Hello? (tap, tap, tap) This thing on?

Umm…Hi.

Did ya miss me?

Hello?

Anybody there? Anyone left?

I have no excuse for not having posted in so long. I’ve even missed my first blog birthday.

What have I been doing? you ask. Or maybe you don’t.

Looking out the window. I’ve got a really nice view out my window. It’s fall and I’m in the middle of the woods. Then there are the bird feeders. I could spend all day looking out at the bird feeders.

Vacuuming. Right before Ms. Zsas goes into heat, she blows her coat – all over the house. Then there is Salt and his annual creeping crud disease where he loses all his hair and is embarrassed by the other dogs laughing at him because he looks like Piglet. This year, out of sympathy I guess, or just because he’s an idiot, Topper decided to get the crud too, only a different crud so that what worked for Salt would not work for Topper and vice versa. The result is a noxious cloud of antibacterial sprays floating over Gnome Hill at Flushing Meadows and me constantly vacuuming dog-fur tumbleweeds.

Vacuuming ladybugs. These pictures do not begin to do justice to the full impact of the infestation. I took over vacuuming these from Dirtman because he was beginning to have way too much fun and his maniacal laughter was keeping us all up at night. Besides, he wasn't leaving any for Zsa Zsa to snack on.

Cooking. Two tri-vection ovens, a five-burner gas cooktop and a full pantry. Oh. Yeah.

Ironing. I can’t help it. I love to iron and listen to oily 1950s Italian men sing to me on Sirrius Standard Time.

Sewing. (Okay. I see you shaking your head. Leave me alone – I’m pretending it’s 1947)

Knitting. I still haven’t finished anything and the one thing I would have finished from last year was burnt to a cinders by Heir I and his friend while they were removing an old bed from the House of Squalor (don’t ask. Just. Don’t.)

Driving Heir II back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Less than a year and he can drive himself, but for now…

Teach Zsa Zsa the down. Teaching Zsa Zsa the down all the time. Teaching Zsa Zsa the down when I need her to down the most – like when she’s vying for her Canine Good Citizen Award, which she now has thankyouverymuch.

So there you have it: a brief run-down of the past month. Now wasn’t that a lot quicker than a bunch of separate whiney posts?

Dirtman's Excellent Adventure

He’ll claim “it’s just another day.”

Right.

Dirtman hits a milestone birthday today.

Dare I say it?

Dirtman turns 50. . . that’s the big five oh…half a century...a twentieth of a millinium.

So far, he shows no sign of ditching me and buying a red Miata with complimentary blonde nymph (I’ve decided a blonde nymph comes with every red sports car sold to a man over 50, kind of like a dealers’ incentive – only not exactly).

So here are some things you may or may not know about Dirtman:

• Dirtman has started an entire “beejeebers” movement among our friends and family (if, indeed, beejeebers can move). He has managed, single-handedly, to bring back the phrase. So next time you see Dirtman, ask him exactly what a beejeeber is and, since they are regularly scared out of him, where he keeps his spares.
• Dirtman knows history, even the stuff after World War I that they never had time to teach in school or that they sort of skirted over to get the course over with. He also knows the representatives and senators belonging to each state, their names and party affiliations. He’s an expert with Virginia history and gets very disgusted with natives who don’t know anything about their own state.
• Dirtman is the best kind of friend to have. You can call him anytime from anywhere and he will do all he can to help. You don’t even have to keep in touch with him. He’s had people he hasn’t seen since high school contact him and he treats them like they’ve been best buds for all those years.
• Dirtman can forgive anyone anything. He never ever holds a grudge. (In this case, I think we were fated to be together in order to balance each other out.)
• Please don’t ask him to sing.
• Please don’t ask him to sing. I can’t stress this enough.
• It’s not true that an alarm goes off at the state police traffic station to let them know Dirtman is driving around and to be on the alert for bizarre accidents involving vehicles running into objects for no reason. But only because he makes his assistant Steven do all the driving. That way he isn’t forced to drive while he’s reading the newspaper.
• Dirtman will talk to anyone and thinks everyone is absolutely fascinating. I’ve seen him chat with a McDonalds employee, fascinated by the nuances of their scheduling procedures. Consequently, without even realizing it, Dirtman makes everyone he talks to feel good about themselves.
• Umm…I need to reiterate the singing thing. Just. Don’t.
• Dirtman married a woman much, much younger than he is.

So, Happy Birthday, Sparkey. Even though it’s “just another day.”

Right.

(About that singing thing…I’m serious.)

19 years, 364 days ago...

…I decided to take a chance.

For once in my life.

It was that kind of decision.

I was the generation brought up straddling the beginning of the Women’s Movement. For half my upbringing I was “encouraged” to be demure around men. While my mother continued to go beyond encouragement in this area (a woman asking a man out received the tersely-spoken title puttana), the media and culture changed rapidly, for the most part taking me with it.

However, as a single woman, while I wasn’t exactly waiting to be chased, I certainly believed that winning my hand should require some Herculean effort. In addition, the idea of that Sicilian lightening bolt that they demonstrate in The Godfather had been drummed into my head. Yet no one I met made me weak in the knees with just a glance and a smile, so rarely had anyone been encouraged to go further. In today’s terms, no one “had me at ‘hello’.”

Needless to say, by my late 20s, not only was I not in a significant relationship, I hadn’t yet been in one, in spite of being “engaged” – in name only – for a brief time when I was barely 20, an event I’d rather be among the forgotten moments of my early adulthood.

Now, here I was, 28 years old and this guy I knew only as a voice on the telephone had asked me out.

And stood me up.

I was working for a local newspaper, writing obituaries and social notices. He worked for a funeral home. One night he was required to call in nine obits, a phenomenal number for one funeral home in a rural area. Truly, they were all standard notices, no horrendous event had taken place. I accused him of going out and killing people just so he could talk to me.

We got to be friendly and not long after that he asked me out on a Friday evening. He’d call me to finalize and scribbled my home number.

Friday came and went. No phone call.

Well, Miss Iggy, that’s what you get for being so forward. So much for Mr. Dirtman and his swarmy voice.

Sunday I was back at work, arriving in the nick of time to a ringing phone.

“Oh good, it’s you.”

Him.

“Do you have an obit?” I asked coldly. Believe me, I know how to talk ice.

“Well, yeah, but it’s not ready...”

“Then who do you want to talk to?” Because you ain’t talkin’ to me, jadrool.

“I lost the paper I wrote your number on and they wouldn’t give me your number or call you on your day off,” he said. “But I thought surely you’d understand why I didn’t call after you heard about the murder.”

“I work for a newspaper, buddy,” I sneered with my best Jersey dialect. “If there was a murder, I’d have heard about it. Unless you have an obit to call in, I need to get to work.”

“But…”

I hung up. Behind me, the city desk editor was leaning against the doorjamb, coffee and donut in hand, waiting to say his usual “hello, anything new.”

“’Ja hear about the murder last Friday?” he asked around a mouthful of cruller. “Let me know when they call in the obit.”

Oops.

The usual Sisiggy would have let the whole thing slide. It wasn’t meant to be. If he really felt bad, he would have driven the 40 miles to the newspaper and been waiting for me with a bouquet of flowers and an “I’m sorry” on his lips. (I know – this is Dirtman we’re talking about. That would have required 40 minutes of driving followed by a wait of indeterminate length, way more focus-time than he’s capable of committing to…but I didn’t know this at the time.) The usual Sisiggy would have told him to leave her alone. The usual Sisiggy would have gone into immediate hibernation, dragging several pints of coffee ice cream into the cave with her.

Fortunately, the usual Sisiggy had had enough of herself of late and decided to employ that philosophy of philosophies: It Couldn’t Hurt…

I met him at The Ground Round. I ordered scotch on the rocks so he wouldn’t think I was an inexperienced drinker he could get drunk and have his way with. I hate scotch.

The day before Valentine’s Day we were driving down to Virginia Tech for some dinner. He asked me to read him the newspaper while he drove. I started on page 1.

“No! Read me the obit page.”

“I read the obit page when I laid it out last night.”

“Come on…”

“Okay,” I said begrudgingly, snapping the paper back. I scanned by work from the previous night. Same obits, same ads, only…

Instead of the car ad we’d placed at the bottom of the page:

“Sisiggy: We met on this page, we’ll end up on this page. Will you spend the rest of your life with me? Dirtman.”

A Herculean effort.

And a lightening bolt.

So, 20 years later, 19 years after the wedding, I guess the chance worked out.

The previous post was supposed to be a picture extravaganza but Blogger isn't cooperating. Envision lots of pictures of me and Dirtman, thinner and with less gray hair, smiling. I'd be the one in uncharacteristic white and Dirtman will look like a maitre 'd. I hate weddings.

The Pumpkin Heir

My kids are really too old for your basic Halloween celebrating. Oh, they have what they call "Halloween parties," which is just an excuse to have a party. They're all way too cool to dress up in costume. After all, that stuff like trick-or-treating and carving pumpkins is so imma...





Never mind.



Note: We know, we know. This is not technically a pumpkin. We kept telling that to Heir 2. We said, "That's not really a pumpkin. It's a gourd and you can't carve a gourd." Is it any wonder he never listens...

Notes 2: Yes, he has way too much time on his hands. I think he needs considerably more homework before he carves anything else that can't be carved.

Just a quick note...

Zsa Zsa had been hogging the computer and now I'm behind on my real job. So everyone will have to be happy with that for now.



This is Miss Zsas this summer with a mouth full of crab -- literally.

Domestic Goddess -- of sorts

I’d forgotten how much I like this whole domestic thing.

Now, don’t be throwing stuff at me…I didn’t say all women should like this whole domestic thing or even that this whole domestic thing is what women are born to do. I’m just saying I like this whole domestic thing.

Granted, this is easy to say when you’ve got a brand new house to play in. And I had lost all sense of domesticity in The House of Squalor. Having to wait for low tide to do the laundry will do that to a person over time.

I’ve already written about how thrilled I am by the whole laundry situation/ice thing – and these continue to tickle me whenever I hear my washer play it’s little finish tune or I hear ice fall into the freezer.

But then there is my work room, miles and miles away from everyone. They have to think before committing to making the journey to my office and usually it’s easier to deal with whatever it was without me. So now that I’m not constantly on call, I get my work done a whole lot faster leaving me with time for the whole domestic thing.

You see: I’m such a girl.

I just am. I can’t help it. I like to sew and knit and cook. I like stuff to smell good. I think lace is pretty (though infestation is always a problem, so lace should be thinned regularly to prevent froth). I really do like to cook and get a certain satisfaction out of a state of cleanliness (although “too clean” is suspect. This is never a threat when you have dogs.).

I guess I come by this honestly. My mother liked the whole domestic thing. In her yearbook all her girlfriends put for their ambitions stuff like “nurse,” “teacher,” or “secretary” (what we now call “administrative assistant”). My mother put “homemaker.”

She was not among those women I keep hearing about who had to make it through the day on antidepressants. She really enjoyed her home, not only the chores of creating it, but also experiencing the fruits of all that work. It was very comforting to come home from school and walk in the door to a worn, but clean, house, smell dinner cooking and my mother on the couch, listening to an opera. That is security.

Then there is my Aunt Marie. Aunt Marie is a homemaker with style. She never flinches at throwing a dinner party. My best memory of Aunt Marie is of her, at 10 o’clock at night, still bustling around the kitchen laying out the last of a major feast and saying, “See? No trouble at all!” Everyone else is beached at the table, stuffed and sleepy.

Now there is me, with my domestic-loving guilt. I know, I know, there are women who fought long and hard to release me from being chained to the very thing I love. And I know there are women who will accuse me of “loving my abuser.” And there are even those who will bitterly point out that I just lucked up into an advantageous marriage that affords me the ability to work at home and let my focus be on domesticity.

I think the intent, though, was always there and led me right to where I wanted to be anyway. Even when it wasn’t foremost in my mind I must have subconsciously aimed myself toward where I’ve ended up.

When Heir 1 returned to public school after being homeschooled, his friends used to call him “The Beav” because his leaving for school looked eerily like the beginning credits to the show Leave It to Beaver. So I was required to stop packing his lunch and had to hide behind furniture until the bus went by so no one could see that I was up and seeing him off to school.

I don’t know if that story is funny or sad. Fortunately the bus stop is now down and hill and around a corner, so I don’t have to resort to guerilla parenting anymore.

And, in my defense, I don’t wear pearls around the house.

boring post with limited capitalization

I’ve simply got to move on from the previous post, but am currently to the point where I stash away column ideas like a greedy miser, in terror of the day I actually run out of things to talk about.

And so, for your viewing enjoyment, I bring you the view from our bird feeders and refer you to the appropriate Spot-on column because what I really need to be doing is going to the bank and grocery shopping because heir 2 has informed me that “There is nothing to eat in the house,” which means we’re out of Cocoa Puffs.

In addition, all of a sudden some of my capital letters don’t work (note the lack of a capital “h” on my son’s name and the fact that I just had to refer to him as “my son.”).

And so I will quit while I’m ahead.

Today and everyday

Dirtman began the day by turning on the television. And it began.

The 9/11 coverage and everyone trying so hard to capture the whole thing with words.

Words words words. Enough already with the words.

Because, thank God, there are no words that are going to recapture that day completely and, in a way, I’m glad such an experience is beyond speech. We assign words to that which we experience and more words to what we experience the most.

So I really just want everyone to shut up and stop speculating and blaming. All we seem to derive from all this is the adrenaline rush brought on by remembrance or anger at whomever. And I don’t know that this is a good legacy for those that died.

Is anything good going to come out of watching everybody’s version of that day? Not a minute of feeling bad about watching the planes hit the World Trade Center towers over and over again will undo those events.

It’s as though we’ve got a nationwide epidemic of survivor’s guilt. Were it any other issue or event, mental health specialists would be telling us to stop dwelling on it. But we keep picking at it and picking at it as though we aren’t happy unless it’s open and bleeding.

I doubt, given a gift one hour back on earth, if those that died that day would choose to talk to their loved ones about the specifics of their deaths.

So I’ve decided I’d keep my focus on the only positive thing that came out of that day, the realization that we must find a way to love each other, starting as individuals since you can only control you. I will make it my goal to release hatred and anger toward anyone, not just those only slightly tick me off .

That is all I will allow this day to remind me about.

Project: Run-away!

All right already.

I watched the freakin’ show – twice – okay? I watched Project Runway as penance for having confused it with America’s Next Top Model and, thereby, offending the handful of people who both read my Spot-on thing and watch the show.

All I can say is: I want my two hours back.

For the record, I love to sew. I love fabric (you should see my fabric stash…), the color, constructing and planning and creating. I love doing all of it. I’d love to see some of the designers’ techniques and construction ideas. At least I’d be learning something.

But once again, we have a contrived situation manipulated to get the most dramatic reactions from the participants. Snore. The words “contrived” and “manipulated” are not what I would consider “reality.”

No matter how many times The Blonde I Assume Is Heidi Klum threatened to get rid of one of them by looking severe and pausing between each word she said (Oh! I get it! She was acting.); no matter how stark the spot lighting; no matter how dangerous the music tried to sound – it is, after all, only clothing. The “losers” are not being marched off to an electric chair. Their careers are not ruined. They fold up the garment and head home.

I know this kind of overkill is common among reality shows but I lost two hours out of my life to this one. I’m a little bitter.

But – I tell myself I’ve wasted time on other things. I have a phenomenal Spider Solitaire score and I can’t tell you how many Virginia Tech football games I’ve sat through.

And another thing: Who came up with the idea to mention Madonna and Cher in the same breath as Hepburn – either one? Giving yourself a one-word name doesn’t make you an icon, fashion or otherwise. It just makes you self-absorbed.

So.

I watched it. But I have important things to do. Now everyone get off my back so I can return to Spider Solitaire in peace.

Pathetic excuses

Whew!

I feel like I’ve been running a marathon for the entire summer. We were in limbo for so long with The House of Never-ending Construction, we’d neglected the Real World. And Linguini on the Ceiling.

We’ve been playing catch up and it’s been exhausting.

First there were all those dinners we promised to people “once we’re in the new house.” Not that anyone was keeping score (other than us), but we were kind of anxious to play with our new cooking stuff. Okay, I was anxious to play with my new cooking stuff, though look where that got me (gross photo alert)… (It’s much better, thank you JAG. I think scarring will be minimal, in spite of what the doctor warned me about).

(As a side note: We need to schedule a Second Bloggers Convention West or something or we will all descend into social atrophy. Okay – I will descend into social atrophy. Besides, I have White Trasherati’s birthday present and I’m not mailing it because I don’t do packages because that requires social interaction with a postal employee and my family doesn’t do package mailings because if you have to mail a package that means the person isn’t as important to you otherwise you’d make it a point to give it to them in person at some contrived event like, say, a Bloggers’ Convention West. The Bros have threatened to infiltrate the next one in view of the fact that JAG is afraid of them. This means that John Boy will, therefore, be afraid of her and Dark Garden will laugh at her for showing weakness. Welcome to the hell that is my family.)

And then there is good ol’ Spot-On which, I’m afraid, gets all my best ideas, even when those ideas fall flat because I dis’ed a show I’d never seen. (Don’t ever do that, by the way. People are very protective about their favorite shows.)

And then there is Fair Week. If you live in a rural area, you know that during county fair week, all things other than the fair come to a screeching halt. Me, I work a church food stand during fair week. I leave early, come home late, scrape the grease from my skin, shower and go to bed. I don’t even venture to my office, which is a long, long walk from the rest of the house, to write, let alone read, blogs.

School starts next week, which means the county takes over shuttling Heir 2 back and forth into town at ridiculous times. There’s 18 hours a day right there.

I hope that means I can be back in contact with everyone and that suddenly a flood of writing ideas will flow through my brain.

At least I’ll save on gas.

The Bros are Back

Dark Garden
Don't let him scare you

John Boy
Keeping endless reams of recorded statistics since 1960

This just in:

Now We Know Who...



But Where...?

Sorry for the delay, but...

So, Sisiggy, what have you been doing lately since, obviously, you haven't been blogging or reading blogs?

Well, we've had some exciting times here in Linguiniland.

First, the bad news. Thanks to my cousin Anna, who has been visiting, I now know that I am related to this:



We don't know who they are, but they're in with a bunch of family photos. So apparently they are related to us and are just as pissed about it as we are. Anyone noticing a resemblance will cause me to lock myself in a closet for the rest of my life.

In other Linguini news, things are so boring around here that even eating vegetables has been forced into competition mode.

For the official record, we decided size doesn't matter
-- in eating corn, anyway.

To make sure everything else was equal,
we had identical judges monitor each contestant.

It became the judges' call to decide if actually swallowing the corn was required before declaring a winner, since there is one of us around here who stores food in his mouth like a chipmunk and feeds it into his mouth gradually during the course of the evening.

and that person is NOT Dark Garden.

And some people know not to even try to
compete in anything requiring eating fast.

The next day the weekend's festivities were brought to a screeching halt by the evil corn fritters of death which spit fire on the pure of heart. You may or may not want to view this, so I put it on Flicker:

Why Sisiggy hasn't been blogging

Let's just say Sisiggy won't be doing much knitting for awhile.

GNOME UPDATE!

Photos from the second security cam have been developed:

The saga continues

Tragedy has once again struck here in Flushing Meadows at Gnome Hill. Once again evil stalks the roadway and we cower in our house, too frightened to set foot out the door.

It started so innocently. The first time it happened, the theft of our gnomes, we blamed the usual suspects: teenage pranksters, the contract tree clearers hired by the electric company, etc. We sort of laughed it off, you know? Gnomes are funny, right? Surely whoever took them had to have a sense of humor. I expected postcards from my gnomes as they traveled the globe.

But now I know there is something more sinister going on.

As is the custom, many guests that have visited us in the past few weeks have brought housewarming gifts.

JAG and Trasherati were no exception this weekend. Knowing about our unfortuate gnome incident this winter, they wanted to help me replace the gnomes that were stolen.

Since we already had your basic garden gnome, thanks to our friends April and Steve (who I also need to thank for picking out some wonderful wine for me this weekend), JAG and Trasherati decided to find a gnome that would be unique.

And so they searched far and wide to find



a tranvestite gnome!

















We like to represent all walks of life here at Gnome Hill and so Loretta was placed proudly on our front porch.




















No one would have the nerve to walk right up to the house to take our gnome. We'd hear their car, after all, and the dogs would bark.

How could we be so naive?

The next morning he was gone. Not a hint of blue eye shadow left behind, not a streak of lipstick.

But we can't figure out how this occurred. All we have is this blurred photograph taken by our security cam:



Other pictures are being developed . . .

The best thing about cheesecake is...

...it's at its most delicious the second day.

Fortunately Dirtman and I were so impolite we didn't offer to spit JAG's cheesecake offering so that she and Trasherati could take some home.

Cheesecake for breakfast! Cheesecake for lunch!

I'll be back to blog about the gnome incident just as soon as I can fit through the door again!*

The fruit tart brought by Trasherati? Haven't seen it since, five minutes after the conclusion of the Bloggers Convention West, Heir 2 secreted up to his room. All that remains is a torn up piece of cardboard due to a temper tantrum by Salt, who was too late to steal get a piece.

*I ate my lunch piece standing up, the effort of which was enough to counteract the calories. More or less. Give or take.

Now Don't I Feel Guilty...

You have to understand -- G. Fuzz has known me since we were little girls (one of us significantly shorter than the other, but nonetheless...). G. Fuzz knows where all the bodies are buried, all my deepest, darkest secrets, and every embarrassing moment of my teenage years.

G. Fuzz has great power over me, yet she chooses to use said powers for good.

So...yes, now I feel guilty. Because when she was going through a stressful time, all I could think to do is send her subversive postcards and these (even though I didn't sign my name, she somehow knew they were from me).

A year later, though, when I'm going through a not-nearly-as-stressful-in-fact-I-don't-even-know-what
stress-is-compared-with-her-stress-in-fact-a
downright-happy time, she sends me all this:




...like a real, grownup person.

Which means I'll have to cancel the T-Bone Shower Curtain I was getting her for Christmas.

Thanks, G. Fuzz. I'll meet you halfway again someday...

Cute flats...

...they say. They, who are more than 5 feet tall. What do they know of cute flats.

Jag and White Trasherati, bestowing guilt on the dumpy-legged Sisiggy: Why would I wear the Heels of Death when I can wear something called “cute flats.”

Why won’t I, of the Oompah-Loompah legs, wear “cute flats,” Ms. I’m Not Bringing a Bathing Suit to the Bloggers’ Convention West Because I Have No Intention of Entering the Hot Tub Because You All Have Cooties Or Mange Or Something Gross?

BECAUSE MY LEGS LOOK LIKE TREE TRUNKS IF I WEAR CUTE FLATS.

There I said it. So now I don’t want to go in the hot tub BECAUSE MY LEGS LOOK LIKE TREE TRUNKS AND JAG THINKS I HAVE COOTIES.

So now it’s down to Trasherati and Mamma K, (who are coming, correct? Since I have not heard otherwise?).

I will, however, be wearing cute flats because, as important as the Bloggers’ Covention West is, it’s not a wedding and you all do, after all, have cooties and mange.

Place Your Bets

Going to a wedding and keeping in mind that she has not been in heels in over three years (not to mention the unfortunate ankle-wacking incident), Sisiggy will last exactly how long in these:




...before she

a) falls over;

b) kicks them off and hopes no one notices;

c) keeps them on and uses severe foot pain as an excuse for issuing orders from the couch the next day;

d) all of the above.

Happy Birthday to Someone Totally Unrelated to Anyone Here

Normally the one of the qualifications for getting a birthday blog is to be a member of this family. But we’ll make an exception this time for Heir I, who does not want it to get around that we are related to him.

So even though he’s not a relative, Heir 1 has to endure gets a birthday blog.

Some random facts you may not know about Heir 1 (who is currently moaning):

• He was a bit of a celebrity when he was a baby since the newspaper I worked for dressed him in a tux and used him as the cover photo for a special section on weddings. Fortunately, for his sake, I haven’t unpacked that picture yet.
• When he was a toddler, even in the winter I had to hang clothes on the line since we didn’t have a dryer. So I would bundle him up in a snowsuit and take him out with me. The clothesline was on the side of a hill. I used to tell him to hang on to a tree because if he stumbled, his suit was so bulky and he’d just continue rolling down the hill until he hit a fence. As usual, he had to find out for himself…
• He once saved the life of Heir 2 by informing us that Heir 2 had a Lite Brite in his nose. It wasn’t until years later we found out Heir 1 put it there in the first place.

• 

  Heir 1 is an extremely talented writer who wants to, for some inexplicable reason, become a bartender. I think it’s because that way he thinks he can move to the Caribbean and immediately get a job. And drunk.
• Heir 1 hated to get helium balloons when he was little. He was okay until we got home at which point he’d make up put them outside. He thought they were following him.
• Heir 1 is suspicious of the Amish too.

Of course, I'm not sure of any of this because Heir 1 and I are not in any way related. Neither is he related to Dirtman or Heir 2. He is a rock. He is an iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisland.

Heir 1 is 18 today and his over-18 friends are treating him to something I find personally offensive, but is absolutely legal – a strip club (specifically, a West Virginia strip club – how trashy can you get?). And so here is my first hurdle in watching him do something reprehensible to me and keeping my mouth shut.

I do this not because he won’t listen if I forbid it, not because I’m passive/aggressive, but because it’s my job to let him go and let him fall and let him make stupid decisions and live with the consequences.

And I do this because his draft card arrived in the mail yesterday.