We had the pleasure of the company of BOTH girls over their spring break. We anticipated Kid Number Two, but Kid Number One’s presence was an added bonus. They came armed with dirty laundry, meal requests and appetites that would put locust to shame. They stayed in our guest room (holy crap, we have a whole room for guests! What kind of grown-up shit is that?), which adjoins the kitchen. It was around day two that I realized just how much this house is designed for two. Dr. Evil and I live in one large room on the second floor, which opens out to the living room on the first floor, so there are no doors or hallways or the like between us and the rest of the house. Not that we’re getting into anything wild upstairs, c’mon, we’re old, but if the stereo is playing downstairs, it’s playing upstairs. The kitchen is industrial style, with commercial fixtures, to include deep stainless steel sinks that resound like kettle drums when anything is gently placed into them, let alone the odd dropped spoon or bowl. Add to that the roar of the commercial coffee grinder I recently found on eBay and it’s tough going for anyone trying to sleep past 7:30. They were troopers, however, and we rarely saw them before 11 AM.
Kid Number One will be graduating from WVU this spring, so we helped her out buying her first car. It’s a reasonable first car: a used Ford Focus sedan with good safety ratings and solid milage figures. The dealership experience left much to be desired, however. I know there’s nothing new to say about the parasitic nature of car dealers, but man, I cannot understand why they won’t be better to their customers (especially young customers), if only out of self-preservation.
It would appear that Kid Number Two is staying in Morgantown over the summer. She and a friend are renting off-campus next year, so they are sub-leasing the unit until the start of next school year and hoping to find summer jobs to cover the rent. I didn’t tell her that jobs tend to dry up in college towns during the off months, but I guess we’ll see what we see. While she was here, I found her hunched over her computer and asked what she was working on. “I’m finding bus and train tickets to Pittsburgh and New York because I’m going to the Governors Ball. Oh. In New York, huh? Oh. Where do these adult children get the idea that they can just do things without permission and consultation? Did I mention that Kid Number One is headed for Spain after graduation? Oh, my aching worry bone.
Dr. Evil’s chickens are growing seemingly by the minute. She and the girls assembled a prefab “chicken tractor”1 for the flock, and the birds are being introduced to it—and the outdoors in general—today.
We got an estimate on rehabbing an existing shop building here on the farm, turning it into a garage/farm implement storage area. Hahahahahahahahahaha. [Comes up for air.] Hahahahahahahahaha. The consensus is that the builder (who built this house twenty years ago, and also just built Dr. Evil’s parents’ new crib) didn’t actually want the contract, so he threw out an incredible number. It worked, he’s not getting the job. But here’s the latest twist, and the latest example of exactly how stupid I am: I got to looking at the building as it stands, then considered what we want to do with it, and said to myself, “Well hell, why not just do it yourself?” I do not learn.
1 It’s no tractor at all, more of a trailer where the human is the tractor. Chicken trailer just doesn’t sound as good, I guess.