Dad Watching Baseball on TV

The other day Dad texted me and said it was cool to be watching the World Series in a ballpark we have been to.  He says that kind of thing all the time as if only certain MLB games he watches on television are being played in a ballpark he has been to.  My response is always, you've been to every MLB ballpark, so no matter who is playing you've been to the ballpark.

Is it downsizing or upsizing our fleet?

Ever since we moved to Alabama the driveway has been overcrowded with the four vehicles (5 if you count my scooter).  They all fit at first, but then the Homeowner's Association said I couldn't park my scooter on the porch and we actually began to keep the wheelchair rack on the van, so they all didn't fit.  Since we were looking at houses here, I also have wanted a boat and then we would need a truck to be able to tow a boat.

Last month Dad took me to the dealership on one of his off Sundays because I was asking him something about trucks (probably what colors Chevy makes).  At first we looked at and test drove an Avalanche, but in the end we (i.e. I) decided on the Silverado because they still make them and thus there were more to choose from so we could get the options I liked the most (mainly the bench front seat, which had a better console and storage for road tripping).

Mom was hesitant at first because she did not want to give up her Smart car, but it had not even been registered in Alabama, yet, and thus she had not driven it in at least six months anyways.  Thus, by trading in both the Smart cars and the Dodge Grand Caravan for one vehicle we downsized our fleet to one vehicle per driver.  It also meant now all the vehicles fit in the driveway.

However, Mom calls it the big ass truck.  It is big and the driveway does end up seeming kind of more crowded, but it is much more suited to our needs. For one, it can pull grandma's boat, which we are keeping in Alabama for the winter instead of storing it like is usually done when the cottage is closed up for the winter.  Secondly, the mini van was not exactly suited for Mik's heavy powerchair and this will work out much better for family road trips, especially once the seat lift is installed for transferring Mik into the Silverado. Thus, it is somewhat upsizing our fleet.

Captain Morgan in the front yard

While not as strange as the onions in the backyard I posted about earlier, the Captain Morgan in the front yard was another new experience.  Growing up in this university neighborhood and living at different places in it over the years, finding empty beer bottles or cans when cleaning the yard is pretty much a given.  So, when I was cleaning up some of the trash in the yard of the rental property I was not surprised to find two cans of Coors in the bushes.  What I was surprised to find, though, was a bottle of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum.

It would be one thing for there to be an empty bottle, but it was almost full.  It was not even hidden deep down under live bushes like the cans, but rather was right up near the sidewalk by the dead bushes.  Someone trying to stash it to come back for it later?  Well, too bad for them it is now poured down the drain and the bottle recycled.

How you don't want onions in your backyard

This month I am staying at my grandma's property that we rent in Tucson, as it is transitioning between renter's and we are keeping the studio for using when in town.  One morning last week when I went outside to walk across the backyard to the front house where I have been using the fridge and thought it smelled funny.  Not necessarily a bad smell, but odd. Then I noticed there was oddly some things on the ground on the dirt part of the yard I had just cleaned up the day before when I was rediscovering the brick path (another post on that later!).  Since, I had just been working in that part of the yard I knew it had to be something newly there.

It turned out that it was onions in the yard.  Now suddenly finding onions in your backyard may not be a bad thing.  However, mushy cooked whole onions that must have been thrown over the wall or fence from a neighbor's yard is not the kind of way you want to find onions in your backyard.  Of all the strange things that end up in our yards living in the university neighborhood, this certainly ranks as the most incomprehensible strangeness.

What is Mik planning wtih survival books?

Today Mik texted me several links of books to order for him on Amazon.  They all ended up being outdoor survival and edible plant books.  No idea what he is preparing for, but I guess he will soon be ready to survive in the outdoors.

Neighborhood citation of the month: Boat on driveway

Okay, so maybe we don't get one every month and they are not really citations, but we sure have collected quite a few warning notices for breaking rules since living in our house in Alabama.  Some have made sense like the one about our lawn needing a mowing, which it really did and I was just waiting for someone to be home for us to go buy one.  Then there was the one about the scooter on the front porch, which I kind of get, but still think it looked better than the broken wicker chair Mom now has there (fixing it is on the list of projects somewhere between finding the guest bed under mom's stuff in her office/the guest bedroom and finding the desks and file cabinets under the boxes still not unpacked and stuffed in Dad's office).

When I left for Tucson at the beginning of the month, I totally predicted we were going to get a citation this month.  I thought it was going to be for the leaves in the yard which were just starting to fall and with me being gone for a month I figured no one would get around to taking care of them in a manner that pleases the reporter.  However, instead it was for having the boat parked in the driveway.

Now we never planned for the boat to be permanently parked in the driveway, but when Mom and Dad brought it from the cottage to keep (and use!) in Alabama for the winter they just put it in the driveway.  Apparently, that is not an okay thing to do.  I don't remember anything against it in the bylaws I read, which may or may not have been the real ones as we were confused on whether we ever got the right paperwork when we asked for them before officially purchasing the house (we were worried about the fact we had 4 cars to park on the driveway, which reminds me that I should do a post on how we now don't). I think I would have remembered, too, because I was dreaming about a truck and a boat since we were looking at houses last December.

Anyways, Dad told me today that he got a notice saying that we cannot have a boat on our driveway.  Of all the notices we have gotten, this one really bugs me as it makes absolutely no sense.  It is not like we have a garage to put it in.  Yeah, we were all along planning of getting a spot at the storage place, but sometimes we may want to have it on the driveway, such as the day before and/or after taking it out in order to load/unload and clean it up.  I feel like we should decide to just leave it in our driveway now until they show us the actual specific bylaw that we cannot.

Because it's been forever

Today Mom said Our Kaotic life hasn't been updated in forever (July to be exact).  It has been almost exactly a year since we made the decision to all move to Alabama and I am spending this month back in Tucson. I gave Dad a hard time about spending so much time back here when he came back in March to just work on making our house ready to rent for a few weeks and that turned into him being gone for two months.  Now I tried to make my one month into two months and stay until Thanksgiving, but Mik said I had to come home as planned.

He had several reasons why I could not stay gone longer.  His first was that the DirecTV genie box is getting full of shows. WTF, I have to come home so I can watch TV? I informed him I have been watching the shows on Hulu, so he went and deleted them and that problem was solved.

I forget what the other reasons he mentioned were, but somehow the conversation got around to how it is weird we did not go to D.C. this year and how we almost did go last month in a last minute road trip with Mom as part of her having to be there for work.  He said I should have gone, but he had forgotten that I was the one that was ready to do it and he was the one that didn't want to go.  I ended up not going because he wanted a mom weekend and if I went then mom and I would have been in D.C. for the weekend.  As much as he ruins all the fun yet again, I gave in and am not extending my stay in Tucson because at least in the end he admitted the real reason he wanted me home was he missed me.

Several random posts coming up in the next few days including the onion experience that I told Mom I would post to put something fresh on the blog.