Evil Twin Moves In

Evil Twin shows Mason
how to catch a lizard

The “more evil” half of the Evil Twins needed some space from her parents—her brothers have long since left the state—so of course she came to FAR Manor. This isn’t a bad thing for a change: unlike M.A.E., she helps (a lot) with Mason, and has her own car. She also doesn’t have the baggage associated with her own rugrat.

As I type this, she’s out looking for a job. Unfortunately, she does share M.A.E.’s functional illiteracy issues, so good luck with that. She’s also Daughter Dearest’s age, but looks (and eats) like a teenager.

While the wife isn’t 100% thrilled to have an extra body at FAR Manor, I’m not griping for a change. As I said, she helps a lot with Mason—which leaves me free to blog, write, or take care of things in or around the manor. She’ll help some with the dishes, too.

Best of all, she’s usually up for spending some time at the patio or even on a berry-picking tramp through the woods. Wife & Daughter Dearest seem to see “outside” only as a place to work. There’s that, certainly, but it also offers recreation. On calm afternoons or evenings, we’ll take Mason out to the patio, light the tiki torches and the firepit in the table, and watch Mason burn off some energy. Sometimes, I get pictures. This morning, the three of us went tramping around and found about a half-gallon of blackberries (a month earlier than usual!) and a cup of blueberries. We probably hiked two miles all told, which explains why Mason wanted to be carried a lot toward the end of the expedition. He’s usually good for about half a mile.

After lunch, I laid him down for his nap. He protested, as always, but dropped off fairly quickly. Well, he didn’t drop off so much as climb down and curl up under his bed. This is something The Boy did fairly often, but his bed didn’t have near as much clearance underneath.

So things have been fairly quiet at FAR Manor for a while. I wonder how long that will last.