Hello my loves,
And you are all my loves. Don’t think that just because you’re not technically family that you get off the hook, cause you don’t!
My current desktop is another sunflower. These flowers are kind of awesome because the stems are like six or seven feet tall and the only leaves are very broad and only at the very base.
Do you see this face?
This face owns my heart and the heart of his Pop-pop too.
When Andrew was born Kevin asked me what I wanted Andrew to call me. Traditionally the women in my family are called ‘Granny’ but there are a lot families where that is a tradition and with two grandmothers with the same name, how is the kid supposed to know who’s who?
“You could be Granny Peg,” you suggest.
Yeah. I just can’t get my head around that. Somehow it doesn’t seem very respectful to be called by my given name. I’d rather chose a different name.
“How about Grammy?” I said. Grammy is what my cousin Jessica called her grandmother.
Andrew, learning to talk, couldn’t say Grammy. What he could say was Mimi. So I am Mimi to Andrew and Mike is Pop-pop.
Andrew can be a stinker at times.
“Oh yeah?” you say.
Yeah! For example…
The kids asked if I would watch Andrew for them one afternoon last month and I said yes. There are not many things that could make me say no to spending time with Andrew.
“Bring his stroller,” I told Kevin and he did.
I seldom go out on the Strip anymore. It’s just so busy out there! Most times I use Station Road, the back way down to Valley Road and I walk the dogs that way. It’s a really steep hill but I would rather face that then all the traffic. And that is the way Andrew, Ginger and I went on this day.
“What about Itsy?” you say.
You guys are too smart for me! I didn’t take Itsy that day. It’s too hard to wrangle the three of them and the stroller. Itsy needs to be carried and the stroller has to be pushed with two hands or I end up going in circles so I left Itsy at home.
We started down the hill and Andrew wanted to walk.
I let him walk.
Andrew wanted to push the stroller.
I let him push the stroller. “Hold on to it now,” I told him. I knew as soon as the words were out of my mouth that that was exactly what he intended to do. I could see it on his face. Andrew let go of the stroller and it started to roll away. Like I said, this is a really steep hill and I had to run for a step or three before I got hold of the handle -- despite being ready for it!
“You stinker!” I told him when I caught it and he laughed.
We get down on Valley Road and I see the wildflowers. “Andrew, you wanna pick flowers for your mommy?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“One of these?” I asked showing him a black-eyed Susan.
“Yeah.”
I cut one, handed it to him, and he took it.
“Queen Ann’s lace?” and I showed him the flower.
“Yeah.”
I cut one, handed it to him, and he took it. Then Andrew spotted a second Queen Ann’s lace and asked me to cut it.
“We already have one…” Who cares if we have two? I thought and granted his request. I cut it, handed it to him, and he took it.
We walked on finding more things for the bouquet. Andrew even liked the different kinds of grasses when I asked him about them until he saw the wild sea oat grass with all the things hanging down. “How about this one?”
“No,” he said.
“Well I think it’s pretty,” and I cut it and handed it to him.
“No.”
“Just carry it for me.”
“No,” and he shook his head.
“Please?” I begged.
“No,” he said again and this time he turned his head away and wouldn’t even look at me anymore! Andrew’s kind of stubborn and I knew that no amount of cajoling could get him to change his mind.
“Fine!” I stuck it in the back of the stroller. The same thing happened with the cattail so he had to ride in the back with the oat grass.
When we got back to Luby’s I put all the flowers together and gave them to Andrew to give to his mom.
“For me? Thank you!” and Kandyce gave Andrew a hug and a kiss.
I took Kandyce’s picture with her wild flower bouquet and when I turn around I see Andrew and Pop-pop walking off.
“Where are they going?” I asked but no one knew. I assumed they were going to play on the bleachers since that is one of Andrew’s favorite things to do and I turned back to Kevin and Kandyce.
By the time we catch up with Pop-pop and Andrew we see where they went! The ice cream store! And the only way Andrew would eat his ice cream is if Pop-pop fed it to him. So Mike would give him a bite and he would go off and play on the bleachers and then, after Pop-pop begged, Andrew would come back for another bite.
Then we see this!
What a stinker!
Andrew isn’t eating his ice cream, he’s holding it in his mouth.
“Swallow it!” his mother told him, and he did, but he was pretty much done eating ice cream at this point. He’d only had about four bites, maybe five, then daddy got to eat the rest. Can’t let good ice cream go to waste.
A few days later, going on a walk with the dogs, I go past the old scarred up tom, Butch…Buck. I think it’s Buck. I don’t see him very often and I was glad to see he was still around. But as we approached, he didn’t move. He was laying there on the gravel so still and quiet. Uh-oh, I thought, he’s dead. But then Ginger saw him and barked and he lifted his head. He was either sleeping really heavy or he’s not hearing as well as he used to.
I keep the dogs away from him so as not to disturb him any more than we already had and we went on our way.
We get to the top of Station Road, the really steep hill that takes me down to Valley Road, and start down. There’s a glove laying there. It’s been there for a couple of months now. Ginger squats on the glove. I laughed. It tickled me. I don’t know if she did it on purpose or if the glove happened to be where she wanted to go but the fact that most of it ran off the glove and down the hill is a testament to how steep this hill is!
Writing my letters and stories means I use a printer a lot. Mike uses the printer for the business occasionally, once or twice a month, and we share a printer. When we were still living in our studio apartment the printer lived between our desks and it wasn’t a big deal to pass the cable back and forth.
One day, the cable not being where Mike could get to it easily, aka in Peg’s computer, he got a little frustrated. “What do we have to do to use the wireless feature on the printer?” Mike asked me, but I didn’t know.
After a trip to Staples, the office supply store, and a talk with one of the techies, we learned we needed a router.
We bought a router.
Owning a router does not automatically mean you can start printing wirelessly. Someone has to set it up. Sharing the printer cable wasn’t a problem for me -- I didn’t care if I had to get up and get the cable -- and I didn’t want to fool with setting up a router. “Maybe we should ask Andrew to set it up for us?” I joked. You know how smart kids are these days. They cut their teeth on technology.
I didn’t want to do it, Mike wouldn’t do it, so our brand-spankin’ new router never left its box.
Now we live in our RV.
“Where are we going to put the printer?” Mike asked when we moved in.
“On the floor under the table?” That’s where I kept it in our old RV.
“It’s too hard to get to there,” Mike said. “How about on the table?”
Well I vetoed that. It’s true, this table is a lot bigger than our old table but if I have my way about it, we are still going to take our kids on a camping trip. We would need the table and the printer would be in the way.
“How about that small counter under the TV in the bedroom?” I asked.
“What about when we want to print something?” Mike asked.
“I guess we’ll just take our laptops back there and print it.”
And that is where the printer lives.
Mike and I have been in the RV for a couple of months now and let me tell you what! It is a pain in the arse to take the laptops back to the bedroom and do our printing.
“If I feed you dinner would you and Kandyce set up the router for us,” I asked my youngest and very handsome son last week.
“Sure,” Kevin said.
Last Saturday I ordered pizza, got a few wine coolers and Kevin, Kandyce and Andrew came over to set up the router for us.
Pizza eaten, table cleaned off, lingering over a second wine cooler, I handed the router box to Kandyce. She took the plastic off and opened the box, took out the router and cables and instructions, hooked cables into the router and turned to Kevin. “Will you take this and hook it into the printer?”
“Where’s the printer?” Kevin asked as he took the router from her.
“Bedroom,” I answered.
He goes to the back of the RV, finds the light switch, turns on the light and sees the printer. “Mom, I can’t move the printer,” Kevin called from the bedroom.
I smiled. I found this stuff by Dap called Blue Stik and I use it to hold things in place while we travel. I like it way better than any other reusable putty because it’s softer, therefore, easier to use. I stuck the printer down with it. “It’s just putty, pull it up,” I called back. I could hear him mumbling something about not wanting to break anything then the mumblings stopped. I guess he got it free.
Yeah. That printer was not going anywhere. I love that stuff!
Once the router was hooked up, I gave my laptop to Kandyce. Kevin sat down beside her and together they tackled making my computer talk to the printer. Those two are a great team and they didn’t need me.
“Come on, Andrew. Let’s go for a walk,” I said.
Andrew was all in for that. He dropped whatever toy he had been holding and got my shoes for me without being asked. He brought them over and dropped them at my feet, then he went back for the dog leashes, brought them over and dropped them at my feet too, then he got his sandals and took them to his dad. He’s such a great kid.
“Daddy!” he says all excited. When daddy doesn’t pay any attention to him he says it again. “Daddy!” and this time he hits daddy on the leg with a sandal.
“What buddy?” Kevin says and when he looks he sees Andrew holding a sandal up to him. Kevin takes it and Andrew flops down on the floor and sticks his foot in the air and daddy put his sandals on for him.
I didn’t have a stroller to contend with so I took both dogs this time and Andrew and I went walking. We walked across this parking lot and the next and headed for Station Road but instead of going the whole way down the hill we took the dirt access road that runs behind Luby’s.
Andrew picked up a rock and threw it. Unfortunately I happened to be standing in the direction he chose to throw it.
Fortunately, it was a big rock and he couldn’t throw it very far. “HEY!” I yelled with surprise. “Throw them the other way!” And Andrew did as I told him.
After a few more rocks he picks up a stick and then reaches for another rock. Is he going to bat the rock, I wonder but he doesn’t. He settled for throwing rocks and pounding with the stick.
Rocks and sticks left behind we are walking toward home and Andrew sees a grass like one we had picked for his mom three weeks earlier. He points at it and says, “Mom.” I had to smile. This kid is amazing. We picked another, much smaller, wildflower (and grass) bouquet for Andrew’s mom.
“I love that he was thinking of me,” Kandyce said when he presented her with the bouquet, which earned him another hug and kiss.
This past Tuesday Kevin called. “Would you want to watch Andrew for a couple of hours Wednesday afternoon?” he asked.
I didn’t even have to think about it. “Sure!”
Wednesday comes and Andrew is sick. “He’s not running a fever but he has a snotty nose,” Kevin called and told me. “I can take him with me if you don’t want to watch him.”
Like I said before, there isn’t much that can keep me from spending time with this part of my heart. What’s a little snot? “I’ll watch him.”
Kevin brought Andrew by and left to run his errand.
And like I said, Andrew can be a stinker.
Andrew climbed up on the big dash of the RV where he likes to be sometimes and I got my camera out.
Can you guess what he’s asking for in this picture?
“His camera?” you hazard a guess and that would be a really good guess and it would also be the right guess.
“You want your camera?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I got the camera he uses but he didn’t take any photographs. When it’s dark in here and the flash needs to come on, you have to hold the button longer. Andrew didn’t try very hard before he put the camera down and scooped up Baby Blue. Who, by the way, he calls Blue.
“Baby Blue!” I tell him.
“Blue.” I don’t think I’m ever going to get him to call her Baby Blue. She’s been Blue to him since he could talk.
Baby Blue is so very patient with Andrew and tolerates being held and carried around by him, but some days she doesn’t want to be fooled with and she’ll wiggle from his arms every time he catches her. This was one of those times.
“Should we get your toys out?” I asked by way of distraction.
“Yeah,” he answers brushing cat hair from his face.
I go out and get two tubs of toys from one of the bays in the RV and bring them in. Then Pop-pop lowers Andrew’s private playground, aka the bunk. The sound of the motor and the platform moving scares Andrew so he runs to the back and watches from the safety of the couch.
Up go Andrew’s toys.
Up goes Andrew.
Andrew settles in, gets the lids off and happily rummages around in the tubs, pulling toys out.
I turned my attention elsewhere and I hear Andrew. “Ewwwwww.”
I turned around wondering what was ewwww. “What?” I asked.
Andrew put something to his nose, sniffed...
and said it again. “Ewwwwww!”
“What is it?” I asked. And Andrew held up a toy turtle.
LOL. He’s so funny.
I didn’t know he was only playing. I truly thought there was something gross in his toys.
Andrew really did have a snotty nose. After catching him wiping with his arm I put the tissue box where he could reach it.
“Use these,” I told him.
I was pleased when I saw him pull a tissue from the box and wipe his nose.
And not so pleased when he put it back in.
After a bit I suggested we go for a walk. The dogs needed to go out. We get ready and head out and what does Andrew see?
Pop-pops shop broom standing beside the door.
Andrew took the broom with him into the parking lot and we took the dogs to the grass.
“Leave the broom here and we’ll go for a little walk,” I suggested to Andrew.
“No.”
I know better than to argue with him and since this was not a safety issue, I let him drag the broom.
“Okay, but you have to carry it,” I told him. We cross the next parking lot drawing a few stares from people. “I couldn’t get him to leave the broom at home,” I told one guy as he passed close by.
He laughed.
We made our way to Station Road -- you know, the big steep hill, and what does that little stinker do? He puts the broom down and tries to push it down the hill.
I didn’t try to explain wheels to Andrew. He smart. He’ll figure it out on his own soon enough. However, I see more adventures coming.
Let’s call this one done.
Lots and lots of love,
Peg and Mike
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