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Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts

Monday, October 10, 2022 No comments

Pizza Night Multilemma: solved!

I still remember an old Hägar the Horrible strip, where the family is gathered around the table. Supper is a pizza, presumably with everything, and everyone wants to take out a topping (anchovies, vegetables, what have you). Helga, the wife, thinks, “I hate ‘take-out’ food.”

I can relate. If we order pizza, we usually have to order two, both with one set of toppings on each side (and make something else for Charlie). I like everything (especially meat), wife prefers mostly veg, Mason’s a minimalist (he’s recently shifted from pepperoni to plain cheese), and Charlie can’t eat regular cheese unless we want Fukushima-style containment breaches.

But I have solved the Pizza Night Multilemma. The TL;DR: everyone gets their own custom pizza.

By doubling my go-to pizza crust recipe, I can divide it into fourths, then top each one with exactly what everyone likes. Everyone wins, even Charlie, as he does pretty well with the vegan version of mozzarella. I asked him what his favorite thing to eat is (knowing the answer), and he said, “bread!” When I asked him if he wanted to see how to make bread this afternoon, he was all for it. So we got to work. He was right up against the kitchen island, watching every move (as I explained it). I had to get him to step back a couple times, as he was encroaching on my workspace. When I got to the kneading phase, he wanted to give it a try himself, and I let him have a couple shots at it. He probably would have done better with a stool, as he didn't have good leverage to push the dough into the table, but he did get floured up for the occasion.

Flour-y language

The pizza crusts are highly irregular, even when tossed a little bit (I’m no expert), but “occasional flaws reflect the handmade nature of this product.” Charlie’s crust started out triangular, then became more trapezoidal as I spread it out. Mason’s was heart shaped. Wife and I both ended up with irregular shapes, but “irregular is normal in the Strange Lands.”

Had I thought it out better, I would have rearranged the oven racks to put the cooking pizza up top and the pre-bake crust on the next shelf, but doing things one at a time worked out. In a slightly inspired move on my part, I cut up some liverwurst and put it on Charlie’s pizza (Mason sampled a leftover piece and opined that cooking liverwurst improves the taste). In any case, everyone got what they wanted, and everyone was happy (and that’s nearly a miracle at FAR Manor).

Everyone got what they wanted

Clockwise, from top left:

  • Plain cheese (Mason)
  • Vegan cheese and liverwurst (Charlie)
  • Mushrooms, onions, peppers, and pepperoni (me) (pepperoni is under the cheese)
  • Mushrooms, onions, and peppers (wife)

I was tempted to make mine Hawaiian (ham and pineapple), but I don’t think we have any pineapple. In any case, everyone has leftovers for tomorrow or whenever. I’ll enjoy mine at lunch.


Thursday, August 04, 2022 1 comment

New granddaughter!

 Check out G3, for lack of a better blog-name right now…

I haven’t seen her awake just yet.

Man, it's so hard to remember how tiny they are when they’re newborns. After hoisting Charlie all the time, she’s like a feather. But that won’t last long.

AJ is (so far) very much the Big Sister, and even a little territorial. Charlie thinks she’s fascinating, and gets excited when “the baby is coming to our house.”

By the by, my skin isn’t blotchy. There was sunlight coming in through the window to my right, and between it and the overheads the shadows got funky.

Monday, November 08, 2021 1 comment

Rope-a-dope

A Saturday afternoon mini-adventure started with a text from Daughter Dearest: Can you take big butt truck to help get sizzles truck unstuck

This was quickly followed up by a phone call, asking me to pick up Sizzle’s boys and take them along (in the slim hope that they could push Sizzle out). Charlie had been jonesing for a ride in M.O. the B.B anyway, so I loaded him up, got the boys, and headed on down. Sizzle was at the campsite, presumably for some deer hunting, and I don’t know what possessed him to get off the high ground… but when I saw the situation, I figured pushing would not be enough.

Of course, I was right. :-P

Another project, that shall soon see the light of blog, entailed my having a spool of 1/2" rope handy. We clattered back up to FAR Manor, got the spool, and returned (turning around at the dam to get oriented for pulling stuff). Meanwhile, Sizzle had attached a heavy-duty ratchet strap to the front of his truck… a Nissan, for which The Boy and Daughter Dearest had taken a road trip up to Nashville to get a replacement motor for… but I digress.

He tied the rope to the ratchet strap, while I wove it through the hitch on M.O. the B.B.'s end. We put our trucks in gear, and mine did its usual “Pfft, I’m towing something?” routine as I crept forward. I stopped, because it was clear that Sizzle was going to get pulled into a tree before he got clear of it. We rearranged stuff to bypass the tree, and started anew. This time, we got Sizzle up on the two-track. “M.O.” stands for Massive Overkill, and that’s what it is… except when nothing else will do.

At Sizzle’s request, his guys piled into his truck, and I clattered on home.

I was too busy doing the tow to get pictures, so I’ll leave you with a shot of the pond, ringed with weeds in glorious flower (I took it while turning around). Wife is planning to nail them, so they might not be around next year.


Now that is some fall color, huh? May your fall be filled with color and miss the part with the stuck trucks.

Thursday, July 08, 2021 1 comment

Ah… the crunchy nuggets

Back in the 70s, when we hunted wild tacos with spears to get lunch, W.C. Fritos was the animated spokesperson for one of Frito-Lay’s primary products (and I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one). One of his taglines was “Greetings, my little chip-a-dees,” and another was “Ah… the crunchy nuggets.”

Fast-forwarding 45+ years…

Mason’s current obsession/YouTube rabbit hole is making replica weapons from cardboard. He has made several decent axes (and spears), and is working on more. We have plenty of unused cardboard around, and (due to disrespectful yapping) is now grounded off the iPad, so he's doing something semi-creative.

I told you that to tell you this:

While I was trying to get supper together, Mason had made a spear out of cardboard and some unused utility handle, and was hassling Rosie the Stupidog. Charlie was yelling “Stop, Mason!" over and over, and I joined the chorus when I saw what was going on. Of course, Mason kept on doing what he was doing.

Then… Charlie took matters into his own hands. He swung an arm around and smacked Mason square in the nuts.

Ah… the crunchy nuggets.

Mason staggered around, trying both not to laugh nor cry out in pain. Meanwhile, I was trying to not fall on the floor in laughter while telling Charlie that was NOT an appropriate thing to do. #parentingfail

The thing is, Charlie picks up on pretty much everything that Mason does. Mason likes to play rough with Charlie, and Charlie thinks it’s fine to do the same things to Mason (who often goes full-blown Drama Queen when it happens). So when Mason acts like he’s the substitute parent, Charlie doesn’t recognize the dynamics… and things like this can happen. Just not so spectacular (or hilarious). Most of the time.

So what will the boys come up with next?

Sunday, March 21, 2021 No comments

Take our best shots

Fire away!

Charlie and I have been chucking our golf discs around the house when weather permits (and it permitted much of the last couple weeks). Of course, Charlie is a fiend for going outside, and he realizes I like doing this, so he tries to entice me with “throw disc?” Not when I’m working, unfortunately, although I should probably take a short health break in the afternoons. The problem with taking Charlie outside for a short break, though, is that he doesn’t want to have a short time outside. If I don’t have a call right after lunch, though, we might do a round.

He’s improved a LOT in the last couple of weeks. It used to be, he could barely get five feet out of a throw. Watch him now:



Meanwhile, I started taking a serious poke at getting the wife and I vaccinated, so we can Say No to the Ro for good. The Georgia Dept. of Public Health has a page that helps. My first attempt was fruitless, but on the second try (last Thursday), I got an appointment for this Thursday! The only drawback was, it's in Marietta. Oh well, people have been driving to Alabama to get vaccinated, as they had some looser requirements than Georgia for certain segments (teachers and clergy) until recently. Mississippi and the Cherokee Nation are both offering vaccines to all comers as well, which leads me to wonder if vaccine tourism is going to be a thing for a while.

I put both the wife and myself in pre-registration, thinking we might end up at the mass vaccination site in Clarksville. The wife pointed out that we should stagger our appointments, in case we both had to spend a day in bed with two kids running loose, and told me to get mine first. But she never got an email, so I ran her info through again. I immediately got her an appointment for tomorrow afternoon, in the next county over! So although I got my appointment first, she’ll get her shot first. I took Thursday and Friday off work, one day for the drive down (wow… I’ll be going somewhere!) and the next in case I need to rest up for the day.

 
We spent much of yesterday digging through the stuff stacked in the garage. Wife was getting inconvenienced at the narrow clearance between the stuff and her van. I found many things she was missing, filled a large garbage bag with trash, and stumbled across a cooler full of Caffeine Free Coke Zero and Diet Mountain Dew. It must have been The Boy’s, which means it was sitting there for well over a year. Several of the cans had lost pressure, and the cooler had a couple inches of yuck-colored fluid in it. I kept the good cans and put them in the fridge. The Coke Zeros are Mason’s, the others are mine.

With the van backed out, Mason decided to take up his dad’s skateboards. I showed him a video of how to do an ollie, and he was “that’s gotta be CGI or something.” I assured him no, I’d seen his dad do it, and explained the physics of it as best as I could. After an hour or so, Mason was able to get at least a little air!



So everyone is taking their best shots at FAR Manor. And I tell you, I will never be so happy to be stuck with a needle as I will be this Thursday.

Friday, March 05, 2021 No comments

Up too soon

Image source: openclipart.org
As Daughter Dearest has to be at school at way-too-early a.m., she drops AJ off at our place through the week. Wife gets the baby, she squawks on and off—sometimes waking me up, sometimes I integrate the noise into my morning dreams.

So the wife arbitrarily decided that I would get AJ on Friday not-quite-mornings. I didn't agree to that, or anything else, but whatever. Not that I would have said no if I’d been consulted about AJ in the morning, but nobody bothered to ask.

Thus, her 6 a.m. alarm went off. Some mornings, she’s in the living room recliner (having been put to sleep by the Hallmark Channel). Some mornings, she fumbles for the phone in our bed. And… on occasion, the phone goes off in the bathroom, while she’s in the living room, and I have to silence the mofo and give it to her.

But this morning, she was in bed, with her phone within easy reach. After a few minutes, she said, “AJ will be here any minute.”

Dropping plenty of F-bombs, I threw on a pair of long johns and a T-shirt, and staggered into the living room as I saw headlights drift by the window. I flipped on lights and got to the door in time for DD to bring Granddaughter Dearest in.

After Mama, AJ’s favorite person is Grandmom (but not by much). Granddad is down in the long tail, especially at 6-effing a.m. So when DD handed her over to Granddad, she started howling. DD’s hasty exit did nothing to settle the situation… fortunately, I did have a bottle handy. After some continued howling, she decided to chow down on the milk.

But it was too late. Rosie, aka Doofus, aka Stupidog, decided something was WRONG and hustled down the hall to jump on the wife. Charlie, who had staggered into our room some time during the night (which is unfortunately typical), was already up and around (“Hi, AJ! Hiiiiiiii!”). So wife got to sleep in for maybe 5 or 10 minutes. AJ immediately started howling again when Grandmom didn’t get her right away, but she was busy getting breakfast ready for both AJ and Charlie.

Wife turned on my coffee maker, but I opted to flop back into bed once she had AJ. I could always reheat my joe in the microwave, after all, and that’s what I did. Then I made espresso, and that got me through the rest of the morning.

To be honest, I hope that’s the last 6 a.m. wakeup call for me. I’ve never been a morning person.

Friday, February 26, 2021 1 comment

I want to ride my Franken-trike

With near-incessant rain earlier this month, we brought one of Charlie’s tricycles inside for him to ride when it’s too soupy to ride outside. He has a Radio Flyer “Fold and Go” (it folds up quite nicely for transport) and one I got off the Zon (it has a push/steering bar for a parent). Encouragement and getting bigger means he doesn’t need to be pushed quite so much, and he’s quite happy to hop off and push his trike around just for grins. The Fold and Go is the inside trike, when one is needed.

Lately, the wife has been requiring me to go with her to take hay to the cows. This usually involves a huge roll of hay, and it’s more convenient (for her) with someone else to cut the twine holding it together before she rolls it out in the pasture. Charlie comes to watch. I really ought to get video of her hay-dispersal technique; it takes quite a bit of coordination. The tractor has an end-loader attachment, except there's a five-foot spike in place of a scoop bucket. She spears the hay on it, takes it out to where she wants it in the pasture, and drops it off. Then she uses the spike like a huge fingertip to flick the roll down whatever slope is convenient (this is Georgia, flat ground is a rarity unless it’s been leveled).

But I digress. Earlier this week, after returning from a hay-dispersing session, Charlie jumped on his trike and began riding. “Uh,” he said, then spun the pedals. The trike didn’t move.

I pulled the front wheel off the fork, and had a look…

It’s broke, Jim.

“I’ve been expecting that,” the wife opined. “He keeps running it into things.”

Charlie was going “ride?” and making his sign for cycling, so I thought things over. Back in Mason’s day (or maybe earlier), we picked up a Mongoose trike at a yard sale. It was fine until one of the rear wheels broke, then it got put aside. I used the good rear wheel when Charlie parked his Zon trike too close to the edge of the driveway and Big V’s widower caught a wheel. So my first thought was maybe I can pull the front wheel off the Mongoose and Frankenstein a working trike. No such luck—the mounts are completely different. I briefly considered an entire fork swap, but that would require both the Radio Flyer and the Mongoose to have the exact same fork tube diameter. They’re close, but it would be a lot of work to verify…

But hey! Why not pull the rear wheels off the Radio Flyer and put them on the Mongoose?

Sparks fly!
Like pretty much anything else at FAR Manor, easier said than done. Fortunately, both of them have a 3/8" axle, so swapping wheels was no problem. Push nuts are common on walking-speed rolling things, and they are one of the rare exceptions of being easier to put on than take off. I tried prying it off with a screwdriver, yanking with pliers… and finally decided to order some new ones and get out the Dremel.

The Dremel already had a metal cutting wheel on it from the last job (and I can’t for the life of me remember what that was), so I let 'er rip. I was very careful, and put only a small notch in the plastic. It wasn’t necessary to cut all the way through the push nut; just grooving it was enough to weaken it to where I could pull it off with pliers. The axle was in a frame tube, so it slid out and I got the second wheel off for the price of one.


With the wheels off, I put the big wire wheel on a drill and skimmed the surface rust off the Mongoose’s axles:


This, of course, took longer to get the drill and mount the wire wheel than to do the actual work. I sprayed some lube on the axles, more to prevent re-rusting than reduce rolling resistance.

With the axles ready to go, it was time for a test fit. OOPS, the inside of the wheels rubbed against the step. Fortunately, it required only a pair of thick washers to add the needed space:

Just a little extra space was all we needed.

The second test fit left me satisfied, and I waited for a box of push nuts I ordered off the Zon to arrive. Then, I had to re-assemble everything after I turned my back and Charlie tried to ride it. Fortunately, I managed to find the outside washers (one outside the garage and one in the gravel driveway), and Dizzle (Sizzle’s #2 son) found the missing bearing.

The new push nuts didn’t want to cooperate—it was afterwards that I remembered a reviewer saying to use a socket to even out the force—so I found the old Mongoose push nuts and popped them on instead.

Ready to ride?


Yup! I moved the seat as far back as it would go for Charlie, but a little time with a drill press might let me move it back a little farther. The Mongoose’s pedals have a longer… throw? moment arm? than his other trikes, so he seems to be able to get a little more power out of it, letting him get up the driveway a little better.

I wonder how long it will be until he realizes he can stand on that back step and push with one foot…

Tuesday, January 12, 2021 3 comments

Charlie Five, and a brief uh-oh…

Charlie wearing a paper crown, made in church last week
King for a day
Charlie turned 5 late last week, but of course we waited until Saturday to celebrate. After all, his bio-brother Skylar has his birthday pretty close to Charlie’s, and Sizzle has one as well. So the party was extended, but Charlie wore the crown! (After all, he made it in church the week before, as part of the Epiphany lesson.)

There was cake for everyone, and presents for the birthday folks. Sizzle brought some chow, and the wife made some stuff, and we all ate, drank, and were merry.

But… (cue the “dun-dun-dunnnn” music here)

Sunday morning, Sizzle sent the preacher and me a text: Daughter Dearest is running a fever we will be staying home today and keep everyone updated no other symptoms. Well, if DD got the ro, then we had been exposed as well—especially me, because I hugged her twice and she took a nap on my side of the bed.

They all went and got tested in the afternoon, and we changed clothes, took showers, and planned to hunker down. During the early days of the pandemic, I bought two huge canisters of powdered Gatorade, and sent them the unopened one. I caught a pretty good case of the flu back around 2000 or 2001, and staying hydrated let me bounce back pretty quick once the fever got tired of hanging around. The non-nutty sister in law was in the hospital with her own case of the ro, which likely happened (the hospital part) because she got dehydrated, and I wanted to make sure DD had every possible advantage. I made plans to do our grocery run as curbside pickup this week.

[Aside: Big V probably would have been a casualty, had she not checked out a couple years ago. She never took care of herself, and I suspect she would have been a ratlicker. The Boy could have gone either way, and probably would have. Mason definitely has mask fatigue, but he’ll wear it if we remember to bring it.]

Today brought a little better news. DD called me this evening and said her test was negative (woohoo!), and the sister-in-law came home from the hospital. Sister in law is debilitated, as is usually the case. I’ve heard that each day in the hospital adds a month to full recovery time. She was fairly healthy to begin with, so maybe she’ll bounce back by summer.

Meanwhile, since we’re still saying no to the ro at FAR Manor, I made a minor grocery run this evening. But given how the B117 strain (aka the “UK virus”1) is proliferating, I’ve once again broken out the Clorox wipes to clean off everything that comes into the house.


1If the wingnuts want to call the original the “China virus,” then it should be acceptable to call this latest strain the “UK virus.” And we should also call H1N1 the “American virus,” since it originated in Kansas.

Monday, July 13, 2020 No comments

Oh deer! (redux)

Somehow, we as a family have been fortunate when it comes to deer encounters. This one marks the third occasion that a deer and one of our cars have attempted to occupy the same point in space, without damage to (at least) humans and vehicles.

Last week (Monday, of course), Daughter Dearest was heading back from the church to her house. Just beyond the church driveway, of course… a doe and its fawn decided to play a live-action version of Crossy Road, using DD as an NPC. Unlike non-players in Crossy, DD stood on the brakes, and the doe scooted on by. The fawn… not so much.

There, there…
Fortunately, at this point, she was going slow enough to bonk the fawn and tumble it a few times. For all her ferocity with people, DD has an extremely tender heart when it comes to animals. So she gathered up the four-legged victim (which was unable to get its own act together) and carried it up to the church porch.

From there, she called her mom (totally upset), then the DNR. The latter was busy trying to deal with a bear keeping someone in her car* so the two of them sort of comforted each other while Wildlife Rescue got its act together.

The DNR people got there, and assured DD that the fawn wasn’t severely damaged—no broken back, at least. With any luck, they’ll fatten it up for Thanksgiving dinner reunite it with its mom shortly.

Of course, wife and I were concerned first with DD, and then with her car. Both were fine. Wife opined: “She can hit a deer and not have any damage, but hitting a groundhog tore out half the underside of the car!” Well, this is Sector 706… logic is neither common nor appreciated.

*Probably not the same bear I encountered Friday night. That one has been sneaking up to the manor, on dark nights when we forget to drop the garage door, and gobbling an entire 40lb bin of dog food. I happened to be on a late-night grocery run, and probably startled him off as I pulled up the driveway, since the bin was just outside the garage. Turning on the floodlights, I saw him standing there on all fours in the back yard. After I cussed him out and banged on the plastic garbage bin (empty because of him), he shuffled into the woods. The dogs, who usually lose their shorts when a strange car comes up the driveway, amazingly didn’t say boo about a freeking bear coming up to visit. Then again, as I’m fond of saying, “stupidog” is one word.

Thursday, April 09, 2020 2 comments

Life and Work in the Time of Pandemic (part 3, school)

We’re on spring break this week… like I said in the last post, we were supposed to be at the beach, but having to cancel a vacation falls into the #firstworldproblems bucket.

The two-week “online learning” got extended to next week… then just before break, they finally realized the wisest course was to finish out the school year online. It’s a pain in the rear, but better that than getting a bunch of people sick without need (or the resources to take care of them).

I need to say, the school system obviously meant the whole online learning program to be something used once or twice over the winter, maybe for a few days. Now they’re having to adapt it for a months-long outage. My biggest beef with it is that they couldn’t settle on a single app or website to manage everything—there are three or four apps/sites, and they occasionally roll out another one. Although my Mac has a built-in password manager, I’ve gotten account fatigue over the years. So every time I get a memo about Yet Another Account to set up, they can hear my eyes rolling all the way out here.

“Out here” presents its own online learning issues. This is farm country, and I still think it’s amazing we have DSL. It usually works OK, unless heavy storms take out a line card (which happens pretty often)… or everybody who can work at home is doing just that and their kids are also online trying to do their schoolwork. It gets where the connection can’t even support a low-bandwidth music stream. I can do the normal work things—email, edit a DITA file from the cloud, chat—because that traffic is mostly short bursts and can slide in between the school traffic. Conferences are more iffy, but I usually use my cellphone for audio and the video is showing mostly static images of spreadsheets or documents.

But I digress. Our school is swimming against the Zoom current (an app I only heard about after the isolation began) and using Google Meet (aka Hangout). We can often manage one hangout at a time, or at least phone in if bandwidth is an issue. Charlie’s therapists (and pre-school) is also using Meet. Most of the time, this seems to work out. The bandwidth is hitting Daughter Dearest even harder, because she’s a teacher and has to be online. It got so bad that she simply bypassed the wheezing DSL and used her phone to get out. Needless to say, that burned through our data cap, our reserve, and then some. Now we don’t have a cushion for this month. I suggested she go to Dunkin', get a coffee and maybe a doughnut from the drive-thru, then sit in her car and scarf the Wi-Fi from there.

Often enough, our connection is marginally good enough, so DD and her kids have been at the manor most school days. That means I’ve had AJ (or Charlie) in my lap more than once during a conference call. I can totally derail a meeting by turning on my camera with either one; they’re both cute.

While we’re on break, I’m trying to set up a place in the larger upstairs bedroom (The Boy’s old room) as an office space. We made some headway yesterday. But I can’t help but think that once I get upstairs, all the kids will wander (or be sent) upstairs so I can still deal with something. I guess that’s okay, as long as I hold my end up at work. So far so good!

How about you? Have you torn a bumper sticker off your van yet? Comments are open!

Wednesday, March 25, 2020 No comments

Life and Work in the Time of Pandemic (part 2, food)

Coronavirus (image credit: CDC, public domain)
Our “online learning” was extended through Spring Break, the first full week of April here, and they should probably close out the school year doing it. I suggested that to Daughter Dearest, and her response was “SHUT UP. SHUT UP.”

But whether we pull a Hong Kong and lift restrictions early (spoiler alert: it would be a Bad Move), or keep movement tamped down to prevent further spreading, the occasional grocery trip is a necessity. Maybe less necessary is occasional pickup from restaurants, although they might argue the “less necessary” part.

Restaurants are adjusting as well as they can, offering incentives like extra points for rewards programs or free delivery. Meanwhile, the wife and I have roughed out meal planning. We’re mostly digging meat out of our freezers, although we're short on ground beef and the hoarders (aka #covidiots) grabbed it all last weekend. Bread and milk are easier to find, now… both have a finite shelf life and hoarders might have a hard time using what they have before it spoils. Ground beef should soon be available as well, because even covidiots have only a finite amount of freezer space. (But they must be using all that toilet paper as mattresses.)

Meanwhile, the school system is still running the bus routes… except instead of dropping off kids in the afternoon, they drop off lunches in the late mornings. We don’t need the extra food, but they beg us to take it because we’re at the end of the route. Today, we got burgers. The kids eat whatever sandwiches are provided, but sometimes skip the veggies + ranch dip packages (add 1/4 tsp of onion powder to the ranch containers, instant chip dip). We’re going to cook the veggies for supper, if I keep my mitts out of them. Still, it’s starting to get overwhelming—we’re covered up with fruit, milk, juice, etc. We’ll need to make sure the neighbors get some of this if it continues.

Since the kids don’t drink all the milk, I have rediscovered the joy of drinking half-pints of chocolate milk from the carton. I have not yet tried my old trick of jabbing the side with a pencil, making a hole of the exact diameter of a straw; I could pressurize the carton and pump the milk into my mouth. One of my better memories of elementary school.

Fortunately, Charlie is expanding his protein sources, although he still strongly prefers his latest adoptions to be breaded and fried. Chicken nuggets (especially Chick-Fil-A) and fish sticks are winners. We thawed and baked a slab of salmon I had kicking around in the freezer earlier this week; the adults ate that, and Mason and Charlie gobbled several helpings of sticks. We got these corn dog bites, and Charlie ate half of one before he realized it wasn’t chicken, then ate the breading and left the mystery meat. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference between picky and intelligent.

We have a few days of not-rain this week (yay!) so I’ll likely pull some ribs out of the freezer and smoke/grill them.

Monday, March 16, 2020 2 comments

Life and Work in the Time of Pandemic (part 1)

Coronavirus (image credit: CDC, public domain)
Local schools are on “online learning” this week (and I’m sure that will be extended). I started working from home last week, and we all got a “recommendation” from a manager to work at home through March 27 (again, it’ll probably be extended). Oddly enough, Charlie’s daycare (a Petri dish if I ever saw one) is remaining open. His therapy office is also open, but they’ve moved the waiting room out to the parking lot… in other words, wait in your car until your therapist comes out. Our little church has moved its sermons online (unfortunately, to the Book of Face, which I don’t use) for the duration.

You’re probably seeing the same things in your locale, and I’m not here to provide dry statistics. I’m going to journal the mostly self-isolated life in a rural area, in case someone else finds it interesting now or later on.

Long-time readers might remember FAR Future, a long blog-novel I wrote starting all the way back in 2007. Although the chronic energy shortages that the whole story is built around have yet to materialize, some of the things I wrote about have had eerie parallels in real life. One episode (written in Sep 2008) discusses a serious flu pandemic, with a 3%-5% mortality rate, breaking out in… December 2019. We’re not laboring under a junta, but the administration in real-life 2020 is every bit as incompetent as was the junta in FAR Future. The difference is, the fictional flu was like the 1918 pandemic, hitting young and healthy adults the hardest. This one goes (mostly) after the elderly. We also have the Internet, a find way to find information (and plenty of misinformation) about what’s happening.

Saturday was “run errands” day, so I combined the trips to limit time out and contacts. Charlie had horse therapy, and we needed both some groceries and a UPS battery. Other than that, we were in all weekend. Wife and I keep talking about meal planning, so we can order pickup from the local Kroger, but haven’t quite done it just yet. Today, she’s out with Charlie for therapy. I’m not sure he’ll go to daycare today. If he does, I might run to the office to grab a laptop dock and some notes, then pick him up on the way back.

These first few days of (mostly) shelter-in-place are very strange. It’s like a winter storm, except that all the utilities are working and the roads are even more clear than usual. Our crappy DSL is crappier than usual, what with all the school kids with Internet doing their work online (not to mention people like me, trying to work). Structure is going to be important… along those lines, Daughter Dearest forwarded me a suggested schedule for families. Modify as needed, but a little structure will make everyone's day go better:


Meanwhile, I have a minor cold. I’ve never been so glad to sneeze.

Saturday, January 18, 2020 2 comments

Weekend AJ blogging

Daughter Dearest’s maternity leave ran out last week, which meant she went grumbling back to work on Monday. And that meant AJ was at the manor through the day until she got home.

She doesn't mind having her @$$ in a sling!
AJ is definitely her mother’s daughter. DD liked to be held close, so does AJ. The difference is, DD's happy place was rocking. AJ is like Mason; she likes to be carried around. Wife asked me to work at home so she could deal with a couple of things without having to listen to AJ howling to be picked up. After a couple tries, we found a good position for her in my old sling, and I had both hands free for working (and taking a selfie). Of the three babies who have spent time in that sling, she’s the earliest adopter… Mason and Charlie were both about 3 months old when they got comfortable in it. She also sat in on her first two conference calls, and started crying when someone said the schedule had to slip (so she’s already qualified to be a Product Line Manager!).

She’ll sleep about half the day, and we have a little bed for her. “Safe Sleep” notwithstanding, she likes to sleep on her side more than her back (which is what Charlie preferred as well).

She's like 7 weeks old now, growing quickly and gobbling prodigious amounts of formula. When she’s hungry, everyone knows it. Charlie started sympathy-crying at one point.

She looks a lot more like Daughter Dearest now, and the eyebrow ridges and lack of hair make her look a lot like my youngest bro Solar. He replied (paraphrased), “Yup, we’re both gorgeous.”

Both of us enjoy our baby time, and Charlie likes being around her as well (although we have to make sure he doesn’t hug too hard). She’s not a boarder, she doesn’t live here, but she’s aboard.

Monday, November 25, 2019 2 comments

Granddaughter Dearest!

Say hi to AJ, born Saturday afternoon around 4:30pm local time.

Keep me covered!
She was a month early, extending our streak to three generations. I was a month early, so was Daughter Dearest, and now AJ… all for different reasons. Still, she is doing fine, and might get to come home as early as Thursday (Turkey Day). As preemies often do, she has a touch of jaundice and spends some time in a tanning booth (the NICU version, anyway).

DD and I went down to NICU to see and feed her yesterday evening. DD was rubbing her head, and she got visibly irritated and calmed down instantly when she quit… so she’s already showing some preferences (besides hating to be cold). She also didn’t want to eat, pressing her lips together tight. The nurse persuaded her, though. I told her, “I’m gonna call you AJ,” and she gave me a half-smile and a fart. I guess she approved!

We’ve been a little concerned about DD’s high blood pressure, which was a side-effect of the pregnancy. But after she stood up a couple of times, it returned to a normal range. The nurse said it should go away soon, but the BP was what prompted the early escape this generation.

Back at FAR Manor, we’re in a flurry of activity. We’re sending Charlie’s crib mattress to DD for AJ’s crib, and working on converting his crib to a regular bed (he doesn’t have a lot of room to stretch out in the crib now). That on top of Turkey Day.

Friday, November 15, 2019 1 comment

Granddaughter Dearest, an early peek

It’s amazing what they can do with ultrasound these days. They zoomed right in on Granddaughter Dearest’s face…

Look at those duck lips!
Her face is all squooshed… as the Genie might say, “itty bitty living space!” Looks like she has some hair, too, although that could be focus/distortion.

The Blessed Event is about a month away, now… although DD is starting to be less insistent about carrying her to term. “She could decide to come early," DD opined recently. I don’t hold out a lot of hope about sharing a birthday, but whatever the date, it’s all good.

Thursday, October 31, 2019 1 comment

Sunset, sunrise… (2019 edition)

Together again!
And when I die, and when I’m gone,
There’ll be one child born in this world
To carry on, to carry on.
—Blood, Sweat, and Tears


The father in law passed away a couple weeks ago. This was something he’d wanted for a while, but especially after he fell and broke his leg a couple weeks after The Boy took his longest journey. He was mostly interested in reuniting with his wife, who has been gone about seven years now, but I like to think they also hang out with The Boy (and my dad).

So the wife has been at the manor a lot more than usual, and that’s a good thing. Daughter Dearest, Sizzle, and their kids have been coming by a lot as well (also a good thing). One of us cooks supper, we all eat, and sometimes we’ll hang out and play cards or whatever on the weekends.

And, coming soon, to a blog you’re reading… Granddaughter Dearest!

Hi!
She's a lively kid, so says DD. Since she and I were both a month early (for much different reasons), I told DD she ought to have GDD a month early and maybe we could share a birthday. “Don’t even go there!” was the response I got.

So besides that, it’s the usual crazy at FAR Manor. The furnace went out to lunch, just as the weather decided to get serious about cooling off. With any luck, we’ll have that fixed tomorrow.

Tuesday, February 26, 2019 No comments

A weekend at Camp Driveway

It has been a wet winter so far. We’re currently getting a few days of dry (and reasonably nice, for late February) weather… in mid-week, of course, when we’re all working or at school. But a couple weekends ago, we had a mostly dry weekend—that is, the rain didn’t arrive until Sunday afternoon. It was seasonably cold—around 50°F for highs, not quite freezing for lows.

Roughing it in style
If you ever end up with a popup camper, Popup Portal is a deep hive mind that can tell you pretty much everything from the most basic tips to walking through complete rebuilds. Now the Starflyer (I can’t improve on the name that Starcraft gave it) doesn’t need anything close to a complete rebuild, but there are a few maintenance issues that the previous owner (and perhaps those who came before) neglected. The Portal has been very helpful in that regard.

One thing the hive mind recommends for new popup owners is to do what they call “Camp Driveway.” In other words, set up the camper in your driveway or back yard, and spend the weekend in it. You get to test it out, and figure out what you need before you go “live.” Mason was wanting to try out the new camper, so I opened it up and Camp Driveway was on!

Fortunately, I’d ordered a bunch of accessories from Amazon—an extension cord, an adapter to plug an RV into a house outlet, leveler, heater, 12V LED bulbs (they’re brighter and draw less power, important if you’re using a battery for lighting) and a few repair and maintenance things. I was pleased to find that everything worked as intended. The interior lights did a fine job of illuminating the camper, the stove fired up once the air got worked out of the lines, the outlets were happy to charge my phone and Mason’s tablet (and keep a night light glowing). The “Little Buddy” heater, which uses the same small propane cylinders as lanterns, was a big help because the electric space heater that came with the camper wasn’t too helpful. With both heaters going, the digital thermometer I brought along inched up to about 67°F at tabletop level (not nearly as warm along the floor, though!). But still, with the beds a little higher yet, I figured that was going to be just fine. Besides, we had the same sleeping bags we used for Mason’s Polar Bear Camping outing a couple years ago. If we kept warm enough in an unheated tent, a popup with (some) heat would be at least as warm.

It was. My first night was restless, with the electric heater kicking on and off every 15 seconds or so, but I stayed warm enough. Mason, wrapped up in the down mummy bag, had no trouble sleeping at all. For us old farts, I think we’ll need a memory foam topper on our bed. The camper came with a literal Porta-Potti, a little self-contained toilet that sits in a cabinet during the day and Only Comes Out At Night. It turned out to be very handy—after I turned off the Little Buddy at bedtime, the temps inside the camper dropped to around 55°F, but that was still better than the 34°F outside. Especially if you had a post-midnight necessity.

In the morning, putting a kettle on the stove and cooking bacon&eggs helped to warm things up. The French press I bought myself for my birthday finally got its first run, and there’s nothing like a good strong cup of coffee on a cold morning. The Starflyer has fairly primitive plumbing—a hand pump at the sink, and no hot water heater—but the Popup Portal hive mind had a solution for that. Get a pump pot, fill it from the kettle in the morning, and you’ll have hot water to wash the evening dishes (and an afternoon coffee, if necessary). Actually, we used bottled water, since I’d put RV antifreeze in the water system to prevent serious issues until spring.

The second night went better for me; I turned around to put my head toward the center of the camper, and for some reason I found that more comfortable. I left the Buddy Heater going until it emptied its canister, which saved me the hassle of getting up and turning it off. It went a little longer than I expected, which is nice. We got to air out the bacon smell for a few hours, and I folded up the Starflyer as the first sprinkles came in mid-afternoon.

Camp Driveway was a success. I came out with a list of stuff we need, and am holding out some hopes of hitting a local campground next month when Mason has another no-school Friday. A 3-1/2 day weekend would be a nice warmup to our Spring Break trip to Mom’s…

Friday, December 07, 2018 2 comments

A TB02 of sorts…

A long time ago, back when The Boy had more than his share of teen angst to deal with, I had a series of “TB” error codes. TB02 was “He moved back home (again).” (Dang… this blog is old. 13 in Internet years is like “going out for lunch meant we hunted wild tacos with spears.”)

Fast-forward to now. He’s married, living in his own house, starting a business, and doing a decent job of adulting. Unfortunately, he ended up with some health issues that put him in the hospital for the better part of two weeks (not his foot this time). During that time, his wife & his mom got together and really kept things going, spending days and nights with him, making sure he was being taken care of—I was thrilled at how well they worked together. Still, he was bored $#¡+less, and was more than ready to get outta there and get back to his life.

Yesterday, they sprung him, but with a condition: he can’t be left by himself for a week. The daughter in law has to work (hey, I totally understand, because I do too)—so he’s here at FAR Manor. He’s not really moving back in, just hanging out with us for a week, so it’s not a real TB02. I’m sure Mason is happy to have him around, because he was supposed to stay with his dad for a few days Thanksgiving week, but with one thing or another, I haven’t gotten home before Mason was asleep in bed.

Yeah, The Boy missed Thanksgiving, but I think we’re going to have an extra dinner this weekend. After all, we really have something to be thankful for this time.

Thursday, July 26, 2018 4 comments

Stay on, your toes

The Boy continues to embrace the whole home ownership thing. He has a pretty decent garden spot (mostly hot peppers, with a few other things) and is talking about adding a room. A really good thing, he's been keeping up with his glucose and insulin for the last six months or so.

Of course, there are downsides. About a month ago, a bad storm came through and dropped a tree limb on their newest car, totaling it. At least it was parked, which means comprehensive kicks in (lower deductible) and no ding on his driving record.

Then there was the garden incident… at least, as best as we can figure. He was weeding when his foot started burning (wearing sandals), but the pain faded quickly and he kept at it. He saw a blister later was all.

A few days later, he had a pretty heavy-duty infection in his foot, and ended up in a hospital in Carrolton. We grabbed a hotel to spend the night down there. The surgeon told everyone, “we’ll do what we can, but he’s probably going to lose four toes.” Yeowch!

So they wheeled him in, and we flipped out our tablets to wait for the news, whether good or bad. Finally, a nurse called us into the consultation room. The surgeon said, “the infection hadn’t gone to the bone, or got into the tendons, so we cut out the infected tissues.” So far so good… everything was still attached. For now. Even better: “he still has pretty good circulation in his feet, that helps.”

They wheeled him back to his room, and the surgeon came by to tell him what was next: they would leave his foot wrapped up for a few days, then the wound care specialist would come by and check for any further infection. At that point, they would decide whether his toes could stay attached a little longer. The way he talked, it sounded like a 50/50 proposition.

This is the GOOD side!
We went home, but kept in touch via text, until we returned to the hospital for The Unveiling.

No infection! Yay!

The wound care specialist came in and said, “three things if you want to keep your toes: don’t smoke, don’t walk on that foot, and keep up with your insulin.” There were other particulars, including a special boot he wears to walk around safely, but those are details.

The wife took a pic of the bottom of his foot. I really don’t want to inflict that one on you… there was basically a trench about 1/2" wide and deep, running across the joints. Top view is bad enough (the bruised big toenail came from him dropping something on his foot while doing a moving job).

Last week, we got a report (and a pic): the wound care specialist says it’s healing up faster than expected. Indeed, the pic showed a small oval of raw flesh surrounded by new skin. Woohoo!

So what caused all this? The symptoms were all consistent with a brown recluse bite. We may never know what happened, but I’m willing to blame spiders.

Tuesday, September 26, 2017 3 comments

Happy #1, Zoey!

I haven’t blogged much about Grandkid #2, mainly because I haven’t seen much of her, mainly because The Boy lives about 120 miles from FAR Manor. (Smart move, that.) But she had her first birthday party over the weekend, with a “Wild One” theme. Zoey isn’t terribly wild—she’s not quite walking yet—but her parents…

Anyway, I expected Charlie to get a good nap on the 2-hour drive down… nope! He was fascinated with the 18-wheelers and transfer trucks on the freeway. When we got all the way past one truck, he would crane his neck to look out the windshield for the next one. We got to the pavilion, and he was ready to party!

A good time was had by all. Especially the birthday girl. There was cake. With icing, of course:

Now why did someone give me this spoon? Who needs a spoon?

Charlie thought the party was fun, too. He even tried to steal the show by turning loose and trying to walk away once—for the second time that weekend. As with the first time, he got two steps, keeled over, and I caught him. He wasn’t too sure about me holding Zoey; but while the wife had him, I carried her over to say hi to Charlie. He grinned at her, she stuck her tongue out, and Charlie cut loose with the Joyous Ear-Splitting Screech™. Zoey suddenly decided she’d had enough, and started wailing for someone she knew to come get meeeeee!.

One of the cool things they did was to put out a stationary pad for everyone to write Zoey a letter. She’s supposed to get them all and read through them when she’s 18. That involves a lot of confidence that someone will be able to hold on to that correspondence for 17 years, but it’s still a cool idea.

After the party, we hit Golden Corral and hung out for a while before heading back. Once again, Charlie kept a lookout for trucks… at least until it got dark. But he refused to give in until we got about 10 miles from home. Then, he crashed. It didn’t take much longer for me to do the same.

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