Grandpa Duty

Well it finally happened my two oldest daughters gave birth to sons making me a grandpa. Ironically the oldest daughter, who has insisted all along that she should have the first grandchild, but had a due date a couple of weeks after her younger sister's due date, gave birth first. Like you my first fleeting thought was how did she pull this off, then I learned that her water broke and even thought the kid was six weeks early there is no going back. Grandma and I made the trip to Bee Hive State and visited the poor little guy in the hospital for a few days (he is home and is doing well now). What a great experience is was to hold that little guy in my arms.

A couple of days after returning home to the Cowboy State we got a call late one night informing us the grandson number two was on his way. Early the next morning we got word of his birth. Since he lives in the same town we do visiting was easier. Again the thrilling feeling came as I held him at the hospital.

Grandma has already made a second trip to Utah to see Knight (pronounced ka-niget). William also known by one side of the family as Buffy-B has been left in our care for short periods of time. While I find it enjoyable to hold the little guys, I find myself anxious for them to get old enough to do something with. The problem is by the time they get old enough to take hunting I will probably be using a walker. Taking them fishing will come sooner. I am already trying to figure out a way of convincing their grandmother that I need to get ready for the future by purchasing a couple of more shot guns, deer rifles and fishing poles. I do not know if she'll buy it, she already thinks I have too many.

In a conversation with my brother Jim in reference to our own father's death some 26 years ago just a month before his first grandchild was born, he stated "I reached one of my major life goals… to be alive to be a grandpa". He stated something that I had often thought about myself. I must admit to a feeling of relief that I'm alive to be a grandpa. My youngest daughter who is in 5th grade and I were watching Nacho Libre the other day and Nacho was complaining about the undesirable "duties" he had been assigned like "dead guy duty". I must say that "Grandpa duty" isn't too bad. It sounds like William just "crapped his chaps", time to hand off to Grandma.

Rattle Trap Road Warrior

Recently I completed a 700 mile trip driving alone in my daughter's 1990s Suzuki Sidekick POC. No air conditioning, no cruise control, and temperatures in the high 90s.
The car was loaded to the roof with pink storage tubs and large black trash bags. You know, the typical "girl returning home from college on semester break" stuff. With the windows down the fluttering trash bags made it sound like I had a car full of bats all flapping their wings behind my head. I had to drive with the windows open due to the extreme heat, if I had failed to keep the windows down I would have arrived at my destination resembling a 250 lb rotisserie chicken at the Wal-Mart Deli.
The noise from the wind and rattling trash bags by the time I arrived home my ears were ringing. I do not recall my ear ringing this loud since I attended the 1978 Ted Nugent "GONZO LIVE" tour Day on The Green at the Oakland Coliseum. It took weeks for the smell of pot smoke to wash out of my clothes and hair and about the same length of time for my ears to stop ringing.
As I drove down the road I kept thinking what do I do if this POC breaks down on me? I came to the conclusion that the best course of action would be to set the beast on fire and then stand by the side of the road, look distraught while wringing my hands and muttering "oh no my daughters car and all of her worldly belongings, u p in smoke….whatever shall I do". I would then call the insurance company, have the remains disposed of and hitch a ride the rest of the way home. Just a side note between Columbus and Billings I witnessed a family of four standing on the side of the road looking at the burned out shell of a motor home as the fire department finished putting the fire out. They were having a much worse day than I, nothing like burning down the motor home to ruin the family vacation (lesson: Don't ride your breaks).
I was very glad to be home. The things we do for our kids.

I Heard They Taste Like Chicken

Yesterday afternoon my son Miller and I were getting ready to add a "honey super" to each of the bee hives we have. What is a "honey super"? Well to keep it simple it is a box containing frames placed on top of the hive where the bees store the honey. Back to the story. I had sent Miller out to the back of our property to place an empty "honey super" by each hive while I gathered needed tools and finished putting on my "bee suit", No I do not look like a bee in it! It is not like a Halloween costume, it is white coveralls with the attractive hat and veil. A moment later Miller came into the garage and said "Dad there is a rattlesnake in front of one of the hives, he almost bit me, if it hadn't been for Jackson (Miller's black lab), I would have stepped on him". I sceptically went out to see if it really was a rattlesnake or just an angry bull-snake. Sure enough it was a prairie rattler and a fairly large one and not very happy. I sent Miller into the house for my Walther PPK (yes the same one James Bond uses). I shot the snake, cut off the rattles, then the thought came to mind "I heard that they taste like chicken". I resisted the urge and properly disposed of the snake. Maybe next time I'll try cooking the snake.

Guess What We Are Going To Have

The baby competition continues and here is the latest update. Those of you who have been following this know that my two oldest daughters (Kristine & Karlee)are married and expecting children. You are also aware that the younger of the two (Karlee) is due to have her baby first. Well today the oldest daughter (Kristine) called to tell me that she was having a boy, his first name will be Brian and his middle name will be Knight or Ka-nig-it ("and there was much rejoicing") if you watched Monty Python. This poses a challenge to Karlee because she will not have the sex-identifying ultra-sound until the first week in June. What to do? A friend of hers who is a Veterinarian at a large animal clinic has offered to do the ultra sound at the clinic using the horse ultra sound equipment. I am curious to see if she will go this way or simply wait until the human ultra sound appointment in June. Kristine may have won the "Who knew what they were going to have first" contest but Karlee could easily walk away with "The most unique how we found out what we were going to have" prize.

For my part I am just enjoying the competition and figure that however it goes, I'm going to get two grandkids out of the deal.

Red's and Big Red

In March I was in Kileen, Texas for work at Ft. Hood. A group of my co-workers who had been there a few days longer than I found a Texas style BBQ place called Reds. The food is great. They have Big Red cream soda on tap. I know you thought that Big Red was the owner of Red's or something but it is indeed a soda pop. If you do not know what Big Red cream soda is like, well I'll do my best to describe it. Big Red cream soda smells like the bubble gum you chewed when you were a kid, it tastes like cream soda but with a very slight cough syrup after taste. It goes very well with BBQ ribs, brisket, pulled pork and sides like cole slaw, beans, and potatoe salad. I don't know why this combo works but it does. Perhaps it is because Red's is Texas BBQ and Big Red is brewed in Texas.

I have a desire for some of Red's ribs and a little brisket. I guess I'll just have to cook up some of my own. It will not taste the same but I can always kid myself by drinking some Big Red. If you want to try Big Red cream soda it is available at most WAL MART stores, I found some here in Wyoming of all places. I've included some pictures so you can see I didn't make this up.

Facing Facebook

I haven't written for a while largely because I have been so busy. I was thinking that this is probably a good thing. What would I do if I felt obligated to write every day or worse yet how would I handle the stress of having a Facebook account. My life would be incomplete if I feel asleep without checking in on Facebook, updating my status and seeing what everyones status was. I am not certain that I am ready for this level of commitment. How could I live with myself if someone were to ask me to be their friend and I really didn't want them as a friend? The guilt might be so overwhelming I might need therapy.

I have begun to get pressure though from family and friends to open a Facebook account. My children who are old enough to have Facebook accounts have been particularly interested in seeing me have an account. When I ask them why their reply is “so we can talk with you”. My question is so what happened to just talking with people on the phone or in person? I call my oldest son on the cell phone, he won't answer but if I send him a text he replies back right away and will text me until my thumbs cramp up. I don't get it.

Perhaps the only way I'll know is to take the plunge and open an account. So stay tuned. I f ask request you to be my friend, be kind I have a fragile ego and do not handle rejection well.

Great Expectations

I have been given official permission to share with the world that my two married daughters are both expecting children. I have known this for sometime but upon threat of death I was not allowed to tell a soul until today. I am still not certain why the silence was needed but I complied. My wife had a difficult time holding back the good news and justified letting a bit of information here and a bit of information there slip to select individuals. I got the "don't even go there" look from her if I attempted to point out that perhaps when her daughters told her not to tell anyone they really meant it.
So now I have two daughters who were very competitive with each other prior to getting married and both are due to have babies within one week of each other. This could be good. The kids are expected to be born in September some time. This scuttles my plans for archery hunting elk this year. Perhaps I need to send out an edict to my children that their children's births should be planned so as not to occur between September 1st and the end of November. This will avoid any potential conflicts with hunting seasons and grandchildren's births and future birthdays. I have a feeling that to blow off a grandkids birthday so I can hunt it will not go over well. If I live long enough it may serve as an excuse to go hunting. Imagine; "Honey I am taking little Scooter/Scootette hunting for his/her birthday and I need to buy a new gun for him/her to use". There are some possibilities here. If grandkids are born during summer, I may be able to get a new fly rod out of the deal.
Needless to say I am excited for the births of our first grandchildren who will also be the first great grandchildren on my wife's side of the family. I look forward to feeding them food their parents prohibit in their own homes, letting them have free reign over the house and allowing them to do things their parents absolutely forbid. Then when they become smelly, cranky and out-right obnoxious I will send them home with their parents. Sounds like great fun without the responsibility. I can hear it now, "But Mom, Grandpa John says that @#%&!! isn't really a bad word because it's in the bible", "Grandpa John said it was o.k. to pee outside as long as nobody is looking" or "But Grandpa John does it all the time".

What a pain

I was talking with a friend the other day and we were discussing the rise in presciption drug abuse. Neither one of us were very fond of the effects that pain medication have on our behavior. Typically "hitter pain" medications like hydracodone, even T3s make me turn obnoxious. Now I know that there are those of you out there who feel I do not need medication to assist with being obnoxious. According to my wife I go from being an extremely charming, quite, repectful and laid back individual to a very roudy, loud jerk once the medication takes effect.

I was reminded recently of an incident that should have been embarrassing for me except I was under the influence of an opiate based pain medication following a surgery at the time. The events as I remember them are as follows. The only witness to the event is a former Relief Society President. I was to be left on my own for the fitst time following a back surgey, my wife and children went to a program at the local high school. I was at the point that with enough pain medication, I was able to get up by myself as needed. I was dressed in my "angel chaps" and a bathrobe. I was watching a John Wayne movie (I can only watch them when my wife is out, I think it is beacuse in about every movie he is in with Mareen O'Hara he ends up spanking her, of course she always deserves it. Did I mention that my wife reminds me a little of Mareen when she is behaving badly?), there was a knock at the front door. Having downed a pain pill 30 minutes earlier I felt no hesitation on getting out of bed, slidding my feet into some house slippers and waddling down the hall to the top of the stair to see who was rapping at my door. As I stood swaying at the top of the stairs I could see trough the side light window that the visitor was our Relief Society President, Sister Gilbert. Without bothering to close my bathrobe, I worked my way down the stairs to the door. I opened the door to find a suprised, embarassed Sister Gilbert. Politely averting her eyes she said "Bishop, I didn't mean to get you out of bed, I thought they weren't leaving you home alone yet" and she handed me a cassarole dish of food. I assured her that I was now old enough to be left alone for short periods of time. She again appologized for making me get out of my sick bed to answer the door. I assured her I was alright. As I made my way back up the stair and set the cassarole on the kitchen counter. I realized that I looked like "cousin Eddie" from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, you know the scene where Eddie is standing outside in his bathrobe emptying his motor home septic into the storm drain. Well that was me minus the hat. I remember thinking "I should be embarassed but this is just too darn funny!" Poor Sister Gilbert always the prim, proper polite one. You know she has never said a word to me about that night, didn't even mention it to my wife. Maybe someday I'll get the guts to ask her if she remebers seeing the Bsihop in his underwear.

Once I got to bed the humor of the situation hit me with full force and I laughed even though it hurt. My sister-in-law Ronalee called and I accounted the details to her. She later remarked to my wife that I was funny and quit a bit more talkative than usual.

I think I'll stick with Advil or something similar.