Notes from the Attic...warts an all.

All right, a week of vacation starts tonight and it was kicked off with almost getting knocked down the basement stairs again by Jackson and Brady’s usual “hello Steve…hello…lick, lick…hello…hello Steve…” jump to the crotch greeting and my eventually calling one “knuckle” and the other “head” for eating my dinner (it was in a bag I left on the counter, my mistake). I mean I probably would have forgotten I brought it home in the first place so at least someone or somefur ate it, but damn, that was my dinner.

So anyway, a week of vacation starts tonight and it looks like a stay at home, project kind of week. One of the intended projects is to finish painting the outside of the house as long as that lady that controls the weather allows. I’m sure the first question is “have you done this before? You sound almost confident in a definitive statement kind of way?”  The answer to that statement is. No.  But in my first foray into house painting, round one a month ago, I successfully got about two thirds of it done without it looking like it was done by a six year old in need of their first trip to Sterling Optical so I’m hoping to continue the work. Brushes crossed.

Now since it’s been so long since I’ve taken time in this Frankenberry’s Attic for some key scribbling I figured I’d catch you up on how things have been going in Frankenland with some new Notes from Attic part whatever…haven’t a clue.

-          My Buccos have been making me an extremely happy fella these days what with them making the MLB.com Power Rankings top 10 consistently an all for the first time since there wasn’t an MLB.com and pulling into August with the best record in Baseball.  Do I take such an occurrence with a Gibraltar sized grain? Well, of course. I’m an elephant on the last two seasons. But that salt rock is starting to grow perceptively smaller with each passing day and win and, dare I say that I’m confident they can be playing ball in October? Yes. Not quite sure what to do with myself actually but hell, I’ll continue to wear my Pirates boxers, don whatever Bucco hat that I have that hasn’t been eaten by Jackson, call it lucky because and pull the same socks out of the hamper that I wore last night while watching them win on the PC here. Yes they smell, but they won while I wore them, so there! As to the above mentioned  October baseball in Pittsburgh? I didn’t say it out loud, so keep it to yourself.

-          Riddle me this? How many knives does it take at the FrankenGreco Ranch for the JG to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Now, how many knives should it take to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the real world? Answer? 3 and 1. Yes here at the stead we are not in the real world as it apparently takes JG 3 knives to make such a sandwich. One for the peanut butter, one for the jelly and then another to actually cut the damn sandwich. Sometimes it even requires 2 plates! This is all in an effort to make sure the peanut butter does not taint the jelly nor that the jelly taints the peanut butter and that the cut of the sandwich be clean of either. I, by the way, am considered to be some sort of ignorant peasant for even considering making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich any other way.  And my Maria is where Jagger learned of this architecture of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  I live with crazy people. Crazy people who also don’t, in the planning stages of peanut butter and jelly sandwich constructing, have a post construction plan. They don’t do the dishes. 

-          Turned to Sports Center the other night for some ballgame highlights but instead they led with golf and a parade of the gallery, the envy of a Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks skit never done, breaking away almost, but not quite, yet quickly enough to the second most boringly exciting moment in all of sports. The next hole. Like making the highlights when you catch a foul ball do you think the lead gallery guy walks slowly/quickly to his car to drive slowly/quickly home to check the match replays to see if he made tonight’s sports?

 “Hey honey, look…it’s me on the 8^th! Had that guy next to me in my pocket! Psyched him out…he almost tripped!”

 

…“Yes dear (sigh) I can see. You looked silly. Chicken or frozen pizza tonight? Oh, did you pick up wine? Please tell me you picked up wine and please say frozen pizza.”

 

-          The first most boringly exciting moment in all of sports by the way? The slam dunk.  You’re tall. Got it.

-          On a bathroom break a couple of days ago at the station I looked in the mirror and noted that my left eyebrow had a mind of its own. Apparently it wants to point northeast…at all times. Is this a concern? A friend noted, after I posed this question on Facebook, that it was OK as long as the eyebrow didn’t fight with my ear hair. I responded with a “never fear” as the arms of my glasses serve as a sort of face grocery divider. Just gotta watch that the nose hairs don’t get rebellious.     

-          Still waiting to see how Kanye saying, a while ago, that he doesn’t want the baby to be on reality TV works out. At the time Kim agreed, saying she would be Ok with just “sharing her experience as a mother-to-be vicariously with television viewers.” Is there a definition I’m missing? This was before she popped out “North” West. Now I realize it’s incredibly important in the otherworld of entertainment land to give your child some sort of singular, boutiquely unique name. It is what it is, right Blue Ivy, Pilot Inspektor and Bronx Mowgli? But I think Kanye and Kim both missed the boat with the cute play on words of naming the poor child “North”. I think they should have gone with something more uniquely original to them bothand Kim’s family. “Talent.”

-          This from a recent National Weather Service recent report: Lightning is a danger to outdoor enthusiasts. Just a heads up.

-          Maria puts the toilet paper on the toilet paper thingy in the bathroom roll sheet down. I put it roll sheet up. Should I be worried about us? You know as a couple?

As to the FrankenGreco Ranch it is business as usual. Controlled chaos.

-          Jackson snuck upstairs to the Attic and ate all the cat food while my Maria was up there with her mother!  (Shoes was even licking the inside of the bowl like some sort of homeless scavenger when I got home). Thankfully Jackson didn’t discover the tasty, granola covered treats in the cat box.

-          Brady again hid some bits of things he shouldn’t have eaten in the first place for later. (none of us knows how he does that).

-          Shoes sat in the mud room meowing at the basement door waiting for me, not realizing I was already upstairs.

-          My little Bella tried to kill me again with her under footness when she got stuck in my sock at the top of the stairs. Then she tried to play cute with a belly rub roll. Devious.

-          The JG cannibalized the remote for the upstairs TV and lost the back of it (I discovered this when the TV didn’t react to my remoting).

“JG? Where the hell are the batteries?”

“I used them for my own TV”. 

“(sigh) Where is the back of the remote?”

 “I left it here on the futon, right next to it”

”So where is it?”

”it’s…wait…Bella!”  (future reference: never leave anything out in the open that can be hockey pucked on a hard wood floor).

But hey, it’s all good. I’ll take being able to sleep in for a couple of more weeks before school starts again. The sleeping in is courtesy of Jagger actually offering to get the boys in the morning for their eat, pee, poop for the rest of the summer. Now, for poor Jackson and Brady,  this “first up” has come  a couple of times in the early afternoon when his highness has decided  to drag his up all night it’s summer ass out of bed. Sorry boys. And he considers this one of his chores. I’m ok with it for the moment. Jackson and Brady can hang, crossed legged, for those occasional sleep ins that I’m envious of but I do have to convince him that walking to the mailbox to grab the mail isn’t also a chore. He’s doing well though, and I do so like living with JG. He is a wonder of energy, curiosity and a reminder of us when.  Thanks kid. You keep me young (and often old).

Well, gotta get to the drama that is Bella is playing with a bug that, for some reason, is Japanese 50’s horror size to JG and Maria. I know Shoes. It’s a bug. What am I gonna do? Gotta go…

“yes babe I got it…you’re pretty by the way…ok, bug first….”

And so it goes………………………..

There were other notes here but they were joyously lost somewhere between Shoes fat orange ass now laying on my keyboard, those Jackson / Brady hello’s to the balls, JG’s youth, Bella belly rubs and my Maria being pretty. Life at the FrankenGreco Ranch. I’m good. Life...