The Great Closet Purge of 2016

I’ve been saying for a while now that I need to get clothes I don’t/can’t wear out of the closet to take to Goodwill. Well, today the wife took Mason to see The Secret Life of Pets, leaving me with Charlie. The baby was ready for his nap, but wasn’t about to go to sleep while Mason was making noise and doing amusing things… but it took less than 10 minutes to put him down once they left. With him asleep, and me alone and stuck in the manor, I decided this would be a good time to tackle that closet.

Now I figured to purge enough clothes to fit in one bag, then I could run by the Goodwill dropoff after dropping Mason off at school. But the Great Closet Purge of 2016 had other ideas. After taking a third of the old shirts out, I already had two stacks and wasn't even half done with the closet. Next came the pants; over half of those had to go, but I found 8 or 9 pairs I could wear and didn’t know I had. Finally, the sweaters and miscellaneous stuff on the floor. I ended up with four stacks, plus a separate pile for rags. Then Charlie woke up.

Note: the baby is to show scale and isn’t otherwise part of the purge.

Somehow, I don’t think I‘ll get all that into the Miata with room left over to carry Mason and his bookbag. Besides, I have to purge my dresser as well…

Lucky 7 (Months)

Hey, put your finger in here…

Charlie’s 7 months old today. As you can see, he has been cutting teeth for a while. This of course is accompanied by the usual “chew on anything kind of soft” thing that babies do. If you give him a finger, he’ll s-l-o-w-l-y pull it up to his mouth, touch it to his teeth, then start applying pressure. And those teeth are sharp. At least he gives you plenty of warning.

He’s not sitting by himself or crawling just yet, but I can no longer drop him on my bed between two pillows and expect him to stay put. Saturday afternoon, he wriggled out from between the pillows (in his sleep) then flipped over while I took care of some laundry. Fortunately, he didn’t go any farther. Now I know I can’t get away with doing that anymore.

We’re converting the wife’s office, a tiny bedroom really, into his room. That entails moving a bunch of furniture around, as always. Mason’s big enough to help now, which should make life a little easier. The office stuff will go into the corner of the living room where Charlie’s bed (and some other stuff) is now.

Diamond sword something something creeper…

His surrogate big brother Mason is obsessed with Minecraft these days, but he’ll always make room for Charlie to sit and watch. Mason’s always ready to clown around for Charlie, who always appreciates his antics and weird noises.

Charlie, of course, has a bit of clown-sense of his own. Sometimes when I'm giving him a bottle, he'll catch my eye, grin around the nipple, and go “hee heeeee.” That cracks me up, which gets him going, and it turns into a positive feedback loop. Usually, when he does that, he’s had enough bottle anyway.

Stay tuned… always something weird around FAR Manor.

Charlie at Six (Months)

He’s a little behind, which is to be expected given his not-so-stellar origin story, but he’s catching up quick. He’s quite the chubby baby these days… and happy!

Jiggle his leg. Gets a grin out of him every time.

Look Granddad, I'm multitasking!

In the last week or so, he has mastered the trick of rolling onto his back. I find him in bed that way most mornings now, either playing with his feet and chattering quietly, or grumbling about the slow service around the manor. He still makes that growling noise, sometimes in two notes at once (sounds like a sixth, not terribly melodious), and it can either mean “I’m content” or “I need some attention over here!” depending on context. But he’s added singing to the mix, especially when he’s ready for a nap. (But that going down for a nap thing requires at least a token nip at the bottle.)

He’s not much for toys just yet. He much prefers people… I think because they do stuff without him making it happen. Playing with his feet—or at least one foot—is something he does often, though. The pediatrician asked, “does he pull it up to his mouth?” and the wife replied, “his legs are too fat for that.” Mostly true.

He’s kind of lazy, though. He likes to slouch with shoulders slumped when we sit or stand him up. We have to press on his back to get him straight. Someone made a scary noise that sounded like “scoliosis,” but he’s Bonnie Common Charlie, not King Richard III. :-P His legs are strong enough to hold all his weight now, which is good, and he’ll scramble up to a crawl position when we put him on his stomach. (He hasn’t mastered forward propulsion, though, still scooting backwards.)

Play time!

Mason, meanwhile, has really gotten into the surrogate big brother thing. Charlie absolutely loves it when Mason capers around and makes weird noises. I’ve never heard a baby laugh the way Charlie laughs when Mason’s playing with him, a soft “haw haw haw haw” with shoulders shaking.

As for Mason, asking him to play with Charlie is the easiest way to get him off the iPad for a little while. This morning, when Charlie was sitting in his bouncy seat and grumbling about nobody being around, Mason brought the iPad over and sat with him. Charlie quieted immediately and watched what Mason was doing. Now if Mason’s own babyhood is any guide to the future, we can expect to see Charlie soon wanting to “help” by bopping the screen at an inopportune moment…

A Salted Battery, Golf Cart Edition

Things have been going mostly pretty well here for now. I’m working remote, there’s plenty of stuff to keep Mom and me occupied after work, and we have dealt with most of the little things and all the bigger ones.

Mom’s electric golf cart has been acting up for a while now. First, there was the “wouldn’t run” issue that somehow cleared itself last year. But it was still giving trouble, bogging on hills and even cutting out for a few seconds at a time. So before we came up, she got on the phone with some friends. Wicked Stepfather had parked the cart in the garage for the winter, figuring it would be less moist there.

Here’s where the fun begins. They couldn’t get the thing to go at all. One of the brilliant folks, missing the power cord sticking out below the driver’s seat, put a car battery charger on one of the batteries (it has six). Here’s the fun part: they’re 8V batteries. OOPS They couldn’t get it to go (gee, I wonder why) and ended up pushing it down the hill and into its garagelet around the back of the house.

So we got there, I plugged it in to charge up. Still nothing. I figured the batteries were shot, a pretty good guess because they were the original batteries and the cart is six years old. So I lifted the seat to get the capacity and any other information that would help us get replacements… and when I shone a trouble light down the side, I saw the disconnected positive cable. Wicked Stepfather had wisely disconnected it last year to cut down on battery drain over the winter.

Ooooooookaaaaayyyyyyy. I hooked that back up, plugged the charger in, and the cart rewarded us with motion, hooray! But it was still bogging and cutting out. The battery that had been abused with a car charger had boiled out most of its water, so we added about a quart to get it back up to scratch. That helped with the cutting-out part, but not completely, and it was still bogging on hills.

Out with the old…

So since the Sam’s in Johnson City (about 50 miles away) carried them, we decided to add that to Mom’s list of stuff. Six batteries, $100 apiece. Yay. We got them home, and I brought the cart up top so we only had to carry the batteries 10 feet or so. These suckers weigh about 50 lbs (22-23kg) apiece, so I had a good time getting the oldies out of the cart. But with them out of the way, Mom took the other end of each battery and helped me get them into position.

This is when the next thing happened: the new batteries have their terminals spaced closer together than the old ones. That means there was about an inch more distance between terminals on adjacent batteries. Since they’re connected in series (six 8V batteries = 48V), and the connecting cables had little to no slack, they were about an inch too short. The long one, connecting the two rows, was okay, so we just needed four short cables.

Undaunted, we called Lowe’s. They had 18-inch (450mm) battery cables for riding lawn mowers and ring terminals. Since half the length would be more than sufficient, I figured to cut the cables in two and make four out of two. It turned out the cables were about half as thick as the originals, so I bought a second pair and doubled them up.

Double, double, less chance for trouble?

Wicked Stepfather has a little workbench space in the storage room behind where the cart goes. He didn’t have a crimp tool that would handle 4-gauge terminals, but he had a bench vise and that was sufficient. It didn’t take long to cut, strip, and crimp them all. I brought them back upstairs and made the connections.

Finally, it was time to plug it in to charge. I was glad the cart was outside, just in case something caught fire. Fortunately, that wasn’t an issue. So yesterday, I took it on a shakedown cruise. It pulled the hills without any problem, never cut out, and is working just fine in general. After the cruise, I touched the cables—not even slightly warm.

So that pretty much wraps up all the maintenance kind of stuff that Mom couldn’t handle on her own. The lawn mower started on the second pull after two years, which makes me think Wicked Stepfather put preservative in the gas. We made pizza yesterday and had guests over, and that went well.

Looks like I’ll be going back to the manor for a few days next weekend. I’ll come back Monday (since I took the second half of June for vacation), spend maybe another week here, then Mom will spread her wings or something like that. Maybe she’s flying up north or something. I’ll figure it out. I miss the wife, Charlie, and Mason (and DD, who has been married two weeks now), but not much of anything else.

Nerd Month!

For all of June, I’m the quintessential nerd: living in Mom’s basement. You probably know about Mom’s summer house in the mountains of North Carolina; I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before. With Wicked Stepfather’s abrupt shuffling off of the mortal coil in spring (he keeled over in seconds), Mom has obviously had to make some adjustments. She still wants to get out of the Florida heat for the summer, but wasn’t sure how she would do with distance driving because Wicked Stepfather was one of those guys who did all of that. So I agreed to come up with her, spend the first two weeks working remote, then take the next two weeks as vacation.

So far, she’s done quite well. I packed my Miata with stuff I’d need for the month (mostly electronics), and showed her the easy way to get here from FAR Manor. The GPS in her car, which famously led Wicked Stepfather at least 100 miles out of the way each time, had a snit fit most of the way up. But she kept up without any problem, and I only sandbagged a little. The route I discovered a couple years back has about one mile of really sharp curves (out of over 300 miles, most of which is four-lane now). She’s also doing most or all of the local driving now that we’re here. She has no problem, something the youngest brother Solar was worried about. There’s the question of how she ’s going to get up north (probably flying), but so far so good.

Now, for a couple pix…

First, my June dwelling. The basement, like most in hilly areas, is exposed on one side (eastern exposure, which makes sleeping late in the morning problematic). I took the TV off the cart at the back wall to make room for the computer. Mom said I’d need another set-top box down here to watch TV anyway, so it all works out well.

I put the work laptop on the little table by the window. The first couple days I was here, before the cable company set us up with Internet, I had to hike it down to the “media center,” which is right by the pool. I might do that again…

Yesterday, after a morning of yard work (I had to weed-eater the entire back yard, because it was like a meadow with all the tall weeds and flowers), we went to Blind Squirrel Brewery for lunch.

The food was good, too.

They have two disc golf courses, and I happen to have my golf discs with me, so I’ll likely head on back there once I’m on vacation the last two weeks of the month.

Daughter Dearest Ties the Knot

And we officially begin a new chapter—both our kids are married.

Here comes the bride—get outta the WAY!

Saturday was the culmination of a lot of preparations that made everything a little crazier than usual around the free-range insane asylum, but everything went off as expected. Charlie tried to steal the show, making his contented growling noise in the back row and making DD laugh a little up at the altar.

At rehearsal, I had to carry on a tradition started by the wife’s dad. Back when, the preacher got to the part where he asks who’s giving away the bride. He answered “Her mother and I. And I got two more at home! Who wants ‘em?” So when it came to my time, I put her hand in Fizzle’s and said, “She’s all yours, buddy! Good luck!” (Of course, neither of us did that at the actual ceremony.)

So now it’s time to rename Fizzle, since he’s no longer the Future Son In Law. +Katherine Hajar suggested “Sizzle.” And why not? Sizzle it is!

And tomorrow, I’m off to NC with Mom. For the whole month. Once she gets her cable modem activated, I’ll resume regular blogging.

Mason Says Farewell to Kindergarten

Mason’s first year of school is drawing to a close. Yesterday, the kindergarten classes had their “graduation” ceremony.

In which Mason gets a hug, from the principal of the thing. :-P

He has made quite a few strides this year. He reads now, and he’s always been good with numbers. He doesn’t know it just yet, but he has a couple of graduation “presents” waiting for him tonight: his own writing/drawing journal, and the second Dragonbreath book. He always complains when packages arrive from Amazon and they’re not for him… at least the one coming in today is partly for him.

Wife’s birthday is tomorrow, Mason’s last day of school is Friday, DD’s wedding is Saturday, and I think I missed the 11th blogiversary day for TFM. This week is going to be crazier than usual. At least Thing #1 (the graduation) is over.

An Upgrade

Multitasking: Charlie’s eating and sleeping all at once,
while I’m feeding him and typing one-handed!

Sun Tzu said, "the wheels of justice grind slowly, but grind exceedingly fine.”

Karma was awfully busy around FAR Manor this week, preparing for the runup to Thursday’s court hearing. Whether you believe Karma’s a b***h or not, she got awfully cranky having to work overtime on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Big V has insisted all along that she should have custody of Charles, regardless of her unwillingness to take care of herself and her fractional ability to take care of Skylar. She kind of spilled the beans at one point: what she really wants is the benefits and tax deduction she'll get for having custody, while we actually take care of him and have the expenses. The wife is already taking her and Skylar to their various appointments as it is. So she did what anyone does who doesn’t want to acknowledge reality: constructed a narrative.

Because of various things, mostly having to do with DD’s upcoming wedding, I worked at home Tuesday so Mason and Fizzle’s kids would have someone at the manor for them when they got off the bus. Thus, when Big V called, I got an earful of narrative. Most of it is pure crap, especially the part where she says we’re not allowing her to see Charles—in fact, when I had to go down there, I would take him inside to see her if he wasn’t asleep in the car seat. The crux of the matter is, we don’t let her have unsupervised visits. That’s not our doing, that was a stipulation from DFACS at the time we got him. Signed papers and everything. She seems to think that we should blow them off at her own whim, regardless of the consequences (which could involve Charlie being relocated and none of us get to see him, but Big V and rational aren’t even nodding acquaintances).

Anyway. In her rant, she said she was going to file a Motion to Intervene to get “grandparent’s rights” (which means more in some other states than on Planet Georgia). In case I never mentioned it, my mom worked for a Federal judge when I was in high school. I’ve been behind the scenes at courthouses more than most, so her waving writs at me didn’t faze me much. Seeing I wasn’t giving her much satisfaction, and was in fact poking holes in her narrative bubble, she called the wife to rant at her—and then… here’s where Karma got mad. She called Charles’s lawyer and screamed at her. Now this lawyer is a volunteer for DFACS. She teaches law as a day job. So she isn’t paid to put up with weapons-grade crap like Big V throws when she’s in one of her moods. And… she’s originally from New Jersey. Yup, Big V pissed off a New Jersey lawyer, and you know that isn’t gonna end well.

So the DFACS advocates all know each other’s business, even if they don’t always get along. Charlie’s lawyer didn’t need a whole lot of poking to learn that Big V is legally-blind, one-legged, can’t drive, and depends on us to get both her and Skylar to their various appointments. So she decided to make life difficult for Big V.

So now we come to yesterday morning. Figuring the 8:30am scheduled time wasn’t going to happen, I brought my work computer since there’s wifi in the courthouse. And indeed I was right. There was a rather large spec review, and I got through all 13 documents before they called us in. Meanwhile, Splat and BB sat with us to see Charlie. We’ve never had a problem with them visiting, although we both wish they had actually done it more than a handful of times. At one point, BB took Charlie and was making all these adoring noises. He started crying, and BB said, “here, take it” and gave him back to the wife. Yes, take “IT.” Meanwhile, Big V was off to the side, bad-mouthing us. Like we cared.

Just after 11, we finally got called in. Big V was looking all self-righteous, and got pretty steamed when she got the papers from Charlie’s lawyer. Shoulda kept your big freaking yap shut, sis. But when we got started, the judge said “we’ve got a conflict with one of the lawyers, come back at 1:30, and we’ll deal with this Motion to Intervene in July.” Seeing as neither the wife nor I had managed to grab any breakfast, we had no problem with that.

So after a nice leisurely lunch, it was “hi ho, hi ho, it’s back to court we go.” Big V was not there; since her tossed wrench got deflected for two months, I guess she couldn’t be bothered. Too bad, it would have been interesting to see her reaction. The DFACS lawyers and staff not only dug into Charlie’s case, they started laying the groundwork for Skylar’s. Meanwhile, Charlie charmed just about everyone in the courtroom—the caseworkers, the lawyers, and even the judge smiled at his “I’m content” growl¹. But when Splat took the stand, it became an utter trainwreck. He really didn’t want to incriminate BB, who face-palmed a few times while he testified, but he was under oath and seemed to understand that. Finally, one of the DFACS lawyers asked, “do you want to save time and just turn custody over to [the wife and me]?” Interestingly, the judge quashed that question.

The upshot was, Splat and BB both admitted to having a serious drug problem, and they were unable to take care of Charlie (living in their car is another minor detail), and they wanted us to continue taking care of him. So now we’re officially a foster home, as opposed to a safety home. That means we get some more benefits (which is what Big V wanted for herself), Charlie now has his own insurance, and Splat & BB have nine months to clean up their act. Meanwhile, there will be scheduled visits (although our policy of “you can see him whenever you want to” is still okay), and Big V will likely get scheduled visits once her motion is considered in July. The question is, whether she’ll just be seeing Charlie, or Charlie and Skylar, by that time.

In Big V’s case, it would have been better to keep her yap shut and let everyone think she was nucking futs, than to open her mouth and remove all doubt. Meanwhile, she has killed any willingness on our parts to help her with… anything. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

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¹ He has some fairly distinct vocalizations. There’s the raspy wail for “I’m hungry,” the smooth one for “Rock me, I’m ready to sleep,” the growl that can mean “Everything is awesome” or “Pick me up NOW,” and one I can’t really describe that means “I want to go home now.”

Charlie at 4 (Months)

Time flies. You realize you haven’t blogged for a while, and more time goes by. Ideas pile up, and where do you start?

I’m happy to be here! Or just happy!

Where I left off might be a reasonable approach… so heeeerrrrrrrrreeee’s Charlie!

When you’ve raised a couple of exceptionally advanced babies, “normal” can produce anxiety. Given Charlie’s inauspicious start in life, I was starting to wonder if he was permanently damaged.

All that changed about a month ago. He’s been eating well for a while, but he kicked it up a notch and really started putting on weight—pretty close to 15 pounds now. He also started vocalizing—first with this odd growling sound he makes, sometimes with two notes at once—then recently, more normal squawks. His “feed me” and “I’m tired” sounds are pretty distinct, and he’s working on his “my diaper is wet” sound. The communication goes both ways, sort of… the wife says when he’s sitting with her, he recognizes my gait and starts looking for me. And he’ll get rather upset if I don’t stop and say hello!

He does have some odd notions of what’s funny. Jiggle his legs, pump his arms, and he’ll reward you with a big grin and a giggle. He will also give you a big smile when you lay him on the changing table—he knows that means a dry diaper is on the way. (His happy place is a dry diaper and a full belly.)

He’s a little lazy about holding his head up, though—he lets it flop forward when we’re holding him up. The wife thought he had a problem at first, but when he’s fighting sleep, he’ll push off your chest and turn his head back and forth for a good long while. Like Mason at that age, he’s trying to get by on brief catnaps through the day, then sleep all night… 9 or 10 hours. This works for me, obviously. On the other hand, he’ll fight sleep at night, some nights. Like last night. He kept going until 12:30 a.m., but then he slept past 9 this morning.

Also like Mason, he likes to be held most of the time. He’ll lay on our bed and watch the ceiling fan, but mostly he likes interaction. He’s finally big enough to sit in my sling, so maybe I can catch up on writing. Typing one-handed, while feeding a hungry baby, has been a lot slower than I like. Accidental Sorcerers #7, The Blood of Heroes, is way behind, and everything else is backed up behind it. But now that I’ve done one blog post, maybe the logjam will break. I’d really like to get four books out this year if possible… but with the year already ⅓ over, it’s going to be a challenge.

T + One Month…

…and counting.

Hm… am I hungry yet? It’s been six minutes…

It’s been a rough one on the wife and me, too. Mostly her, but I’ve had my share of sleep deprivation as of late.

Given his profound lack of pre-natal care, it might be best to think of Charles as a preemie even if he was carried to term. During that first week and a half, the pediatrician clucked at his inability to gain weight. She encouraged us to encourage him to eat more, and not let him sleep a whole long time in between.

An aside: I was a preemie, a month early and under five pounds. And I had a hernia that made me howl like a banshee. The docs said I had to get over six pounds before they could operate on me… and so, every time I opened my mouth my parents stuck a bottle in it. With the hernia fixed, I started sleeping through the night. DD was also a preemie, and was very much a “hold me close” baby. And so is Charles, most of the time. I’ve found recently that if I prop him up on some pillows, he’ll contemplate the universe for a little while before deciding he needs some more personal attention.

Anyway, Charles doesn't have a hernia. But we started encouraging him to eat more… and about the time he got a “gained six ounces!” report, he really took it to heart. And hasn’t stopped. One night last week, he inhaled three ounces of formula before I realized (he typically gets an ounce at a time, then gets burped). Lucky for us both, he didn’t live up to his nickname (Chuck) and give it right back.

Unfortunately, he does have some issues with gas cramps/colic. Not to mention the typical baby trick of rockin' and rollin' all night long while everyone else is trying to get some sleep. This last week has been particularly hard on us ol' farts. We’ve started taking shifts. So last night, I got up at 4:30am and staggered into the living room. “Shift change,” I said. Wife made him some formula, but also prepped a second bottle with a tea she makes for his cramping. “Give him some of this,” she said, and somehow managed to get to the bed before falling down. So I let him suck down an ounce of tea and settled back in the recliner. Sometimes, he’ll zorch out on my chest… the trick is to not zorch out myself, then see if he’ll lay in the Pack&Play. I got him down, went to bed, and heard him squawking ten minutes later.

Grumbling some things I’m glad Mason didn’t hear, I went back out, got him, and gave him another ounce of tea. Fifteen minutes later, he was out cold again. I put him back down, but this time just laid on the couch. I wasn’t comfortable in bed for some reason. But then I slept until 7am, when Mason got up. Charles slept until 9. Wife was still zorched when I left for church; she supposedly got up around 11. He had a very wet atomic diaper, and his outfit was moistened as well. Like DD, he doesn’t like to be uncovered much (unless he’s being held, then he’ll tolerate it). So I’m hoping we’ll get a break through the night really soon.

Splat and BB have started making more of an effort to see him, lately. I took him down to Big V’s today; she has griped mightily that we have him and not her, but she admitted she couldn’t take care of him anyway. Splat, BB, and a bunch of BB’s family came to see Charles as well, and BB even changed his diaper. I don’t know if that means they’re going to make a serious effort to get him back when the 45 days are up (a little over 2 weeks from now), but I hope they at least are getting the idea he’s worth the effort of making some serious lifestyle changes.

And with that, the workweek begins anew tomorrow. With the X-Files back on the air, I have a reason to look forward to Mondays. And to watch at least a little TV.

Our Newest Inmate [UPDATEx2]

I have been sort of quiet about this, but the wife… well…

Already sleeping (and snoring) in my sling

I’m joking. This is Charles, the offspring of Cousin Splat and his wife (let’s call her Badger Boobs, for the pawprint tats that show up when she wears something low-cut). The tale of his arrival at FAR Manor is definitely an exercise in the weirdness that reigns in the free-range insane asylum.

So. Charles was born Friday. BB (not to be confused with DD, as the latter would hurt you for that) is not exactly the most stable isotope on the periodic table. As Cousin Splat is Big V’s offspring, I guess he was comfortable with that. One problem with BB is that there was some question about whether the baby was Cousin Splat’s… but one look at him dispelled all doubts. The other problem is BB is on probation for drug issues, and may not have exactly stayed squeaky-clean during her pregnancy. So there was a test.

Now here’s where stories diverge. BB claims the only stuff they found in her system were what they gave her at the hospital. Other claims were that the baby tested positive for meth, and yet another that his bloodwork was “fine.” Howe’er it was, DFACS asked Cousin Splat if he had any relatives who could provide a “safe house” for the kid. He gave them the wife’s name. They called Saturday, paid a visit Sunday, and Charles came home with the wife from the hospital today. [UPDATE #2: The pediatrician says they found amphetamines in his system, not meth. Bad enough, but not horrid.]

You can’t hear it, but he’s snoring in my sling right now. BB thinks the sling is an awesome idea. I like it too, because I can have both hands free to type.

According to the agreement, he could be here “up to 45 days,” although the case workers said that could run a lot longer. I expect an immediate return to the old 3am feeding/diaper change runs.

UPDATE: I forgot the funniest part of the story. We spent much of the weekend preparing for the new arrival, which included digging out a bunch of stuff from when Mason was a baby. Hearing the noise in the living room, he went to see Daughter Dearest and Fizzle setting up the Pack&Play. “I know what that is,” he said, and came back to me. “I’m gonna have to cover my ears. Aunt DD’s gonna have a baby.” Of course, I explained the situation to him, and he was fine with that. He can’t wait for Charles to get old enough to play with.

Sliding Into Six

It's our timeshare week, and Mason's birthday was yesterday.

Splashdown!

Today is the last day the waterslide is open, so we made the most of it this weekend. DD, Fizzle, and his kids all joined us Friday night, but left Saturday so Fizzle could get to his mall cop job. We went back to the manor for Mason’s party. To my shock, Snippet called for the first time in a long time. She texted me pics of her other two kids; I sent her a couple recent shots of Mason.

Of course, even though we’re on vacation, Mason keeps waking up at 7am and insisting on asking me questions instead of playing quietly until I’m ready to shamble out to the kitchen and start some coffee. We spent all morning at the waterslide, pool, and lake (where there’s a slide going into the water, as I demonstrated last year). He was seriously worn out, but a warm bath and lunch got him roaring back to life. He was hungry, he ate: a piece of bread (aka mayo sandwich), a slice of pizza, a piece of ham, and a cheese stick. He left one corner of the bread uneaten. Now, he’s badgering me to take him to the clubhouse.

And they call this vacation? :-P

Getting Organized

We were poking through some stuff in the garage a few weeks ago, before leaving on vacation. To my astonishment, my old Dayrunner turned up:

It’s been a while

As you can see from the date in the corner, it sat in a storage box for roughly 23 years. What was really amazing was the felt-tip pen (a “LePen”) still writes!

I remember buying the thing back when, after attending a time management seminar at work. Both the seminar and the planner were centered around to-do lists, with A/B/C priorities, long before the rise of portable electronic devices. To be honest, I don’t know how long I used it until I gave up and tossed the thing in a box.

Between then and now (spring of 2007 judging from the receipt), I heard about Getting Things Done (aka “GTD”) and bought a copy of the book. It was far more relevant to my life than Seven Habits or that time management course, and I did take a stab at implementing the system using the “Hipster PDA” forms from DIYplanner.com. It didn’t take, for whatever reason. Of course, I’d forgotten all about the organizer, and it was geared toward that A/B/C to-do list system anyway.

I started jotting down things I knew I needed to deal with in the organizer, then grabbed GTD off the shelf and read it through again. The forms in the organizer hadn’t magically transformed into GTD-compatibility over the years, but I knew how to fix that… DIYplanner loves GTD, and has gobs of forms that you can download and print. The selection was a little spotty for my organizer size—3.75"×6.75" or “Size 3” as they call it in the office supply stores (and Amazon) now—but I have LibreOffice, a punch, and a guillotine (paper cutter). Then I found that DayTimer sells blank pre-punched sheets in my size, and I ordered a pack. That’s handy, because (for some strange reason) they don’t sell undated refills… anywhere.

Part of GTD’s setup, and one of the things I didn’t do before, was to have a filing system within reach. My filing needs are fairly simple so far, so I figured a file box would be sufficient. The wife happened to have one empty, so I grabbed it and added a handful of paper clips, Post-Its, and an X-acto knife…

It’s not all over my desk!

It’s nice, the way it doubles as a file drawer… especially since I don’t have one on this desk. My home desk is nearly clean, now!

Somehow, I think it’s going to take this time. I have the system established, and I’m using it both on and off working hours. I already feel like my mind is clearer, which feels weird to be honest. I keep thinking, “now what?” even if the “what” is already written down where I know I can find it. Give it another week or so and I’ll get used to it. I hope.

Cue apocalypse in 3… 2… 1…

School is Now in Session

Did you SEE that playground?

As I have said before, Planet Georgia starts school way-too-dang-early and “makes up” by scheduling a bunch of off-days through the year. The upshot is, what used to be a three-month summer break is now only two months. This makes things difficult for vacations, because the entire month of August is no longer available.

This becomes more significant this year, because Mason has started kindergarten. While I was last dropping off kids at school… oh, about eight years ago I guess, I’ve been taking him to pre-school for the last couple years. It works out well on days I work at home, since his school is about five miles closer than the pre-school he went to last year.

He’s doing pretty well. He went into kindergarten already able to read a little, and to count well past 200 (and can do addition in his head). We were afraid he would be bored, but so far so good. He’s getting good behavior reports daily, because he saves up the acting-out stuff for when he gets home. :-P

As for school itself, it seems slightly disorganized… which might be appropriate for kindergarten. The school sent a child-oriented planner, but they don’t use it for anything. We’re trying to decide what to do with it. His teacher had a family emergency on Curriculum Day, when they invited the parents in to tell us what they’re working on this year, but that wasn’t her fault. Just the usual glitches, I suppose.

Meanwhile, Daughter Dearest has begun teaching music full-time at a different elementary school (same county) this year. The former “other” teacher snarfed all the material the two of them jointly worked on, and then DD’s work computer ate itself, so she has to start from scratch.

So there’s a big milestone for two of the FAR Manor inmates.

Escape from FAR Manor: Family

For pix of the beach trip, scroll down or jump to the previous post…

These trips north give us all a chance to escape the free-range insane asylum, and gives me a chance to see my family. Dad has Alzheimer’s these days, which makes it difficult for him. He’s in a facility where they can keep him comfortable, and I suppose that’s the best that can be said. Other Brother and his family lives nearby, so he at least gets regular visits.

Despite the issues, he’s still Dad. He reads quite a bit. Remembering how to work a TV remote is a little beyond him, so one of the staff turns it on for him and he just unplugs it when he’s ready for some quiet. He does retain some of what he reads; he could tell me a little about the book he was reading when we came in. I think I should send him a monthly letter with pictures; maybe it will help.

He has a rather odd narrative of how he ended up here: he was at an assisted living joint for a while, and liked it there. He says two guys from the place invited him out for a walk, then abandoned him; he got cold-cocked and woke up in this place. What actually happened was that he got an infection in a leg muscle that got to the point of blood poisoning; between that and the Alzheimer’s, he doesn’t remember the hospital stay or the transfer.

Some of my other uncles are not doing so great, so we’re planning to see one or two tomorrow. We’ll hit a winery while we’re out. Combining trips is important when you have to leave Friday for the old grind…

Escape from FAR Manor: Reaching the Beach

In an attempt to stretch vacation, I took Thursday and Friday off as well as the entire week. We made the hotel reservations, and only afterwards found out DD’s fiance was coming with.

BTW, I have the fiance’s blog-name: Fizzle. (Future Son In Law → FSIL → Fizzle) This name will last unto the wedding, at which point I’ll come up with another one.

There was no problem at neither the hotel we spent the night at along the way, nor the one we have set up camp in. We couldn’t get two rooms at the Ramada like we did last year, which was bad because that pool has a waterslide and good because their wi-fi sucks so hard, so we ended up a couple miles farther out at Crowne Plaza. We arrived Friday evening, unpacked, got food, and crashed. Saturday we mostly dinked around. We went to a local park so Mason could hit the playground, but that was about it.

But Sunday… ah, Sunday. We loaded up and headed to Saugatuck. We went to the beach there many times in my youth, climbing Mt. Baldy and running full-tilt-boogie down the other side. The “in my youth” part is significant here. They replaced the uphill slog with steps:

Stairway to Heaven?

Wife took one look and said, “nope.” DD echoed the sentiment. To my surprise, so did Fizzle. Mason wanted to do it, and I would have been OK with it, except I knew my knee would start screaming well before the day was over.

So we piled in the car and took the less up-and-over route to Oval Beach. Being a summer weekend in Michigan, with temps in the mid-80s (F), we were far from the only people going to the beach. There was a rather long line of cars waiting to pay the $8 and get through. When they got to us, they said, “you’re the second to last car.” Yipe!

We found a spot, a rather decent location in fact, and hucked our chairs, cooler, and bags to the sand. It was rather crowded, as you can see here.

We have reached the beach!

The gatehouse to the parking lot had info posted, including the water temperature: 65F. eep But the air was warm, the sand was downright hot, and there were people in the water. As it turned out, the water was cold, but it didn’t feel all that cold. Fizzle and Mason were gung-ho to get in, DD skeptical, and I took my sweet time but joined them.

Did I mention the sand was hot? Yup. In one of those “reality is stranger than fiction” things, the sand was actually hotter than the pavement on our tender bare feet. If you were standing in one place on the sand, you could dig under the top inch or so to a more comfortable layer.

The wife stayed with our stuff, high up on the beach, while the rest of us gamboled in Lake Michigan. She took plenty of pictures, including this one of the four of us:

Me, DD, Fizzle, and Mason

She took many other shots, but there was this one woman who seemed to like to photobomb us a lot. Or maybe she knew I’d appreciate it…

DOUBLE photobomb!

She got right in the way of DD and Fizzle’s happy embrace. Jeez.

After a few hours, we were all ready to move on. After a late lunch at a local bowling alley/restaurant, Fizzle and I ended up at the Saugatuck Brewery for a taste of local craft beer.

Bottoms up!

The Beer of the Day was a dopple-bock that was very good, even if it had a tarragon note. The Singapore IPA is a middle-of-the-road IPA, nothing weird. I was less impressed with the Oval Beach Blonde, even if we had just come from its namesake. I got a variety 12-pack to take back to Planet Georgia.

So, a toast to vacation—may it go on much longer!

Brown Hawk Down

There’s an open field between FAR Manor and the in-laws place, with a utility line crossing the road and the field. A hawk has been perching on that line, and I’ve been trying to get a decent picture of it for a long time. Good light and a few seconds is all I need, but mostly I’ve had one or the other.

On Friday, I was heading down to the in-laws after work, and saw the hawk jumping and tumbling on the road. I hit the brakes, and he got off the road and laid in the grass. This was not the way I wanted to get a picture.

Approach with much caution

He was still breathing, so I knew “no touchy” was the way to go. I told the wife about it, and she said, “Mason saw him on the fence post yesterday, and I slowed down. Then he flew in front of me. If I hadn’t slowed down, I would have hit him then.” So I expect someone else must not have missed. She advised me to get the guy who has been helping with the farm work, which was a good idea since he’s had to handle raptors before.

He put on gloves, got in behind, and made the grab on the second attempt. I drove the cart back, with him holding the hawk. As for the hawk, he was in “chomp anything that gets close enough” mode for a minute, but settled down when we didn’t do anything. We popped him into a cage, and it was obvious he had a broken wing.

Take this broken wing, AND this cage…

The farm guy called the DNR to get a rehab specialist to pick him up the next day. That meant he wouldn’t be released back into the wild, but would spend his life making the rounds of state parks and educating people about raptors native to the region.

Unfortunately, he didn’t even get that far, and died overnight. Whoever clobbered him must have left him with internal injuries. Bummer.

The odd thing is, he could have seen the in-laws’ chickens from that perch on the utility line. I always wondered why he didn’t go nail a few of them… maybe he thought chickens were too evil to eat.

Foraging the Harvest

As yummy as they are big!

Last month saw a return to the typical summer weather we get in Sector 706—we had more 90°F days in June than we did all last summer. Combine the heat with lots of rain, and it made for a few oddities. Usually, the wild blueberries growing around the manor peak around the first week of June, and the blackberries a month later. This year, the blueberries were late and the blackberries were early, so we had lots of both all at once.

And dang, some of them are big! We usually get a few nice plump ones along with the not so plump, but this is the first year I’ve seen them get as big as the domesticated blackberries you get in the store.

Pick, eat, repeat

The weird thing is, in early June, the berries looked pretty small overall. We had a dry (and cool) May here, during the time the vines were setting fruit. So I figured they wouldn’t get much better. Fortunately, I was wrong.

This is Mason’s favorite time of year, because he can go outside and get himself a snack. He loves blackberries, even the tart ones, and it’s a hand-to-mouth situation for him.

One notion I need to disabuse him of: he likes to say, “you pick, I’ll eat.” WRONG. I do tend to pick into a container, while he just eats everything he picks… and then wanders over to snag a few out of the container. (And yes, I’ve been known to pick myself a little snack as well. But the vast majority of them go in the container for later.)

Another one of his oddities is that he’ll move on to the next vine and insist that I should be over there with him—even when I have a ton more berries on the vines that he can’t reach.

Small but sweet

The blueberries always run small (the wife insists they’re actually huckleberries, and I have no reason to doubt her). But, they’re a lot more plentiful than they’ve been in most years. The wife thinks the birds will clean them off immediately, but I’ve not found that to be a problem. We’ve been picking for nearly a month, and getting small handfuls. The good thing is, they’re easily as sweet as commercial ones.

But I think after this week, the berries will pretty much be done. Just in time for the garden to start producing. I leave you with a line from a UNIX fortune cookie:

Faith is what lets you eat blackberry jam on a picnic, without looking to see if the seeds are moving.

Planter… planted

I started this project last fall, but only now have I finished it.

As you may recall, there was a steep slope between the driveway and the back yard. A couple summers ago, I dug out the eroded pathway and replaced it with concrete-block steps (hosing my left shoulder in the process). I haven’t quite gotten around to filling in the holes just yet, but now I’m a step (pun intended) closer.

Between the steps and the garage was a steep bank about four feet high. It was clay and gravelly rock, supporting nothing but weeds and debris. I long fantasized about digging it out and putting in a planter, and decided to dedicate it to strawberries because Mason does love to pick himself a snack. So last fall, I dug out the bank, throwing the dirt into large (20 gallon?) buckets that once held mineral lick for the in-laws’ cattle and covering them. I poured a concrete footing and built up the sidewalls with concrete blocks. And that’s pretty much where it remained through winter and early spring, because cold weather and mortar mix don’t play well together.

The top really isn’t that uneven… the driveway slopes.

But the weather finally warmed up, and it stopped raining for a little while, and I tackled what I thought was the final step: building the front wall with all the rocks I’d picked up and saved for the job. Trowel, bucket, mortar mix, water, rocks… I spent a pleasant afternoon finding stones that fit the next mark, slathering them with mortar, trying to remember why I thought it fit that way, repeat. I used some shale I’d dug up to make the top a little flatter. I used some old bricks to cover the tops of the concrete blocks. Ta-daaaa!

Now we have a hole!

Done! Or so I thought. The Boy pulled up just as I finished. “Looks nice,” he said, which was good because he’s been doing similar work lately. “But you need to put some bricks behind the rock wall with some rebar so the dirt doesn’t push the wall out.” Fortunately, I had some extra concrete blocks handy, and two 8-foot lengths of rebar laying around. I stacked the bricks, drove the rebar through the holes to hold them in place, and left it all there so the mortar could finish setting up.

The rebar that sticks up gets pounded down…

After a week of warm weather (and rain on the back end), I figured it was time to fill it in. I dragged the buckets over and started shoveling until they were light enough to lift, then dumped the rest in. To my surprise, I had just enough dirt to fill the thing about 6 inches below the top—I thought I’d have plenty of dirt left over. I left it this way for another week to allow the incoming rains to settle the dirt.

Just before dumping the garden soil in. Plants ho!

Another surprise: the dirt didn’t settle all that much. Three huge bags of garden soil topped it off nicely. It’s ready for the strawberry plants!

Indoor-ish Critters

I’ve mentioned Rosie, also known as Doofus, Roomba, and GET OUTTA THE KITCHEN!, on Twitter but I don’t think I’ve done it here.

Making noise, as dogs do

She’s obviously a Boston Terrier, huh? Panda delivered her to FAR Manor around Christmas as “a gift for Mason.” Of course, I was not consulted, and of course the bulk of her care and maintenance falls to me (although Daughter Dearest gives her baths). She displays the occasional cat-like qualities, especially if she’s on the bed and someone slips a hand under the covers, but mostly she’s a dog: loud, smelly, grabs “treats” out of the garbage when she gets a chance, occasionally incontinent, and chews stuff (especially Mason’s toys) when nobody’s looking. Oh, and she’ll drop a fart-bomb and walk away—like she did just now.

Daughter Dearest’s fiancé has Roscoe, one of her brothers. When he brings Roscoe over, things get… well, this is FAR Manor. She tries to hump him.


More recently, Cousin Splat lost the lease on the house he was renting (“It was in the bottom drawer, I swear!”) and brought a cat and her kittens down to the in-laws. Dogs being dogs, they started hunting the kittens, grrr. Wife brought the mom-cat and the last kitten standing to the manor, to live in the garage, and the fiancé adopted the little grey furball right away. That left us with the hollow-flanked mom, who is quickly regaining some weight now that she only has to feed herself. She was a bit shy at first, but now she’s all about getting picked up and cuddled:

Pick me up!

For lack of a better name, I’m calling her Miss Target because that’s what she does (where “target” is the litter box). Wife is fed up with that already, even though it’s just in the garage, and is threatening to send her packing. Maybe we should try a covered litter box, where she has to be in the thing. I’ll try to get a better pic of her… it’ll have to be when she doesn’t know I’m there, though.