Weekend Mason blogging

Or, “what I did on our vacation…”

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Y'all can call me Shady!

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Hey, these floaties keep me out of the water!
Time to go for a swim…

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Yes, wearing ice cream is half the fun!

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Man, it's been a long day… I guess
I'll rest a minute… ZZZzzzZZZzzz…

Adventures in Potty Training

From the moment I could talk

I was ordered to listen

— Cat Stevens

Nothing was exposed
in this exposure…

We’ve begun the arduous task of potty-training a toddler. Given Mason’s family tree—one branch is Type A, another branch just stubborn and contrary—it’s going better than one might expect. We’re getting into the habit of putting him on the throne when he wakes up (morning or nap) and that ’s going well (no pun intended). I think he’ll be out of diapers by summer’s end.

For now though, it’s the Atomic Diapers that are the problem. He just doesn’t want to take time off from whatever’s got him interested, and thus loads up his diaper. He knows by now that he loses TV or outdoor privileges when we gives us a nuclear waste dump, but hasn’t taken steps to avoid it yet.

But he does know when he has or hasn’t done it. Yesterday, we were going home and I smelled something. “Mason, are you atomic?” I asked him.

“No!” A very vehement “no” it was.

“It wasn’t him,” said Daughter Dearest. That was all that needed to be said, but who’s going to pass up the chance to say more?

Friday was better. His Grandmom was in the bedroom, and he came in and took her hand. “Come here,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“Come on.” He led her into his bedroom, where he had a diaper and the wipes laid out on the bed.

“No spank.”

“What… did you put those there?”

“Uh-huh. No spank, okay Grandmom?”

He did avoid a spanking on that one, yes. But it would be better if he said something beforehand.

If Planet Georgia wasn’t so bug-heavy, I’d do what Mom did to me: let me run around all summer flapping in the breeze. For whatever reason, I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have something on. But I wouldn’t get the kind of pictures she did…

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.

Multitasking

Last week, I wanted to get some writing done, but the wife was glued to the TV and Mason wanted attention. We played in his room for a while, then the old evening refrain…

“Watch George.” (i.e. Curious George)

“Grandmom’s watching something,” I said. “You can watch George when her show’s done.”

“Watch George!”

I suddenly realized: there’s a way that all three of us could be happy. I plucked a Curious George DVD off the stack and put Mason on my lap in front of my MacBook. I plugged in the outboard monitor, moved Scrivener over to it, then put the DVD in.

Soon, Mason was watching George on the laptop screen, while I was typing away onto the other screen (and balancing a toddler on my leg). Both the computer and the granddad managed without anything falling over. All too soon, Mason decided to go back to playing.

I’ve been promising the MacBook a memory upgrade for some time. But a recent update got the computer into constant swap mode, warming things up and getting the fans going, so now it was past time. I went hunting on lowendmac.com for info, and found that my MacBook was manufactured between May and October 2007. So… if it hasn't happened already, its fifth birthday is imminent. The memory came in yesterday, and it took less than 10 minutes to install. Not only did it cure the fan-spinning problem, the whole computer feels a lot snappier. No bop-to-swap when changing apps!

The MacBook continues to be plenty fast for my needs, even at age 5. It will keep going until a major hardware failure or until too many apps require Cougar Mountain Lion to run (and in the latter case, I could just go with Linux and run Scrivener in emulation).

With tablets as capable as they are, I may make my next computer an iMac or Mac mini, with an iPad paired to a Bluetooth keyboard. (That is, if I can keep Mason from stealing the iPad… that’s a problem with the current one.)

Just Shoot Me

Big V came up here Wednesday and spent the night. “It’s for this week,” says the wife, “until she gets her glucose under control.” Like The Boy, Big V has diabetes — and like The Boy, she does absolutely nothing to keep it where it needs to be. So her levels have been running anywhere from 220 to 490 (100 is ideal), and “until she gets it under control” could be a long, long time. She had the audacity to ask me for ice cream over the weekend, then I had to chase her away from grabbing a box of Teddy Grahams in the kitchen. Maybe I should just give her the gun; it would be a lot quicker and there’d be more of her left in the casket. Yes, I’m being morbid, but that’s pretty much the situation.

Of course, with Big V up here at the manor, Skylar is here too. Of the two, he’s less hassle. Usually. There’s always the screaming matches with Mason over some toy that one didn’t care about until the other one picked it up.

Monday nights are extra-special. The Voice is on, and SWMBO insists in devoting her full attention to it, and woe to anyone who makes undue noise while it’s on. That wouldn’t be so bad, but Mason sleeps in the living room for now. I need to show her Hulu, so she can watch her shows on the iPad once Mason’s asleep. Of course, if you try using the iPad in Mason’s presence, he’s all over you wanting to play Otto Matic or something. I think once things warm up more reliably, and Big V is no longer here, we’ll move Mason into the guest room until he’s old enough to want The Boy’s old room upstairs.

I give this situation another week. By then, Big V and SWMBO will get into their own screaming match over something and Big V will drive home in her powerchair with Skylar in her lap.

But to end this on a more pleasant note, Mason got his first ice cream cone this weekend. He also got his first taste of kiwi, and I’m not sure which he liked better — his eyes lit UP over the kiwi, and he gave me the Happiest Kid in the World grin when he saw me bringing his cone. Of course I got a pic!

That’s pretty much the way things are at FAR Manor for now. As always, I’ll have to wrest an afternoon from the clutches of everyone else so I can get a few things of my own done.

Racing to Recovery

Mason’s cold has about run its course — he’s back to his old (usually) cheerful self — and hallelujah, he’s sleeping all night more often than not!

The Boy is starting to send some cash to cover what he owes us (oh that’s right, it is 2012). So we were in the local Mal*Wart to pick up the wired cash, and guess what was crouching just past the front door? Mason got all excited and walked all the way around it, then I got him to stand in front of it so I could get a picture. “Mason and race car!” he said, pointing to the picture; he’s not referring to himself as “Boy” now.

Speaking of The Boy, he and Snippet are officially on the outs again. Or was as of two days ago. She hadn’t been “home” for a while, and The Boy now says he’s going to get his own apartment when the lease runs out. Having heard similar things before, we’ll believe it when it happens. I am so glad we don’t have to deal with that drama up close and personal anymore. I guess the breakup will be truly official when Snippet moves back to Planet Georgia.

And speaking of Snippet, her mom (i.e. Mason’s other grandma) came to visit on the weekend. He enjoyed hanging out with her. While she was here, we — that is, the wife, her mom, and I — planted a couple fig trees out back. “We need to plant them where they’ll be sheltered from the north wind,” said the mother-in-law. You know, I never thought I’d actually use that Compass app… never say never, right? We ended up planting them behind the house. Maybe they’ll actually give a fig.

Now that Mason’s better, things are getting peaceful at FAR Manor. Time for something else to happen.

Long November, Sick Grandkid

This “winter” has been one long November on Planet Georgia. The mini-winters that make up the season have been few and far between so far. I’ve actually had to stretch the definition to designate the last couple of days Winter #2 — it didn’t stay below freezing through the day, and the forecast sleet and “wintry mix” never materialized. I guess the Mountain West and Europe have been getting all their winter and ours to boot. It’ll be March in a couple weeks, so time is running out.

Meanwhile, the weather got to Mason: he’s had a cold for the last week and a half. He was pretty good about it at first, but in the last few days he’s run out of patience. He’s cranky, doesn’t want to eat much, and his sleep cycles are all out of whack. He really needs to eat; it would probably make him (and us) feel better. I really don’t know how he manages to get by on a handful of fruit and liquids (juice and a little milk), but he doesn’t look starved yet. And yet, he’s spreading the misery. Mrs. Fetched says she’s taking him to the doctor tomorrow, but she’s been saying that for a week now.

However, he has figured out how to use the iPad. He can wake it up and find a game (or Adobe Ideas, a nice finger-painting app), even if he doesn’t quite understand how to play just yet. His favorite game is Otto Matic, right now. Even “better,” he’s figured out that my iPhone has most of the same games — which means I can’t give Twitter a look without Mason crawling into my lap and trying to grab my phone. It did come in handy over the weekend though, when we were trying to keep him from nodding off in the car before lunch: I handed him the phone and he took it from there.

Tax time is here, but I’ve already done ¾ of the work: just waiting on Mrs. Fetched to get me the business expenses and car taxes.

I downloaded the Blogger app for my iPhone over the weekend, thinking maybe it would help me compose stuff at lunch. Kind of, yeah… if it bothers to save drafts. Google needs to do some serious work on that app, or make a mobile-friendly dashboard. It’s best feature is (again, when it saves) the ability to upload photos from the phone.

Oh, remember Prince Stinky? He disappeared for a couple weeks, but came back with a little matted fur but otherwise fine. I think he has a first home somewhere nearby, and comes here to visit when he needs a little weirdness in his life. Mrs. Fetched is making noises about getting him fixed, so he won’t spray everything (Daughter Dearest says he even scented my car last weekend).

Winter and headcolds both go away, so things will soon improve at FAR Manor. Just gotta wait it out.

Winter on the Patio

As always, winter on Planet Georgia is confused: it’s warmest out when it’s cloudy. After a couple chilly nights during the week, temperatures recovered to roughly normal for the long weekend. Mrs. Fetched’s mom said she had some play sand a while back, and I finally brought it up to the manor. We put a coat and “boggin” (wooly cap) on Mason, the same on me, and we went out to the patio.

This worked out fairly well, except that Mason wanted to treat the sand the same way he treated the water during warmer weather: something to fling in all directions. I was only partially successful in dissuading him. Otherwise, I sat back and played with my phone — and found that the wifi carried all the way out to the patio… sweeeeet. The sand was much warmer on bare hands than water could be, a major plus.

Then Mrs. Fetched brought Skylar up. Mason was not happy about this at first, but they shortly worked things out and started flinging sand everywhere. sigh I built a fire in the table and kept my feet warm while watching the kids play. Except for one or two brief shouting matches, they played pretty well together.

Naturally, it wasn’t all that long before they decided to explore a little. This was mostly wading through where I’d piled the leaves from the back yard, and they came right back when I told them to (it’s a miracle, I tell you!).

Finally, lunch called and we all went inside. With rain coming tomorrow, I put the covers on things and left the spilled sand where it lie. It’ll likely wash in between the tiles, where it will possibly do some good.

A Smooth Visit

Well, as smooth as anything ever goes around FAR Manor, anyway. There were no episodes of Daughter Dearest committing mayhem on Snippet, or even a heated argument. But it wasn’t completely uneventful…

The Boy and Snippet arrived Christmas Eve, almost exactly when expected. I got to talk with The Boy a while outside that afternoon. He seems to really like Manitowoc; he said he plans to stay there two or three years. He’s been working at a snow blower factory, which seems like a pretty steady job in Wisconsin although they haven’t had much snow there this year. He texted me a pic last week (before arriving) of a dusting of snow, with the comment “this is the first snow that stuck for more than five minutes.” It’s been a pretty mild winter so far, north as well as south. But he thinks he has a better job lined up when he gets back… one with good benefits and better pay. That would be good!

Of course, they were off visiting friends pretty much every evening except the last. Mason mostly enjoyed having them around, although he seemed relieved when they were gone. Toddlers do like their routines, and don’t like having them disrupted.

Snippet was mostly on her best behavior while she was here. Mrs. Fetched printed out several of these shots and included them in Christmas cards, including the one for The Boy and Snippet. She opened the card and squealed.

“What is it? A $100 bill?” our friend Jacob asked.

“No, it’s better!” She waved the picture around.

Okay… when someone says a photo I took is better than a $100 bill, it becomes rather difficult to say bad things about that person afterwards. Really, the only problem we had with Snippet is that she seemed to have an upset stomach. A lot.

You think she’s preg? Daughter Dearest texted me (from across the room) at one point. I really really don’t want to think about that possibility. Texting or IM’ing someone in the same room is a kind of telepathy, when you think about it… nobody else can hear what you say FARf! focus!


Anyway. She got better, good enough to go to iHop with us for lunch. One of her friends is working there, was on duty, and they had a nice chat. Snippet had a job at an ice cream factory (imagine that, a dairy job in Wisconsin… almost as strange as a poultry job in Georgia), but it melted away and now she’s at the local Applebee’s. So she told her friend, “If we move back, I could work at Applebee’s and Calvin Klein!” (she worked at the latter in the outlet mall before moving). Mrs. Fetched looked at Snippet, while I looked at The Boy. He didn’t show any reaction at all… like he just tuned her out.

Mason and I both got “happy place” presents. He got the train table shown here, and has left it only reluctantly since Christmas. Mrs. Fetched’s older sister, the sane one (because she lives like 90 miles away) got a new iPhone 4S, stuck her old iPhone 4 into its original box, and gave it to me. SCORE! Her daughter, Cousin Al (long story) gave me a hard-case for it. It doesn’t have Siri, but it works a HELL of a lot better than that crappy-ass Sony-Ericsson thing. I’m looking forward to no random crashes. I just need to get the photos off the old phone now.

There was much of the 3 Fs — friends, family, food — and that’s the part of Christmas I can get into. Of course, that meant I didn’t spend as much time with my online friends as I would have liked, but something’s gotta give when you only have a 24-hour day (and have to sleep for ⅓ of that). I would have liked more time with The Boy, and would have liked to see Snippet make an effort to spend more time with Mason, but overall I think things went much better than expected.

Then came Tuesday. It started out pretty good: I cashed the check that Dad sent, bought a Kindle 3 and a couple $5 CDs (Styx and Journey if you want to know)… and Daughter Dearest’s present for Dia de los Reyes, plus printer ink for her and Mrs. Fetched’s printers. Total: $300, and would have ran more if they’d had a Kindle case I liked. By the way, the Kindle 2 cases aren’t compatible with the Kindle 3. slaps Amazon upside If anyone has $50 that they want to throw away, you can buy me the lighted cover. I plan to de-register my old Kindle 2 and pass it (plus cover) to a friend of mine who wants an eReader. Of course, I’ll leave an ARC of White Pickups, plus Xenocide and a few Project Gutenberg goodies on it.

But I digress. The Boy and Snippet wanted to visit her dad, who is currently in Marietta, and take Mason with them. It’s one of those things that I haven’t managed to wrap my head around, the idea that Mason has another grandfather, but we got our act together and moved the car seat over so they could go. What they didn’t bother to mention was that they went about 40 miles out of the way to pick up a friend and take him along (some things never change). So… we were done with the “blow the Christmas money” spree, and on the way home, when The Boy called: “My car broke down at McFarland Road.”

Yee. Haw. Fortunately, we left the Civic near the freeway. We called our favorite towing service, and the girlies went on home while I went down to pick up the warm bodies — especially Mason. The tow truck was already there, so that was taken care of. That’s when I found out about the friend, but we crammed everyone into the car and got rolling. That’s when Snippet opined, “Maybe we should just stay here.” Again, The Boy gave no reaction. Snippet was less than enthusiastic about this whole “move north” thing to begin with, and she was hoping they’d just stay here once they got here. I had sort of expected them to stay, but they didn’t.

The car was a relatively easy fix: it mostly needed a major tune-up (and a valve cover gasket). So… $100 for the tow bill, $250 for the repairs, and they departed about seven hours behind their original schedule. And yes, we’re the ones who paid for it. Almost worth it to send Snippet on her way, although it would have been better if The Boy had sent her and stayed here. They departed with a car packed to the gills, plus a big carrier that somehow didn’t fall off the roof. Good thing they’re all skinny.

The interesting thing was Mason’s reaction. He seemed to think he was going to go with them, and was relieved when he stayed behind. He was happy to say “bye-bye” even if he enjoyed having his bioparents around for a few days. I hope that one day, not too far in the future, they’ll be able to give him the kind of attention he needs… I’ll miss Mason big-time, but for now he’s where he belongs.

Staycation 2011, Days 0–2

Work has a strange policy: they let you carry over two weeks of vacation per year. But everyone gets three weeks, plus a week of personal days and floating holidays, so (if you carried over two weeks from last year) you pretty much have to burn off a month’s worth of vacation to keep from losing any. The upshot is, the office gets awfully empty the second half of December.

We were hoping to get down to Florida to visit Mom before Christmas, but I couldn’t ever get anyone to nail down the days they were off… so maybe we’ll go next month. At least with the chicken houses in permanent shutdown, there won’t be that to contend with — but I have full faith in Mrs. Fetched’s ability to find some other timesuck to throw me into.

With Mason around, I’m already watching him nearly all weekend, every weekend. This weekend was typical in that regard. After a haircut trip yesterday, I zipped over to the bank to deposit a check and that was the closest thing approaching free time I had. Mason refused to take an afternoon nap, so I had none of the time I expected for writing this post yesterday. Then Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest took off on a shopping trip, leaving us to find our own supper. I know Mason likes Subway’s meatballs, so we went there… and they were out of meatballs. I headed up to Johnny’s, where the food’s good but the service is glacial, and got us some chow. Then it was off to Chick-Fil-A, the only fast-food joint around here with an indoor playground, to let Mason burn off some energy.

One thing about Mason: he has a near-fetish for straight lines. He’ll line his cars up in a neat little row, then have a Toddler Meltdown™ when they don’t stay straight when he pushes the line. On modern playgrounds, with their tunnels and spiral slides, he’ll go through a straight tunnel — but if he can’t see the other end, he won’t go in. So he would go up the stairs, then come down and go poke around in the toddler area. Meanwhile, a little girl about three months younger than him was roaring down the spiral slide and having a good old time. Didn’t make the slightest impression on him.

So I’m not sure what happened — maybe some other kids chivvied him through the bent tunnel into the upper level — but he ended up in the enclosed area up top and started crying, because he wouldn’t go down the slide and he wouldn’t go back down the tunnel where he couldn’t see the outlet. I had to climb in there and talk him down; if he could see me, he was fine.

He also refused to nap today — and I had to make rolls for the supper after our church cantata — but I chucked him in his crib anyway until I got the dough thrown together. He was not exactly happy about that, but he got over it pretty quick once I came in and got him out. I got the rolls done just in time — I mean, we were out the door as soon as I threw them in a paper bag — and my throat survived the singing.

Tomorrow, I hope to do some yard work and some writing. Not necessarily in that order. The Boy and Snippet will be here for Christmas proper — or maybe I should say improper — so there might be a little soap opera-kind of post this weekend.

Deck Them Halls

Christmas time is here, by golly

Disapproval would be folly

— Tom Lehrer

With Thanksgiving finally out of the way, Mrs. Fetched went into full-blown decoration mode. I somehow got out of helping with the inside stuff, beyond horking boxes around. I was doing something, not at the manor, but can no longer remember what it was.

However, Mason was there to help, and he did hang some ornaments. Of course, he slapped ’em right back off the tree first chance he got. Mrs. Fetched invested in non-breakable ornaments this year… although as a friend put it, “they’ll cut your foot just like the glass ones if you step on one.” Okay, maybe they should be called shatterproof instead?

We’ve started doing the “one finger” rule with him — if he touches something, touch it with one finger. But that doesn’t stop him from sweeping that one finger across something to send it flying.

I wasn’t so lucky with the outside. We don't go as bat $#¡+ crazy as some people do with their lights (those, as Mrs. Fetched puts it, who “have nothing else to do”), but it’s more than enough in my opinion. She kept us going much of Saturday and Sunday, well past sunset both days, poking hangers onto the shingles and hanging lights every which way. I had to dismantle and re-do the net-lights over several of the boxwoods, since someone plugged them into each other and I had no idea how they were meant to plug into actual AC current. But I got it straightened out in the end and we managed to get it all lit up for a while… until (I think) the breaker fried. Mrs. Fetched insists we didn’t do anything more this year than last, but she always hits the after-Christmas sales and stocks up on more lights and stuff so I know better.

Then there was the strange case of the “decoration” in the field that was once going to be a subdivision. Seems that some merry pranksters snagged this thing from a farm off Juno Rd. My first knowledge of the deed was seeing it in a ditch along the highway one morning, on the way to work. Two days later, it was gone… and showed up here. It’s been there since Thanksgiving, clearly visible from the road going to the in-laws’ place.

If the chicken looks headless, that’s because it is. If the head didn’t shatter into a zillion pieces when it landed in the ditch, I rather expect it’s now a decoration in some goofball’s man-cave. I like to think of it as the Evil Zombie Chicken, protecting the acreage from another developer… or maybe there’s a bankruptcy curse in effect. Actually, I’m surprised that Coldwell Banker (the seller) hasn’t done something about a stolen statue yet.

Revolving Door

I really ought to install a revolving door at FAR Manor — M.A.E. lasted about a week at the free-range insane asylum this time. At the beginning of the week, she told us she was going to visit with Lobster for a night. One night stretched to two, three… and Lobster has a girlfriend living with him, so I don’t think it was that. However, I did get a call on my smellphone while I was at work from some guy named Jesse (I think it was). I figure she hooked up with someone on Facebook. Again.

So I was working at home Friday, because I had a meeting on Wednesday, and she came in without my noticing. I often work with the door closed to keep Mason from demanding more granddad time, so that wasn’t unusual. I also managed to miss the “discussion” she had with Mrs. Fetched, who had talked with her baby-daddy when he called earlier. So…

M.A.E. asked Mrs. Fetched, “Am I going to get Moptop this weekend?”

“No.”

“Why not?!”

“I don’t want her here this weekend.” There was the minor detail about us not being here all afternoon today, and M.A.E. almost immediately blowing off everything after she promised us she’d do anything if we let her come back, but Moptop does antagonize Mason a lot. Sure, he gives it right back, but the constant shrieking does get annoying.

So M.A.E. stomped upstairs to make some phone calls. Mrs. Fetched called up the stairs after her to bring the phone back down with her. She didn’t. This is where I first learned of M.A.E.’s presence, as she stormed back downstairs, slamming the door behind her, then out. “If you’re leaving,” Mrs. Fetched advised her, “you’d better take your stuff with you, because you’re not coming back.” M.A.E. gave no response. We found out later she went down to Big V’s with the boo-hoo routine, then got Cousin Splat to give her a ride into town (presumably to meet her current… whatever you want to call it).

• • •

Left to right: Mason, me, Skylar

The 80s song, “Me and the Boys” might be my theme song for this week, since that might be what’s coming. Since we get Thursday and Friday off, and everyone else is going to be gone anyway, I took the rest of the week as vacation (or more like staycation). Skylar is another revolving-door inmate at FAR Manor, in and out a lot, and I expect that Mrs. Fetched will find many “reasons” to leave them both with me.

I’m hoping that Big V will start picking up some of the slack, since she’s had cataract surgery and can see a little better now. Funny how things work: just when he’s where he’s not screaming in his sleep at night, and is starting to play a little better with Mason, they take him back.

One of the Evil Twins is here for a couple days, so I just may get a few things done while otherwise abandoned with the grandkid. Her sister is visiting some friends, and she’s getting stir-crazy.

Weekend Wibbles

Writing Wibbles, Photo Wibbles, Life Wibbles, I need to start posting in the moment again.

But first, welcome to the two newest followers:

• S.M. Reine — author, proprietor of Red Iris Books, and (as you may remember) the person who designed my White Pickups cover.
• Carole Gill — an author whose goal, as she puts it, is to “push the boundaries of gothic romance.”

Your visitor’s badges are at the front desk — in a free-range insane asylum, you don’t want to be mistaken for an inmate!

Hallowe’en has come and gone. Mason had his first trick or treat experience, and brought home a modest bucket of loot. Now when he wants a piece of candy, he’ll say, “Trick or treat? Please?” As he loves Cars so much, Mrs. Fetched got him a pit crew uniform for his first outing.

If I had to caption this particular photo, it would be something like, “Well, they told me to make a scary face, so…” Or maybe “Caaaaandyyyyyy!”

This morning at church, he pulled a good one. He snagged a hymnal and sat down and said, “Read?” I reached for it, and he insisted, “I’m reading!”


Daughter Dearest has also been busy. She had her senior recital last weekend and it went pretty well. The preparations for the reception following were fairly intense, though. Fortunately, I was spared and and just had to keep Mason out of everyone’s hair.

We took video, and I took a few pictures:

I've learned that slightly de-saturating the photo is the best way to deal with the rather intense backdrop on the Falany Performing Arts Center stage. DD really has a gorgeous voice. I’ll link to the video somehow when Mrs. Fetched edits it down, so you won’t completely miss out.


Writing? Right. I’m definitely not doing NaNoWriMo, but cheering on anyone who is. I’ve got two people, John Xero and Chuck Allen, looking over the complete version of Xenocide so I’ll know it’s in reasonable shape. I’m using it as a “test bed” of sorts, turning it into an eBook so I’ll have an idea of what the overhead will be like for White Pickups as well.

My #FridayFlash piece from week before last (Geek vs. Zombies) pretty much confirmed a theory I came up with: if you want lots of pageviews and comments, write a zombie story. I got really close to cracking 200 pageviews, and got nearly 30 comments. Quite a spike when compared to other recent #FridayFlash stories (not to mention the #TuesdaySerial). So the big question: is it wrong to be a “zombie whore”? I don’t think so, not if you write them because you enjoy writing them. I like doing a slightly different take on the zombie apocalypse — such as scavengers on the edges of the horde, or even grass-eating zombies.

I’m working on a soundtrack for White Pickups. I’m about 40% done, and that’s just songs in my own playlists. I’ll continue looking for suitable tunes.


I happened across a site called ifttt (IF This Then That) recently. It’s really handy, the way it can tie many of your online services (and your phone) together. It doesn’t talk directly to Blogger, but does read RSS feeds, so I have it auto-tweet new blog posts and text me when someone comments. Several people have had trouble with Feedburner’s auto-tweet lately, and I pointed them to ifttt. I may expand on what I’m using it for later on. I also need to talk about Calibre, and how it can turn your Kindle (or other eReader) into an offline blog/news reader.

Way Out West

Technically, this wasn't an “Escape from FAR Manor” — my employer has an office in Beaverton OR, and they wanted me to attend the Author-it training the writers out there were getting. Fortunately, we have something set up with a travel agency, and they took care of making the derangements (including changing my name on the plane tickets to match what’s on my driver’s license). It’s been like six years since I had to get on a plane, and several things have changed since then — like fees for just about everything including checked baggage. Since you’re allowed two carry-on bags (one luggage and one “personal item” such as a computer bag), I put my clothes in a soft-sided bag and loaded up the laptop bag with other things.

So Monday morning, I bolted out the door a little later than planned since I was trying to take care of a panic-mode glitch in one of Mrs. Fetched’s video projects — leaving behind the credit card I’d planned to use for incidentals such as the hotel room and rental car. Fortunately, I’d stopped for lunch just a little ways down the road and was able to call someone to bring it to me.

It’s difficult to find a non-stop flight from Atlanta to Portland, and nearly impossible to find one that fits the corporate travel budget, so I had an hour and a half layover in Chicago. O’Hare is undergoing a lot of reconstruction right now, so things are a little strange. For the first time in my experience, they rolled stairs up to the plane and we got off outside. Cool! Getting to the next gate took about a third of my layover time. It was going to be a long leg to Portland — around five hours — so I asked the guy at the United desk whether the inflight meal was worth paying for. “The food itself is okay,” he said, “but you don’t get very much.” He proceeded to suggest a place just down the hall that made great hot sandwiches, and I took his advice. It was an early supper, but it was going to be a long evening (made even longer by shifting three time zones west).

On the plane, I suddenly realized I’d left my crappy feature phone in the terminal. A flight attendant told me there was time for me to go grab it, but another one brought it in and asked if anyone had lost a phone. I was of two minds: 1) Whew! 2) Can’t get rid of it, it followed me onto the plane! I suspect if I’d left an iPhone behind, I’d have never seen it again. We left without further incident, and I spent the flight reading and listening to my iPod.

In Portland, the nice young woman at the Hertz rental counter gave me directions to the hotel — or rather, directions to the exit I needed to take. The hotel turned out to be a few blocks off the road, and I stumbled across our office while looking for it. I finally stopped and called the front desk and got directions. The room was labeled “kid-friendly” — it had a little table for kids to sit and draw or play board games, there were cute decorations all over… Mason would have loved it, but I had it all to myself.

Mason and Dutch

For me, the high point of the trip was meeting Janet, a regular on Andi’s blog, and her husband Wayne. They lived just a few miles away, so we managed to get together the last evening I was there at a local Thai restaurant. They plied me with gifts for Mason (really cool folks!) and sent me back with most of the leftovers. I didn’t do much exploring other than that, just spent a lot of uninterrupted evening time writing. I pretty much stayed jet-lagged the entire week, waking up at 4am every morning.

The second-to-high point was the first leg of the trip home. The TSA people in Portland actually smile and talk to you; I asked one if there was a problem bringing my lunch through security. “No,” he said with a grin, “but you might have to share!” I didn’t have to, but there was plenty. The first leg of this trip was to Seattle, on Horizon/Alaska Air. Not only did they roll the staircases out like in Chicago, it was a twin turbo-prop! I hadn’t flown on a prop plane since college, in the days of North Central/Republic Airlines. More cool! They used two staircases, which made boarding a lot less congested than usual. We got in the air, and they brought beverages around. Including… free beer! I LOVE THIS AIRLINE! I did ask them if they planned to serve Atlanta any time soon (doesn’t sound like it, drat).

Finally, the long flight to Atlanta on Delta. And here was a surprise: every leg, both ways, was on a different plane. The Boeing 757 was easily the most cramped from a passenger standpoint, while still being the largest. Even the Bombardier prop-job was more comfortable. I read a lot, catnapped, and generally endured until we landed. Delta’s gone downhill in a lot of ways in the last 20 years.

With the unresolved jet-lag, at least I didn’t have to readjust when I got home.

Mason Gets a Boat Ride

Up at the resort. Mrs. Fetched, after giving me Friday night to myself, gave me Mason all day yesterday and today. We’ve had a good time; we signed out a paddleboat yesterday afternoon and he got his first(?) boat ride:

We went to the pool after supper. There was another family there, with two ten-ish kids who thought Mason was truly the World’s Cutest Grandkid. The boy even held him for a moment, before Mason suddenly got anxious about it.

We’ve taken a couple long walks (well, I did the walking and pushed him in the stroller). Right now, we’re at the clubhouse where he’s working his way through a shelf full of toys and I’m scarfing the wifi.

Happy Birthday, Mason!

Although he’s been “terrible” for a while now, today Mason is officially two!

Blowing out the candles

After blowing out the candles, he seriously considered eating his cake Viking-style…

Who needs a fork when you’ve got a tongue?

Compared to last year’s big blowout, this was a pretty low-key event. The Boy and Snippet wanted to come down, but were out of money. Since the van’s alternator decided to begin eating its bearings on the way home from Mom’s yesterday (it got us home), and my car’s thermostat got stuck this morning, we have no money to send them. August came a month late this year.

As Mason blows out his second candle, he’s advancing a lot these days. He’s getting scary-good at climbing — not quite The Boy’s level, but getting close. (Speaking of which, he refers to himself as The Boy, which could get confusing around here.) He’s also beginning to move beyond two-word sentences: last week, he told me “The boy drive Granddad’s car.” This evening, after cake, he told Mrs. Fetched: “The boy is hungry,” and pointed to himself. He also told me, “Granddad in, too,” referring to the underside of his bed.

The Boy and Snippet think they’ll be able to just come get Mason once they get settled up in Wisconsin, but I don’t think it’ll be quite that easy. Mason barely knows his parents now, and there would have to be a transition time for them to take over without seriously disrupting his life. I really want them to be where they can actually be his parents, but I don’t want it to be at Mason’s expense. I just haven’t seen that he’s been their priority even when they were here.

Terrible Two

Mason will be 2 in ten days, but he was quite the little monster yesterday. To be fair, it wasn’t entirely his fault.

Mrs. Fetched’s aunt died this week, age 90, about three hours after she went into hospice. The funeral was yesterday afternoon, so I took Mason on to church. As happens rather often, he started nodding out in the car on the way home. Since we were nearly home, I took a little loop that adds ten minutes to the ride and that was enough to get him zorched. Unfortunately, that left about a half hour for him to nap before we had to get him up and go back into town.

Results were about what you’d expect from a toddler whose nap got interrupted: he kept moving at a frenetic pace, trying to keep moving so he wouldn’t go back to sleep in front of all those people. Some other kids showed up, and they opened up a side room for the kids to bounce around in — and Mason’s idea of a good time was trying to escape and getting angry when I wouldn’t let him. After a while, I got frustrated with his disrupting things and took him outside so he could cry as loud as he wanted. All in all, I felt like I was there for neither the aunt or the mourners, and told Mrs. Fetched as much. “You were there for me,” she said, which did make me feel a little better. But if I had it to do over, I’d have stayed at home with him. I did end up taking him home early; DoubleRed was at the funeral and offered to bring Mrs. Fetched home.

Once we got home, he got a little more nap in, but woke up cranky and not completely napped out. Meanwhile, DoubleRed got off on a tangent about Sesame Street, saying there was an episode that was never aired. I was thinking, “Oh boy, the whole Bert and Ernie hoo-hah again,” but it was Something Different. “The head of PBS pulled it,” she said. “They had a same-sex couple, and an interracial couple.” Okay, assuming she hasn’t swallowed yet another line of crap, I could see that they might not want to get embroiled in the same-sex marriage issue. A lot of people aren’t comfortable with the idea just yet, as lame as their justifications might be. But equating interracial marriage? The pod people have had fifty years to get used to that idea. I gave her a rather sarcastic response, and she shut up. Which is fine, because Sid the Science Kid features an interracial couple (Sid’s parents) and I haven’t heard any flack about that even on Planet Georgia. I’ve decided that sarcasm and ridicule are the only way to respond to pod people when they start spewing their anti-everything agenda — they know it’s shameful outside their little circle and rubbing their noses in the fact is the only way to open their eyes to the Real World.

Anyway. Mason cheered up considerably once I got his shoes on and took him out to the patio to splash in the play table, then he walked back to the house. I thought for a moment he wanted to go inside and watch Cars for the zillionth time, but he grabbed a stroller and said, “Ride!” So I took him for a stroll along his usual route, and he was in a much better frame of mind for his supper/bath/bedtime routine. In fact, he slept all night for the first time in quite a while.

The Boy called me this afternoon and talked for a while, then talked to Mrs. Fetched for quite a while longer. He seems to really like Manitowoc — the lake’s right there, the parks don’t have No Drinking ordinances like they do here, he’s fallen in love with disc golf, cost of living is cheaper, what’s not to like? Winter? He’s planning to get a snowboard. He’s in line for a couple jobs that involve sanitation in food-handling plants, similar to the job he had in the chicken plant before a party derailed him. Not much was said about Snippet… I don’t know how she’s dealing with the move or how she’ll handle Real Winter. For all I know, getting her away from the influences she has around here might help her mature a little. (Yes, I’m the eternal optimist.)

Moving Furniture

With M.A.E. out of the manor, Mrs. Fetched decided it was time to bring in the bed she bought for Mason at a yard sale last year. There were many cobwebs to clean out of various corners, and I ended up vacuuming then wiping down each part with a towel, and that got it pretty clean.

Whoever designed this bed knows little boys. It’s up off the ground, giving room for a matching dresser and cubby along one side. The door on the footboard turns the rest of the under-bed into either storage or a kid’s fortress of solitude.

Mason said, “Cheeeeeese!” as I took the picture. Where did he learn that from?

Mason watched and “helped” as I assembled everything, then put the slats, pad, and mattress on top. He was suddenly less pleased with the door, but I showed him that he could come out the back side and around and that mollified him a bit.

The cubby is a tight squeeze for a kid, even one as small as Mason, but I told him he could throw toys in there. He opened it, tossed whatever gadget he was holding at the moment, then closed it. Now if we can get him to do that consistently…

He’s still in the crib for now, and this will be the guest bed until he’s old enough to sleep in it himself.

(Late) Wednesday Wibbles

I got no new followers this week, so I don’t have anyone to shout at. Spread the word, folks, I’d like to have 100 followers about the time I publish White Pickups so I’ll have a good excuse for a giveaway.

Not much writing got done while on vacation… but hey, it was a vacation, right? I really do need to get cracking on Pickups and Pestilence though. Other things, that will take a lot of effort, are beginning to draw my attention. I just may have to start serializing the thing to get the incentive-to-finish going.

Speaking of vacation, here’s a cute anecdote: Mason was very comfortable at Dad’s place — comfortable enough that he’d go explore odd corners on his own, well out of sight of the adults. We slept downstairs, where there was also a large TV. So one morning, we were minding our own business; Mason slipped up the stairs, into the kitchen, pulled a quart of blueberries off the counter (fortunately a snap-top container), then carried them back down the stairs. He came walking up to us: “Berries?” That kid could just about live off fruit and cheese… and meatballs. He loves him some meatballs.


I mentioned having a “crisis of confidence” about the Friday Flash that I didn’t post week before last. I thought of it at first as a Vacationlanders fan-fic, but that isn’t right either. After watching both parts of the first episode, which are all that have been posted so far, I found myself objecting to some of the key points.

First off, while I could see the feds cutting off services to regions — or entire states, as was done to Maine in Vacationlanders — I don’t think that what comes after is quite so drastic as is depicted in the first episode. WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD On the other hand, I have to wonder if the film crew has been set up from the get-go. If the UTM were as lawless and dangerous as it seems, I would think they’d have heard about it and gone in prepared. END SPOILERS

Even if the Feds cut off the power grid and fuel deliveries at the border, 1) any local hydro and alternative facilities would still be available; 2) state and local governments would attempt to function and preserve order as much as possible, just to justify their continued existence; 3) you couldn’t cut off chunks of the country without some kind of quid pro quo for the affected citizenry or civil suits, probably both; 4) politics would exclude wealthy citizens from the Unincorporated Areas; 5) there would almost certainly be commerce along the border, perhaps even people continuing to commute from Unincorporated Outer Suburbia into Atlanta.

Back in 2009–2010 when there was a lot of talk from the right-wing losers about secession, I concluded that Planet Georgia could secede without hurting the rest of the country much, if at all. Seriously: what do we have here that can’t be produced somewhere else? No oil reserves, the gold was mined out decades ago, and the only strategic industrial pieces we have are concentrated in specific locations. So I created this map (click to enlarge), designating the Georgia Quadrangle where there are still full services, and Unincorporated Georgia. The corners of the quadrangle are the primary cities, with Columbus as a separate enclave, and a largeish rural “heartland” to supply food.

So here’s the writing prompt: think about your own area and whether it would still be “incorporated” or not, and conflicts should be many and obvious. Post links to your stories here so I’ll see them. If you use the graphics, copy them to your own blog so they stay available. I’ll post one of the flash pieces I’ve written on this theme on Friday.

Amusing, but Only a Little

This evening, Mrs. Fetched and I went down to Big V’s with some chow — and Skylar. The big blond chunker is starting to think FAR Manor is home, but he’s always glad to see his gramma. Mrs. Fetched set up her morning meds — I think they’d be enough to fill her up and she wouldn’t need breakfast — while I had one eye on the Kindle (reading Seed by Ania Ahlborn right now) and one on Skylar. Meanwhile, The Boy was tasked with watching Mason.

We came home to find The Boy sacked out in the lounge chair and Mason playing quietly in the living room. He’d only pulled a few old VHS tapes off a shelf — and laid one on The Boy and two on the love seat. As I picked up the latter, he brought me the sleeves.

M.A.E. and Daughter Dearest were lurking nearby if anything came up, but Mason was being mostly good (if a little mischievous about the tapes). I’m glad it wasn’t Skylar; he’d have made a huge mess for sure and probably hurt himself. As it was, the results were only amusing. Yes, The Boy gets up really early for his job these days, but he needs to focus…