The Boy leaves... again

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The latest chapter in the soap opera that is my son.

Since he's been home the last few weeks, we've been going around & around with when we expect him to be home, who he's with (especially the girlfriend who's three years older than him), what he's doing, all the basic parental stuff. Naturally, to him this is thoroughly unwarranted interference in his private life. Any restriction whatsoever means we don't want him going anywhere or doing anything. Then there's the constant lying, and justifications when he's caught, and constant demands to use a vehicle (and paying for gas is always "later"), and never getting home when he says he'll be here.... You get the idea.

The problem with the girlfriend is that he keeps bringing her here to stay for the night. She has a place to stay -- her mom is a serious piece of work, but she's staying with a friend -- so there's really no reason for her to be here constantly. Especially when we tell him to not bring her here for the night (well, we got here at 6:30 a.m., so it wasn't overnight, was it?). Then she hands him cigarettes, in plain site of The Wife, after we've both told her specifically not to do that.

So Saturday morning, we took her back to her place and started toward the retail district for lunch. Wife says, "I guess we'll get a restraining order to keep her away from you, since she's contributing to the delinquency of a minor."

BOOM

Within three seconds, he was in a full-blown tantrum, screaming obscenities at us and demanding that we stop the car and let him out. He actually opened the side door, at 45mph. I thought he was going to jump -- I saw him jump -- which would have killed him most likely, but he didn't. I told him we'd stop at the next intersection since there was another vehicle behind us and he continued to scream and curse and demand we stop right now until we actually got to an intersection about a mile up the road.

He turned, kicked at the door (a slider, not a swinger), then jumped out, screamed at us a little more, then slammed the door and started walking back the way we had come (presumably to the girlfriend's). That's the last we've officially heard from him, although he called Lobster and asked him to bring some clothes over. He didn't say anything about insulin, though.

Speaking of insulin, I found his glucose meter and had a look at it. He took his last reading on Friday, and it was over 400 then (very bad news). I figure he'll be in the hospital in two weeks... I hope it's a wake-up call instead of a permanent sleep. He can't stay with us and continue to treat us the way he has, I just pray he gets his act together sooner than later.

Fire in the hole(s)

So a week ago, wife-o-licious was mowing the lawn while I was splitting logs (more on that later) and ran the mower over a yellow jacket hole. These little barstids seem to think that just because they dig a hole in the ground, they own the ground around it. She got stung on the hand, which swelled up rather alarmingly but just on this side of having to do something about it. The hole was easy to locate, being next to an above-ground root, but with all the rain we've been having there wasn't anything we could do about it immediately.

Now last weekend, I'm splitting logs again. We had one group come and cut down some trees in the back yard that were leaning toward the manor, while another was cutting pines down in the woods. So group #1, not wanting us to get paid by group #2 for the timber, cut the logs into 6-foot lengths instead of the 12-foot lengths we requested. I decided I'd split the logs down to 6 inches so we can rent the biggest baddest chipper-shredder that Home Depot has to offer and make lots o' mulch. So I dragged a log out of the brush at the edge of the woods, and quickly noticed yellow jackets swarming not eight feet away. I high-tailed it out of there, coming back a little later to locate their hole.

Finally, a dry early night. Yellow jackets go down with the sun. So armed with a flashlight, a gallon of gas, and a box of matches, we marched to battle. It was a rather one-sided affair: locate the hole, pour in two quarts of gas, toss a lighted match in its general direction. FWOOMP! Burn baby burn!

I paid way too much for FAR Manor. I'm not sharing it with any wasps besides the one I married. :-P

More wetness

We weren't finished drying out from Cindy when Dennis came by. Oh sure, the center of Dennis was over in the next state or two, but that didn't stop us from getting just shy of 4 inches of rain in two days, and another half-inch the next day.

Being on top of a hill, FAR Manor isn't prone to floods. (If there's ever a flood that nails us here, call for Noah.) However, we do have a gravel driveway, and the heavy rain washed much of it down to the bottom. It actually took less time than I expected with a shovel and rake (no implements of destruction, unfortunately) to fill in the newly-created creek bed and knock down some high spots. If Wife-o-licious runs over it a few times with her barge (aka Nissan Pathfinder), that should pack it down good & solid.

Drying out

The tropical system formerly known as Cindy came wandering by here overnight. I got all the plants in last night, figuring they didn't need to float away.

A bunch of rain, some thunder, very little wind. My rain gauge had almost 4 inches of water in it, although there was probably 1-1/2 inches sitting in it from previous rains this week. So we came in on the low side of the predicted 2 to 4 inches of rain.

Not much flooding this time, certainly nothing like last year. But it's only early July, and we've already had as many tropical systems come to visit as we did last year. Looks like Dennis the Menace is already a major (Category 3) hurricane a couple of days in front of hitting the Florida panhandle, and each forecast update has shifted its track this way. Luuuuuuvly.

Background info

I didn’t actually write anything on the blog in June 2005, so I’m using June for background information. If you’re new to Tales from FAR Manor — first, thanks for stopping by. Second, you might want to read down the list to get an idea of who’s who and what’s what.

FAR Manor’s Denizens and Peripheral People

This post has been superseded by the page, Who ARE These People? — I’ll leave this page up for anyone who has linked to it for whatever reason, but it’s not likely to be updated. Last update was October 2009.

Like any soap opera, Tales from FAR Manor revolves around a core group of people, depicting their relationships, with occasional guest appearances from outside folks. These are all real people, although I’ve changed the names primarily to protect the minors.

FARfetched is, of course, your narrator and correspondent: a particularly handsome and intelligent devil, lurching into middle age and mostly pretending it’s not happening. If only it were easy to trade excess poundage for more rest and more free time. My trade is technical writing, and I’m a bit of a gearhead.

Mrs. Fetched, aka “the wife,” SWMBO, or Wife-o-licious, is... well, my wife. I’ve only been married once and have no intention of repeating the experience. We’ve been married 24 years now. She’s a Type A, and I’m not, and that’s all I think I need to say here. It’s because of her that we live at FAR Manor; the property used to belong to her parents and they went berserk when it went up for sale. So they drove her crazy, and she about drove me crazy telling me we had to buy this place (which happened, over my objections, but I still have to pay the mortgage). Her primary work is her parents’ chicken houses, although she does get some video editing work on occasion (I’m her free tech support).

The Boy, aka “Offspring #1,” is the older of our two children. He turned 21 at the beginning of this year (2009). He’s a Type II diabetic, although they initially thought he was Type I at his onset in March 2004. After losing a good bit of weight (he now weighs less than I do, good job!), the docs switched him from four-a-day insulin shots to pills and one shot per day. He’s very talented in visual and musical art, and plans to be a rock star eventually. At least he’ll be able to design his own album covers. Currently, he’s working night shift in a nearby chicken processing plant (we can’t get away from the $#@!! chickens), cleaning the machines. He’s emotionally a lot like his mom, which I think is the source of a lot of the conflicts between all of us. But I could be wrong.

Daughter Dearest is the second (and last, we made sure of that) child. She’s 20, and a sophomore at Reinhardt College University. Her talents are music (very good soprano, she started singing as soon as she could talk a little), photography (she borrows my camera), and burning up Facebook. She helps her mom at the chicken houses, when she’s home. Emotionally, she’s more like me I think.

We also have two cats and four dogs, which is enough cats and five dogs too many.

The peripheral “cast,” as it were, includes:

Snippet is The Boy’s current girlfriend. She’s 18 and the grandbaby-mama. She can act mature when she wants to, although she’s quite capable of acting her age (or less) — motherhood seems to be giving her the beginnings of a little perspective, though.


Mason is our first (and so far, only) grandson. He’s about six weeks old as I type this, growing like a weed and starting to take an interest in the world around him. His early life will likely be the source of much material for the blog.


DoubleRed is our current boarder. She’s easily the oldest of the non-family who has lived at FAR Manor since we moved here, but in very few respects the most mature. She likes to let her problems become everyone’s problems by dint of freaking out and whining until everyone around her gets tired of hearing it.

EJ has been a friend of The Boy’s for a long time, and has always been polite and responsible (attributes we wish most of his other friends had). He was one of our boarders, probably the only one we really wouldn’t mind keeping.


J is a friend of The Boy’s, about the same age, and into many of the same things, unfortunately. However, he doesn’t have as much of a problem being helpful and doesn’t wave his issues in our faces. He had a job, had a car, then wrecked the latter and thus had to quit the former. What is it with kids and lead feet anyway?

M.A.E. (Ms. Almost Einstein) is The Boy’s ex-girlfriend. She lived here from July 2005 to October 2006 — and for all the weird stuff that goes on around here, it’s probably one of the more stable situations she’s been in. She matured some while she was here, and I don’t think she’s as unintelligent as she believes. She’s living with a guy now, has a girl (Emma), and very happy about it all.

Big V is Mrs. Fetched’s younger sister. She lives fairly close by. We mostly have a pretty good rapport, although the events of the Summer of Discontent massively strained it for a while. Her two sons are Cousin Splat, about six months younger than The Boy, and P.O.D. (Prince of Darkness), who is 25 or so, married, and not quite growed up yet. Like The Boy, Big V also has diabetes, and does an even worse job than him of managing it. She will probably loose one or both feet sooner or later, probably sooner.

SPOW (Serious Piece of Work) is M.A.E.’s biological mother. Her nickname should tell you everything you need (or want) to know.

Lobster is a former boarder, our first actually. He and The Boy met at the private school they went to back when. He lives wherever he doesn’t have to follow anyone else’s rules, lost his job at KFC, lost his truck to repossession, lost another job at Wal-Mart, and has mostly dropped off our radar.

Mr. Sunshine is Mrs. Fetched’s (and Big V’s) brother. Like most of his family, he doesn’t have much respect for other people’s opinions, and has led a my-way existence for most of his life that has taken him absolutely nowhere. I’m afraid The Boy is heading down the same road, but with even less going for him because Sunshine finished school and has at least some vo-tech education. This year, he’s a truck driver… Lord knows what he’ll be doing next year. He also has a wife (Jam) and two boys (Brand X and Evil Lad NOT) at home (plus a daughter, long since married off).

There are others who haven’t appeared here too often; I’ll add descriptions as necessary.

Planet Georgia

If you Google for "two Georgias," you will find links to lots of articles that contrast Atlanta and the rest of the state. In the over 20 years I’ve lived here, I’ve found a different — more metaphysical than political — pair of Georgias. It’s like one of those Stephen King stories about how the barrier between worlds wears thin in some locales. C.S. Lewis wrote of this phenomenon in That Hideous Strength, where a nation (or state) can be torn by the conflict between two visions of how things should be.

One one hand, there’s the Georgia that gave us progressive heroes like Henry Grady, Jimmy Carter, and Martin Luther King, Jr.; poets like Sidney Lanier, musicians like Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers, Otis Redding... the Georgia that lives up to the words, “Wisdom, Justice, Moderation” on its state seal.

It seems impossible that the same place could inflict upon itself (and the world) a state legislature that is a perennial laughingstock — or worse, the likes of J.B. Stoner, the lynching of Leo Frank, and the sordid events of 1912 in “Historic” Forsyth County. This is Planet Georgia, where the “old times” of Jim Crow and even slavery are not only not forgotten, but held up as an ideal; where there are enough knuckledraggers, who like the old state flag with the Confederate emblem, to swing elections. Here, the only place you can find wisdom, justice, or moderation is on the state seal.

Unfortunately, in the struggle for the soul of the state, Planet Georgia is currently prevailing. I don’t know if things will change for the better in my lifetime.

In, Out, In, Out...

It didn't take more than a couple of nights for the boy to realize he can't get too far without us either loaning him wheels or driving him everywhere (naturally, he prefers option #1). With three days left in the school year, he missed the first of them. The principal let all concerned know that he wouldn't pass 11^th grade if he blew off the last week of school, truncated though it is. Since he slept in (he's 17, can't even get himself out of bed, and thinks he can take care of himself — yeah right), he decided he needed to spend the rest of the week with us. So he made it the rest of the week. Whew!

So we laid down some rules that we expected him to follow while he lived with us. As I read them off, I got the expected (but still annoying) “no... no... no...” He Just Doesn't Get It.

Meanwhile, he kept trying to change the subject to his CD collection. SWMBO, after listening to a couple of them, decided to confiscate the whole bunch. He thought she'd destroyed them, and he has been demanding $500 to replace them. He owes us a bunch of money for repairs to the van (after bopping a street sign) and my car (tearing the muffler off), and was hoping to weasel out of it that way. I told him today that he'll get the CDs back after he pays us back. “Why can't you give me the CDs and I pay you back later?” Because you've proved you can't be trusted, that's why.

He seems to think he ought to be able to live with us, use our vehicles whenever he pleases, come in when (or if, like last night) he pleases, and be rude to us when (not if) he pleases. Nope. I'm about >< that far from just not selling him my car at all. He can find something else (I know of two cars for sale for half what he needs for mine anyway).

He has also had the temerity to call SWMBO “crazy,” sometimes to her face. Huh. She's not the one who lives in a delusion, is obsessive, has violent outbursts, and thinks he can try the same failed tactic and succeed.

During all this “discussion,” I turned to the wife and said, “Taking a job in China teaching English or something sounds appealing right now.” She laughed.

Boy moves out, for now

The boy staying with the in-laws lasted exactly one night. Our nephew decided to have an undergraduate party to celebrate the impending end of school, and invited about six friends and relatives. Naturally, the guests invited friends, and so forth, and suddenly the body count was closer to 20 than 6.

My sister-in-law, not the most stable isotope in the periodic table, wasn't terribly thrilled that The Boy was actively participating in the party expansion (getting girls no less), and when they decided to go down to the pond on her dad's farm, she did what everyone else in the family does when they have a problem: call me. So I grabbed the cellphone and called his. Turns out they haven't gone anywhere... or at least, no farther than the bottom of the driveway. Sheesh. But at least he found out early, there are worse people than his mom to share a house with.

So while we're out attending a graduation ceremony on Saturday, and he starts calling us asking which car he can borrow to go to a movie. The answer: “none.” He's still not allowed to drive for some unspecified amount of time.

“But I made plans!” (Like that’s supposed to make us realize that taking away privileges for disobediance is Just Wrong.) Unfortunately for us all, he found the spare key to The Barge, the mid-size SUV She uses for the farm, and left. After all, he made plans, and that made it OK, right?

Needless to say, we weren’t happy campers when we got home and found The Barge missing. SWMBO told me to call him and tell him to get home right now. I did, he did, then he immediately told us he needed another car to pick up his friends at the theater. He Just Does Not Get It.

“I’m moving out tonight,” he says. “Fine with me,” She says. He walked out the door and started down the road (10 miles to anywhere from FAR Manor, remember). After letting him walk a few minutes, I called him and asked him if he wanted me to take him down to get his friends. He was OK, so SWMBO and I jumped in the van. He didn't want her coming, but didn't try to force the issue. We got his friends, took his girlfriend to Steak&Shake (where he works), then left him with the friend who said he could live there.

It gets better.
Today, he calls, wanting a vehicle so he could go to band practice. He decided to talk to his mom, kind of a surprise, and managed somehow to talk her into letting him use the minivan this afternoon. We went over there to drop it off and had a talk with him & the people he's staying with. He's probably going to come home in a few days... probably once we say he can drive around again.

I'll admit to having mixed feelings about the situation. Things are certainly quieter with him not here — I don't have to listen to his constant whining about needing the car for any excuse he can cook up. On the other hand, I really don't want him leaving just yet; he has the survival skills of an opossum on a busy freeway combined with the teenage angst that makes him not care. OK, maybe I'm exaggerating about his lack of survival skills, but he certainly hasn't demonstrated to us that he can take care of himself.

BOOM

The sky went BOOM last night about 3 a.m. The storms weren't bad in terms of wind or hail, but there was lots of lightning. But it kept us awake, until SWMBO thought to say, "did the boy come home?"

We got up & checked. No boy in bed, no minivan in the driveway. I called his cellphone, got his voicemail after about 6 rings (the cell coverage out here gets a bit flaky when the towers are getting hit by lightning, imagine that). Told him it was 3 a.m. and we needed to know where he was.

I got the call about 8 a.m., after She went to deal with the in-laws' farm. “I'm fine, I just got real tired coming home and stayed with Blake.” After reminding him he should have called, and pointing out that his mom was less than pleased, I went on to work. The other BOOM happened shortly thereafter.

So about 40 minutes later, I've stopped for gas before hitting the office and he calls me, trying to keep it together and not managing too well. “I guess I won't be seeing you anymore. I can't take living with Mom and I'm leaving.” And he was; actually walking down the road (and you have to go like 10 miles to get anywhere around here). I got him to agree to call the preacher to talk to him, knowing he wouldn't, and figured he wouldn't get too far anyway before he cooled off.

Turns out he's going to live with my sister-in-law. Not a bad arrangement; he's nearby and the accommodations won't be too dodgy. They're not the most stable people on the planet, but that seems to run in the family on Her side. Must be something in the water... but since I've been drinking the same water for 20 years now, I worry about me sometimes too....

Inconstantcy

So I got home last night, wife & kids are sitting there watching The Incredibles. No broken furniture (yes, the boy has gotten that mad) or other signs of warfare. Turns out that SWMBO expected me to tell him he lost the car. Yeah, right, like he would have come home at all.

Then, in the morning, she lets him use the car anyway because she's going to need the van. He started a new job at Steak&Shake today, about a week earlier than scheduled because “something came up” according to the manager (i.e. somebody quit). So he's picking up Lobster from KFC tonight.

This is another problem we've had around here: on several occasions, She blew up, pronouncing dire judgement in absentia while breathing fire and brimstone. Later on, I told him he can't do XYZ because She said so, not knowing that statement has become inoperative (as they say). I end up looking like an idiot. After a couple of those, I just quit trying to have anything to do with the discipline end of things. I'm not going to back her up if she's just going to kick me in the ass.

So tomorrow he's losing the car. This time for sure. Yeah, really. (Well, at least for a day or two; it'll be t-storming so the bike stays in the garage.)

And in the middle of typing this, my daughter (also a teenager) decides my back needs some zit removal. What a life.

The nuclear option

I suppose this is a good a time as any, my imaginary and real audience, to briefly introduce some of the cast of this unending one-act.

First, the wife, whom I will usually refer to as SWMBO or Her Imperial Highness on crappy days and Wife-o-licious on better days. Our teenage son is much like her — which is the source of much conflict and the basis of tonight's post. Then there's Lobster, the kid staying with us. (Don't ask me why I call him that; I don't think I know myself.)

Finally, my car. It's a lowered Honda Civic with a rather excessive sound system — in other words, a teenage boy's wet dream. The only reason I have such a thing is that our nephew needed to sell it so he could get a truck for his new job, and I needed a car with good gas mileage. The boy has pretty much appropriated it, tries to tell everyone it's his car, although he's only paid $60 toward the $1500 he agreed to. Lately, he's been driving it every-freeking-where — I don't think he goes anywhere without putting 200 miles on it.

So this afternoon, he agreed to help in the in-laws' chicken houses. Unfortunately, his concept of the verb “to help” is to do about a quarter of the job and then take off. After he was told not to go anywhere. Reeeeeeeeeeeal smart.

So he calls me up, wanting the gas card. “It's on E.” Well, duh, that's what happens when you spend every free moment and some not-so-free moments driving around. Wife says, “He's not driving that car anymore. He can take the van.”

To make sure he gets home, I told him, “I'll bring the card. You get gas and go straight home. I'll get Lobster.” The way I figure it, he's not driving the car anymore, so I'm not buying him gas here. So I'm in the KFC parking lot, borrowing the wireless signal from the Super8 motel next door, and avoiding the screaming match that is surely going on as I type. I'll probably still take the bike to work on dry days; it gets slightly better gas mileage than the car (42mpg vs. 40). Besides, he tore the muffler off the bottom of the thing a while back, going down a driveway we told him not to go down.

Nobody listens to nobody. That's probably two-thirds of the problems we have.

Just ahead of the storm

The siding on the gables was rotten at the bottom — I think the wood was wicking up rain running down the roof. They put flashing underneath, but didn't seal the bottom of the siding. The original stuff lasted 20 years, anyway.

On one gable, the builders put the flashing behind the plywood, so the plywood rotted too. More fun with the crowbar. Hey, it's not every day you get to take a crowbar to a house you didn't want. So Sunday, I was putting up the siding when I heard thunder. God, please give me some time, I said. Hurry up, He rumbled.

I finished putting the siding up, finding I'd cut the last piece backwards. Screw it. Up it went, I'll cut another piece later. I called the daughter, tossed down some tools and foam insulation then carried the drill down with me. The first gust of wind knocked the insulation out of her hands and we gathered it up. Got everything in the garage, then got inside.

About five minutes later, the bottom fell out. Rain came down in buckets, and the lightning was banging around pretty heavy. One shot hit 'way too close to the house for comfort; the power dropped out for a second and came back on. We got the computers and TV unplugged first, fortunately. As far as I'm concerned, lightning could have fried that TV to a crackly crunch... but then the rest of them would have been whining to buy an HDTV to replace it. Yeah right, like we have any freeking money for that kind of crap.

So a day later, the muscle aches are about gone. Riding the motorcycle to work has its benefits.