The Sandwich Life

Spending a long weekend with your grandchildren can really be intimidating. Oh, sure, we started out great; with things I do well like eating ice cream and building great fires out in the field. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Our crowning feat, the ultimate glory in campfire skills, was when our Saturday night fire was still going on Sunday afternoon (not even morning, mind you. I'm talking evening here.) It was still burning and the coals were hot enough that all we had to do to get it to re-blaze again was add a few more logs. AND this fire, I might add, even survived a brief rain Saturday. The best fire will survive a good rain but it has to really be a good one. Trust me, I know my fires.

So we were doing pretty well with the eating and nature appreciation until we moved into the electronics side of life. And when we did that, even Beaven couldn’t keep up with them. And this is the man who built his own TV once.

My first clue that I had been left in the dust was when I realized the girls had managed to get into an argument even though they weren’t even in the same house. My own two daughters usually had to be within hitting distance to have a decent argument when they were growing up. But nowadays you don’t need that. You can get up a pretty good fuss electronically and it doesn’t matter where anyone is.

One granddaughter was outside in the hobby shop Beaven built for his ham radio and various computers. This one was on the computer out there and the other was in the house. Somehow they were playing a game with each other and there was a virtual “place” that the game characters could go to and it was called “headquarters.” So Sarah stormed into the house and told Essie to go to headquarters at once because she was about to time out and she’d have to re-boot if that happened. Most of it was geek to me but seemed very important to Sarah. But Essie wasn’t cooperating so Sarah stormed out and went back outside to the other building to re-boot.

Then Monday morning Essie sent me an email that had little icons and I was supposed to click on them to get pictures. But it wasn’t working and she told me I had to be on yahoo. As she explained it all I was dumbfounded. I asked her where she learned how to do all of this and she looked kind of blank like you didn’t “learn” this stuff, it just happened.

And this isn’t even the nine year old. This is the seven year old who is in SECOND grade. The fourth grader was so far beyond my skills she didn’t even bother to try to teach me anything.

Our week got a lot easier yesterday when Terry and his new wife Betty got here. You remember them—they got married this time last year. Betty is my father’s second wife’s third husband’s third wife. And all of this from only one measly divorce. The rest of the marriages were after the previous spouse’s death. I like to say we are a loyal and loving bunch of people, albeit with a few health issues.

The hardest part of them coming was cleaning up after the girls and bringing the house up to this generation’s standards when Sarah and Essie have virtually no standards. You can imagine the housecleaning to be done.

We went from having pizza for breakfast to coffee, eggs, bacon and biscuits. I really do prefer it this way but haven’t brought the grands into this mindset. We went from communicating by computers in two different buildings to having actual conversation around the kitchen table and talking long into the night.

The one constant to both sets of guests has been the fire that is still going out in the field. The fire has now survived two rains and still goes. I’ve got to get back to the sausage on the stove. I’ll see you all next week.