Slackjaw's Forum

We’ve had the fish for six months now. Back in March we decided to see if Ike would like watching some fish swim around so we bought him a small tank with a couple of fish for his birthday. Ike found them interesting for a little less than five minutes, and since then has found them interesting for absolutely no minutes. The Older Boy helped pick out one of the fish and Sweetie and I picked out the other in the hopes of finding one that Ike might like, but it was all for nothing. The fish we picked out for Ike lasted barely two weeks before we found him “resting” near the bottom of the tank, while the fish the Older Boy picked out, though a bit hardier, has up to now, been hardly more interesting than if he were dead. The Older Boy has taken the responsibility for feeding the one remaining fish, a white goldfishy type fish with a blood red blob on the top of his head. He does it in exchange for the sporadic allowance he receives when Sweetie and I remember to pay h...

We’ve started making The List. Somehow lately in trying to keep our head above water, we’ve forgotten the usefulness in keeping up the Big Check List. There are things that need to be done and like all things that one keeps trying to juggle in the air, errant balls will veer off their trajectory and disappear under sofas and wing-back chairs for weeks until cleaning day where they manage to get swept back out into the open. Sometimes it to late and the moment’s past and sometimes they never get found again. So Sunday night we gathered up our calendar and tried to put all the balls back in motion. Of course today is only Wednesday, and while we have achieved some degree of juggletude, there are still many balls to get up in the air. The best part of this new approach is that the Disney Trip is back on. We’ll be heading down to Anaheim for the Halloween weekend, taking the boys out of school for a few days to take advantage of the midweek rates. Sweetie is also ...

I noticed them as I was getting Ike’s wheelchair out of the back of the 402. A young couple; her standing about five feet or so from him and facing away, looking down, and he, sitting on the park bench, shoulders down and elbows on knees. She was crying. The Older Boy took no notice of them, and was asking if we could go into the park after the party, but since I was trying to both listen to his question and suss the couple’s situation out it took me a while to answer. Later, while we were at the party in a house that overlooked the park, I saw that they had moved to another bench, but that she was still crying and he was still seated with his elbows resting on his knees. The party was a surprise birthday celebration for Heather that Earl put together at the last minute the day before. We drank Mojito’s and red wine, and Earl’s mother put some chicken and potatoes in the oven to bake. Both Heather and Earl’s mothers have been staying with them for the past few months since He...

Sweetie and I spent the better part of last weekend working in the yard, planting two new trees, moving another one and populating the front of the mobile home with a nice selection of perennials and shrubberies. It was the culmination to the Super Great Birthday Present that almost never was; due to the Unforeseen Circumstance Beyond our Control also know as, Our Summer. By the time we finally left the trailerpark, we had really started to hit our stride with our garden. The flowers we had planted, the grape and the trees had really started to come into their own and by the end, we were both able to spend an afternoon out there without hating the yard, the world or even each other. The new Mobile Home is nice, but the people who lived there before us didn’t have a clue about gardening or landscaping. There was not a tree or healthy looking plant anywhere near the front yard. My great gift idea for Sweetie's birthday this year was to have a garden installed while she was a...