Category: Family

The Friday before Independence Day, we were expecting that our weekend was going to be filled with taking care of the newest member of the clowder. Particularly keeping him off the counters and out of food. That lasted until I got a call from The Brother that our mother was heading to the ER. The Wife and I jumped into the Ward Wagon and trekked up to the hospital.

Upon arriving, I found out that the hospital has full security screening. Which meant most of my normal EDC had to be left in the vehicle. In true Florida fashion, I walked through the metal detector. it went off and the security guy had to wand me.

“Hey, what’s this?” “My holster.” “Cool, I just need to make sure it’s empty.” Satisfied, The Wife and I went over to where Mom was waiting with Shootin’ Buddy and his girlfriend (who live with Mom). A few hours later, Mom was ensconced in her room.

Over the next week, I made sure I went to see Mom every day to make sure she has everything she needs. Normally, The Brother would have handled that as he is much closer. Unfortunately, The Brother currently has a bum leg. Which meant I had to make the trek up. Since I still had to work for most of that week, I hauled up my work laptop and peripherals up. I am so glad we bought that portable monitor back in October for our trip out west.

Friday comes and Mom gets discharged. It was a bunch of wait, wait, now hurry up. Still, we got her home and settled in. Shooting Buddy started doing meal planning with Mom’s diet restrictions while I retrieved her prescriptions. It had been a long week, and I was ready to go home.

Then someone rear-ended the Ward Wagon. I don’t blame the kid. Traffic came to a quick stop on 75. It took me standing on my brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of me. Two cars behind me had to veer on the shoulder. The third car just couldn’t stop in time. No one was injured, but the Ward Wagon was dragging its exhaust. So, it’s off to the shop our insurance recommended. Due to the traffic, it took The Wife and MIL a while to come and get me.

Since the Ward Wagon is our only car, we rented a vehicle. We asked for a smaller SUV. We ended up with a Ford Expedition. Yeah, that SUV is bigger than I want to deal with. Yet, we needed something because I was supposed to go to jury duty and The Wife was going to have to schlep three of the cats to the vet. I was not looking forward to taking that into downtown Bradenton. Fortunately, when I checked on Sunday, I was not required to report. I’m going to chalk it up to my brutal honesty on my voire dire form. After all, I can just see attorneys seeing interests of “reading, writing, libertarian political theory, firearms, economics” and everyone asking to just keep me away. Or at least, that’s my head cannon.

Hopefully, we will get the Ward Wagon back quickly.

Back in September, we lost our sphinx cat Titus. It The Wife hard because he was her baby – and it was such an unexpected loss.

Everyone who knows The Wife, knows how much she loves her sphinxes. And how bereft the clowder has been without one. Enter SIL (more accurately, BIL’s Wife, but I call her my SIL). She helpfully sent The Wife an article that the local shelter had just gotten in a sphinx.

But we weren’t planning on adding any more cats. But it’s a sphinx. But we’ll have to buy a bunch of new stuff to accommodate another cat. But it’s a sphinx. Well, the article has gotten a lot of attention. We probably won’t get it. What do you mean we’re the first people to come see him?

So, Friday, our new sphinx joined the clowder. He’s very food motivated. And hasn’t learned that he’s not to get on counters or the table. This resulted in MIL discovering the little rascal had climbed on the counter and figured out how to open the door to the toaster oven to get to the melted cheese and crumbs. Insert Anchorman meme of “I’m not mad, I’m impressed”.

He’s going to be a handful, but he’s our Boo Radley. (Name change is still under discussion.)

Yesterday was Independence Day. That day has special significance for The Wife and me. Back in 2018, we agreed that would be the day I “moved in.” I use quotes because it would be another month before I stopped sleeping at my Tampa house during the week. The big event to signal our change in status was moving down my cats to form our blended clowder. Or at least, that’s what she thought was going to be the event.

That night, after things and cats had settled down, I proposed. In many ways, this was the start of two people who had been independent agreeing to depend on each other for the rest of their lives. It was our Dependence Day.

My jury summons has showed up for early next month. While I don’t have a problem with going for the jury pool, I also realize that I’m not really the ideal candidate for any attorney. Which is probably why I’ve never been selected to serve on the few times I’ve had to go previously. However, this is my first time in my new county. I don’t know if the dynamics are any different.

My other issue with having to go to do jury duty is the same as when I go to the airport. Too much of my normal EDC has to be left at home. Which means going through my bag and other things to remove prohibited items and switch out for things that aren’t as objectionable.

When I started smoking meat, I had a big tub full of charcoal. I left that with my old grill back in Tampa when I moved down to Parrish. When we moved into Ward Manor, I bought a new tub and proceeded to fill it up. Part of it was the belief that if I had a full “coal bunker” I could always have fire to cook and/or heat the house if we had a significant disruption.

I think the damage started with Ian. Sometime over the past few months, the tub warped, and the coal was soaked. As in crumbling from water impregnation. I thought it was just the top layer. Nope. The Wife, MIL, and I methodically parceled out the ruined charcoal into reasonable weight trash bags. Garbage day is going to be oh-so-fun.

Anyways, we bought a couple of new deck boxes for outside. I’m not going to go as hog wild with the charcoal. Probably try to keep it to a couple of bags.

This is more just journaling rather than commentary or prognostication. Let’s go through some sagas.

1. The Zillow Incident – The Wife gets various Zillow notifications because she’s been watching some properties down our way for other family members. Last week she gets one and pops it open. Her first thought was it was strange to see houses down our way that have the detached common-wall garages. The only other place she saw that was at my old Tampa house. Then, it hit her. She was looking at my old place – which had just been put on the market. Why didn’t she recognize it? Well, let’s just say a busted pipe in the ceiling and resulting mold mitigation didn’t leave much standing on the inside when we sold it. The folks who bought it did some really nice upgrades and repairs. I’m kinda tempted to swing by if they have an open house.
2. The Hotel Saga – Last week, The Nephew graduated from high school. Due to the timing of his graduation, the work commitments The Wife and I had for the day of the graduation, and the notorious traffic between west central Florida going anywhere near Orlando, The Wife and I decided the best option would be to go over the night before, check into a hotel, work the morning, and then go over. As we’re packing and making our final preps, I go to find the reservation email so I can load the address into the GPS. Hmm, can’t find it. This precedes about an hour of The Wife and I trying to retrieve the email, then calling the couple of places we think we have reservations to confirm. Okay, did I just forget to make the reservation? We booked a room we wanted, but due to the short timing and the upcoming holiday weekend, there was some extra to be paid. Guess what? As I woke up the next morning, my calendar helpfully reminded me that I had a reservation – at another hotel we didn’t even think to check. Yeah, some stupid tax was paid.
3. The Unknown Shopper – The Wife and I use Instacart with our local Publix for pickup. It keeps us out of the store and those tempting impulse purchases. This week, we went to the store to pickup our groceries and both spots were filled. It would be frustrating if they were filled by folks waiting for pickup. No, it was just assholes who wanted to use the closer spots. We went in and retrieved our groceries. Which resulted in a couple of the store staff saying “Oh, this is what you look like.” Apparently, we have a bit of a reputation.
4. Adventures in Garage Reorganization – Memorial Day morning was spent cleaning out and reorganizing the garage. The impetus was The Wife’s acquisition of additional storage for yarn. First thing was to take some of the decoration bins up to storage and bring back the ones for Independence Day. While we were up there, we found additional yarn that was stashed when MIL moved in some 18 months ago. While I was wrangling with shelving, The Wife and MIL set up our six-foot table and a smaller two foot table. When I looked up from moving shelving units and getting some up on risers, they had covered both tables with yarn. My first thought was “Damn, that’s a lot.” Then I remembered the reactions I get from people when I discuss ammo inventories. Um, yeah, that’s probably enough for a while. Particularly since we found an additional black tub full. While they were in the midst of sorting and classifying their yarn, I mounted a Sig Romeo to my FPC. I also mounted a spare Streamlight. Yes, they’re both on the top rail. Yes, it looks goofy. I’m going to try it out and see if it works.

Last weekend, The Wife and I took my mom to a local winery for a tasting. As the post title states, I generally don’t do wine, but I figured I could at least try some and enjoy the food.

We went to the Bunker Hill Vineyard. We each got six samples of wines we chose from their menu. I know I’m not big on dry wines, so I chose mine from their medium dry wines. Mom chose hers. The Wife chose hers. We traded. Some we liked. Some we didn’t like as much. Here’s what came home with us: Black Tea Wine, Black Coffee Wine, Strawberry Wine, Spiced Apple Wine, Sparkling Cucumber Wine.

What also came home with us was a jar of Apple Butter and Key Lime Marmalade.

If you happen to be in the West Central Florida area, I highly recommend you swing by. It’s good stuff and a fun time was had by all.

There are a couple of graduations happening in these parts of the world that are impacting Ward Manor. This resulted in The Wife making her Cricut machine go BRRR on Saturday morning to make cards and other supplies for the celebrations.

While she was working furiously on that, I was busy working on my fantasy novel. The good news is that I have finished most of the major action. It’s really down to the denouement. Upon relating this to The Wife, she said “Did you kill anyone else off?” I’ll take the Fifth on that.

Mom and The Brother came down for dinner and board games. Well, one board game. I highly recommend the Quacks of Quedlinburg. Plus both Mom and The Brother enjoy playing with the newest member of the Gubler clowder.

On Sunday, we remedied an issue with the dining room and put down a rug. That wouldn’t normally incite a comment on the blog. However, the room occasioned a larger than normal rug. Which was kind of fun toting down in the Ward Wagon. Then all the fun getting it appropriately aligned.

A relatively regular weekend, including the resulting back and shoulder pains.

About a month ago, The Wife’s niece got a new gig that was work from home. This will be the first time that her niece had done a work-from-home job. So, we offered her a chance to come over and work from Ward Manor. After all, we have better internet, can provide a better setup, and the MIL can help watch our toddler great niece.

Niece came over last weekend to set up. There was great shuffling of furniture and other things to get her workstation in the upstairs living room. We were hampered on where we could place her workstation because her new job required a hardwired internet connection. Um, what? Yep, no wifi. Must be connected directly to the router.

I dug through my box’o’cables and came up with one long enough. Which is why I have a box’o’cables.

Not sure how long this arrangement will last. But it will be interesting.

A while back I mentioned that The Wife and I purchased new robots to replace the current robot vacuums and a new double oven range. There were issues with setting everything up over the weekend.

First, the robots. I opened the first box and started unpacking. What’s this slip of paper? Certified refurbished? I don’t remember that being on the listing. Continue unpacking. Robot is missing one of the spinners. And no instructions. At this point, I’m annoyed heading towards angry. I go back and re-read the listing. Nope. Nowhere does it say that I’m buying a refurb. Well, fuck that. Start the return process. I box up the opened robot. While The Wife is busy handling the labels, I look on Amazon. Huh. The same robots are on sale for about 80 bucks less than when I bought them. And they would be here the next day – as opposed to the better part of a fortnight for the others. I buy those while The Wife and I lug the other ones to the UPS store. Where we find out we need to pay for shipping. The clerk at the store says that sometimes Amazon will refund the shipping charges. I’m going to let The Wife fight that one. She is much better at it than me.

Then, the oven. It was going great until we saw that it was sticking out a couple of inches. WTF? The culprit was the cord. With the double oven, there was no place to tuck the cord, so we had a gap. The install guys tried a couple of things, but no joy. Well, it gave The Wife to add a shelf thing to the top. Except the magnets didn’t want to stick to the top of the range. So, adhesive. The Wife and MIL did a couple batches of cookies to christen the new oven. They were suitably impressed, but they made it clear they’ve got some learning to do.

Ward Manor has been upgraded.