White Lightning Axiom: Redux

My recidivist son has taken up the habit of waking in the wee hours of the morning again. He starts at 0200 and begins a mantra of 'Mommeee, daddeee, help meeee!' and slowly raises the volume till the racket is enough to rip asunder the flimsy veil I like to regard as slumber. Of course, all the experts say that you should not bring them into your own bed or they may develop attachment issues or problems with self image. These bozos are probably getting a good night's sleep. In that vein, I go into the room and notice that Alexis is not happy about having a howler monkey as a bunk-mate. No kidding hon. I lean over his bed and he immediately latches onto me like a possum cub. Quickly, I saunter back to the interim master suite and drop him in between the Mrs and myself. She has not stirred a bit and does not notice that Jake is intruding till 0800 when he starts to get restless and sits on her head. Literally, not figuratively.

I leave those two alone so they can sort out who commands the lion share of the bed while I go take care of the hounds. Upon hearing the floor creak, they begin their morning ritual of low barks and nerve grinding whimpers till I let them out. While they are busy trying to outwit each other, I take the 55 gallon drum of ash that we have produced over the week and filter out all the unburned coals. Cheap penny pincher that I am, I take these nuggets and toss them back into the firebox. I have a simple rectangle of 2x4 with a quarter inch screen attached. If it falls through, it's going back into the soil, if not, back into the manor. Every BTU counts, you know. After I throw the unburned carbon back into the stove, I light up the fire and start getting ready for the Breakfast With Santa deal that is being managed by our family friends, the Seliga's. It goes pretty well actually. Pancakes, chaos, screaming kids, Alexis being distant and surly when seated next to Santa ... as usual. Her vicissitudes when it comes to emotions is legendary. She can go from a sweet little chatterbox telling the world about Santa to a petulant, bellicose little burr in seconds. She would have made the most surly union worker wither should they have crossed paths. At least she did not whip out a Glock and try to do away with the Jolly old Soul. We managed to excise ourselves from the gathering with the grace of a pregnant three legged blind yak and get on with the day. I dropped off the Mrs and the 2 sprouts at Target while went off to get my haircut and MY barber shop near the WG Air Base. I got there just as one of the barbers was finishing up so I had ZERO wait. The funny thing about this visit is a man walks in right behind me and eventually sits down in the next seat. When asked how would he like his hair, he points at me and say 'I'll have what he's got!". Now, my flat top is nice, but the man has just a little cape of hair from ear to ear and a big old shiny chrome dome up top. Everyone burst out laughing at that point. Good one, old fellow, good one.

Shopping at Target is typically not a difficult trial for me. Today, however, the hordes of zombie shoppers made the environment stink of angst. On queue, when I found the Mrs and the Terrible Twin Tyrants, Jacob insisted that now would be the best time to use the local facilities. Gotta do this in every place we go at least once. Fine. After weaving through slow-moving wide-loads and surreptitiously circumventing the dazed cart wanderers, we squeeze out a couple tablespoons of fluid and make the return trip to the opposite corner of the giant-box facility. While there, I pick up a half dozen chains of LED Christmas lights for the manor exterior. The neighbors down the street put up a nice display this year so I'll have to one-up them a bit. We made a bee-line for the checkout lines and were happy to see that nearly every 'cattle chute' was manned (womanned?). Pay, pack and escape. Flee to fight another day. I really wanted to get out of there since my next stop was the DMV.

Oh, the woe of the DMV. Actually, our DMV gives out little numbers like a deli and you get to sit and mind your own business. No worrying about what line you're supposed to be in or any nonsense like that. As much as they have tried to make the waiting area as stress free as possible, there is no reading material so you end up face-surfing the whole time. Everyone noticed the young woman with 4 inch heels on. We all looked down and snickered when she stumbled on her way out the door too. Winter, appropriate foot wear, 'nuff said. Other than that guilty little reprise from boredom, there were the standard FATHER-child pairings. Not sure why that is. No Mothers, just Fathers with their teen-age wards. On of the high-points of the day for the public servant I was paired with was me calling him SIR. He was stunned. A polite interaction? Indeed, he was even more amazed when I only required ONE photo for my driver's id. Not like the usual dozen or so for the people who came before me. I almost never need to present my ID so the photo really means close to nothing to me. I did not spend 15 minutes primping and priming myself for the photo either. Good thing I only have to do this every 4 years. I need a drink. Badly. The worst part of this urge is that the Mrs and Co. went off to SuperFresh in the same plaza that the DMV is in. This grocery store has an attached Liquor Store. Strange for Pennsyltucky where all the liquor stores are franchised via the PLBC. After giving her a long, loving kiss outside the gateway to inebriation, I tell her to send in a search-party if I do not come out in a week. Or if I call AMEX to up our credit limit.

Not much else came of the rest of the day. We picked up the Mrs' car from the shop. Needed an inspection so I had dropped it off on Friday. Back at the manor, I hid all my liquor and ill gotten booty (bought a 30$ spiral ham ... mmmmm). While the Mrs and Alexis made cookies, I napped with Jake for a few hours. He was doing his best melt-down renditions and I was just plain wiped out. One thing I did forget to mention is that we finally picked up our Christmas tree on Friday night. This year, we abandoned all the fragile ornaments and stuck to the stuffed, metal and edible ones. The top half of the tree is packed with candy-canes. I can see the desire in the kids eyes when they level their gaze on that forbidden fruit. I'm sure they'll find a way to get at it. They always do.

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