silliest name I ever heard,” Dan said.  “We can’t call it Together House.  That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Neither does naming the house after Luna,” Sal said.

“It makes more sense than Together House,” said Dan.

“Does not!”

“Does too!”

“Stop right now,” said Patsy.  “You don’t need to yell at each other.  We simply can’t decide on a name right now.  We still have twelve more items on the agenda.  I suggest we go on with them and come back to this when tempers cool down.”

“Okay,” said Dan.  “But we’re not calling it Siberia House.  Or Together House.”

“Or naming it after Luna,” added Sal.

“We’ll come back to it,” Patsy said.

Unfortunately, they never did.  The meeting finished and commune still hadn’t decided anything about the name of the new house.  In fact, the commune did not ever make a decision about the name of the house.  

But from then on everyone except Sal and Dan simply referred to it as Siberia House.