White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Dearest Friends, Family and Mortal Enemies;

Yet another year flows away like water between the banks of time, taking with it the memories and experiences of the Family Haupert. Waxing poetic, not my style but I come up with a gem every once in a while and just HAVE to use it. It's like having that dollar in your pocket when you are walking past the Home Depot Hot-dog stand ... it just leaps out and says 'BUY THAT! It tastes goooood.' But I digress. This year has been somewhat mundane at an initial glance but when I go back and review my Web Log entries, I find a veritable treasure trove of ... mundanity. Little things were completed or started. Like the garden.

The kids got into the whole peas, beans, cucumbers and such this year. They LOVE eating raw sugar-snap peas. Well, they mostly like opening the pods and lining up the peas in the 'life-boats'. We play 'Titanic' and they are the Ice Bergs that gobble up all the survivors. Pretty dark, but at least they are eating their vegetables. All in all, the garden did well. The carrots did horribly again in spite of Mom's best efforts. I'm guessing that a combination of mutant killer vampire rabbits chewing off the greens and the concrete-hard baked-clay soil have something to do with that. The tomatoes, green beans and peas made up for it though. Non-stop bumper production. Must be the mountains of compost I've been tilling into the garden over the years is finally starting to garner some returns.

Other outdoor activities include the completion of the kids playset. Oh, yeah, it took a year and about 20 tons of sand ... hundreds of retaining wall blocks and having to replace the cable television after I severed it ... twice. Sure, you can live without food for a month ... water for a week, but cable TV (Disney) and broadband internet? Seconds. At most. Purely a sanity issue for the 'authority figures' in the household. Don't even ask what we do when there is a power outage. Mass chaos, anarchy, collapse of society, fries with mayonnaise and such. Thank goodness I have that back-up power supply. We've lost power twice this year for a reason that is beyond my control to fix other than sitting on the local power company and insisting they fix the same problem every time. It's gotten to a point where I can show them where to dig and how deep. Of course, after cutting my own TV and phone lines, I really should not be throwing rocks. Glass house, don't you know. Speaking of rocks and stones and sticks (may break my bones?), Uber-Dad has spent a bit of time helping me cut down the dying white pines along the back property line. I'm a big fan of evergreens, but these seemed to be in a constant state of shedding needles. The pollen, the needles, the loss of 15 feet of yard became too much of a con for me and we cut them all down. Mostly. The chainsaw finally gave up the ghost on the last tree. The poor little 46cc bugger was just not meant to be lopping up 60 foot monstrosities. In place of the trees, I'm planting bamboo to act as a sound barrier and a visibility screen. Less mess, less fuss.

The job front is stable for the Mrs and I. I've been working at the same client for two years now and will be wrapping up at the end of this year. New work is set up for me at the home office of my consulting company so I have no great concerns. After working somewhere for 8 or so years, you become an institution rather than an employee. The Mrs is doing exceedingly well at her company. They have had a few shake-ups and some other issues that you may have heard of in the news. Every time though, she ends up either getting promoted or assigned new responsibilities. Now she works out of 3 different locations and seems to have her position upgraded to 'Corporate Goddess of the Internal Computer Software Stuff'. I believe that is the official title ... that or Level 0.1.2, but I might be wrong.

Inside the Manor, we have been working on getting the last two rooms finished up. The master bed room and the smaller room which will be Jacob's new room. It should not take long, I just need to get motivated to get it done. Then we can move back into our Master Suite and get a new bed. The old waterbed finally shuffled off it's mortal coil and will not be returning. Nope, time for a new bed ... something that does not require a heating pad and constant vigilance. After the rooms are finished, I've just the bathrooms to remodel on the top floor and that should complete my efforts on beautification in that wing of the Manor. Of course, there is always the idea that I want to add solar panels to the house, but that is still a distant dream right now. I'm more than content with the wood burning stove that Dad and I installed. It has a fairly small box, but I've managed to burn 5 years worth of wood in it over a 3 year period. Now I'm going to need to order a new truck-load of logs (of which I'll need to borrow Dad's chain saw ... that we wrecked) and restock the wood-pile. It's worth it ... wood heats twice you know. Once when you burn it, once when you chop it.

Speaking of chopping wood, the kids have formed a fairly interesting perspective on my work efforts. Whenever I'm out chopping wood, My Most Lovely and Intelligent Wife tells them that I'm working. So now, whenever they hear that I'm at work or working, they assume I'm chopping wood. I can only imagine what they will tell their classmates about my endeavors. 'My dad is a fireman. My dad is doctor. Yeah, well, my dad chops wood! Ooooohhhhhh...' Oh well, it keeps the house warm for a miserly amount of cash. While we are on cash, we got a HUGE bonus this year. The kids were successfully potty trained and now we no longer need to keep a home equity loan to buy diapers. Our basement storage area was a mountain of the damn things whenever we could cobble enough coupons together to get the price down. We are just going to spend the money we save on braces anyways so I suppose I should stop counting my chicks before they hatch. Oh, and the counting. Both the kids are learning to count in English, Chinese (along with me) and German. They are not so good with the German and picked up Spanish somewhere. In addition to counting, they are doing well with addition. I'm so durned proud of them (as a daddy should be) and cannot wait to start subtraction. The Alphabet and Arts thing is in the bag as well. When your child corrects you when you mislabel a octagon as a circle, you know you are going to have issues with helping them on their homework.

We have spent quite a bit of time with the Grandparents this year. A birthday here, and vacation there. All the holidays and a few other major events ... like Boxing day and Lithuanian Summer solstice. All in all, the kids have managed to completely worm their way into the hearts of their intended targets. Every time they are clutching at the legs or arms of either of the adoring progenitors, I ask them "Who is your favorite? Daddy and Mommy or Grams and Gramps?" Of course, the answer is rhetorical and they feel no remorse about answering the question with their fickle hearts. Here is the catch though: The favorite is invited to the bathroom to perform audit functions. In the end, there is a price to be paid when you are the favorite. Indeed, I do not know what I would do without the sage wisdom and the boundless compassion of Mom & Dad V 1.0.

Here is to the hope that all your yearly activities have been as entertaining, exhausting and fruitful as mine. Oh, that reminds me, I won't be sending any more fruit cakes so stop sending all the hate-mail. ;)

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 1:23 AM