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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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5:10 p.m. - 2011-06-04
Before I forget again: John in Tucson please leave me your new email. I misplaced it. Thanks! Still grooving on the weather which after a brutal few days moderated back to open window cool. Love it. Love it. Love it. The tummy troubles have moved on and my guy is feeling a 100% better. My little Spartan is rapidly becoming a fan of letting me help. Stunned at how fast he feels well again. Of course being Mick he has to justify this lapse into cowardly nostrums and analgesics by weighing the rapidity of his recovery and speedy return to productivity against the manly man way of toughing it out but being down for the count at least three times longer. "See? I wouldn't have felt well enough to do (insert: incredibly onerous chore) if I hadn't taken that stuff you gave me!" Okey-doke. I have given her the heave-ho, but Mick is still one of the Guilt Fairy's best customers. Whatever does ya, my love. Jer the lawn boy sent a helper (possibly a sub-contractor) over today to clean out the former arborvitae hedgerow which is now a very rustic fence. It's made from the still rooted stumps as the uprights and rough-hewn saplings as cross-pieces. When we had the smashed and broken arborvitae taken down I had the guy leave the stumps really tall with this fence thing in mind. It needs a bit more filling in across the horizontal and we'd like to add some doo-dads to it and funk it up a little, but since I can't have my arborvitae back I'm finding the fence an okay replacement. Now that it's all trimmed and tidy it'll be fun to find some folk arty d�cor to hang on it. I briefly considered crazy art, something totally nutzoid like dozens of mounted doll heads or a solid wall of hubcaps. But this would just attract buttheads who needed to tear it down. A few pieces of angle-iron and some colored glass fishing net weights or similarly low key stuff should escape the attention of the "YAY! Let's Wreck It!" doofuses. Don't you hate having to factor other people's nastiness and ignorance into your decision making? I mean, hey, I've lost three mailboxes since I moved here. Mailbox baseball is alive and well here in Mini-dunk. I stopped fixing mine. Most of us have. Where there used to be clever and kitschy mailboxes there's a lot of duct taped wrecks. Serviceable and realistic. Cretins- 1 Homeowners- 0. I don't need to lose a fence too. Low key it is. Gads, earlier Wolf came in the backdoor and I chirped, "Hi, Sweetie Pie!" and he slit his eyes and snarled at me. Insisted I call him by his first name. The name he uses at school and to sign legal documents. His middle name is Wolf and he'd always gone by it, then when he changed schools in 3rd grade he decided a name change was in order too. New school, new name. I could dig that. It's why he had the other name anyhow. Thought perhaps he wouldn't always be keen on 'Wolf'. Plus I did it with an eye toward the future. A guy named Wolf could be a musician, or fix your exotic sports car or even teach philosophy or poetry, but manage a bank or run for office? Nah. Who knew we'd end up with a President named Barack? So my kid's got a nice non-animal (yet still wicked cool) first name and has told me in no uncertain terms this is the ONLY acceptable thing to call him. Not Boo-boo, not Sweetie, not even Wolf. (Oh? How about 'Heart-stabbing Twerp'?) Then looking at Wolf's angry righteous frowny face I heard, "They call me Mis-ter Tibbs!" and quickly got a grip before I could sail off into a Sidney Poitier-inspired giggle fit and ruin Wolf's big assertion of personhood. I nodded and said, "Okay. You're allowed to be called what you want. I'll try to remember." Wolf stood down and apologized if he'd been rude. This made me feel better. It's good he can stick up for what he wants. Way better than his father and brother who feel entitled to resent and hate you for stuff like this but never do anyone the courtesy of ever saying a fucking word that might help. But I'm not going allow Wolf to be rude or mean or disrespectful either. He can ask, but it don't mean he's always gonna get. He does, however, get another semi-painful outing with the geezers (us). Cool flick, lame to see it with parents. We're going to the new X-Men tonight. I'm evil enough to fantasize about getting to the ticket booth, saying he's 12, and turning to him and going, "Isn't that right, my widdle binky boo?" But am nowhere near mean enough to actually do it. I'm ferociously glad he's growing up and doing so well. But I'm not made of steel. (Well, there's my rebuilt knee.) I'll admit it stung when he snarled and forbad me any pet names or endearments. Sucks. Who is this Mr Biggety Britches to tell me I can't 'sweetie-pie' my own kid? I put you into this world, Sonny-Jim, I'll call you what I want, when I want. Sigh�No, I can't undercut his need to be 'grown'. Besides, respecting this small thing might stave off a bigger, far uglier rebellion later. I shudder at the idea of a bell tower, a sniper rifle and Wolf screaming, "She never stopped calling me 'Boo-boo'!!!!" Or the much realer possibility of a silent phone and another empty place at all my holiday tables a few years from now. You try your hardest to make the cutting loose go as painlessly as you can, but in the end someone always bleeds.
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