Changin', Arrangin'

The wife asked me to clean off the computer desk in Mason’s room, because she wants to move her video editing system in there. Then the old office will become a guest bedroom. So in I went, with trash bags, vacuum cleaner, and a rag with a can of Pledge. The dust bunnies were large under there, but not overly aggressive. I think I bagged about a pound of them, along with a half-ton of trash and a new (and unused) power strip.

With that done, I hung the DSL box on the wall next to the router, and neatened up the UPS position. Then it was time to unhook everything in the office and drag the computer stuff over. That went as well as could be expected, dusting each item as I brought it in. There are plenty of dust bunnies in that room, too, but the pile of papers on that desk is close to approaching critical mass and creating a black hole like the one we had in our college dorm room. She knows what the papers are for, so I’ll let her deal with them. :-)

So after I got Mason down for a nap, and the girlies took off, I finally got to relax. Then I got a text from Daughter Dearest: Go ahead and clean off your desk, so we can move the one upstairs downstairs. So there were more oversized dust bunnies, more trash, and then I hauled the old desk into the living room. With that space open, I cleaned out behind the dresser before moving the new desk into position.

Then… I started loading it up. The new desk has both more and less space, both due to the shelf. The laptop and monitor couldn't both be up there, so I moved it as shown here. But there’s room for the microphone, and (with a little more arranging and dust bunny eradication) I managed to get the laser printer in place. The printer was displaced by the wife’s DV deck.

I got smart and zip-tied the power strip to the framework on the back of the desk—now, it’s out of the way but reachable. The UPS is on the bottom shelf, and the desk is on rollers, so cleaning behind it won’t be an ordeal. Maybe the dust bunnies won’t have a chance to proliferate this time.

Monday Musings

We’re definitely in the Countdown to Christmas. A week and a day before the wrapping paper flies. Mason is old enough, this year, to understand the whole presents and Santa Claus thing. Of course, he had to get sick… and he’s always uggggly when he’s sick. We’ve heard, “Am I on the naughty list?” a few times. He just wants cars, and I mean the Hot Wheels kind. We could get him ten of those, wrap each one, and he’ll think he hit the Presents Jackpot come the 25th. It reminds me of Daughter Dearest—we could get her twenty bucks worth of puzzles, back in the day, and she was happy as any kid on the Big Day.

It’s been too long since icicle lights were the Big Thing for decorating. They’ve finally come up with a new “must have” light set: the waterfall/cascading kind. Well, Mason does love the extravaganza of lights outside, and we’ve made a few adjustments with wiring so we don’t blow those tiny fuses in the first string of lights this year. Pictures will be taken once the last set of lights are hung.

The clever and talented Angela Kulig is almost done with my cover art. It’s going to be glorious. I just hope it’s all ready by Wednesday, so I can wibble about it.

This evening, a couple hours after we put Mason to bed, he came up the hall saying, “there’s a problem, there’s a problem.” After a little cuddle, he let us know that his projection nightlight had cycled off and he wanted it back on. With the moon and stars once again glowing on the ceiling, he went right back to sleep.

Writing Wibbles

With the White Pickups blog tour in the rear-view mirror, I heave a sigh of relief. There were a large pile of guest posts to write, plus an interview. As I type, there’s still two days to enter the raffle. You can’t win if you don’t enter!

October is the crazy month. Well, they’re all crazy months at FAR Manor, but October stands out as the real moonbat. It’s not Hallowe’en so much as that it’s tourist season in Sector 706 of Planet Georgia. That, and the “change of season” feeling that we don’t get much of the rest of the year. So it’s natural that I get the Biggest Word-Bomb Ever, or at least my personal biggest, in October. Perhaps I should explain…

If you’ve been around a while, you might have read at least parts of Accidental Sorcerers, a serial I've been blogging for a while. What is on the blog is about half of a completed novella, roughly 30,000 words. But that’s not all of Mik and Sura. Not by a long shot. I’ve had an idea for a second novella for a while now, and took a shot at writing one scene. One. This story really puts Mik and Sura through an emotional wringer, and frankly those two voices in my head got angry. Very angry. And while they may be kids, they can do magic. One has summoned an Elemental Dragon, and lived to tell about it; the other one gets the urge to set people on fire when they cross her. They chained me to the keyboard and made me write the ending (with the resolution), then sent me to the beginning where they were having a really good time at first. I call it a word-bomb, because it didn’t really feel like a Download from God like I’ve had a few times in the past. Still, 17,000 words in a week was mentally taxing. At least I excerpted a little of it for my #FridayFlash last week.

So I’m over halfway done with this story, and they’ve left me to muddle through the middle. Anyway, I need to finish beta on the first story, and then get the second one up.


I got a rather pleasant email from Amazon this morning. My first royalty “check” is going to be direct-deposited toward the end of the month. Nothing huge—I’ve sold about a dozen copies each of White Pickups and Xenocide—but it’s a start. The wife is suddenly realizing that I could have a little income out of this… so maybe I’ll get more time to write? Let’s hope.

Opening Hosta-ilities

Pulling a few things together into one post…

One corner of the back yard, directly behind the downstairs bathroom(s), is one of those spots that none of us have figured out what to do with. Beneath the master bedroom is a very utilitarian cellar space; there’s about 10 feet of sidewalk in front of the door, and a low rock wall on the left (facing the door). In previous years, when I haven’t ignored this space entirely, I’ve gone in with the lawn mower and took no prisoners. But last year, I realized that there was something other than grass and weeds along the top of the rock wall. This spring, I pulled up some of the grass around the hostas planted there, and one of them rewarded me with some flower stalks. Well played, hostas. It probably helped that the tree (now the stump on the left side of the above photo) was removed, giving them a little more sunshine to play with. The lawn back here is as much wild strawberry as grass, but that’s fine with me. Mason might find some forage-snacks in late April, and they don’t need as much mowing.

Around the front of the manor, we had a handyman replace some rotted wood around the door frame. He used some kind of (I think) PVC-based composite material, which should last until the house collapses. The wife & I got around to painting it yesterday afternoon. She ever so helpfully left the paint bucket at the bottom of the ladder, whereupon I stuck my foot in it and knocked it over onto the brick stoop. Well, the window frames on either side of the door needed some fresh paint too, so I dipped brushes in the spillage and took care of it. The rest of the spilled paint I scraped into a paint tray. I figure we’ll use the pressure washer to clean off the stoop once we put the screen door back up.

After some weed-pulling outside this evening, in which Daughter Dearest threatened a rabbit who got too close to the flowers, she went upstairs for a shower. Shortly after, I heard a scream and my name being called.

“You need to come up here and kill this spider in the shower!” she yelled. Oh yeah, like I’m really comfortable with spiders? Well, I came upstairs and saw this monster in the shower. Now there are places (especially Australia and Indonesia) with much larger spiders than this, but this SOB was the biggest I’d ever seen outside an enclosure on Planet Georgia. And it was IN MY HOUSE. And its eyes reflected the flash on my phone camera. (What was even scarier was that Daughter Dearest was wearing only a towel, and it was barely adequate to keep the important stuff covered. She used this as evidence of how urgent this was to her.)

I decided I needed long-range artillery to deal with this thing, so I went back downstairs and got a shoe. Mason, meanwhile, was attracted by all the noise surrounding the situation and had to come up to get a look at it himself. Fortunately, it stood still until I opened fire; it only took two or three attempts to get the shoe angled where it could compensate for the rounded shower corners.

I reached in with the toilet brush, planning to knock the corpse into the trash can, and it stuck to the brush. It was then I realized that it had webbed the bottom of the shower stall. And the web was all over my hand. I made sure Mason didn’t hear what I really felt about that—I hate spider webs more than spiders themselves, when it comes right down to it—as I boarded the spider for his one-way trip on the Septic Express. Then I got the webbery off me as best as I could, while Daughter Dearest laughed.

With that in hand, I rejoined Mason downstairs and gladly went into his room to watch him play with his blocks, while Daughter Dearest finally got her shower.

There may be three of us having nightmares tonight. I’m self-medicating in advance.

Writing Wibbles: Kreativ Blogger Award

Thanks to Helen Howell for passing the Kreativ Blogger award to me! (When she releases her young-reader book Jumping at Shadows, you’ll want to get it for your kids. The book, not the award.)

As part of the acceptance speech, I have to tell you 10 things about myself. If you’re on a diet, you might want to read before you eat—knowing me, some of these could be appetite suppressants…

1) I prefer not to use the syllable “Win” in conjunction with Microsoft products. Because they generally don’t.

2) In college, I had a small article published in Byte magazine, and several in Micro.

3) If you count user manuals, I’ve had about 15 million books published. I’m guessing maybe 1500 of them actually got read. :-D

4) When I was on the cross-country team in high school, I would run about 5 miles a day. That was… oh, 35 years and 80 pounds ago.

5) During those runs, I often had to detour into a brushy area to take care of business. I’d come home a couple pounds lighter.

6) My first attempt at writing was when I was 12. It was a Hardy Boys knockoff, and I think I only wrote about 3 chapters. But as part of the effort, my mom gave me her old “portable” manual typewriter and a typing textbook she’d kept from high school. By the time I abandoned that first attempt, I could touch-type. (I keep thinking I should post a photo of that typewriter. Think “netbook, ca. 1955.”)

7) In college, I had a job as a “galley hand” (cook’s assistant) on drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. My uncle Sonny was a cook for one of the service companies, and he got jobs for my brother and me. I completed my first novel that summer while sitting in a bunk, far out of sight of land. The whole thing was hand-written on scrap line-printer paper, and I still have it.

I thought I’d have to winnow 15–20 facts, not struggle to think of 10…


8) For several years, from late childhood to early adolescence, I would narrate my life to myself as it happened. My brother would say something, and I’d mentally add “he said” when he finished.

9) I nearly left the wife over the purchase of FAR Manor. I didn’t want to buy it for several reasons, not the least of which were the easily visible issues with the place. The decision already made on her part, she ignored every objection on my part. I’ve so far been right about everything regarding the house.

10) I wanted to retire when I was 40. It obviously didn’t happen.


Okay, now comes the other hard part: pass the award onto some other bloggers. There are some who come to mind immediately, but either never started blogging or gave it up (Jen, Janet, I’m looking at you). But fortunately, there’s a lot of other choices. I’m going to throw in my reasons for giving each recipient their award as well. So…

• Andi and Jim Ferguson at 40 Acres, More or Less (daily photography)
• Boran’s Saturday Painting Palooza (a weekly painting series)
• Kendall Grey (for her unorthodox views on publishing)
• Patrick Hester (a podcasting Hugo nominee, and another early serial writer)

I’m looking forward to reading your acceptance speeches!

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…

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.)

They’re Bawwwwck…

See how they're in the farthest corner
away from the crucifix?

Fortunately, not in the numbers they once were though.

My mother in law was either overcome by nostalgia for the “old days,” when getting eggs involved walking across the yard, or just got bored at how much less evil things have become since November. However it was, she got herself a dozen laying hens and a couple roosters last month.

Of course, they need a little fresh air and the like, so she converted an old shed last used to raise orphaned or abandoned calves. This shed has a generous half-acre of fenced in pasture, and “all we had to do” was hang some chicken wire on it to help keep them in.

Do hippie chickens
lay psychedelic eggs?

With the place prepared, the new avatars of evil were brought in and shown their new home. Being of non-industrial breed, they’re a lot more colorful than the plain white chicken house chickens. Mason enjoys watching them walk around outside, and we all enjoy the eggs.

But I have to wonder: do hippie chickens lay psychedelic eggs?

Commence to… Something

Let’s start with the big picture — long-time readers will recognize the “Then” pic from July 2008.

So yesterday morning, we got up at 6:30 a.m. That was a Saturday, which is a bad thing, but this is something that only happens once. I have several pictures to share, so I’ll let them do most of the talking.

Here they come! You can see DD with a big smile
close to the bottom-right.

I was on the side where her back was to me for the diploma,
but I had a clear line of sight to her in the seats.

And here she is, taking the handoff!

And I got a clear shot of her coming off the stage.

Hey Dad, I got it!!!

For me, the highlight came near the end. She was chosen
to lead the entire assembly in the alma mater!

Today, we’re sort of recovering. I’m going to take Mason outside for a while now.

If anyone needs a music teacher who graduated magna cum laude yesterday, she will entertain all offers. ;-)

Junk in My Trunk

It’s been a long overdue chore to clean out the trunk of my car, and I finally tackled it this weekend. Here's what I found:

• Trash. Enough to half-fill a big trash bag. Actually, there was already a trash bag a quarter full.
• Lots of hardware. I knew The Boy had a screw loose, but not that he had a couple dozen of them in my trunk.
• Scat-loads of his and Snippet’s clothes, and a few of Mason’s.
• A couple of Mason’s toys (he was happy to have another ball).
• $1.14 in loose change.
• Three UPS batteries. Oh yeah, that's where I put them — thinking I’d soon find a place where I could replace them — two years ago.
• A skateboard. I texted The Boy about it, and he thought he might have put it in there to keep stuff from slipping past the gap at the front of the plywood platform.
• Daughter Dearest’s kite (in a vinyl bag, so it survived).
• A shade for the back window, that I bought last summer to keep it from getting too hot on Mason when I took him somewhere.
• Two binders that belong to the choir.
• A bunch of CDs (all The Boy’s, I presume).
• Three pens. Two of them still write.
• Two screwdrivers and a wrench.
• Two jacks, various extensions and the like — but no spare tire (I knew that) or lug wrench (oops).

I think I excised a good 20 pounds from the trunk, when all was said and done. The thin plywood that serves as a floor over the spare tire well is seriously warped and coming apart, so I’ll need to replace that soon. I’ll reinforce the replacement so it doesn’t sag so badly over time. I just wish I knew where the water was coming in back there; it’s keeping me from stuffing some camping gear in there for an impromptu getaway.

Perspectives

I've seen this in email a couple times, but couldn't find the text with a quick Google. This is how I remember it:

A rich man wanted his son to understand and appreciate the wealth he had, so he sent his son to spend the summer with his poor relatives in the country. His son returned at summer’s end, looking tan and fit.

“So,” said his father, “do you now understand how it is to be poor?”

“Yes father,” said the boy. “I only see you a few times a month; my cousins see their father every day. I looked out their back door and saw gardens, woods, a lake, and mountains in the distance, instead of our walls and fences so close by. At night, we gathered around a bonfire and watched a sky full of stars, not hidden by the security lights I see here. We swam in a lake that is bigger than these grounds, let alone our pool. We played in woods that went on without end. We ate food we grew ourselves, instead of telling the help to go buy it for us.

“Thank you, father, for showing me how poor we really are.”

It might be that those who passed it on were looking at what I call the “cultural superiority” aspect of the story — there’s quite a bit of that in country music these days — but to me, it speaks of how adults and children have different perspectives. An adult might crave wealth, then hide behind walls to keep it in and spend all his time gaining more wealth. But to a child, such a life is little more than a clean “nice” prison. Kids like to be outside, girls as well as boys. I remember The Boy as a toddler, having the time of his life rolling in the mud with an overgrown Springer Spaniel who adored him. And then there’s the whole hands-on perspective — like when I try to help Mason with something and he says, “I do it, I do it!”

When is it that getting dirty, doing stuff with our own hands, and spending hours on end outside becomes abhorrent? I know that, for some, that day never comes. Are they really worse off?

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.

Skylar, "Latchkey" Kid

I was trying to catch up on Twitter this afternoon, when I looked out the window and saw Big V cruising up the driveway in her power-chair. I shouted an alarm, and Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest went out to see what was going on.

“I need you to call 911,” she said, “Skylar has locked himself in the car.” Now for those sharp readers (which, since you’re reading TFM, is all of you) who were wondering why she didn’t make the call herself, she dropped her cellphone in the toilet yesterday. Which makes it a smellphone for sure! Turns out that Cousin Splat was cleaning out the car, and Skylar wanted to “help.” Of course, there is no second set of keys for their car.

The 911 dispatcher asked Mrs. Fetched if the toddler was stressed. “No,” she said, “but his grandmother is pretty stressed!” That got a chuckle out of dispatch. I figured I’d better go down there myself, just in case there was something I could do… and passed Big V (and her German Shepherd with the huge schnozz) on the way.

Skylar is (when he’s not throwing a random fit) the Zen Master of toddlers. He was chattering nonsense, poking at various things, and not concerned in the least about being locked in an Impala. Cousin Splat (his dad) and I tried to get him to poke the power unlock, to no avail. I thought about trying to get him to push buttons on the key fob, but the keys were in the ignition and decided that wouldn’t be a good idea. The car has an interlock where you can’t shift out of park unless you’re hitting the brakes, but still. Big V got in on the act, and the schnozzlehound got between her and me when she started sounding upset… like I was the problem here.

The cop showed up at last, and had me hold the flashlight on the driver door latch while he ran a gadget between a window and the weatherstripping. Skylar got interested in the thing poking in the car, and started pushing on it. This was actually helpful (for a change), since it gave the cop enough leverage on the latch to pop it.

“His diaper is pretty wet,” said Cousin Splat, carrying him inside.

“Yeah, you probably have to change your pants too, after that!” Big V opined.

I think they’re going to get a spare key made first thing tomorrow.

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.

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.

The End is Just the Beginning

Somebody pinch me. Bonus points if you’re female and I get to pinch back.

It appears that we have outlasted the chicken houses!

Tyson’s, using their usual “company store” debt-slavery tactic, demanded some rather pricey upgrades to the chicken houses to renew the in-laws’ contract. They said “nope,” and thus the last batch was scheduled to leave around the end of March. However, since the entire paycheck goes out the furnaces during winter grow-outs, the in-laws pulled the plug after the last batch left Friday night. Permit me a brief…

WOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO!!!!

This leaves the farm with four empty chicken houses and still a small hill of debt remaining. Several possibilities have been bandied about for making the houses pay the rest of their way — some kind of greenhouse seems to be the idea that we all keep coming back to. It's actually not a bad idea; the houses have lights, water, heat, and ventilation. And fertilizer. Lots of fertilizer. If we replace some of the roofing tin with plexiglas, we can get some sunlight into the middle of the houses as well. I’m pushing for herbs (cooking, not smoking) as a primary crop, since the stores charge like two bucks for an ounce of leaves and they can grow like weeds under the right conditions. The agent at the ag coop that has the loan had several good suggestions for marketing and lining up customers. The upside is, you can go away for a weekend and not come back to a thousand dead chickens to pick up.


In less pleasant news, M.A.E. seems to be back at the manor. She can’t seem to pick friends who can handle her desired lifestyle, which is to spend the entire day on Facebook and do as little as possible to help around the house. She’s brought her daughter (Moptop is no longer a good moniker for her as her curls have gone for now) over for weekends and she and Mason have a great time antagonizing each other.

Gotta take the bad with the good, I guess.

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.

Let There Be Light

You know I wouldn’t pass up a chance to re-use this picture, right?

Tuesday evening, I was playing with Mason under his bed for a few minutes. When I went to get up, I put my left knee down on the register grate… then put my entire weight on that knee. HURT I limped around for a few minutes until the pain went away and didn’t think much of it.

Until that night, when it hurt enough to wake me up. Ibuprofen was my friend then and for the next two nights. It never got to the point where I couldn’t walk on it, or needed my friend Reality the crutch, but I didn’t like it much. From then until Friday afternoon, when the pain subsided, I didn’t do much tweeting, blogging, or writing. I’d planned to post yesterday’s October Horror Spotlight on Thursday, but it was one of the casualties of the week.

So when I got home from work on Friday, I got crackin’ on my #FridayFlash and got it posted.

But Saturday brought new issues to the fore. Ever since the fluorescent fixture in our bathroom crapped out again last winter, we’ve been getting by with a lamp on the vanity. It hasn’t been a wonderful workaround — it gave just enough light to be useful, but took up space and we kept trying to flip the switch. We finally decided to do something about it and picked up a new fixture at Home Despot.

As with any project, I realized I needed more parts once I actually got started, not to mention getting the wrong parts for the next thing, so back I went. With everything I needed, the actual job took less time than the round trips needed to get the stuff. (I took the picture with auto-exposure set to −2 so the light wouldn’t blow out the whole picture.)

A less annoying, but still necessary project, completed the electrical work at FAR Manor. One of the dimmers in the living room wasn’t working right, and I decided to get something that didn’t have a large protruding knob that Mason or Skylar could put a lot of sideways force on. What I really wanted were the new touch-plate dimmers, but they didn’t have any rated to work with dimmable CFL or LED bulbs. So I settled on sliders with rocker switches.

One of the things I got on my second trip was a wall plate and a 3-way switch. It turns out that they don’t have a wall plate with two big rectangular cutouts (slider size) and one small (regular switch size). So I replaced the working switch with a rocker so I could get a plate to fit them all.

Unlike the bathroom light, where I just had to turn off a switch to have safe working conditions, we had to find the breakers for the dimmers. Once that was accomplished, I got to work… OH $#¡+ the 3-way switch was on another circuit we hadn’t shut off! Mrs. Fetched fixed that by hitting the main breaker, and I got that job finished without any further tingly zappage.

So I have a good dimmer and a good 3-way switch in the parts drawer now. I think I know where I want to put the dimmer…

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.

Lobster Toss

Lobster hasn’t been at the manor for more than a few minutes at a time since we returned from the resort. We specifically told him to not bring his girlfriend over here, especially since he hasn’t even started divorce proceedings, so he (and she) have been at Big V’s place. Another instruction I gave him before we left for Michigan was: “no drugs over here, or you’re outta here.”

Well… back when M.A.E. was still here, the first night we left for Michigan, he and a friend (that Mrs. Fetched told him to never bring to the manor) went in the detached garage and did some meth.
According to M.A.E., he was so whacked he probably doesn’t remember her cussing him out. So last night, Mrs. Fetched told me I needed to tell him to pack it up. Fine, whatever.

So tonight I sat down to check the state of the Internet and it immediately started thundering. I unplugged the power strip and figured that telling Lobster to come get his stuff would be a waste of time because he’s: a) too lazy to get off his girlfriend and do it; b) hoping Mrs. Fetched would forget about it if he put it off long enough, because she has a history of doing that. We’ve been down this road before; I grabbed a couple of garbage bags and waded into the nightmare that is the former bedroom of The Boy and Snippet (and Lobster, sleeping on a mattress at the foot of the bed).

The pile of dirty clothes behind the door was immediately recognizable as Lobster’s, so I shoveled clothes into one of the bags. After removing our towels (so that’s where they all went!), the remaining pile of clothes fit easily into one bag. I started on a second pile, but began recognizing some of those as The Boy’s things. I did, however, find a suitcase that belonged to Lobster so the clothes that looked clean went in there. Things that were obviously garbage went into the trash.

As I was finishing up, Mrs. Fetched made her slow way up the steps. After seeing what I was up to, she joined in. As with anything the wife does, scope creep ensued and (after figuring we got all of Lobster’s stuff bagged up) we started going through all the other crap laying on the floor. There were dishes, cups, a few empties (mostly beer but there was a Crown Royal bottle too), more socks, more towels, more socks, and even more socks. I took a deep breath and dived under the bed and found… more socks, among many other things including several empty photo albums for Mason and a bag of (thankfully unused) condoms. Many little bits of paper and other articles of trash. The iPad charger and an All Dogs Go To Heaven DVD. The lighter I’d been missing (for starting fires in the patio table firepit).

But the crowning horror was yet to come. Daughter Dearest complained mightily about the state of the bathroom when she was here last weekend. She even taped a note to Lobster on the mirror, ending with “if you would clean up after yourself, maybe you could keep a girlfriend.” We found the note in the bedroom; I was surprised he didn’t wad it up or shred it. But the bathroom hadn’t been cleaned up beyond removing the note. Mrs. Fetched, who has cleaned up a dead man’s blood in the bizarre reality that is life at FAR Manor, started by mining out the mildewed washcloths and towels piled in a corner. She asked me to bring a broom, the mop, and the mop bucket. Figuring she’d want me to bring up the cleaning stuff she forgot to ask for, I added it to the load.

So that’s where we are tonight. Mrs. Fetched is cleaning up the biohazardous upstairs bathroom, after I took some risks picking up crap in the bedroom. Tomorrow, I’m getting a large bottle of rum and drinking myself happy.