Foolish Mansion

Well, it is official. All of my boys have been out- macho-ed by their cousin, Benjamin Harrison. Benjamin is in basic training with the French Foreign Legion. I wonder if he and William will ever meet over a camp fire in the jungles of Guyana? I wonder if he will make it through the grueling basic training of the FFL?
Christopher (30) is doing so well at his job that we expect his employers to start playing “Hail the Conquering Hero” over the loudspeaker when he pulls into the parking lot at work each morning.
Christopher’s wife, Julia, is overseeing our adorable, clever and talented grandchildren, Sarah and Pucci, while putting up with Christopher and posting on her blog as Economic Mama (she has a degree in economics). She is due to have number three in August. They are moving soon. The move will bring Christopher closer to his work and, in a few months, the dirty diapers closer to Christopher.
John (28) is welding 12 hours a day, seven days a week, in Texas and earning lots of money for my birthday present .

Robert (26) is getting a bit homesick but will be coming up for a visit at the end of April.

Frances (24)has a hot date in Colorado Springs for the Ring Dance at the Air Force Academy. This is the dinner/dance that occurs on the night that the Juniors receive their Air Force Academy Rings. While she is in Colorado she is going rock climbing. In the meantime she has been riding her motorcycle, Reginald, around town. She can’t wait to get on the plane.

William(22) is off to West Point today, for the Sandhurst Competition. His team’s flight was delayed for two days due to the Federal Budget blockade and they missed out on two days of practice on the Sandhurst course. They still plan on winning.
Joseph (19) is preparing for finals at Purdue and pining over his broken unicycle. He is also probably flirting with some unsuspecting girl who doesn’t know how many hearts he has broken. Joseph and John are our lady’s men. Christopher was the leader of the pack until he was brought to heel by Julia.
Mary Elizabeth (17) was inducted into the Honor Society at school on Saturday. Sunday, after teaching Catechism Class, she started to droop. She is now sick with a cold and sore throat. She is convinced that no one believes she is really sick, since we are not a sympathetic lot when there is neither blood, nor fever involved. She is, however, truly sick. And she is missing a track meet, which is enough aggravation to put her out completely.
Jennifer (15) is plotting to take over the attic of Foolish Mansion.
Patrick (13) just had his birthday this weekend. In celebration of this and of Mary Elizabeth’s entry into the Honor Society we all went out to dinner to the Mexican restaurant here in town. For his birthday, the waiters gave Patrick a huge black and silver sombrero to wear while they sang Happy Birthday and brought him a fried ice cream with two cherries on top. Jennifer was so embarrassed that she hid her face against the wall. On Sunday we had cake and ice cream and presents at home. This is the good news. The bad news is that Patrick’s first track meet was rained out, much to his disgust.

 “They canceled it because it was raining this morning. It’s not even raining now!” he fumed, appalled at the stupidity of the grown ups in charge.
Patrick is currently consoling himself with the new Puma tennis shoes, head lamp and authentic World War II tank sighting mechanism that he got for his birthday.
Chris and I feel as if a huge load has been lifted off of our shoulders. The apartment we have all been working on is finished and the tenant has moved in. Now we only have to deal with the rental house whose plumbing backed up after the heavy rains this past weekend. I am going to rent the giant, nasty, augur again this afternoon. This is the same augur used by Jennifer and Patrick when the pipes were clogged here at Foolish Mansion. It costs a fortune to rent. I wonder if they have a “frequent flyer” discount?
Unfortunately, this rental house does not have a clean out port, so Chris will have to spend this evening removing the toilet and then replacing it after he augurs out the sewage drain line. This will delay the installation of the ceiling fan he is putting in our bedroom at Foolish Mansion.
The weather is warm again, thank goodness, even if it is not dry. We could use the rain anyway, after last summer’s drought. I got some yard work done last week and now I have poison ivy or Virginia creeper. I am allergic to both. My mother-in-law swears by some horse medicine as a remedy but as I am not a horse I don’t think I will use it.
This week has been designated “organization” week. I bought a ton of plastic storage boxes at the Goodwill Outlet and I plan on organizing any identifiable group of things that I can get my hands on. I plan on starting with linens and ending with tools.

The book situation is hopeless, as the north dining room is flooded with boxes of books. I am thus not including our three to four thousand books in this effort. Given that I continue to buy books on a weekly basis, there is no hope in sight. We have shelves down at the farm that we could pick up and install but they are metal and very ugly. They also are inadequate to the task of holding all the books. On the other hand, cardboard boxes are even uglier than metal shelves and they have the added inconvenience of concealing all the books. Since I am a creature of habit, I may actually be buying second and third copies of books I already have. The real downside to this is that, if it is true, I am not buying new books.
There are those who would get rid of the books, and replace them with a library card and a Kindle. These people would not, however, have seen our local library. It is big on service but very small on books. It is also an entire block away.

The Kindle is the worst invention since canned spinach. It is based on the concept that the essence of a book lies only in the words. If you have the words, the machine gods imply, you have the book. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real essence of a book is the possibility for exploration, for discovery of the unknown. In order to fulfill this possibility, you need the ability to browse, to pick up book after book, turning pages, perusing tables of contents, illustrations and book jackets synopses.
A Kindle is fine if you know just what you want. But what if, as is often the case, you don’t know what you don’t know? What if you miss some fabulous book that is just over the horizon of the next shelf? What if you miss an entire subject area that is clamoring with possibilities?
When I was young, my father had a library in his house. He had filled most of the shelves with a book collection that he bought from the widow of a man whose name I will never forget. Book after book was signed by in flowing, elegant script by its loving owner, Walter B. Compton.

Mr Compton must have been old, for there were no cheap, shiny best sellers in his collection. Instead, he had great books from the past. I found old hard back copies of the Dana Girl mysteries, as well as the Hardy boys, Nancy Drew and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “John Carter of Mars”. Eventually a set of the works of the great story tellers aroused my curiosity. In these books I read “The Ballad of East and West” by Kipling, for the first time. I read “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant and “The Two Taverns” by Alphonse Daudet.

 If I had had a Kindle, instead of shelves of hundreds of old books, I doubt if I would ever have made these wonderful discoveries.

Wherever you are, Walter B Compton, I will always love you. And I will always love books.

Patrick has joined the middle school track team. This is an act of purest courage, since Patrick is only slightly taller than the hurdles he is jumping. He is equally dwarfed by his fellow track team members. And I could not be more proud.  He is about two thirds of the way down the track star food chain, with little hope of reaching the top. But he goes every day to practice, does his best, and, most days, comes home all excited about being on the team.

On the days that someone has, once again, mentioned Patrick’s “vertical challenge”, however, he comes home, throws himself down in the big stuffed chair by the corn stove and huffs out his frustrations. There is nothing small about his temper, or his capacity for self-expression.

The point his team mates seem to miss is what Patrick manages to accomplish on the track field per foot of his height. If they were to do as much “per foot” of height as Patrick does, they would be speed machines.

This week Mary Elizabeth participated in her first track meet. She won first place as part of a relay team and second place as an individual in the “800”. Tonight she has a home game and I am going to get to see her compete. We have never had a kid who was so addicted to a team sport before. It is a new and different experience. So far, given the weather on the day of the “mock meet”, it has been a cold experience.

Last night in the car, as we were driving to Indy for a caving meeting, we all took turns listing things that bring us joy. At the top of Mary Elizabeth’s list was “winning”. Second on her list was “understanding physics” (she loves physics). I was a bit taken aback by the “winning” comment and said so. Patrick piped up and said, very firmly,  “I was about to say victorious competition. There is nothing wrong with winning. “

Fortunately in her list of “good things”, Mary Elizabeth also included classical music, domed bird cages and creating art work.

On the way home Mary Elizabeth explained why track is so much more exciting than academics at this point in time. “I know I can do the academics,” she said, “but I don’t know if I can win at track. It’s more of a challenge.”

I can see that. The difference between me and Mary Elizabeth is that, once I know I can do something, I usually get bored and stop. Then I go onto something new. I do not think this is a good thing. Mary Elizabeth keeps doing the old stuff while she piles on the new: choir, academic team, Key Club, studying for the SAT and now Track. This is a good thing, if and when she can squeeze in enough sleep.

William just got back from Selection for Combat Rescue Officer. He is now slated to become an officer for the Para Rescue Special Forces of the Air Force. He was one of nine out of 29 who made it.

Now that that Selection is over, all he can think about is the upcoming Sandhurst Competition at West Point.  This is a team event , whereas Selection is an individual process. William much prefers team competitions. While a Sandhurst win is not a career maker, it is William’s idea of fun. He is the team medic. There is also a pace setter, a team lead and a land navigation man. The course is nine miles and I believe it originated at Sandhurst, one of the British military academies. It is a grueling event. My housewife version of what it entails is rather fuzzy. I believe that it involves carrying heavy things, climbing tall things and shooting small things while not getting lost.

John is in Welder’s Hell. He has taken a short term job in Texas that is 12 hours a day, seven days a week. He left last Saturday and has barely been heard from since. I have left guilt inducing phone messages asking him to call me, so I have heard from him. We spoke for about 30 seconds this morning. Just long enough for him to say, “I hate this job.” Well….duh…  I just hope he survives it.

Robert is thrilled with Mt Vernon, Indiana. He is making friends right and left, as usual. He is waiting on the outcome of his application to join the volunteer fire force. He is lining up more fire fighting training. His favorite hang out is the fire house. Monday was his birthday and Chris ordered a large pizza to the firehouse with  a “Happy Birthday Robert” note, a two liter and an order of breadsticks. He didn’t know how many firefighters would be “on the scene” but he figured they might be hungry.

Robert also met a retired crop duster pilot at work. They spent about eight hours talking planes and going to visit someone who had built his own plane. (Robert is a pilot and has worked with his grandfather on home built aircraft).

After all my work to get his set up in his apartment, Robert hates to be there because it is lonely. He will do anything to get out. “I ran ten miles one day,” he told me, while discussing his methods of getting out of the house.

I was shocked. Robert isn’t a regular runner. And as far as I know he isn’t suicidal. After all that cell phone tower climbing this winter, I guess if his legs give out he can always drag himself along by his arms.

Last May we bought an apartment building. It was a rundown four-plex that needed EVERYTHING. As soon as we got back from Mexico last summer we hit the ground running. By October we had one apartment rehabbed. Now, we are just finishing apartment number three. We have one more to go. I figure it will take us an even year to finish the building, not including the exterior work.

We all feel as if we have been rehabbing the Aegean Stables. So far, the kids, particularly Joseph and Mary Elizabeth, have made more money on this building than we have. They have helped Chris with painting, tiling, laying flooring, fixing plumbing, fixing wiring, etc. Now the leaks are gone, the fleas and cockroaches are gone, the rotten floor boards are replaced, the walls are painted and the horrid, nasty, stinky carpet is rotting in some land fill rather than in some poor tenant’s living room.

Jennifer has done a great job landscaping the apartments, as well as Foolish Mansion. She also spends a lot of time keeping some semblance of order at home while we work on the apartments. She is a very good cook and keeps the troops fed in between working on her novel. She also sands, paints and does “deconstruction”.

Patrick is our gofer and “holder”. He holds the other ends of boards that need cutting. He rides his bike back and forth between Foolish Mansion and the apartments picking up things we have forgotten. He also specializes in “deconstruction”, pulling up rotten carpet, century old vinyl flooring and any other thing that needs pulling up or tearing down.

While we have all been working on the apartment, Foolish Mansion has deteriorated. The place is a mess. The sink is full of dirty dishes and my bedroom looks like a Chinese laundry before the clothes are washed. And guess what I am not doing as I write this? 

In between finishing apartments we take trips. After the second apartment we went to Chicago. We are not sure yet where we will go now that this apartment is finished. We may go on a caving trip. However, first we must get through the rites of spring: Easter Sunday, Prom Night, track meets, Patrick’s birthday, etc.

In the meantime, Chris did manage to pick up his sail boat this weekend. He is planning on putting up the sails and checking the rigging this weekend. It is too cold to sail but he wants to make sure all the parts are there. He wants to be ready to take us all to the lake as soon as it warms up. If he happens to spend some time sitting in his boat in the driveway, pretending he is off the coast of Tonga, who will know?

The caving society is taking a caving trip on Saturday. I am hoping that Chris can take the kids to it, if we can fit it into Mary Elizabeth’s schedule and if it doesn’t rain. This particular cave is apparently prone to flooding. It has lots of water year round. The club chairman recommended that cavers wear shin and knee guards to protect their legs from the boulders hidden in the water they will be hiking through.

 I have no intention of going caving. I like my caves with tour guides, hand rails, flood lights and RV tourists in the parking lot. If I need a helmet, a light, or, heaven forbid, a climbing harness or rope, I am staying home.

Today the weather is beautiful. Frances was planning on riding Reginald to work this morning. It will be her first ride in Rushville. I can’t wait to see if she did it.

As for me, shall I work on the dishes? The laundry? Or perhaps, as I did yesterday, the yard work? The sun is shining. The birds are singing. And I haven’t ridden my bike since October. Hmmmmmmmm….