It’s real life — but like any soap opera, Tales from FAR Manor revolves around a core group of people, depicting their relationships, with occasional guest appearances from outside folks. These are all real people, although I’ve changed the names primarily to protect the minors. OK… I did it to protect myself from retribution.
Mrs. Fetched, aka “the wife,” SWMBO, or Wife-o-licious, is... well, my wife. I’ve only been married once and have no intention of repeating the experience. We’ve been married 26 years now. She’s a Type A, and I’m not, and that’s all I think I need to say here. It’s because of her that we live at FAR Manor; the property used to belong to her parents and they went berserk when it went up for sale. So they drove her crazy, and she about drove me crazy telling me we had to buy this place (which happened, over my objections, but I still have to pay the mortgage). Her primary work is her parents’ chicken houses, although she does get some video editing work on occasion (I’m her free tech support).
The Boy, aka “Offspring #1,” is the older of our two children. He turned 22 at the beginning of this year (2010). He’s a Type II diabetic, although they initially thought he was Type I at his onset in March 2004. After losing a good bit of weight (he now weighs less than I do, good job!), the docs switched him from four-a-day insulin shots to pills and one shot per day. He’s very talented in visual and musical art, and plans to be a rock star eventually. At least he’ll be able to design his own album covers. Currently, he’s unemployed and trying to deal with yet another run-in with the law. He’s emotionally a lot like his mom, which I think is the source of a lot of the conflicts between all of us. But I could be wrong.
Daughter Dearest is the second (and last, we made sure of that) child. She’s 21, and a junior at Reinhardt
We also have one cat and three dogs, which is enough cats and one dog too many.
The peripheral “cast,” as it were, includes:
Olga is what I’ve dubbed my personal Muse. My mental image of Olga is a burly woman with hacked-off blonde hair, wearing a leather corset and carrying a riding crop. “I haff given you idea. You will sit down and wrrrite!” smack That’s what it feels like, when a story is ponging around in my head and won’t let me rest until I get it down.
Snippet is The Boy’s current girlfriend. She’s 18 and the grandbaby-mama. She can act mature when she wants to, although she’s quite capable of acting her age (or less) — and less is her preferred mode these days, if she even bothers getting out of bed. She and The Boy talk about getting married, but they have (wisely, for a change) avoided it so far. She really needs to learn how to trust him, especially when she’s the one who cheated on him at least once.I really need to update this picture… she was 16 when I took it. Giving birth has added a little rounding to her angles.
DoubleRed is a former boarder. She’s easily the oldest of the non-family who has lived at FAR Manor since we moved here, but in very few respects the most mature. She likes to let her problems become everyone’s problems by dint of freaking out and whining until everyone around her gets tired of hearing it.
EJ has been a friend of The Boy’s for a long time, and has always been polite and responsible (attributes we wish most of his other friends had). He was one of our boarders, probably the only one we really wouldn’t mind keeping.These days, he hangs out with Daughter Dearest at least as much as The Boy.
J is a friend of The Boy’s, about the same age. He’s mostly moved on, living in Kentucky these days, but does drop by every so often.
M.A.E. (Ms. Almost Einstein) is The Boy’s ex-girlfriend. She lived here from July 2005 to October 2006, and returned last September — and for all the weird stuff that goes on around here, it’s probably one of the more stable situations she’s been in. She matured some during her first stay, and I don’t think she’s as unintelligent as she believes. She had a girl (Moptop) with a guy whom she was living with, then he started cheating on her, and that’s more or less why she’s here. There’s a certain amount of tension, what with The Boy’s current and former girlfriends under the same roof.
SPOW (Serious Piece of Work) is M.A.E.’s biological mother. Her nickname should tell you everything you need (or want) to know.
Lobster is another former and current boarder, our first actually. He and The Boy met at the private school they went to back when. He lives wherever he doesn’t have to follow anyone else’s rules, lost his job at KFC, lost his truck to repossession, lost another job at Wal-Mart, and dropped off our radar for a while. Now he has a welding job, a kid (who lives with the baby-mama), and is staying with us again for reasons unknown.
Mr. Sunshine is Mrs. Fetched’s (and Big V’s) brother. Like most of his family, he doesn’t have much respect for other people’s opinions, and has led a my-way existence for most of his life that has taken him absolutely nowhere. I’m afraid The Boy is heading down the same road, but with even less going for him because Sunshine finished school and has at least some vo-tech education. This year, he’s a truck driver… Lord knows what he’ll be doing next year. He also has a wife (Jam) and two boys (Brand X and Evil Lad NOT) at home (plus a son and daughter from a previous marriage, long since adults and on their own).
Kobold is Jam’s eldest, from her previous marriage. He was, until very recently, living in Indiana with his bio-dad’s family and moved back to the free-range insane asylum for reasons I ’m not 100% sure of. He has a girlfriend here and a daughter in Indiana.
There are others who haven’t appeared here too often; I’ll add descriptions as necessary.
