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?

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.

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.

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…

Charlie Five, and a brief uh-oh…

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.

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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.

Charlie hangs

We finally got going with the decorations last night. Once again, Mason went under the stairs to eject boxes (and wish he could turn that space into a gaming cave). We put up the tree… and handed some shatterproof ornaments to Charlie.

Hang 'em up (as high as possible)

Charlie seems to have gotten past the “slap 'em off” stage faster than Mason did. Still, we put the breakable ones up higher. Mason is able to reach nearly to the top (we still had to put the star on), so not everything got put on the lower half. He refers to the tree as the “ho ho tree.”

We’re not doing much outside, but we’ll hang some lights on the gazebo because we have power to it.

What’s your decorating status? Comments are open!

Backyard retreat 2.0 (patio to pool)

Ever since we put the gazebo up in the front yard, the old backyard retreat has languished. The fire bowl in the table rotted out, and I’ve procrastinated on rebuilding it. The cushions on the chairs got kind of grotty, and somehow a table (sans top) made its way down there. The rubber tiles were still mostly in place, although a few got scattered out.

But summer + two boys + a pandemic that will probably last through next year got me thinking. We had a small (6') inflatable pool from last year laying around… it had been put up wet, but it still held air and water. We cleaned it up as best as we could and put it on the sidewalk out front (level spots around Sector 706 in general, and FAR Manor in particular, are hard to come by).

All well and good for the kids, but what about the parents? Some poking around Amazon turned up several candidates. So… where would we put it? We need something mostly level.

Oh. The old retreat. But I didn’t want to just drop the pool on the bare ground… the soil around here grows rocks, and I figure it wouldn’t take long for a sharp rock to punch a hole in the floor. The elder sister in law had an above-ground pool at her old place, and fire ants chewed through the floor when the rocks wouldn’t do the job, so “slap directly on ground” was right out.

My first thought was to build a low deck, but I calculated the pool would weigh about 5 tons. I overengineered a deck at our old place, but I don’t know if even it would have supported that much weight. We then considered pouring several inches of sand into the space, or even concrete, to get a flat surface. Given the location, there would be a lot of grunt work involved with concrete: we would have to either carry 100 bags down there, mix it and pour it, or find a concrete company who could maneuver a truck up the driveway and send the slop down a chute. Seeing as I simultaneously tweaked my back and horked my (supposedly good) knee last week*, ironically while bailing water out of the small pool, paying to have someone else do the grunt work would have been the best idea.

Finally, we decided it would be best to smooth out what we have now, cover the Envirotiles with a tarp to protect the pool from ant attacks, and cover it with a pergola.

Patio area, cleared. (Phase 1)

So I took the boys down to the patio Sunday afternoon, and we got everything moved out. Charlie did his best to help, picking up a plastic chair and dragging tiles over to our stacking area. Mason was less enthusiastic, but did a lot of the work. I raked out remaining debris, and tried to level out high spots. I sprayed the whole area with Roundup to discourage plants from trying to slip between the tiles… but, as it turned out, most of the growth was in composted leaves that hadn’t been swept away in a long time.

Given the pandemic, large pools are going for a premium. We ordered a round 10' pool (with filter) for $300, and the same pool was going for $100 pre-pandemic. But even at COVID prices, the pool itself is the least costly part of this project.

The pergola, at $1600, is actually the priciest component. Wayfair is now telling us it won’t be delivered until August (after saying it was in stock when the wife ordered it), but August is when we'll need it most.

The boys laid tiles.
And did a pretty good job of it.

Next step: smoothing out the dirt. Nine years of rain, frost, erosion, and roots had lifted some spots and sank others (most of the sinking was along the south edge, where things do drop off). Last month, Mason and I replaced the rotten fascia boards across the front of the detached garage. One of the original boards was still good, for most of its 16-foot length, and it’s nice and straight.

We dragged it across the dirt to catch high spots, and I scraped them down with a shovel and tossed the dirt into low spots. It’s not perfect, but more effort won’t be worth the return. I swept dirt off the tiles, handed them to Charlie, and he carried them to Mason, who put them in place. Both of them were a big help—but of course, both of them want the pool going!

With the tiles down, I put the tools back in the garage and got out the leaf blower. There were leaves around the margins, and dirt on the tiles (kicked up when I frisbee’d a few tiles down to Mason).

Just add tarp (and pool… and yes, water). (Phase 2)

At this point, we just need to get a 10x10 foot tarp to lay over the tiles, then we’ll be ready to put the pool in place and start filling it. I estimated we’ll need about 1400 gallons to fill the thing—in other words, we won’t be able to fill it all at once. I’m thinking about tapping the downspout on the rain gutters, running a flex-pipe down to the pool, and catching any debris with screening… or seeing if bulk water delivery is reasonable.

I figure we’ll be able to use it through September this year, and all summer next year. Once the pandemic is over, we’ll still have the option of not driving 15 (or 40) miles to go to a pool.

Stay tuned for the completed project!

Are you restructuring your yard for an extended shelter-in-place? Comments, as always, are open!

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*Both back and knee are around 90% of full-function right now, which is a dangerous zone. Just because they’ve subsided to a low-level ache, instead of stabby OUCH pain at random (all too short) intervals, doesn’t mean you can safely hoist 60lb bags of concrete at will… even if you think you can. My back is letting me know I was pushing my luck just cleaning off tiles this evening.

Staycation, pandemic-style

We were supposed to be in Florida this week, hanging out with Mom and hitting the beach. Instead, we’re at FAR Manor.

Over the weekend, I finally got the new front derailleur on the Fuji dialed in. Hooray, time to take a ride! Um, no. The rear inner tube had partly separated from its stem. Well, Solar had suggested I put wider tires on it to improve the ride, anyway. There’s not a lot of clearance at the front fork, but thought maybe I could go from the current 25mm width to 32mm. I have a pair of 47mm tires, but they’re definitely too wide and the wrong diameter anyway. So I made plans to run over to the bike shop on Monday, and maybe get Charlie a bike with training wheels. Meanwhile, Skylar’s bike (the one he has here) needed shifting and braking adjustments. I got him rolling as well.

In the vein of “don’t go out unless you have to,” I called the bike shop before going. Nope, the shop guy opined, there’s not enough room. And they didn’t have any Charlie-sized bikes in stock. I thought we had a small frame laying around, so instead of driving to another bike shop I thought I’d try to Frankenstein a bike from bits and pieces.

Needs a little cleaning along with training wheels

Instead, I found an entire bike with a 12” frame! It was one Mason had for a while, until he outgrew it. The tires, amazingly, still held air. Some WD-40 got the chain loosened up, and I regreased the bearings on one wheel. So it rolls, it pedals, and the coaster brake works. I ordered a set of training wheels, and almost added a Trailgator (basically a towbar to pull his bike behind mine). The price—$65 for a metal bar with clamps on either end—put me off, though. Anyway, I raised the seat an inch and it fit Charlie perfectly.

All that, actually, was in between the ceiling fans. Daughter Dearest had ceiling fans for each of the kids’ rooms (three in all), and asked me to put them in because Sizzle is still working while the rest of us are on spring break. I succeeded, only after multiple trips back to the manor to fetch hardware, tools, and at last I had enough and brought everything. That turned out to be the way to go, and the fans are all happily spinning away.

I mentioned Skylar… he’s been spending weekdays at the manor because his nominal guardians are both working. He brought his bike up (the one I adjusted) over the weekend, and an HP laptop. “Do you have a cord for this?” he asked, repeatedly, until I told him to knock it off and let me do it when I had a chance. Before the fans, I scrounged a power cord and had to shave a little off the female end to make it fit in the power supply. I pushed it in, using as much force as I dared, and a light came on when I plugged it in. He wanted to start it right away, of course, but I told him to give it a few hours to let the battery get charged.

Finally, after everything, we started it. Black screen, and the Caps Lock LED was flashing. I realized it was a pattern—three long, two short—and I looked it up. Memory error. “Well,” I told myself, “it hasn’t been run in a while. Maybe if I reseat the RAM, it will be OK.”

So I flipped it over, opened the little door on the bottom, and… no RAM at all! I found out later, from Skylar, that a house guest had scrounged the single memory stick to put in his own computer. Nice guy. So I couldn’t reseat the RAM, but I had a 4GB stick on my desk from when I upgraded the iMac. It looked to be the same style, so I used the “cat in a box” formula: if it fits, it sits. I buttoned it up, plugged it in, and hit power. It coughed to life and displayed a login screen for the Microsoft thing. Yuck. Of course, I didn’t have the PIN it requested, although I tried some of the common ones (1234, 9999, etc). I configured the BIOS to boot from a USB drive, stuck one on and rebooted, and I soon had a Kubuntu desktop. Things seemed to be working properly, and exploring the hard drive suggested there was little or nothing (besides the OS and apps) on it. Skylar thinks his grandfather (Big V’s widower) knows the PIN, so he should soon be off and running.

So that was my first day of staycation: mostly fixing other people’s stuff. But I’ll soon have a new inner tube for the Fuji, and I’ll at long last take it on its shakedown cruise.

Bedtime follies

Getting Charlie to go to bed can be a crapshoot, especially if he hasn't had a lot of outdoor time to wear himself out… or if he has a cold.

Most nights, I'm the one who gete his pajamas on. As I am ever a hopeful soul, I’ll ask him, “are you ready to go to sleep?” He nods, which is a gigantic lie, but I'll put a blanket on him and turn off the light. Usually, he jumps out of bed after a couple minutes and does his thing until one of us reels him in and settles him down.

But yesterday night, he didn’t jump out of bed right away. After a short while, the wife called down the hall: “Is Charles with you?”

“No, I put him in bed…” Is it possible? I thought. Maybe he went to sleep! 

I went to his bedroom, and waited for my eyes to adjust. I saw a dark shape on the bed, and touched it… too soft. It was one of his stuffed bears. I felt around some more, then finally gave up and turned on the light.

And there was Charlie.

Sitting cross-legged up in the corner of the bed.

Stark naked.

Diaper at his side, pajamas a little farther away, socks at the foot of the bed.

Seriously. I have no idea what his thought process was for this… was he expecting me to find him like that? Or did he plan to sleep in his all-in-all? Or (more likely) would he have shortly wandered into the living room to make the wife wonder what he was thinking?

I re-assembled his nighttime ensemble, and put him in my bed until he gave up and zorched out.

That was one of the more off-beat things Charlie has done in his nightly battle against the Sleep Monster. It makes me wonder what he’ll do to top it, later on.

Done!

After all the hearings, the forms, the interviews and evaluations, the end was almost anti-climatic. We went into a conference room, the judge swore us in, and asked us if we still wanted to go through with it. He signed a paper and said, “It’s official.”

Charlie is now our adopted son.

The judge was happy to stand with us and get a pic. He said, “Adoptions and drug court graduations are the best part. Everything else can be kind of sad.”

Our second family (plus the judge and AJ)

There’s still stuff to deal with, including getting Charlie’s updated birth certificate and changing the name on his Social Security card. And the adoption assistance will take over from the foster stipend to cover Charlie’s therapies and the like.

I took the day off, and we kept Mason out of school so he could be part of the final ceremony.

Then I got to thinking… if Splat (Charlie’s bio-dad) is his cousin, does that make Splat his own uncle? Well, family trees in this part of the country do have their share of tangled branches…

Four!

Wife observed: “Now that Charlie is four, he’s entering his Terrible Twos.” He’s definitely four, Terrible Twos notwithstanding. He’s curious about everything, he can reach the top of the dressers in our bedroom, and he’s trying so hard to talk. He invented a sign for Play-Dough, hands inverting over each other (I should probably post a video). Daughter Dearest got him to make the “d” sound, and the “oh” sound, but he just can’t quite seem to put them together. Hey, at least he’s starting to use consonants. The rest will come.

Bread with pizza sauce… perfect!

We had a sort-of pizza party for him this evening, to mark the occasion. He can’t actually eat pizza, but he’s fine with the crust and sauce. So one of the pepperoni pizzas I made this evening had a fourth of it missing cheese and 'roni. Sauced bread was just fine with him. We also had a veggie pizza, but that didn’t last the night. I’d have liked one with 'roni, ham, and bacon, but hey… it’s not my night.

There was also bowtie pasta (Charlie’s favorite) with marinara sauce. Instead of a birthday cake, we had assorted doughnuts. Charlie likes plain ones, and I think he got two of them. (“Hey, it’s his birthday.”) As we’re working on the theory that he sleeps better on a really full belly, we were okay with letting him eat. Besides, there are a few doughnuts left over for tomorrow morning, and I fully intend to grab one to enjoy with my coffee.

After the food (and cake, or cake doughnuts in any case), what comes next with a birthday? Presents!

Charlie got the hang of opening presents during the Christmas craze, and he obviously doesn’t have a problem remembering how. His favorite was a Play-Dough activity set (have I mentioned he loves his 'doh?). He got a set of Baby Shark puzzles and games, and only got interested in that once we put up the Play-Dough.

He’s not really into the Grand Acquistion of Stuff phase just yet, and Mason didn’t get there until he was six or so. If he has attention, cars, or Play-Dough (roughly in that order), he’s fine. Mason complains about him being annoying, but the two of them aren’t all that different. Mason gets massively annoying when he wants attention from us, and Charlie gets massively annoying when he wants attention from Mason (or us). Both of them torment the dog, and I think Charlie learned some of that from Mason.

Anyway. Big news might be coming in slightly less than a month. Stay tuned for the latest from the free-range insane asylum!

Moving to a Big Boy Bed [[UPDATED]]

AJ is doing very well. She had her first church visit yesterday, and that went well. She has put on a pound since she came home from the hospital (that was like >20% of her take-home body weight, people… babies grow fast).

So we sent DD and AJ the mattress out of Charlie’s crib, which meant we had to get serious about updating his sleeping arrangement. The crib is a “4-in-1,” which in practical terms means it converts into toddler bed, daybed, and finally (using the back as a headboard) a full-size bed. The wife thought a full-size bed would fit in Charlie’s small room at first, then realized it wouldn’t. That was the bad news. The good news was, the bed frame width is adjustable. We slid it down to twin-bed size, I cut a piece of 1/2" plywood I had in the garage to fit, then (temporarily) inflated the air mattress and layered a foam topper over it.

As long as you don't expect me to actually go to sleep…

The body pillow behind him goes on the floor for actual night-night time. He still has a habit of rolling off the bed, and we’re trying to provide him with a soft landing. He made it to about 5:30am this morning, so I think his bod is starting to program itself to not flip and flop all over the place. Then again, I remember falling out of the top bunk a couple of times, when I was 4 and 5, onto a floor (no carpet, and certainly no body pillows to cushion the landing).

Next stop is to replace the air mattress, but we’ve found he does like a soft bed. I guess we can go with memory foam if nothing else.

UPDATE: We got him a cushy mattress with memory foam. He loves the way it feels, but not so much that he’ll go to sleep by himself. :-P

Charlie meets AJ

I’ll let the pics do the talking…

Charlie speaks (sort of)

A couple Fridays ago, I went to pick up Charlie from daycare, and this is what he looked like:

Fence 1, Nose and Forehead 0
…but he came out grinning!

Seems there’s a downslope at one edge of the playground, with a fence, and Charlie decided to take a trike down the slope at full-tilt-boogie. They said he put his hands out at the last minute, but it didn’t stop the faceplant (or was it a fenceplant?). The scuff scabbed over, and could be seen a long way off, before it finally started healing. Fortunately, it’s nearly gone now. I carried the incident report from the daycare around with me for a while, in case someone accused me of something they shouldn’t.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. Charlie’s speech therapy is finally starting to pay off. He still can’t do hard consonants, but he can say several things recognizable as words: “gah-dah” (Granddad), “gah-ma” (Grandmom), “ow-ooo” (out, as in outside), “uh!” (up), “banana” (his favorite snack food) and a couple other things on occasion. The therapist is working on getting him a Dynavox, a tablet with speech software. You tap an icon and it speaks for him. She tried him on one she was setting up for another patient, and he took to it right away. Still, the old grunt-and-point often gets him a long way toward being understood. He’ll put a whiny edge on it when he wants something, too.

I observed recently that he’s looking less like a baby and more like a little boy these days. He wants to do more things for himself, which is commendable. One recent evening, we read a few books, and he held one and turned the pages after I read the text. He’s been working on dressing himself as well, and can do all but the shirt (The Boy, advanced as he was, didn’t start dressing himself until he was 4). He is even showing a preference for which car he wants to ride in… either M.O. the B.B. (huge pickup) or the Miata (tiny roadster).

Now if I could only get him to expand his approved proteins list…

All the boys

I found this after the fact: Mikel, Mason, and Charlie, all in one pic. It was from last December, when he came up to spend Christmas with us. This is one of the few shots I have of all three of my boys in one place… and almost certainly the latest.

The boys hanging out

Gotta love the Pocahontas pillowcase that I gave Mikel that night!

Charlie, soccer, and a few mini-rants

With a new car in the garage—a 2019 Kia Soul EX—I now have that critical extra seat to take both Mason and Charlie places. I still have the Miata, but I won’t be putting all the miles on it anymore. Of course, that means I “get” to take Charlie to Mason’s soccer practices… which means I don’t get to sit and chat with the other soccer dads quite so much.

The upside is, we bring Charlie his own soccer ball, find an empty nearby field, and let him wear himself out dribbling the ball around. He was, despite his best efforts, completely zorched when we got home tonight.

He’s not terrible at ball control, which isn’t something you can say about many U8 or even some U10 players. His throw-in technique is better than half the players in Mason’s U10 league—ball overhead, both feet planted, no coach could ask for more. His birthday was 8 days past the cut-off for “U4 mini-league” this spring, but I’ll sign him up in the fall. It’ll be hilarious, watching a bunch of 3 year olds swarming the soccer ball… or sitting in the grass and playing in the dirt… (BTW, that’s Mason wearing the red/orange shirt in the background, flailing his arms. He scored a personal-record five goals in last Saturday’s game, although I only saw three because I was busy trying to keep Charlie from bolting onto the field.)

Mini-rant #1: How to get me to sign up for auto-pay
Somehow or another, I missed setting up the payment for last month’s cellphone bill. In a highly uncharacteristic move for AT&T, they didn’t immediately send me a “hey, pay up” email, text, or anything else. I had this nagging “did I pay them?” thing going on, but figured they would let me know if I hadn’t. So I go online to pay this month’s bill, and find the bill is about double what it usually should be. Whatever, I thought, and clicked “Pay My Bill.”

The website immediately started grinding, trying to get its act together, but enough time went by for it to pop up a “hey, are you still there?” notification. I gave up, figuring it was just a temporary glitch. (AT&T’s “up”dated website is gobs slower and far less responsive than the old one, BTW.) Then they had the nerve to pop up a “how are we doing?” notification. I let them know, in spades, then closed the tab. Trying again this evening gave me the same results. I finally went to pay it over the phone using the convenient *729 number. It asked me if I wanted to set up auto-pay… and yeah, why not? Most of my other monthly bills are on autopilot now.

So that’s how to get me to sign up for auto-pay. Conveniently forget to tell me I let one slip, then hose up your website to the point that I can’t get things caught up when I find out.

Mini-rant #2: When auto-pay gives you an Epic FAIL
And then, there’s the credit union’s credit card. I happened to be home last week one afternoon, and the home phone rang. The caller ID read CARSERVICES. Figuring this was a telespammer selling extended warranties, I answered to tie up the phone line (the longer you keep those @$$#0|3$ on the line, the less time they have to bother someone else). To my surprise, it was the credit union, wondering why I hadn’t paid my credit card balance.

“Huh?” I asked. “I had auto-pay set up.”

“Did you pay off the balance?” (I had, two months prior.) “If you pay off the balance, auto-pay automatically cancels.”

Surprise!

I happened to have the credit union website up on my computer at the moment, so I set up an immediate transfer and all was well. Except that I was miffed about auto-pay getting canceled without so much as a “good job, dude, and sayonara” message. Unlike mini-rant #1, I hadn’t forgotten anything—just ASSumed it was taken care of. The other credit cards I have on auto-pay just don’t transfer anything if I haven’t put anything on them, or pay off the balance if it’s less than what I set up on a monthly basis. There’s always a joker in the deck.

Mini-rant #3: Taxing taxes
Unlike many people, I don’t mind paying taxes. They keep the roads paved, provide food and healthcare to (not enough of) those who need it, run schools, and keep essential emergency services going. Are there things I wish they would do instead of other things I wish they wouldn’t? Oh heck yes. But overall, it’s better to contribute to the general welfare and reap the benefits. If you want to see what happens when you don’t have taxes, spend a few months in Somalia.

Anyway. I’ve been pretty good about getting the federal/state tax returns done in recent years, usually in late February or early March. This year was different, through no fault of my own for a change. We got our W-2s (as usual) right at the end of the January 31st deadline… but before I could grab the tax software and get to work, I got an email from work. In essence, it said, “the payroll company screwed up the W-2s, and we’ll get fixes to you ASAP.”

Weeks went by, and then months, without fixes. Some of us would email HR on occasion, and get the same response: “they haven’t fixed it yet, we’ll let you know.”

FINALLY, in the first week of April, they rolled out the fixes. It just so happened that I was out of town that week, so it was the week after before I could do anything about it. The wife and I both have business stuff to deal with, so it’s not just a matter of slapping down a few numbers and sending it off. Fortunately, it turns out the IRS has a way of filing for an extension online… and I wasn’t the only one who was up against the gun. The father in law needed some extra time as well.

With any luck, I’ll be able to finish up this weekend. Even with all the games Ch*mp played with withholding, there should be a refund.


Sound off!
What’s your rant du jour? Or maybe you have a new car you want to tell me about? :) Drop a comment, I love 'em.

When you go to the delicatessen store…

I’m one of those people who like liverwurst. Always have. I gave it up for a while, what with the weight gain and high blood pressure, but Boar’s Head came out with a lite version the has lots less fat and sodium, and is still pretty tasty.

A few weeks ago, I got a quarter pound. As the deli guy was slicing it up, I thought, “Hey, Charlie likes food with this texture. I wonder if he’d like this.” So the next evening, I made him a sandwich and offered the corner.

NOM!

Charlie likes sandwiches okay. But when he got a taste of this, he grabbed it out of my hand and gobbled it down. Now up to this point, whenever he got hold of a sandwich, he would open it up, remove the meat, and eat the bread. Not this time, or any time since! The experiment was a roaring success, and I might have got one sandwich out of the batch.

So I found myself at the grocery store a few days later. I got half a pound this time, figuring maybe I could sneak a sandwich or two for myself. I came home and told the wife I got Charlie and me some liverwurst. Charlie heard this, and pushed me into the kitchen. “It doesn’t matter if I just ate or not, I want some of that good stuff!” Next time, Charlie was with me, and he got the sample slice (plus a slice of beef bologna, which he also liked pretty well).

Once again, we were out. I picked up Charlie from daycare on the way home from work this evening, and decided to grab a whole pound this time (because I still only get two sandwiches out of a half pound after Charlie gets through with it). We headed toward the deli, and he pointed and hooted, remembering how he’d scored a freebie last time. Once again, he got the sample. He finished it while they were slicing the cheese, and he signed “more.” Sure, why not? A couple pieces of liverwurst won’t hurt anything.

But he wasn’t through. As I rolled through the store on the way to grab a box of diapers, he wanted another piece. And another. And one more at the checkout. Then, when we got home, he devoured all but two bites of a peanut butter sandwich.

So when you go to the delicatessen store, grab another pound of liverwurst for Charlie and me. What we have now won’t stay around long.

It Don't Mean a Thing

Some cleanup required

I was bonking around in the garage Sunday afternoon, not doing much important, when I ran across Mason’s old porch swing. “Too bad I don’t have anything to hang it on,” I thought. “Charlie might like to swing in it.”

Then I remembered…

Some years back, we had a yard swing. It moved between the front and back yards as the whim struck whoever was sitting in it, until a bored and unsupervised Skylar destroyed the canopy with a stick, along with the sling that kept the upholstery against one’s sitting parts. The frame sat in the back yard, until someone decided to raid it for the hardware. The pieces have been sitting out back ever since.

With Mason looking on, I started to work on the jigsaw puzzle; it clicked after a couple minutes. Next was to find suitable hardware: 3” bolts and nuts. Amazingly, the first drawer I looked in had the bolts, and they were the perfect thickness! Could it really be that easy?

I've been framed!

Anyone who has followed this blog for a while knows the answer: nothing at FAR Manor is that easy. The bolts had two different thread pitches—finding nuts for one pair was easy, the other… not so much. But I refused to believe I had bolts without matching nuts somewhere. Finally, a prolonged scrounging session turned up one, then another, along with a set of bent washers (meant to follow the contour of a pole), so that was useful.

It took far longer, of course, to find the parts than to assemble them. I used a couple disinfectant wipes to clean off the swing bucket, then hung it on the frame. The bottom of the swing was about three inches off the ground, if that. So I pulled the ropes out of the bottom and tied them to raise the swing off the ground.

It works, Granddad!

With that, Charlie tried out the swing and seemed to enjoy it. It’s now sitting next to the gazebo.

I’m not done with the project just yet. My first thought was to hacksaw about 18 inches off the top bar to bring the hooks a little closer together. Wife had another idea… which I hope to show in Part 2.

Friday Charlie blogging

Charlie knows it’s important to accessorize when you’re hitting the town on Friday night…

I’m going to regret this when I’m older.

A big string of shiny beads—and, of course, Mason’s colorful undies as headgear!

Note: He did this without my help or encouragement. I just took the picture afterwards.

The World's Cutest Pirate 2.0

Six years ago, Mason was the world’s cutest pirate.

Well, Charlie has to try to do everything Mason does, so…

The kids at church did a “reverse trick or treat” (in which the kids dropped off treats for the seniors) at a local assisted living center over the weekend, which explains the background. Charlie, of course, charmed many of the residents with his sunny disposition and curiosity. I was surprised that he mostly kept the headscarf on.

His granddad is still ready to plunder some booty, if he gets the chance…