New Lives

Gramma,

The new granddaughter finally arrived.  She's a noisy model.  Her days and nights are mixed up.  Mom gets no sleep.  She complains often on Facebook at all hours of the night.  Mom wanted to call her Jazzerine.  She wanted to call the first one Aquila.  Though I do not object, these are not white girl names.  The protesters won.  She is called Lundon Violet.  She is breast fed, so I will not be relieving mom for awhile.  Baby formula costs more than alcohol. 

Three of the grandkids spent the weekend here.  So mom got a break from Bubba acting out because he is no longer the baby.  He just started kindergarten.  He is always fun to have around.  He likes to be very very busy.  The other two kids are older and do not want his company.  I need to have this set of three at the same time, as otherwise they would not be able to see each other at all.  Ollie's dad is not welcome anywhere but the bar these days. 

We decorated for Halloween,  This is a big tradition.  There are menacing, bloodthirsty weapon wielding clowns, complete with dead bloody doll babies and stuffed rabbits.  Blood spattered toddler sized zombies  colonize outside the iron gates.  Anybody trying to invade will be shanked by rose thorns.  I do this for the kids who ride the bus.  Today, I will zip tie upside down skeletons to very long poles.  They will be reminiscent of Cirque de Soleil.  These will flank the gates.

Lighted spider webs stretch across the gates.  There is a Bates Motel sign.  The "vacancy" light flickers.  There are caskets in the yard.  Skeletons sit on a collection of colored toilets talking on phones, drinking beer, holding their skeleton dogs on leashes.  There are witches, signs, pumpkins, tombstones and spiders.  The annual Witches Ball is always the last Saturday of the month. 

Inside the house, the kids form a chain gang on the stairs to bring up boxes of decorations.  Veve helps set up the villages while the other two fight over the I-Pad, making Grampa testy.  Purple and green cobwebs are stretched on the chandelier and over pictures.  It looks like Halloween threw up all over the house.  I am overwhelmed by the mess. 

Kids are noisy things.  And demanding.  Also, they always want something.  I'm hungry.  I'm thirsty.  Can I have a donut.  Can I have fudge for breakfast.  GRAMMA, tell them it's my turn.  Bubba spilled his milk.  You made me.  Ollie won't put away the scooter.  He used it last.  "Did you fart Bubba."  "No, my ass blew you a kiss."  Wonder where he got that.  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?  I was just holding him back by the throat.  Can I pick some flowers to bring to mom.  There is enough racket to give the devil a headache. 

And so it is, with great amusement, that girlfriend's partner of thirty-some years is leaving her for a woman with six frequent grandkids.  Freeloader has no concept of cute, adorable tiny ninjas of death who are the right height to punch you in the balls.  He has no experience with grandchildren, or children period.  He does not like them.  He does not like noise, or to be interrupted when he is watching re-runs of Jerry Springer.  Kids monopolize the tv.  It is best to let this happen, as the alternative is more noise.  

The new living space is tight.   It is likely section 8.  There is no garage.  Except for his storage unit, Freeloader will have no manspace to call his own.  The kids will be in all his shit.  No escape.  The new girlfriend gets around in a golf cart.  Freeloader will be picking up and dropping off kids.  He has always been tight with money.  He has plenty, he just doesn't want to share it.  He contributed $400 a month to live with my friend.  This included his own office, bedroom and pole shed.  And he was ornery.  Had I known, this would not have been happening.  She lives paycheck to paycheck. 

AND, there is a new grandbaby, freshly hatched.  We wish we could see the shit show up close and personal.  Freeloader reignited a decades old relationship on Facebook with a woman who had wronged him every which way to Sunday.  He is over seventy.  He has visions of reclaiming his studly self.  She smokes.  He hates smoke.  Nothing like kissing an ashtray.  He snores like a Harley.  She talks incessantly.  She is on disability.  He will be the meal ticket for many. 

AND, he is headed for South Carolina with his Indian motorcycle in the back of his pick up truck.  He paid cash for these things.  The bike is too heavy for him to manage since his back surgery.  There is a record-breaking hurricane heading up the coast.  His girlfriend has been biting him in the ass for days to get out there and drive her to safety.  It is a two day drive and the truck is acting up.  The bike will be pelted with hail.  A tarp will not help, as it will beat on the bike and rub the paint raw.  We think this is funny, because we are shallow that way. 

He didn't even say goodbye to his cat.  Weed and paraphernalia was left behind.  After a lifetime of toking, he is quitting.  I am amazed that guys never quit thinking with their dicks.  The honeymoon will be short.  We figure he will beg to come back in the spring.  "You can come back to Minnesota, but not here," she will say.  We will laugh and drink and smoke in the hot tub on the deck.  Maybe we will take a bike trip to South Carolina to see the devastation.  Stay tuned....

Today's Snapshot

Gramma, 

After I mowed the yard yesterday, I was suddenly overcome with exhaustion.  My mower is a tractor.  Mowing is a pretty passive activity that I enjoy, especially when I am low on energy.  I get to admire all the flower beds, yard décor and animals.  It is an especially robust year.  Everything is lush and bigger than life.  This is the third time in the last week that the only option is to lay down.  I'm even too tired to watch TV.  The earliest I can see my regular doctor is three weeks away. 

My monthly mental health appointment was today.  My therapist has finally taken the plunge and given two week's notice.  Her supervisor has repeatedly claimed programs she has developed as her own work.  There is also that backstabbing and lack of appreciation thing.  I hear the same complaints from many of my working friends.  We are both working on the big picture. 

We talked briefly about my daughter-in-law not returning my calls, which means the kids have not spent any time this summer making memories with me.  She is angry about something, but won't tell me what.  She is pregnant and crabbier than usual.  It is a sad thing to deprive us of time together because she has a butt hurt.  Meanwhile, I will send the kids postcards.  Life is getting shorter by the minute.  Get over yourself. 

If the weather holds, Dave and I are going to a biker event when he gets home.  It's been dreary and sprinkling.  There is nothing planned for dinner and there will be food.  I ate a dozen monster cookies today.  I got them at a garage sale.  Find of the day was a lot of gypsy looking bedroom stuff--pillows, curtains. fabrics.  I am thinking for my granddaughter's bedroom she will have in the basement when her baby sister gets her old room.  Maybe it will wait until teen years.  I have storage space in my hoarding shed. 

Aging ungratefully

Gramma

There wasn't much wind today, so I decided to wage war on the weeds using the backpack sprayer.  Then I planned to do some weed-wacking.  Five hours of spraying and I went in to make dinner.  There are more weeds to kill. 

I am not a great cook, but I made an effort today.  Epic fail with cauliflower, chicken, bacon, portabella mushrooms, sour cream and cheese. Sounds good, but not so much.   And, the kitchen is a mess.  The dogs will probably get lucky later this week. 

Gone are the days when I could work outside for eight hours and still clean up the kitchen.  I would go back out after dinner and do some more stuff.  Now I shuffle off to bed before dark.  If I forget something downstairs, it stays there.  Just me and my cat, listening to the frogs and the wind chimes, waiting for death. 

Making Memories

Gramma

Had the grandkids for the weekend.  Started Friday after school with some garage-saling on the way home and a stop at the Dairy Queen for ice cream.   Fresh baked bread, which they love, was dinner.  They don't get "good" food at grammas.  Saturday morning, there were home-made cinnamon rolls for breakfast.   Made a trip to town to get provisions for chocolate chip cookies for lunch.

While in town, we scanned the Goodwill and Helping Hand for "stuff."  Fee came away with two pairs of new silver sandals, and an insulated water bottle.  It's just like the one her best friend has.  Bubba found a truck that does one trick.  It's just like the one his best friend has.  Neither wants anything to do with the stew I made for Dave.  Pizza rolls for dinner.  Gross. 

The kids love bedtime.  We read a story, and then another and another.  They each have a heated lap warmer on their beds.  They let me sleep in while they take turns playing on the I-Pad in bed or watch cartoons and turn on the fireplace to warm up the living room.  As soon as I'm up, they want chocolate milk, donuts, and/or sugar based cereal.  My offer of eggs is turned down. 

Even though it's cold, they want to be outside making parade laps around the driveway with the scooter they got for Christmas.  Periodically, they come in to refuel with sugar and warm up in front of the fireplace.  While I am seriously cleaning and organizing my shed/she cave, they play with the toy inventory.  Meanwhile, mom posts on Facebook that she is bored without the kids.  Take a nap already. 

Sunday is a short day.  I give them their choice of which playhouse to clean.  Up to the treehouse we climb with supplies.  Bubba loses interest first and plays in the tube slide.  Pretty soon I am finishing the job myself.  But, it was about involving them in maintenance.  One down, two to go.  Next time.  I send them home with the rest of the bread, sweet rolls, chocolate milk and more than half of the cookies, which I had a hard time resisting for breakfast this morning. 

On the forty-minute trip to the halfway meeting place, which is a Dairy Queen, they watch a movie on the car DVD players.  I drive a POS mini-van, but the inside is nice.  I was a half hour off on the time, so we traipse through the local antique store.  It has been a good weekend, no biting and no more than the usual arguing over who's turn it is.  When I am old, will they still visit me?  The reality is, not so much.  I already tell them to bring me beer when I am in the nursing home.  I miss them already. 

Another Shitty Day in Paradise

Gramma

Getting my yard under control is no easy feat.  Once I miss a beat, it goes rogue.  Yesterday there was no breeze, a rarity.  So I took the opportunity to spray weeds, which are rampant.  I especially hate when the grandkids come in contact with itch weed.  First I went to empty girlfriends sprayer, which already had some mix in it.  The seam on a plastic part broke at the sprayer handle.  Went to use my hand sprayer, and it would not hold air when pumping for pressure.  Dragged out the big gun, my backpack sprayer once used for spraying weeds in my ginseng operation.  The nozzle refused to spray a consistent target.  Maddening.  I ordered a new nozzle on Amazon.  By the time it gets here, the trees will be swaying. 

I set to my bi-annual bleaching of the well.  Our water stinks like the sulfurous gate to where my ex came from, not what you want to smell first thing in the morning.  There is a water filter under the kitchen sink.  So I remove the well cover and dump bleach down the sides of the well casing, then spray the hose down the tube until I hear the pump churning up the water.  Then it sits all day until  I run the hose onto the driveway for an hour to purge the bleach smell.  I forgot I was washing clothes, so have aborted the laundry. 

I am heading to bed, exhausted from cleaning out garden beds all day.  Dave is on the phone for his nightly call to his mother.  He asks me if I washed the two shirts he needs for union negotiations.  He has other shirts, but these have the union logo on them.  So I throw the two shirts in the washer on the quick cycle.  I try calling Dave three times to tell him to throw them in the dryer for a half hour.  He doesn't answer.  His phone does not reflect that I called.  WTF, we share the same carrier.  I go downstairs to do it myself, instructing him on the rest of the process, emphasizing the importance of removing them before they wrinkle. 

This is an average day around here, uneventful, busy with lots of necessary use of plan B, and searching for yard equipment I had just a minute ago.  The peacocks are screaming and fanning their feathers.  The cardinals are singing birdie birdie birdie.  The weather was beautiful, the yard is lush and needs mowing.  The tractor still has the snow blower and cab on it.