Wednesday Birthday Wibbles

It’s not only Mrs. Fetched’s birthday, it’s also Towel Day! You know what that means: today, she’s 42 again! She was supposed to get dinner at her favorite Italian restaurant tonight, but Big V dumped Skylar on us so we ate leftovers and watched Dawn Treader.

Since I haven’t had any new followers since last week, I get to skip that part. I do love the followers I have though!

Sometimes, taking a stroll with the grandkid has side benefits. I found this sign lying in the grass not a quarter mile from the manor, complete with bullet holes. It must have been lying there for longer than I’ve lived here, over 25 years now, because it was never standing along this road. I took a steel wool pad to it to get it to the state you see here (it was pretty grimy). Mrs. Fetched thinks I should give it to either the county or the state, but I figure they just tossed the sign aside — they haven’t used that particular wording for a long time.

A “Pass With Care” sign came with the manor; I want to hang it in the bathroom.

Mason’s second cousin Skylar (yes, with an “a”) has been spending a lot of time at the manor. You can think of him as a half-time boarder if you like at this point. He and Mason play together like two near-toddlers do: when they’re not trying to kill each other, they have a lot of fun. Skylar is four months younger than Mason, but has the in-laws’ genetic heritage that has already made him a bigger kid.

Having Skylar around has reminded me about Mason’s rather well-developed sense of personal space. Mason has a definite bubble, and if another child gets into it uninvited he can get more violent than absolutely necessary. For example, I’ve had to pull Skylar away to stop Mason from methodically whacking him over the head with whatever toy he has in his hand. But bedtime isn’t twice as difficult, because they wear themselves out chasing each other around the dining table, and they’ll chatter with each other in the morning instead of demanding to be let out right away.

The upside is that Moptop hasn’t been around near so much. M.A.E. reached an agreement with the baby-daddy, where they each get her a week at a time. To make matters better (for us), Moptop was sick and someone else got to take care of her. But she won’t be our problem much longer: Mrs. Fetched tonight texted The Boy, Lobster, and M.A.E. to let them know they have until June 1 to find new lodgings. We’re basically done with letting them use our space without much of anything in return.

We’re going to see Mom in North Carolina week after next. Brand X is graduating from high school over Memorial Day weekend, so Mrs. Fetched is videotaping that, and I got tagged to preach this Sunday. That means the creative energy I’d be putting into a #FridayFlash will instead go toward a sermon. Such is life.

But with the deadwood out of here, it will at least be a quieter life!

So Far No Good

If the rest of this week goes as it’s begun, it’s made entirely of fail.

It was a rough weekend for nearly everyone here, as the stomach/intestinal virus cut its swath through the population. Big V was down, so her grandson Skyler was at the manor. He’s a little younger than Mason, 14 months to Mason’s 18 months (as of today), but larger. Mrs. Fetched thinks he’s “slow,” although I think what she sees is that he’s slow in contrast to an older and more dynamic Mason. But he is blonde… very very blonde. On the other hand, he was about the only one of us not affected by the virus this weekend.

Moptop went off to her grandparents, as she does every weekend, and got good and sick there. She’s still there, as M.A.E. had the double-whammy of the virus plus surgery to retrieve an IUD that went walkabout in her uterus. I think Mason looks forward to weekends, because they are Moptop-free, and having Skyler around plus the virus made him rather cranky. “Does not play well with others,” would have been checked off on his report card this weekend. I heard the Screech of Rage™ way too often this weekend, when Skyler picked up something Mason didn’t want bothered or when he just got in Mason’s personal space.

I sweated out the virus early Sunday morning, but then Mrs. Fetched got it and I dealt with the kids. The Boy, as usual, managed to be “at work” or “helping Lobster move out” (two whole bags). The latter involved him staying at Lobster’s new place, an apartment he and his new girlfriend have picked out. (Great couple… married, but not to each other.) The Boy came down with the virus there and spent all of Sunday night there. That would have been fine, as he left my car here, but took the key with him.

Speaking of The Boy, a glitch in the database didn’t let me add him to our insurance back in November. I contacted HR at the time, and they said they’d take care of it. Now he’s not on our insurance, and they’re saying he “can’t be added” until next open enrollment in November. They’ve fallen back on scripted responses and “it’s policy” like it’s some huge effing deal… how hard can it be to add one line item into a database? When it was their own fail that kept me from adding him in the first place? If I started working there today, would I have to wait until November to add my family to the coverage? I am now officially looking for a new job, just so I can get coverage for The Boy. Maybe I’ll see of my previous employer would give me any inducement to jump ship. On the other hand, the grand-boss is going to be here tomorrow, and maybe I can dump this in her lap… especially when I start making noises about leaving over it.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Fetched is about fed up with Sunshine, her brother. He’s once again unemployed, which means he’s hanging around telling everyone UR DOIN IT RONG. That she can ignore, but when she was sick he went into the chicken houses and implemented some of his “improvements,” which as usual only screwed things up. I’ve told The Boy he could end up just like Sunshine, which he dismisses but its becoming more evident as time goes on — especially in his attempt to domineer Mason.

“I’m not having Mason throw his fits because he’s not getting his way, I’ll bust his butt!”

“Hm,” I said, “maybe I should have done that with you, then.” That shut him up, and he even looked like he was thinking about it.

One bit of comic relief came this morning. Mason once again snatched the pen and Moleskine out of my shirt pocket. “You got an idea for a story?” I asked him. He responded with a long string of vowels that, if I could only translate it, was no doubt the plot to a best-selling series that would eclipse J.K. Rowling. Mrs. Fetched bought him off with another pen, and he proceeded to the nearest wall and would have begun his first draft had she not stopped him. He cut loose with the Screech once again when she took the pen away.

Snipped!!!

She even looks like an older version of Snippet…

Hooray, I say!

Things started going our way about a week ago, when Snippet finally got her mom’s truck like she said she could. Her dad put her on his insurance, and away she went. And has been at the manor for less than 24 hours since then.

I think The Boy was happy to get a little space at first, but it may have been that Snippet only stayed with him because he has access to a car most of the time. Now that she has her own vehicle, she’s been pretty scarce lately.

Last night though was the first time I really dared to get my hopes up. The Boy met me on the way to choir practice and swapped my car for Mrs. Fetched’s. “What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I’m going to give Snippet a little chewing out,” he said. “Basically, I’m gonna let her know she can choose either her friends, or me and Mason.” That’s not quite as controlling as it sounds — he’s never had a problem with her going to visit one of her friends for an evening or even an entire weekend — but when she’s gone pretty much constantly, after being up his butt for so long, there’s some questions that need to be asked or at least implied.

He was gone all night (which didn’t please Mrs. Fetched) and came in this morning. “How did it go?” I asked. He just scowled, shook his head, and carried Mason upstairs. M.A.E. and I high-fived.

Our quiet jubilation was dampened somewhat this afternoon, when Snippet called him and The Boy decided he needed to go to Krystal’s to talk to her. “He’s gonna patch things up with her,” I thought. “She’ll come back,” said M.A.E. We clung to hope, because he packed a couple garbage bags full of her clothes and took them with. Mrs. Fetched phoned in after and got the scoop: she “has feelings” for an old school friend and “isn’t sure she loves him anymore,” and “doesn’t want to live at the manor.” Of course not, she doesn’t have to use him for transportation anymore. He then called us on the way to get Lobster from work, and said he’d need help “getting the rest of her $#!+ downstairs.”

Happy dance! M.A.E. and I high-fived again and even hugged.

My continued jubilation is dampened by The Boy’s hurt. Having been slept around on and dumped when I was his age, I have a pretty good idea of what he’s going through right now (minus the having a kid part). The Boy does let his Flaky Emotional Artist side fly a little freer than I do with mine, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have intense feelings about things. I opined that he’s now free to find someone who truly loves him, although M.A.E. (who has also gone through the love/dump wringer) thinks he should just focus on himself, Mason, and his music for a while. Sound advice.

I’m sure Lobster will be happy to have Snippet out of the picture as well. It’ll give him more space in the bedroom, and he won’t be summarily kicked out when Snippet wants a little nooky. ’Course, he’s getting a car tomorrow, and has a date on Saturday with someone he met on Facebook. Seeing as she’s about 10 years older, maybe he’ll have a different temporary roof over his head pretty soon…

The Fun Age, and a Power-Squabble

As Mason approaches 16 months, he’s hitting what I’ve always thought of as the “fun age.” For the next few months, he’ll be a constant source of hilarity as he explores, learns, and expands his vocabulary. Think of it as paying forward the Terrible Twos. He loves fruit, especially apples and oranges, and is equally happy to bite and spit out the skins of either one. He refers to both apples and oranges as “apple,” and it’s fun to hear him say it (sorry about the Flash trash):



He’s also learning the whole toy-snatch thing from Moptop, who is well into her Terrible Twos, and we sometimes despair of her ever getting out of them. While she annoys him quite often, he has learned to reciprocate — he got into a rather unpleasant mode yesterday afternoon, and bounced a plastic block off her head, and now all he has to do is hold his hand behind his shoulder to get Moptop to cut loose with that ice-pick-in-the-ear shriek. But when she ’s cranky and sitting on M.A.E.’s lap, he’ll come over and wiggle his fingers at her feet and go “tick-tick-tick” (tickle). Now that’s funny.

The Boy and Snippet weren’t going too far through the afternoon, and (after a morning run to repair two chicken house furnaces) I found myself with a little time to start clearing off the bank out by the road. There’s still a fair amount of snow laying around, but I either had to work around the snow or not get any of it done. I made both more and less progress than I expected — I got most of the small junk cleared out, but the bigger logs were immobile and I decided to come back with the chainsaw later. I hacked the vines off the trees and will whop them back with rake and weed-eater in the next day or so.

As I was working, Mrs. Fetched drove up and placed me in the middle of one of her & The Boy's power-squabble games, an act that I deeply resent. “You need to go up to the house. They’re not to take Mason anywhere,” she said. I think she was mad because The Boy didn’t dedicate enough time to helping her with the chicken houses — but that should be between them, why drag me into it? But the orders were given and, in her mind, that meant they were to be carried out or it was my @$$. I hiked up to the house.

“We’re taking Mason to my dad’s,” said Snippet. “He doesn’t smoke or drink” — yeah right — “and he hasn’t seen Mason since he was like a few days old.”

“Mrs. Fetched said no,” I said. “That’s all I know.”

“Well, we’re taking him,” The Boy snapped. “He our son and that’s that.”

“I guess you don’t give a care that your mom will be all over my butt if you take him, huh?” He had nothing to say about that, but Snippet went off on a tangent.

“I’m tired of him calling you ‘Daddy’!” she snipped.

“I never asked him to. I think he’s trying to say ‘Granddad,’ because it comes out different than the ‘Daddy’ he uses for The Boy.”

That mollified her somewhat, but The Boy was unmoved. I told him to call Mrs. Fetched and wait until everyone reached an agreement, but of course she wasn’t answering her phone. She tends to be incommunicado when at the chicken houses… or any other time, for that matter. I grabbed my phone and stormed outside to deliver a blistering voice mail, then saw my car sitting there. Hm… I’ll just pull a fuse or something, I thought, and opened the door.

Bee-bee-beep. Bee-bee-beep.

The Boy had inadvertently left the “key” to the whole problem right there in the ignition. I pulled it out, pocketed it, then stashed it off my person. They bundled up Mason and assured me they would be back by 9 (yeah right), and out the door they went. A minute later, The Boy came back in and went upstairs. A couple more minutes later, he came down and Snippet came in with Mason.

“Where’s the key?”

“I don’t have it,” I said, which was technically the truth. I emptied my pockets for him. “Your mom might have come and got it.” Snippet bought this, but The Boy is a professional liar and could see an amateur at work.

“Fine,” he said at last. “We’ll leave Mason here if you give me the key.”

“I’ll help you look for it,” I said, and he left. I again pocketed the key, dropped it on the floor of the car, and “found” it for him. They left… and their idea of “by 9” is 11:30. Whatever. At least The Boy wasn’t drunk — he has done that before; he gets one screen a week and yesterday morning was his screen, so he’s clear until next week. I’ve seen him come home hammered and confident he won’t get caught. On the other hand, one more violation and he’s in the clink for 90 days; he just has to stay clean for six more weeks and he’s done.

One encouraging note: he told me, “after I get done with this,” and said something that wasn’t some variation of “I’m going to drink an entire 30-pack.” He needs to grow up, not bang heads with Mrs. Fetched, and they both need to leave me out of their power-trips.

Hell Hath No Fury…

Even in the alternate universe of Weirditude that is FAR Manor, there are physical laws and constants. One of them is anyone who undertakes to help Big V, long term, will come to regret it in about two weeks. That’s about as long as it took The Boy this time — yes, he’s been here before. So Spring #1 comes in with a BANG.

I think it might have been because Snippet wore out her welcome at FAR Manor some time ago, but they were spending most nights at Big V’s place — taking care of her grandkid Skyler (Cousin Splat and his wife make Snippet look almost like a halfway involved parent), driving her to doctor appointments and so forth. Actually, from what I heard, it was The Boy taking care of Skyler… like when she’s here, Snippet can’t get much motivation to deal with a baby, hers or otherwise.

Because of Big V’s lackadaisical credit history, she doesn’t keep much money in the bank — they have no problem using her deposits to make her payments for her. And somehow, she had something north of $1000 cash in her purse where it was safe… from bankers, at least. And that cash turned up missing some time on Saturday, while The Boy was at probation-mandated classes of one sort or another much of the day and Snippet was there at Big V’s at least much of the morning. The more Big V thought about it, the more convinced she became that Snippet was the culprit.

Now it must be said that Snippet isn’t exactly famous for her respect for other people’s property. Daughter Dearest found a ring that belongs to her (actually, M.A.E. gave it to her) down at Big V’s, among Snippet’s stuff while looking for something else (the money). So Big V has been calling the house, wanting us to get involved with Snippet while doing all the other things she thinks we should just be happy to do for her.

I made the mistake of trying to work at home the last couple of days, and with the phone ringing every few minutes, I found myself getting rather annoyed at the constant interruptions. This morning, I announced “I’m not answering the phones today,” and removed them from the bedroom. That didn’t stop the noise, of course… especially when The Boy started screaming upstairs, then came storming down into the bedroom.

“You need to talk to this $#@%!” he yelled, thrusting the phone at me.

“I don’t have anything to say to her.”

“You need to talk to her!”

Seeing as I wasn’t going to get any work done with him waving the phone and yelling at me, I finally took it and listened to Big V imply that she was going to hang The Boy right along with Snippet. I asked her what evidence she had, she told me, and it was all circumstantial at best — especially when Snippet is an expert at the poor-pitiful-me act, and has a face and figure that would get her the sympathy of any male jurors right off the bat. Big V started the sob story — I’m pretty sure she was trying to panic, guilt, or pity me into giving her the money to buy The Boy another day, but I don’t have any either — and I told her the sob story thing wasn’t going to help and she just had to do whatever she felt was best. I also told her I was trying to work, and got her off the phone.

And… I had an audience. I took the opportunity to announce that I was packing up, taking Mason, and moving out. “I’ll come with you!” M.A.E. offered. Um… no. Daughter Dearest, who was already upset by the crap, called Mrs. Fetched to tell her I was leaving and she had to come right home NOW. While she was on the way, I called The Boy into the bedroom.

“If Snippet took that money, you need to scrape her off,” I said. “You don’t need that crap right now.”

“She didn’t take it!”

“I said if. I’m not saying she did take it, but if she did you need to get her out of your life. Pronto. That’s all I have to say about it.” And to be honest, I’m not 100% convinced myself that she took it. There were other people running loose in Big V’s house, and I liken Snippet to a crow. She’ll snatch something sparkly if the opportunity presents itself — but we’ve had money in various quantities laying around here and there and it’s never disappeared without turning up (often after Mrs. Fetched tells me Snippet probably took it). On the other hand, given her recent behavior I’m not exactly motivated to step up and defend her.

Oh… and here’s a good one. Big V was trying to get a loan (a big fat “yeah right” given her history); The Boy and Snippet took her up to a place they’ve used in the past. While they were there, they decided to get a loan to pay their phone bill (um… what part of “recurring charge” are you missing here?), and got $500. As it turned out, they used my car for collateral. Without asking me.

Now… it’s personal. I think what I’ll do is contact the loan office, explain the situation, and remind them that they have lots of ugly lawyers to do their bidding. If Snippet ends up in jail, for that or for snatching Big V’s wad-o'-cash, I won’t shed a tear.

Friday Flush

This was going to be a Friday Flash post, but things didn’t quite work out that way. I’ll have it ready next week, but I might as well catch y’all up on the everlasting soap opera here…

Mrs. Fetched’s granny died earlier this week, age 98. The photo here is from last fall, obviously, when Mason was rather tiny. The Boy got tagged as a pallbearer, which meant he had to do the monkey suit thing… which meant I had to tie a tie for him and loan him a jacket and black pants. The funeral was in Rome (GA), which meant I put over 300 miles on Mrs. Fetched’s car Wednesday and Thursday. Mrs. Fetched’s sister (the one who gave me the iPad) got a block of hotel rooms near the funeral home, but The Boy needed to be home because it was nearly certain he’d have a probation-related drug/alcohol test on Thursday morning… which meant I got to drive home. Mason stayed at the hotel with Mrs. Fetched.

“Make sure you get me up at 5:00 to make my call,” he said as he headed upstairs.

“If I wake up, I will,” I said. Left unsaid was this is your responsibility, why are you trying to dump it on me? But I did wake up shortly after 5 a.m., and heard the squawk of his alarm all the way in my bedroom. No surprise there, he’d sleep through World War III. I went up and poked him, told him to make his phone call. He turned off the alarm and I went back to bed.

Surprise! He also rolled over and went back to sleep. A friend of his called at 8 a.m. to let him know he needed to do something, so I took him to the ER to get a screen there. He got his papers, and we came back home. Whether it will be enough is the question… if the judge declares him in violation, he goes to jail for 90 days this time.

We got some breakfast and headed back to Rome. Mason did fair… he loved the flowers and wanted to touch (and chew) them. He finally got bored about halfway through the service and Cousin Al took him out back. Then at the graveside, he decided he wanted to preach his own sermon. His second cousin Skyler was already removed from the immediate action (via a nephew), and his other second cousin Wyatt (with his mom) joined us soon after. Being removed from the scene did not deter Mason from delivering his sermon, though.

Meanwhile, my car was in for a new idler pulley (yay, I was afraid the power steering pump was shot). $180 got me rolling again. The mechanic was impressed by the 402,000 miles on the odometer, and that’s a little low because the speedo only works intermittently these days. At least with a manual transmission, you can use the tach to figure out how fast you’re going.

This evening, Mrs. Fetched decided to (finally) put up the tree… so the living room looks like it always does this time of year. Mason and Moptop each hung ornaments on the lower branches, I’ll post pics tomorrow when I get a chance. I also made a loaf of bread this evening, and marked it with an M (for Mason). There was some dough stuck to the bread machine pan after the dough cycle completed. so I rolled it out and put it on top of the loaf. That I’ll also shoot in the morning…

A Comedy of Errors (not the TB kind)

Mrs. Fetched reminded me yesterday morning to get off work early so we could go see Daughter Dearest in the Christmas Concert at Reinhardt. Even DD herself got in the act, suggesting I skip picking up the Christmas present we bought Mrs. Fetched because I’d likely be going straight to the campus from work. And she was right, of course.

I was put slightly off-stride when The Boy called at 4:50 though, from Mrs. Fetched’s phone, wondering when I’d be home: my thought was, can’t she make her own call from her own phone? I had just slapped down the last piece of a major rewrite of a chapter, for a firmware manual at work, so I assured him I was just a couple steps from being out the door. I did have to throw the completed PDF in the approval tool, but that took about ten minutes. Packing up for the day took another ten, and I was off. Traffic on the freeway was a little bumpy; but GA141 now has two lanes open going both ways, all the way, and that knocked a good ten minutes off a 1-hour commute. At 6:02, I was on the last leg, about three miles away, and my phone went off again.

“Three minutes out,” I said. It was as good a substitute for “hello” as anything, especially since I knew what (s)he wanted.

“Okay, see you shortly.”

Before I was even out of the car, The Boy was crossing the driveway with Mason in the portable car seat. “We’re going to the tree lighting,” he said by way of greeting. “Then we got to go to T-Mobile and get my phone straightened out.” Aha, mystery solved. It wasn’t Mrs. Fetched poking him to call me, he was anxious all by himself. I’d planned to pocket the key and “forget” I had it, but it wasn’t that important. If he wanted to go places, he’d have to put gas in the car. No biggie.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Fetched was in the usual “out the door” tizzy. Skyler was at the house, and Big V was supposed to have picked him up already, but Mrs. Fetched had made arrangements to drop him off at her mom’s. Big V called and wanted me to come toward the retail and meet her, which was out of the way for us (not like that concerns Big V), but we told her where Skyler would be and that’s how it was. As always with these weeknight-evening concerts, time was a little tight for us.

I’ve mentioned before, Mrs. Fetched isn’t huge on planning ahead. “Living in the moment” is supposed to be a virtue, but can be annoying to everyone around when carried to an extreme. So we jump in her car, and I see it too is low on gas: not enough to get to Reinhardt, but plenty to get to several gas stations along the way. On the advice of Daughter Dearest, we passed by the first station (Chevron) since the second (Citgo) was 10 cents/gal cheaper. I got our gas and jumped back in the car —

Nothing. Not even a click. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Looks like a dead battery.” Fortunately, she does have jumper cables. A guy in an Explorer (which looked like it spent much of its life off-pavement) gave us a few minutes to get restarted, and away we went. Suddenly, Mrs. Fetched saw some virtue in making a plan: 1) Get to the performing arts center, and back into a parking spot near a streetlight. 2) Afterwards, take the battery out (Mrs. Fetched had a set of tools in the truck, ironically for Daughter Dearest’s car) and ride with DD to get something to eat. 3) Swing by Mal*Wart in Canton and get a new battery (Canton pretty much rolls up the sidewalks at 8, and Mal*Wart has the whole commercial scene to itself most evenings). 4) Come back and put the battery in, go home. It made me feel better that she wasn’t insisting on winging it, even if the old saw no plan survives first contact with the enemy holds true. In this case, things took a big left turn after step 1.

We went inside, got through the line… and there were two old bats in our seats. Mrs. Fetched’s eyes aren’t all that great lately, so I double-checked the row and seat. Yup, those were our seats, and they weren’t even looking at us. Mrs. Fetched decided to get an usher, who looked at our tickets. “These are for tomorrow night,” she said.

“What?” she wasn’t exactly prepared for that. Needless to say, I wasn’t terribly thrilled about the situation. They reprinted our tickets and we went back out into the chilly night.

We had to park a long way from the door, so we discussed our next move. “I have a spare set of keys for DD’s car in my purse,” she said. “We can find her car and jump off mine with it, go to Mal*Wart, then meet her for supper after the concert’s over.” This sounded like a pretty good plan — she’s quite capable of making logical plans, it would be nice if she’d do it more often — but in this case she was wrong about the keys. At that point, The Boy called. “We’re almost out of gas, so you need to come get us.”

“We’re all the way to Waleska,” I said. After some back and forth, he whined about how much gas was left. “Just go straight home and you’ll get there, that’s about 30 miles worth of gas.” Of course, he chose to ignore the “go straight home” part, but that came later.

There was a slope where we parked, so I figured we could roll the car off and get going that way — and there were plenty of open spots below, so if it didn’t work we could still get the car out of the way. “I’ll push,” Mrs. Fetched said, “you can drop the clutch faster.” I also stomped the gas as I dropped the clutch, and there was just enough juice in the battery to do the job! We got to Mal*Wart without incident, even getting an open spot near the door as we arrived, got the battery, and (with the usual working around the lack of space that is prevalent in maintaining a Japanese car) put it in. Problem solved, just in time for Daughter Dearest to call. “You guys are still here?”

“We had to get a new battery for the car,” I said. “You want to get some supper? We can come back for you or meet you.”

“We’re still going, won’t be done until like 10. Just go on and we’ll meet tomorrow.” (In other words, the night we actually should have been there.)

We grabbed some chow, and the text messages started arriving before we’d properly finished. Everything was coming from Snippet’s phone, but sometimes it was unclear which one of them was sending. Transcript:

TB/SN: Yup guess what we are out of gas stuck in town
Jam is bring us a gas can
Me: OK, good that you have a can coming. Just got both msgs.
TB/SN: Yeah thanks
Me: The blue car had a dead batt when you called. We had to go to Mal*Wart for a new one. Is Mason OK?
TB/SN: Ha that's what u get for leaving us with a car with no gas and yeah Mason is fine we are at [JW’s] and when we went to leave the car would not start
Me: So I guess you didn't go right home? But I didn't know you would be going anywhere anyway, & even then it's not my job to buy you gas.
TB/SN: Yeah well [JW] ask if we could stop bye and thank god because if would not of stopped we would of run out of gas in the middle of no where at lease w
e were somewhere and they live right inside of town so we didn't go out of our way to see them

There was more… Snippet had told me earlier in the week that she was getting paid Thursday, so I wondered why she didn’t have gas money herself. Turned out she got paid early last week because of Thanksgiving and she actually gets this week’s check this afternoon. oooooops But we got home, they got home, they ate our leftovers, they put Mason to bed. Just another cRaZy evening at the free-range insane asylum.

This morning, Snippet was whining about her paycheck not being enough to cover her bills — welcome to my world. “What kind of job can I get to make more money?” she asked me.

“I dunno,” I said. “Stripper?”

The Season-Change Shuffle

As much as changes to the outdoor decor, time, weather, a sign of changing seasons is that Mrs. Fetched gets the urge to move furniture. Or rather… telling everyone else where to move furniture.

She has been talking about moving her video editing equipment to another room for a while now, leaving room to put Mason’s crib in the vacated room. So it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that she suddenly decided to do it yesterday. Bad idea, starting on a weekday, especially when I dropped by the hospital to see Big V (she’s much better, on the way home as I type). Worse idea, doing it on a Tuesday before a major holiday. Worst of all, she rarely if ever develops much of a plan besides “tell other people to move $#!+ around.” So I came home to find the crib in pieces on the floor — she’d gotten Panda to dismantle it, and he also thought the timing was bad — and the contents of the attached cabinet on our bed. (Her sense of timing is like my poker face, neither work very well.)

The idea itself isn’t a bad one — the desk in the guest room, where she’s moving her stuff, is more spacious and sits in a corner. She won’t have to stretch to reach anything she uses often. If we move a doll display case and one of DoubleRed’s shelves that she hasn’t taken with her yet, there’s room for the shelf with the 1/2" VTR deck and DVD copier so they don’t have to use space on the desk (it would get a bit crowded). We’ll get it done over the long weekend, no doubt, and quickly enough if she doesn’t start second-guessing and throwing wrenches. But if she’d thought things through instead of the usual do something NOW, a plan might have looked like this:

1. Clean off corner desk (done, actually).


2. Find and prepare places for the case and shelf. Move them.


3. Disconnect computer and move.


4. Move and attach DV deck.


5. Clear VTR shelf and move.


6. Move VTR and DVD copier in, attach.


7. Take down the old desk.


8. NOW dismantle and move the crib.

In other words, taking down the crib should have been the last thing done, not the first.

Upshot, she had to clean off our bed before going to sleep last night and Mason ended up sleeping in the playpen.

Out of the Frying Pan?

It’s too good a graphic to not use when I get the chance, although The Boy disagrees:

I was working at home yesterday, and Mrs. Fetched gave me the heads-up: they would release The Boy after he attended drug court. Those classmates who happen to be serving time for a violation of whatever type when drug court comes around get to set in the jury box, resplendent in their orange jumpsuits. The Boy had plenty of company: one other guy and four women. I brought Mason up to see him during a break, and the women of course ooh’ed and aah’ed over him too. Mason’s definitely a chick magnet, but… anyway. He said he had no idea how long it would be, as they had a mini-reception for several “graduates” going on as well, and suggested we go home and wait for him to call us.

While the break/reception was going on, Mason got to run loose in the hall outside the courtroom for a while, then gravitated to the window where they’re building the new courthouse next door. (Why we “need” a new courthouse is a question that nobody has a satisfactory answer for, but up it goes.) He isn’t much for watching TV (smart kid), but he’ll watch construction for a long time:



At this point, I should have followed my first instinct and taken Mason home, letting Snippet either come with or hang out and wait for him. But they wrapped up fairly quickly, and I figured they’d roll him out shortly after.

WRONG

Three… hours… later… around 6:30 p.m., they finally sent him through the doors. By this time, I was cranky and rather hungry, and Mason had nearly worn himself out running around the lobby and worming through chicanes that even skinny adults could not navigate. A guy on the sex offender registry was also in the lobby for some yearly check-in they have to do… lovely. After we got The Boy, we went to the Mexican joint for supper, and Mason was an uncharacteristic holy terror, not wanting to sit in his high chair. The food finally arrived, and he calmed down enough to eat some of my fajita chicken but never did get back in the high chair after that.

Things got a little interesting after we got home. Mason was okay, but M.A.E. was a little weirded out and she finally told us all what it was about. Seems that Wednesday, she was walking through the living room when Snippet’s phone beeped. She went to see what it was, and it seems Snippet’s best (male) friend decided to engage in a little full-frontal sexting. In the proverbial train-wreck mode, M.A.E. looked some more and found plenty of “compromising” shots of Snippet herself. (The one where the guitar covered all the naughty bits was rather artful, especially in black&white. But anyway.)

Snippet at first denied it ever happened, then admitted he’d done it “because he was drunk and having an emotional meltdown.” Um… shoulda gone with that one first, girlie, especially since you’ve cheated on The Boy before. As for The Boy, he looked pretty grim. I don’t know what was said later and in private, but the two of them seem to have worked it out (at least for now). It kind of makes me wonder though… the first weekend he was in the clink, Snippet decided to go visit her mom (with Mason) but was on the phone with this guy on the way to meet Mason’s other gramma, trying to get him to come over to her mom’s place.

The Boy doesn’t need distractions like this while he’s trying to get his act together and stay out of trouble. One more violation and he goes in the clink for the rest of his sentence. Having a baby in the mix has complicated things far too much to just toss them, as much as I’d like to do just that and fooey on what Mrs. Fetched thinks for a change…

Sunday Afternoon… on the Road

Current Music: God’s DJs

The time may change, but free time is ever at a premium for your humble blog-host. I did find an unexpected free hour early this morning — I went to bed at 11:30 last night, figuring that a baby in the house meant nobody would get “an extra hour of sleep,” then woke up at 6:30 with a full night’s sleep. Mason didn’t wake up until 7:30, and in a good mood once Granddad showed up to get him out of the crib. Then he ate a good breakfast, but I digress.

Snippet decided that since The Boy is in jail for two weeks (oh yes… I forgot to mention, he tested positive on a breathalyzer last week, claims it was Listerine, yeah right), she’d go visit her mom overnight. To seal the deal, she came to church with Mason and me, then I took her to meet her mom. She has Mason for the night, which is good in a way but also means we have to go pick her up instead of telling her mom to keep her. :-P So that, and a leisurely lunch at Waffle House (since Mrs. Fetched has the flu), took me to 2 p.m. when Mrs. Fetched called: “Did you remember that Daughter Dearest’s concert is at 3?”

I hadn’t, but I didn’t feel like admitting it and listening to the resultant imprecations. “I’ll go straight there from here,” I said, here meaning the retail district where I happened to be getting gas. In her car.

“Yeah, but you have to stop by here to pick up the tickets.” Oops. That was going to set me back a little, but I figured I could show up about 20 minutes late without missing too much. I buzzed home, switched cars in case Mrs. Fetched felt up to going to The Boy’s visitation, and got on my way. To my surprise, I didn’t get behind too many slowpokes, and managed to get there only 15 minutes late — just in time for Daughter Dearest’s chorus to go onstage. Naturally, I went into the venue on the wrong side (DD told me later that I made the president of the college stand up, big whoop-dee-do) but took my seat just as they were filing in.

DD was naturally hungry after the concert — I think she doesn’t eat much or anything beforehand — so I took her to a restaurant where she got a martini. Hey, she’s 21, and after a concert and after dealing with Snippet and M.A.E. yesterday I told her she could have as many as she needed. “No I can’t, I have homework,” she said. I guess I’ll get her good and sloshed during winter break.

So I got the call from the wife: she wasn’t up to getting to the jail for The Boy’s visitation. Looking at the time, I was in pretty good shape, so I gave the waitress (one of DD’s college acquaintances) the plastic, took the daughter-unit back to the campus, and headed back to town. I got there with 10 minutes to spare by the schedule, quite a bit more by the reality. These days, “visitation” means you get to talk to your inmate offspring via videophone — maybe with a little hacking, we could stay home and Skype him — but at least it was some facsimile (literally) of visual contact. We ran down the allotted time with trivialities, then I check to see what the next visitation time would be… Friday evening, it turns out. Oh well, Mrs. Fetched should be better by then. Maybe Snippet and Mason will come too.

Home. Rum. Blog. I’ll probably turn in early tonight, just to get an early start again tomorrow. I might actually get to work by the nominal starting time…

Grrrrrrr!

With M.A.E. and Moptop being at the manor for a while, and Daughter Dearest at college, Mrs. Fetched thought it would be OK to let them stay in DD's room. Now DD is home on break and livid about the state of her room. She's growling about the disarray, including "trying on my clothes and shoes without being asked." Maybe it's better that M.A.E. is elsewhere this evening.

Me? I got sent up on the roof to nail down a few shingles, which turned out to be loose flashing under said shingles. There's a couple shingles that have come off, but not leaking. Yet. I knew the roof was going to be a trouble spot the first time I looked at the place. Naturally, Mrs. Fetched ignored me.

Knock Me Over…

I came home from choir practice yesterday evening to find the downstairs… rather quiet. The Boy and Snippet were nowhere to be found; my iPad and MacBook both lay idle. I took a peek in the crib, and Mason wasn’t snoozing.

No way, I thought, and slipped upstairs and tapped on The Boy’s door. “You guys have Mason up here?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said The Boy.

“No problem, just curious,” I said and headed back down. “They must WANT something,” I thought, more than a little surprised. I can’t remember a time they’ve tended to their own kid through the evening, at least while at the manor. Granted, Snippet didn’t have to work last night, but evenings off have never stopped them from ignoring their offspring before.

The weirdness wasn’t over yet. They came downstairs, and Mason suddenly got cranky like he was ready to go to sleep — he didn’t even want a bedtime bowl of oatmeal. I took him while Snippet got a bottle ready, then took him from me (!) and gave him the bottle… and he went to sleep. And then, as I was doing a little work on some upcoming White Pickups episodes, came the top of the whole-a topper. From my desk in the bedroom, I can look straight down the hall and see the kitchen door; it was closed but there was light coming underneath and I could hear a strange clinking noise. I had to go check this, again thinking no way… but there they were, cleaning the kitchen! At this point, I was ready to pack my bags and stand outside, because the apocalypse had to be imminent.

I suppose it goes to show: you might have known someone all his life, even watched him being born, raised him, watch him go his own way… and he still has the capacity to surprise you, even if he does exactly what you expect 99% of the time.

Oh, and this morning, he was streaming a classic blues station on his new phone. Yeah, my son the metalhead likes classic blues. Shock upon shock.

I’m Back!

Did’ja miss me?

While you count the turtles on the dock next door to Dad’s place, enjoying one of the last warm days this side of spring, I’ll ask an age-old question: what’s worse than dialup? Obviously: no Internet at all. Or perhaps Internet on a not-iPhone with a tiny screen. I actually picked up a wifi signal from a friend of Mom’s across the lake, but they wisely had it locked. I tried tethering to my new phone, but that didn’t work out either (still working on that for later needs). I was mostly able to keep up with Twitter, but that’s about it.

Anyway, we had a pretty good time visiting with Dad. We went golfing several times, until a tendon in Solar’s arm decided it had enough. I guess that’s the advantage of dealing with a baby; all the lifting kept me in good form (and I actually started getting off the tee fairly well once I slowed down my swing). We had a small party for his 80th birthday… for the things he complains about, I just hope I’m doing as well when I’m 80. We ate out (a LOT) and ate well when we ate in, too. I got more pictures, some of which will end up on Picasaweb and maybe here sooner or later.

I got home last night around 11:30 p.m. and Mason was asleep (whew!). Of course, we were getting rapidly re-acquainted at an earlier hour than I would have liked. Mrs. Fetched and M.A.E. said he called down the hall for me for a couple days after I left. He changed quite a bit in five days: his hair is a little longer and a lot thicker, and he’s gotten tall enough to reach the tabletops from the floor (eep!). He had his one-year checkup last week, and he’s still 20 lbs. — not much weight gain in the last four months, but the doc says it’s not a concern. He just runs off what he eats, and has minimal baby fat. He’s been trying to talk for a while, and hit on saying ahhhh for a drink before I left. Of course, he’s getting into anything he gets a chance to get into, often looking over his shoulder to make sure we him him doing it… then running away and laughing when he grabs something he shouldn’t.

But I digress. My first day home, I get a call from the sheriff’s office, asking me if I can pick up my car. What has The Boy done THIS time??? The dispatcher couldn’t get any info from the state trooper, who was making the bust almost right on her doorstep, but took my number and called me back when she got the info: speeding and suspended license. Turns out the second charge was bogus — he had paperwork showing he’d done what he had to do to avoid that, and the DMV agreed this afternoon — but 64 in a 45 zone is going to leave a mark… on his wallet. The Boy, of course, is in high dudgeon about it, and is ready to sue anyone he can find who’s attached to the situation. (I told him to look up “sovereign immunity” but, like Mrs. Fetched, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear so he dismissed it.)

Vacation in general was pretty nice. The week at the resort is almost like a distant memory, and don’t even ask about work (although I’ve peeked at email a few times). But today’s event was a reminder that I really need to start looking forward to my daily escape from the free-range insane asylum.

Everything Happens at Once

We came home from the resort on Friday. No big deal.

Saturday, we had another birthday cake for Mason, this one so The Boy (who was still in jail on Monday) could participate. Go check out the pictures — the last nine are from Saturday. He fed his parents each a bite of cake and I got pictures!

I also got serious about the woodpile out back on Saturday. In the photos linked here, the second pile has been completely removed and the first has taken a big hit. The Boy and I split up what was left needing splitting this afternoon. There’s still plenty to pick up and stack… I’m just trying to figure out where to stack it. What we have now might be enough to get us through the winter, especially if it isn’t too cold. I should have it all finished up by tomorrow, then I can start to finish (heh) the shower room.

Speaking of the shower room… as I came out of it this morning, I was treated to this particular sight in the bathroom. Now Andi gets to see them outside, 15 feet up in the air. Me, I get them in my personal space. It saw a bright flash, then the Atomic Flyswatter blasted it oblivion.

I don’t have a problem with spiders building their webs where I’m not going to run into them or open a cabinet door into their webs. When they get that close, it’s go time.


In the sigh department: The Boy came home last night… with Lobster. This might be construed as a TS03, but Lobster came to apologize to us for the stuff he’d done. OK, we’ll clear that alarm and move on. He got in with the Job Corps, got certified as a welder, and is hoping to find a welding job around here (sounds good, anyway). This evening, we had to run some stuff down to M.A.E., and decided to eat at the Steak & Shake where The Boy and M.A.E. used to work. The Boy met us there… with Lobster (so much for “move on”). Anyway, remember when M.A.E. and Moptop moved out? Well… her job started getting flaky soon after, with one decent manager and one Psycho Manager From Hell, and her hours got cut back. So she moved in with SPOW, her mom, at the end of the month. Mrs. Fetched predicted this would last about two weeks.

So while we’re eating, M.A.E. calls us: her mom’s having a psycho tantrum, can we come get her? Sure… why not? They got back, and I momentarily had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn’t 2005: The Boy, Lobster, and M.A.E. were all there once again, perhaps the first time since we unloaded them. The Boy took Lobster home, but M.A.E. and Moptop are here with us.

So we have The Boy/Snippet, DoubleRed, and M.A.E./Moptop. I told Mrs. Fetched I need to start hitting on the extra women, maybe they’ll move out.

A Little Quiet

I took the day off work today to help Daughter Dearest head back to Reinhardt for her junior year. Mrs. Fetched also enlisted Panda to help with various items. Last night was a bit of a crisis; she had some hard drive corruption and her MacBook suddenly decided to refuse to boot. Then Disk Utility said it couldn’t fix the problem. DD said I spent five hours on it altogether, but that was because I didn’t want to invoke the nuclear option (but had to in the end): copy her home directory to an external drive, reformat the internal, then copy her files back after installing Snow Leopard.

I got her refrigerator out of the studio first thing this morning, just to make it easier to move. Then I found an inch of ice in the freezer compartment, so I let it sit outside with the door open. A couple hours later, it hadn’t thawed much, so I took a hammer and chisel to the ice. A spray and PSHHHHHHHH let me know I managed to knock a hole in a freon area… dammit. I took the beer out of my fridge and let her take it instead.

There was a 40% chance of rain today, and light sprinkles were already starting just as we finished loading the truck. Panda tied a tarp over the back, and off we went — and the rain quit a few miles away, naturally. We both managed to find parking slots in front of the dorm and started hauling. For some reason, Mrs. Fetched insisted on bringing Mason with us, so the first few trips up I had Mason in the sling and what little loads I could carry with my free hand. Finally, I wised up and gave him to Mrs. Fetched and I was pulling full capacity for the last two trips.

Two females in a tight space means not a whole lot of room… but after about 20 minutes of putting stuff away, there was enough floor open to move around a little. Once it was slightly more under control, the rest of us bailed for home… and that’s when the rain really started coming down. Mrs. Fetched’s car has some tires on the back that are really prone to hydroplaning on certain roads, and she thought we had a flat tire. She wanted me to stop NOW, but we were going down a hill and I didn’t want to change a tire on a slope. “I don’t care, you could damage the rim!” she yelled. Oh yeah, really nice, the rim is more important than my foot getting crushed when the car falls off the jack. My mind tends to shut off input when it gets that irrational… and of course, none of the tires were flat when I got out in the rain to have a look. We continued on, slowly, until the roads cleared up.

So DD is gone all week and many weekends to come. Fortunately, Snippet has been stepping up a bit in the last week, getting up in the mornings and taking care of business — and DD has been visibly more pleasant to Snippet in response.

Plenty of stuff to do tomorrow, some work-related. I’ve also done some writing on the White Pickups sequel… and did I mention I had a couple ideas for spinoffs?

While My Grandson Gently Sleeps

A little update while Mason’s napping…

My stitches itches. But that’s pretty much it. Except for a tiny stinging, it hasn’t hurt at all. I’m supposed to get the stitches out on Thursday, and then I don’t have to worry about scratching it anymore.

Daughter Dearest went to Savannah with her roomie-to-be this week. The roomie’s mom does a lot of traveling, so they make an extended outing of it. It’s been really nice for DD, it’s a few days away from the cRaZy and time to do some girlie things. We picked her up last night and brought her home…

… to a very dark house. Some storms came through, and the power went out around 9 (about an hour after we left). J, Kobold, Brand X, and Evil Lad NOT were up here for some reason. Snippet rounded up a few candles and lit them up so they could navigate. We have plenty of LED flashlights in the bedroom, so we got ours and were able to move around pretty well after that. Somewhere in all that, one of The Boy’s friends decided to drop in around 11 p.m. You have to wonder sometimes… Mrs. Fetched told The Boy to send him home ASAP, and he left after ten minutes or so. The power came back on around midnight, and everyone went to their respective homes and beds.

Mason’s more than a bit under the weather at the moment. The Boy and Snippet got sick with this early in the week, and Mason decided to catch up. He started not feeling good Thursday afternoon, as that’s when he started getting clingy. He had a fever on and off much of yesterday. Mrs. Fetched called the doc yesterday evening and they were booked for the day, so this morning Snippet and I went looking for a place that would look at him. The “family care, minor emergency” place up at the freeway doesn’t see anyone under 3, and opened about 20 minutes late, so we went up to the hospital were Mason was born and took him into the ER. They were amazingly quick about getting him in; I stepped out to use the bathroom and the ER doc was poking and prodding him (which he objected to at full volume) by the time I got back. He has an ear infection, which some amoxicillin and some infant acetaminophen should take care of.

Oh… and DD’s new roomie is OK, and so is her vegan mom. Her brother asked her out last night. Wouldn’t be a problem, except that he’s 32. He’s a big guy, recovering from a parking lot accident in which he had a leg and shoulder broken up pretty badly (the car that hit him was totalled), so at least she could put some distance between them if necessary. But it’s a little disconcerting.

And that’s all I got. New White Pickups episode goes up, as usual, Monday morning.

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Fetched!

And a milestone, no less!

Flowers, cards, dinner out, and now she’s zorched out in bed and it’s not even 11. These milestone birthdays are the ones that get you…

The Boy and Snippet at the Cinder Block Hilton

So we add one to the collection:

The Boy got to serve his mini-vacation over the weekend, going in on Friday. Snippet was scheduled to go in on Tuesday, which meant we got to listen to her whine about how much she missed The Boy for several days. Finally, she got her own trip to the pokey. “I wonder if I’ll get to see him in there.”

“Probably not,” I said. “I’m pretty sure they keep the men & women separated.” As it was, I went on to work and Mrs. Fetched took her in Tuesday morning. That left us to take care of Mason, which isn’t much different from the usual situation. DoubleRed is visiting her family all week, and Daughter Dearest is home from college, so we were planning for a fairly quiet couple of days. There was a wrinkle, though: Granny fell that morning and broke her nose (I tell her to stop picking fights in biker bars, but nobody listens to me) and The Boy wasn’t released. So when the phone rang at 1a.m., Mrs. Fetched was ready to hear her mom inform us that Granny had died.

“They let me out,” The Boy said. “Someone needs to come pick me up.” Since I’d gotten up with Mason shortly after midnight, a highly-relieved Mrs. Fetched volunteered to go get him. As it turned out, he spent most of his four days in the medical block: the doc wants him checking his glucose at each meal and the jail’s SOP is to do it once a week. He said that went well enough, he had his own shower and bed. But our quiet couple of days ended up being about 16 hours.


Snippet was supposed to spend two days in the clink, but they let her out Wednesday night at 10 p.m. and I went to get her. She was already highly giddy at the prospect of seeing The Boy, but once again there was a wrinkle: not expecting her to be home, he went down to Kobold’s to play Guitar Hero or something. Mrs. Fetched didn’t want them down there all night, so we agreed to pick him up and bring him home. Snippet, if anything, got even more giddy as we rolled down to Kobold’s: “I’m going to jump on him and kiss him all over!” or something like that. yeeeeesh And that’s pretty much what she did. Mrs. Fetched agreed to let them stay at Kobold’s until 11:30, at which time Kobold would bring them home, and that was good because it gave Snippet a chance to get it out of her system.

You know what? I don’t think I ever wrote about what earned them their mini-vacations. Back when they were at the apartment, a drunk underage chick from next door came over crying and saying she’d been “inappropriately touched” (and both The Boy and Snippet said she’d been their “mattress” for quite a while). She called 911, thought better of it, hung up, and hid in The Boy’s closet. What she didn’t realize is that when you call 911, the emergency services operator can keep the line open even if you hang up on your end… and since she had a cell phone, they could trace both number and location, which brought the heat to The Boy’s door. Now it should be pointed out that this drunk chick wasn’t the only underage person in the apartment who had been drinking… and even though The Boy had not been there, he got hung with contributing. Oh, and Drunk Chick tossed a baggie of pot over the balcony rail, and the cops decided to try pinning that on The Boy as well. The problem was, Drunk Chick was telling one story (as the so-called victim) while everyone else was telling an entirely different one, so The Boy got off with a fairly light charge and Snippet got an underage drinking rap.

So they’re back. DoubleRed’s still gone, but she doesn’t make much noise through the evenings anyway.

The Week in Pictures

Just a few of the things, normal and not-so-normal, going on around the manor this week…

The dogwoods shook off their yellow early in the week, and are now their usual blazing white. The blooms aren’t as plentiful this year as they have been at least some years past.

This particular shot is the dogwood at the corner of the driveway, with a gigantic cypress in the background. I’ve joked about renting a bucket truck to string Christmas lights on that sucker.


Mason loves being outside, and loves getting a bath. He got too big for the bathroom sink, so now he gets his dunk time in the kitchen sink.

I didn’t have any pix from the various baby food showers he administered to his grandparents this week, unfortunately. On the other hand, I don’t have to worry about cleaning off the camera lens if one of those sneezes got directed that way either.

The Boy takes Mason outside in the stroller; sometimes he sits and plays guitar for him. Mason is fascinated by the guitar and the sound it makes… but most of all he enjoys his “dad time” (what little he gets). He also met Buster T. Butthead, who is officially the first dog he’s petted (stroke, stroke, grab handful of hair). When he’s running around in a few months, I expect Buster will be his best buddy. We’ll probably need to give the dog a bath, now that I think about it…


I spent much of yesterday cutting up a poplar tree with Mr. Sunshine. This was not my plan for the day — I was going to do the Bakin’ Fool thing and hot up the kitchen all day. But they’d dropped it in the area in front of the chicken house, where feed trucks will soon need to go, so it needed to be taken care of. It took us most of the day, cutting off the smaller branches to clear the work area then feeding them to my chipper-shredder… once the work area was clear, the rest of it went fairly quickly. Everything is stacked or piled up here at the manor except for the trunk pieces. We moved them out of the way and Mrs. Fetched said she’ll get the splitter down there and finish that up this week.

Now that’s not even beginning to address what’s waiting for me behind the manor — the above picture tells that particular tale (left side morning, right side evening). Mrs. Fetched has complained for a while about several oak trees close to the house out back; one does make a bad habit of dropping limbs on the roof above our bedroom. Since the renters requested removal of a similarly-positioned tree at the old place, she decided to deal with both jobs at once. So now I have quite a bit of raw firewood to process, and I won’t have to go far to get to it. I’ll have to see if The Boy is interested in getting started on it. I think we’ll miss that extra shade in the evenings, but what do I know?

But even though my day got spent cutting trees instead of kneading, what I wanted to get done yesterday actually happened. Instead of making bread, we bought a loaf. DoubleRed made cookies. And after supper and a brief rest, I made some cinnamon rolls. I took a few to Daughter Dearest, since her Spring Concert was today. Still plenty left, come by the manor and grab one!

Snippity Snippet

Home. No supper cooking, which is no surprise. More surprising is that The Boy was the only one here, but no surprise at all that he was on my laptop. Oh well, he finished his Facebook’ing and left, giving me a clear shot at the blog.

I work at home Wednesdays and Thursdays, but it’s not the orgy of productivity it used to be. I could blame Mason, and indeed he’s the proximate cause since he ends up on my lap quite a bit, but the real problem is that Snippet seems to want to have the bare minimum (if that) of involvement with her baby (and Daughter Dearest tells me she had him all day today). In the afternoon, she’ll sit and watch TV (the Judge Whoever shows, Springer if she can get away with it), and let him squall in her lap — which makes it hard for me to focus on what I’m supposed to be doing. Her primary goal seems to get him to go to sleep so she can do what she pleases… and Mason picks up on that (which, in Snippet’s mind, means “he’s spoiled”). He’s happy when The Boy has him, because his dad will at least put PBS on the idiot box and interact with him, but I think he’s growing distant from his mom.

I did get a fair amount done yesterday in the late morning, since I had pretty much the entire house to myself, but after lunch Snippet came in and told me about how awful Mrs. Fetched was to her — Cousin Splat is getting married in June, she’s been tagged to be a bridesmaid, and Mrs. Fetched wouldn’t let her go with the bride-to-be (the less said about her the better) to look for dresses. She concluded that Mrs. Fetched is a control freak, and she can be controlling at times, but I figured there was more to it than I’d been told. Snippet, like most people, will omit or gloss over certain details to polish up her side of the story.

Sure enough, Mrs. Fetched furnished the missing piece. Earlier on in the morning, she had asked Snippet to watch Kobold’s daughter (and there’s a story I haven’t told yet) through the afternoon, and Snippet agreed to do it. But when she heard about this dress shopping expedition, the commitment she’d made was suddenly forgotten (SN07 without too much of a stretch) until Mrs. Fetched attempted to hold her to her commitment. This turned into a big argument, and it’s fortunate for all involved that the fatal SN01 didn’t come into play. In Snippet ’s mind, the commitment she made didn’t matter (SN05) when she was given another choice.

OK, I can understand that part. She’s immature, and that kind of crap is to be expected. What I can’t understand is her profound lack of commitment to Mason. When The Boy and Daughter Dearest were babies, our lives revolved around them. Mrs. Fetched’s parents were nearby, and they got their share of grandkid time to be sure, but we didn’t just dump our kids on the grandparents and try to take off every weekend. If we went out, we usually took the kids with us — exceptions being a yearly office party or something similar, and that was two or maybe three times a year.

I doubt talking to her (or both of them) will make any difference, but I’m duty-bound to try.