Evening Garden

Fresh out of Swimming Pool

I’m really beginning to think my Camry could be on the verge of staging some sort of formal protest against the abuse I’ve subjected the poor beast to over the past couple days. I loaded even more weight last night than the night before and it once again handled the load with an adroitness that belies its usual uses. We made it to the top of our hill with no problem which was followed by the usual unloading and excavation.

The Poor Camry Loaded up

I was unsupervised for yet another night because the neighborhood Mafioso had kidnaped the resident Panamanians for a trip into Boston. As my wife’s uncle’s days in the US are dwindling they are trying to cram as much sightseeing in as possible. I got another third of the way down the wall before they showed up fresh from Quincy Market clam chowder and the inevitable shopping.

Mafioso and Panamanians in the Hub

Mother in Law and Wife's uncle in Boston

I was buoyed during my run to Home Depot and later on the wall with a call from New Jersey. Seeing my granddaughter twice was a real treat and more than made up for the missing call from the night before. My daughter had the day off as her husband was winging off for a couple days to support a friend. The first call saw them out on the deck where the Frist Blog Reader got herself into trouble when she tried to share her glass of water with me by pouring it on her mother’s IPad.

The First Night's Work

Tonight sees us all up in New Hampshire for the wedding of Keene Friend 2 and his longtime girlfriend. I’m psyched to see so many friends whom I’m sure will be in attendance. Due to our increased entourage I’ll be staying in a hotel for the first time ever in my hometown and am kind of sneakily looking forward to it. This has nothing to do with the fact the hotel is smack dab in the middle of my usual pub crawling environment.

As Far as I got Last Night

Mulched Wall

The Pillaging Crew in Newport Yesterday
When I'm Forced to Go I usually End up in Irish Pub in Background

I’m a victim of my own success when it comes to retaining walls. My wife decided she wanted a small one in the front yard to protect her newly expanded garden empire. This may have something to do with some of the top soil ending up on the front walkway after a recent thunderstorm. She must think these things appear by magic because she blithely informed me of the requirement as if it was no big thing. The magic part may come from my technique of trying to do the work when she’s not around so she returns to find the wall in place as if by arcane arts. She has a hard time avoiding her supervisory nature despite the fact she has never laid a brick in her life; it’s a wife thing.

Future Gymnast

The visiting Panamanian’s shopping/pillaging tour headed south to Newport, Rhode Island yesterday so I was offered an opportunity of an unsupervised evening following work. The only limitation was the much smaller car I drive as opposed to my Favorite Panamanian. I often drive by guys with overloaded cars barely avoiding scraping the pavement and comment on their idiocy. Last night that was me. Twenty bags of mulch and a hefty load of bricks has a tendency to strain the struts of a Camry but against all odds I made it home without leaving important parts of the undercarriage strewn in my wake. I’m sure there were a number of my surrogates who passed me on I-190 commenting on my intellectual shortcomings.

Cat Finally Lets Her Get Close

While I complain here about the work, in reality I find it almost therapeutic. Well everything except lugging those damned retaining wall blocks around. I got the first third of the wall done and most of the mulch distributed, exhausting the Camry-load supply of material. I did learn the important difference in working the front yard which has me in the full sun as opposed to the shade blessed back yard. The therapy came in handy when I learned I would be denied my nightly FaceTime call with the First Blog Reader. It seems her parents feel the need to have lives as well and their schedules didn’t permit one last night.

I addressed the loneliness with calls to Keene Friend whom I accidentally “butt dialed” returning my cell phone to a pocket after a SITREP from the pillaging crew. We coordinated operations for tomorrow’s wedding of Keene Friend 2, mostly to insure an uninterrupted beer supply. Later my Favorite Son and the ABFA caught me up on their preparations for our visit this weekend after the wedding. Riggins was called upon to contribute but he was exhausted from another day squiring his day care girlfriend around. Pictures tomorrow of the front wall progress, pay no attention to that overloaded (again) Camry on I-190 tonight.

I got some updated photos from the condo construction down in Panama - color me psyched!

Pools

Looking Towards Common Area

Common Area Party Place and Firepit

And a Hot Tub!

But the Beach is What's Important

Icy Deck, Reacher Shorts, and Arthurian Hasbro

Watching Skateboarders Yesterday

New England seems bound and determined to show the visiting Panamanians the wide variety of summer weather it is capable of. I warned my wife over lunch that Buddy the Wonder Pooch should be corralled and placed in his kennel due to an oncoming thunderstorm. When that good advice was ignored my wife’s uncle eventually chased him down and dragged him out of the bathroom down to his safe place. He was still cowering there when I returned home after work and remained incarcerated because an even bigger storm blew in accompanied by a lengthy session of hail, which neither of the visiting Panamanians had ever seen before. Deckzilla was completely covered in ice for a while.

Deckzilla Last Evening

Out Front

I thought the storms were finished for the night so Buddy was allowed out of his. It turned out the storms were not through for the night. My wife and I went out for a movie on date night and my wife’s uncle was once again in hot pursuit when another storm blew through. Buddy ended up urinating repeatedly during the pursuit so I had that to clean up when I returned home. He looked thoroughly apologetic as I lectured him on his psychotic storm behavior.

I finished up No Middle Name by Lee Child which featured the collected short stories of Jack NMN Reacher. I’d read many of these already but I can never get enough of Reacher and there were a sufficient amount of new ones to spur the purchase. The stories span Reacher’s entire life including his childhood, military career, and wandering days. I thoroughly enjoyed the read, even the ones I’d been through before, because, again, never enough Reacher. He is a guy you would not, however, want to be standing next to in one of the thunderstorms I described above as danger seems to seek him out, usually to its infinite regret. It was a nice sojourn in Reacher world as I wait for the next novel to come out.

While Buddy was watering the carpets, date night saw us at Transformers: The Last Knight. Anyone who goes to a Michael Bay directed transformers movie and complains has only themselves to blame. You know going in you’re going to be subjected to incessant CGI action, relentless noise, and plot holes Optimus Prime could easily walk through. I enjoyed the cacophony and thought this might be the best of the transformer movies although that isn’t exactly high cotton. Who else but Bay could audaciously link King Arthur and his knights with Hasbro’s transformers? The movie is overly long but it’s all breathless action so it goes quickly. The first three quarters focus mostly on the human characters which was welcome as Wahlberg is always watchable and Sir Anthony Hopkins (must have been a huge payday) looked to be having a supremely good time with tongue firmly in cheek. It was Bay at his best/worst which means an action packed summer popcorn-a-palooza. I liked it, so sue me.

She likes to Hang

And Swing

Chipmunk Whisperer

The Whisperer

Monday finally gave me a bit of break yesterday and I certainly needed it after my foolhardy but fun operation to drive back and forth to DC over the weekend. Work was the usual chaos on a Monday after an eventful weekend installing some major route changes and the forced departure of a cretin masquerading as an employee. I locked a couple of subordinate managers out of the staff meeting when they decided it was okay to show up five minutes late while they finished up their smoke break. They erroneously judged that I was a kinder, gentler soul after moving up to the GM position.

My Wife Forced this Hat Upon Me when my granddaughter summoned me to the Pool Last Week

Miss Her, Lots

Back at home, the Panamanians have moved into what I comically (at least to me) refer to as the acquisition phase of their visit. My wife’s uncle leaves next week and is setting out to make the “required” purchases prior to his return. They returned late last evening after a pillaging episode in a local Wal-Mart. One of the routine events of this phase includes the purchase of an additional, larger suitcase to handle the supplementary freight that will return with him to Panama. We have the added bonus of a weekend in New Hampshire coming up with the advantage of tax free shopping there. At least I have it on good authority that they serve beer in the granite state so I should be covered.

Yesterday Wingman Found her Dancing in the Shower in her Winter Boots
Because, Well, Why Not

Today Elmo is Teaching her About Sitting up While Eating

It looks like some small rodent is burrowing under the wall of the middle terrace out back. When I asked my wife about it she remembered a story from the First Blog Reader’s stay with us last week. She and my wife were outside sitting on a stone wall separating us from the next door neighbor. While my wife talked with the neighbor one of the ubiquitous chipmunks appeared on the stone wall. Despite the best efforts of the neighborhood hawks we have a burgeoning population of the little fellows, including one under the front stoop.

My granddaughter was of course enthralled seeing him and immediately walked towards it. My wife assumed he would scurry away as they are hard wired to do. Instead he let my granddaughter approach and actually pet him a couple times while my shocked wife looked on. He then took off for his burrow and my wife intercepted the attempted sticking of the little one’s arm into the burrow. I’m guessing the chipmunk realized she posed no threat and I’m wondering if he took encouragement from the exchange to dig into my terrace for a home. I might just leave him alone since he seems to have the granddaughter seal of approval.

Deckzilla Dancing

Hard at Work Writing Great American Novel

Do Not Disturb

Lecturing Dada and Grampa

Past Weekend Shopping

Late Night Latin Ladies

Weekend Drive

My Wife's Tio and I at the Iwo Jima Memorial

I took another one of those “leisurely” weekend drives down to our nation’s capital and back over the weekend. This has become one of the standard features whenever one of my wife’s family members visits from Panama and I’m stupid enough to keep volunteering to do it. It’s a trip replete with nostalgia after all the time I spent in the capitol region during my military career but there are better ways to spend a weekend. It wouldn’t be an operation involving my wife if there weren’t a few curve balls thrown my way though.

Musquetera Lunch Upon Arrival in Virginia

The plan was for my wife’s uncle and I to drive down and stay in a hotel in Springfield, near some of my old stomping grounds. Late on Thursday she came to me and said she’d decided to accompany me along with her mother and that we would be staying at the Virginia Musquetera’s home. My first question was what she wanted me to do with Buddy the Wonder Pooch for the weekend then. So I spent Friday morning (which was absolute chaos at work for other reasons) canceling hotel reservations and trying to find a place to board Buddy. Both of the dog hotels we use were full and Great Aunt, a couple weeks short of knee replacement surgery, was not an option. As he is justly famous for Keene Friend stepped up for us. He volunteered to stay at our home and Buddy-sit for the weekend. He is probably the best friend the world has ever seen.

At Arlington House Overlooking DC

I still had the small matter of driving to Virginia on Saturday morning. I told my wife we needed to be on the road no later than 5am. She nodded sagely and stayed up until after midnight for still unexplained reasons, which meant I was up until that hour as well. Driving 500 miles on 4 hours sleep is not the preferred method of execution. So we left around 530am which I considered a huge win since I was dealing with no less than three Panamanians. For the trip down I used our normal Pennsylvania routing to avoid the dreaded I-95 corridor. We did well and I dropped off the ladies at the musquetera’s around 130pm.

Meanwhile at a Nearby Virginia Shopping Center

My wife’s uncle and I then set out for Arlington where we stopped at the Iwo Jima Memorial and then made a quick side trip into Fort Meyer where I stopped by my old company which I hadn’t seen in a several decades but looked to have changed, not at all. Our next stop was Arlington National Cemetery where we made the usual trek around the grounds. I did notice a huge increase in security since my last visit, just last October. I made a point of making a silly smile selfie at each of our stops because, well, why not?.

My Old Company

My Series of Selfie with Tio (Some of Him) at MLK Memorial

Lincoln Mermorial

Reflecting Pool 

WW2 Memorial

The Other Side

White House

Washington Monument

Jefferson

FDR

My wife’s uncle, north of seventy years old, was a great trooper and kept up with the walking required, which was only beginning. We took in a change of guard at the tomb of the unknowns, as well as the JFK gravesite and Arlington House before heading back to the car and snuck into DC across Memorial Bridge. I lucked into a parking spot near the tidal basin and set out on our ramble. Washington, in a huge surprise, blessed up with a New England-like summer day with none of the usual smothering humidity. It was still ninety degrees out and I definitively established docksiders are not the footwear of choice for a miles long hike through the monuments. On the upside the hot temperatures had female attire in peak season form.

I can See the Reason fro Complaints
He Does Look Chinese

We took in the MLK Memorial with their Chinese version of MLK, the Korean War Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Wall, the World War 2 Memorial and the Washington Monument before walking across the street to the White House. Here security once again raised its head. It seems each trip to DC I find the viewing further and further from the White House. This time the security cordon (maybe in reaction to our benighted leader’s popularity) was pushed fully halfway across the ellipse. I took my stalwart companion around to the front of the White House where at least something of a view was offered. Our return walk to the car included the Treasury Department, the Smithsonians, the Jefferson Memorial, and finally the FDR Memorial. In a moment sure to locked in the memory vaults as a time to “cherish” President Trump’s motorcade passed directly in front of us as we were crossing Constitution Avenue. We stopped to make a FaceTime call to the First Blog Reader from the Jefferson Memorial. She was not impressed with the locale. We were back at the car a little before 7:30pm.

Some Great Words Though

We were both a little footsore by the end of the walk but we did successfully avoid the temptation of soaking our feet in the World War 2 fountain which I count as a victory (at least for those around us). I had to buy some gas before the trip back into Virginia and I ended up stopping right across the street from my old office in Crystal City, site of a lot of great memories. The memory string continued as I took Braddock Road to get back to the Centreville home of the Musquetera. All three of the homes we occupied during our various stays in Virginia are just off this road and I made sure to point each out to my very tired uncle in law.

Arriving in New Jersey

We found the ladies in high fettle when we arrived. They had spent the entire day talking non-stop and catching each other up on everything. My mother in law truly enjoyed the gathering of Spanish speaking ladies. We all sat around the dining room table after the Musquetera’s signature lasagna and the talk and laughter were almost non-stop. Something I’ve noticed about Latin culture is the respect they afford senior citizens. All of my wife’s friends that stopped by made a point to pay respect to her mother. It may be because I’m all too rapidly approaching that status myself but I think we could learn something from the way they honor their elders.

Yep, Abuela is Really Here

The beer we arranged to have on site combined with too much lasagna put the nail in the coffin of any energy I had remaining after a long day of driving and walking especially since I had the drive back awaiting me in the morning.

Happy Girl

I decided to chance the I-95 corridor for the trip back for one reason, albeit a very, very good one. If we just happened to be traveling on the Garden State Parkway it would make all the sense in the world to stop off in Maplewood and see the New Jersey contingent. The drive was every bit as unpleasant as I remembered even with the roads twice as wide and the tolls three times what they used to be.  The traffic still chokes the roads making for a tense drive. We arrived during nap time which gave us a chance to catch up with my daughter and Wingman.

Showing her Parents how the Pool Works

The smile we received when my granddaughter woke up and realized who was there was worth all the aggravation I-95 had thrown my way. After a devastating hug I was directed outside where she showed me the new pool she’d convinced her parents to get for her. Her splashing, developed under our tutelage, has lost nothing of its energy. It was a fabulous way to break up the trip. She doesn’t seem to forget anything. When asked why I had to work her reply was, “more toys”. I’ve been spoiled by spending so much time with her lately that it pains me to think it might be until August that I see her again. That is just unacceptable.