Story Broken Yet Rising

[Kathy in FL]

Broken Yet Rising

Prologue​

Part 1A

She is smokin’ dope if she thinks she is getting the adorkable duo. Fine, I might have just turned eighteen, but I’ve been emancipated since I was sixteen. Had she been around before our lives turned into a Telemundo soap opera, none of it needed to have happened. She might not have been the cause of our parents dying but she sure didn’t help what came before and afterwards. Maybe she doesn’t carry all the blame, but she carries her share of it. Gah! She and her husband both.

They are both holier than thou and so are his family and everyone else that assumed that the stories she told back then were the full truth of the matter. She stood there and let our parents’ reputations get shredded, let people that didn’t know what really happened trash-talk them like they were somehow defending her in the process. Yeah right. Hypocrite! She tried to say she didn’t agree or participate with the gossiping, like that somehow exonerated her of the exaggerations and outright lies that the gossip turned into, but there wouldn’t have been any if she hadn’t talked to her “friends” and let her emotions to make it out to be something it wasn’t. She dug that hole. I thought we were filling it. Well now she can live in it til the end of days for all I care, though frankly I don’t know for sure that she cares. She’s got her narrative that she believes in, and I have mine.

Yeah, Dad could be an emotional guy, but he worked his tail off to give all of us everything he hadn’t had as a kid. And yeah, maybe Dad’s parents hadn’t exactly been … well … the most educated or anything like that and Dad had all but raised himself because that is what his own parents had also been forced to do because they didn’t grow up in households where the dad hung around. It was like all they knew and almost all they were capable of knowing by the time Dad came on the scene. And yeah, Mom was kinda emotional herself in a different way, but she loved us and none of us could ever doubt it. She and Dad both told us all the time. Showed us in all the sacrifices they made though I might not have understood all of that in the beginning. But I did know Mom was always there like a reliable taxi service and Dad was there most of the time, and when he wasn’t it was because he was working, not because he was off “socializing with his buddies”. He was never one of those men that had “outside interests.” It was family and work. Okay, so sometimes that could get out of balance, but only because he threw so much of himself into everything.

Tessa was the oldest, she shouldn’t have just left and then … <sigh> … I gotta stop this. I know it isn’t healthy but I’m feeling pretty torched. Mitchell warned me against being so hard-hearted … and hardheaded. He wanted me to keep an open mind. He sure wouldn’t have wanted me to blow a blood vessel. I mean he was hurt worse than me when Tessa decided she couldn’t have a relationship with Dad which pretty much meant Mom, and the same thing for the rest of us. She closed the door on each of us one at a time. Slammed the door is what it felt like, with our hearts caught between it and the doorframe.

I really thought we were working out a way for things to be different than they had been. I really, honestly thought that and thought we were both trying. Aw gawd, maybe we were, and we both dropped the ball and took a wrong turn. At this point I honestly don’t know. All I do know is that it feels like a lot of wasted time and effort, at least on my side. I just don’t know. I hate feeling like I do. And with the world being so screwy it would have been better to be building allies, not this mess we’ve made of things. I mean I tried. What more could I have done?!

Oh brother, if I’m going to write out my feelings like those idiot self-help books are always on a person to do then I might as well start this journal the correct way. I need to write like someone may someday actually read it. That means I need to make sense and have a timeline that goes all in the same direction. Whoever you are, pretend person in the future, don’t blame me. I’m trying. I’ve been trying. I’ll keep trying. At least I’ll put the energy into constructive relationships and try and avoid toxic ones. For now there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of reward to it. And maybe that’s my problem. I was looking for the pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow, but all I found were broken skittles of the flavors I don’t like, mixed in with noxious unicorn farts. So for better or worse, here it is …

 

[Kathy in FL]

Part 1B​

There was Dad, Mom, Tessa, Mitchell, me (Mina), and eventually the adorkable duo who were a major surprise. Then there were Dad’s parents. Tessa and Mitchell knew Nana and Poppy, but they passed away right before I was born. And then Mom’s parents, Granddaddy and Memaw, who died the same year as Mom and Dad and even the Adorkable Duo have memories of them. Dad had a sister, but she was never really part of the picture and was a lot older than Dad, like nearly twenty years because Dad was one of those whoops-holy-crap-you-gotta-be-kidding-me “menopause” babies. I never understood why she stopped talking to us, but Mom tried to explain that it had something to do with the fact she got her feelings hurt when Dad’s parents left their entire estate to Dad even though Dad was a ton younger than her. Dad offered to split it with her anyway. She and her husband and daughter just couldn’t get over it. They acted like family for a while but then when I was little, they just faded away between one holiday and the next. They never did bother trying to take up much room in our lives, but it still left a hole when they vacated the last of any emotional ties that could have been.

Dad once said that he wouldn’t have minded sharing the responsibility for the old Homeplace. His parents had inherited the house and farm from his Dad’s uncle. The place would have been one of those picker’s paradises you see on shows like Antiquing Around had Dad ever been able to get around to doing something with it. We used to go to the property about once every six weeks, but we camped out rather than slept in the house until my parents could make the kitchen, the living room, and one of the downstairs bedrooms livable. We expanded the cleanup from there, but only incrementally. Mom and Dad were never sure what to do with it all, so it was more like moving the piles from place to place and room to room after getting rid of the trash that had been mixed in. It was overwhelming for my parents in an unhealthy way but at the same time they couldn’t quite admit it and move on even though Dad did occasionally threaten to hire Guido to you know … wink, wink … take care of the problem.

Sometimes it could be like summer camp and kinda fun … for some of us. Tessa had hated it from the beginning and was really glad when she started college and didn’t have to go anymore. Dad had told her if she didn’t have the time (didn’t make the time) then she could get a job to fill up the time she thought she was going to have free and clear because he wasn’t fronting her an allowance any longer. He gave her room, board, education, vehicle, and insurance … she needed to learn to provide the rest.

Tessa didn’t have a problem with that from what I remember. She isn’t a total skuzz, not even now when my anger wants to boil over and tell me things that aren’t true to fuel the bonfire in my head even higher and hotter. That’s Tessa’s way of getting through life and I don’t want to be that. Mitchell explained to me back then that it wasn’t just the Homeplace in and of itself; it was the disruption to her social life and all her other activities that her identity revolved around. It wasn’t really much of a disruption, but she couldn’t stand it for any reason.

The reason why we were able to go away that often was because Dad ran things a little differently. Mom did too by default. Dad ran his own business and didn’t have a lot of time or patience for socializing and hobnobbing with the men at church, or anyone else for that matter, though he could do it if he had to. By the time I came along, Mom had quit working outside the home, but she helped with the business and what she liked wasn’t the same things as a lot of “modern” women her age.

Mom liked quilting, sewing, and stuff like that. She hated shopping unless it was at thrift stores, yard sales, and clearance racks. She loved growing flowers and having a vegetable garden. But she used silk flowers, not expensive real flowers when she arranged flowers, and those were generally from yard sales and discount bins at thrift stores. But they were still gorgeous and won awards the few times she entered them into contests at the county fair.

I don’t think Mom ever bought anything that wasn’t on sale or with a coupon. I know she tried hanging out with the women at church every once in a while, but she didn’t have any real friends there because she just didn’t feel like she fit in. Plus, she was too busy to do brunch, lunch, girls’ weekends, and found the women’s Bible classes and retreats expensive given our lifestyle. She had better luck with our homeschool support group, but even there she was a little outside the norm. Didn’t bother me but I guess it bothered Tessa.

Tessa was the opposite of Mom in a lot of ways and was involved in everything except the church sports leagues. That was something Mitchell and I really liked. Tessa had a ton of friends, though she didn’t keep them once they all started college. I think they grew up and maybe saw stuff in each other they no longer liked and didn’t want to remember. I didn’t realize it until I heard Mom crying to Dad one night, but Tessa acted like she was embarrassed of Mom (and Dad). She never wanted Mom to join anything she was involved in unless it was to be there to see her get an award or whatever. I had been really sad and angry up to that point, believing everything Tessa was telling me and upset with our parents. But after I looked at it from my parents’ side, I started leaning the other direction. Mitchell explained even more but we both tried to play Switzerland. We just wanted everyone to get along. Nope, didn’t really work but we still tried.

I look back and realize that everyone was at least a little wrong in how things were being handled. I don’t exempt myself from that. But in all honesty I saw it more from my parents’ side than I did Tessa’s. There just needed to be more give and grace than happened, but it didn’t have to happen the way it did and for that I mostly blame Tessa. Especially because of what happened at church.

We were all homeschooled our entire lives which you would have thought would have made us really close and stuff. And we were, or used to be, or something like that. At least I thought so. Our parents were very old-fashioned and had a lot of trouble with all the stuff kids were into when Tessa and Mitchell were younger. The one thing I can say for Tessa is that she never pushed certain boundaries … she dressed modestly, didn’t drink, or date in high school but at the same time it felt like she was doing that to show she was doing the right thing, not necessarily because it was the right way to be. A fine line between the two, but it does make a difference.

As for Mom, she was big into healthy cooking, growing a garden, preserving food, old-fashioned hobbies and crafts and stuff like that. Most people would have said she was a little frumpy but only because she didn’t wear make-up unless she had to, she didn’t dress fancy (she called her style Walmart Chic), and she never went to the beauty salon, not even for Tessa’s wedding which I think was another mark against her in Tessa’s book.

Looking back, I understand that Tessa would rather have had a fantasy than reality, especially when she considered reality beneath her. To be brutally honest, Tessa was a snob without any real reason to have grown up that way unless you count the fact that Dad was making good money in his business. I’ve never understood it. Tessa had everything going for her … looks, brains, friends, and a family that backed her every need and most of her wants. And yet it apparently still wasn’t good enough.

Then Tessa found what she wanted. She started dating this guy from church and then got married straight out of college. Dad had wanted her to wait a year to have some freedom, but she had finished her master’s degree early and Doug had finished his Ph.D. in engineering and they both just wanted what they wanted. Oh well and all that, or so Dad said. He thought, given her personality, she’d come to regret it, but she was an adult, so it happened. Dad paid for the wedding, and it was no small chunk of change. It wasn’t lavish but they didn’t just go stand up at the justice of the peace either. But I heard later that because his feelings were so hurt, Dad regretted it and wasn’t too proud to say so. Mom would tell him, “Don’t regret doing the right thing no matter how wrong it turned out.” I’m not sure what to believe. Maybe I will at some point, I’m still confused.

Everything looked like life was going to get better for all of us because Dad had tried “for the family” and let the problems go so we could all still stay together after Tessa left home and got married. However, by the time Tessa and Doug had been married a year they’d pulled away and the rumors at church had started. Mom was upset and embarrassed. Dad was just mad. They stopped going to that church, but they still allowed us to participate in our church programs and have our friends, but it wasn’t the same. Mitchell started pulling away from the church next, especially when a couple of girls tried to say some crap that wasn’t true after Mitchell pointed out that they weren’t exactly … you know … as chaste as they claimed. Plus, they were like pastor’s kids so you know how it went. Nepotism is alive and well in the modern church, was how Mitchell put it when he finally had to explain to me what was happening because no one else would. When I had enough information to put two and two together, I decided I didn’t want to go there either and if I didn’t go there was no way the twins could go because I helped in the preschool area and that was Dad’s sticking point because there were a few people at church he stopped trusting. In hindsight I understood he had good reason to think a lot of those people were hypocrites and just plain nasty even if they were too blind to see it.

Tessa had completely stopped talking to our parents by then and we weren’t talking to her or her in-laws who were just as guilty of turning things into what they became. Then Granddaddy and Memaw got sick and died from one of the covid variants. They were already older and fragile. The thing with Tessa had broken their hearts. The virus just kinda finished them off. But I suppose it was best that they went together. Oh, who am I kidding. No it wasn’t, and that’s just a story grieving people tell themselves because everything just hurts too much.

Dad helped Mom to deal with all the grief and legal stuff as he’d already been through it with his parents, and he also had a Power of Attorney that let him deal with their financial stuff because Granddaddy had started having problems because he was 85 and starting to exhibit some dementia. Memaw wasn’t much better on her bad days. We all pitched in but Dad was the one that volunteered to be on the hook legally. The POA technically ended when they passed but Dad had put it to work when they went into the hospital and got Mom’s name on all their accounts. It is a good thing they did because the government tried to pull some money out of their account to pay their estate taxes, but you can’t get anything out of an empty account. They didn’t have a lot of what Dad and Mitchell called “liquid assets,” but they had collectibles and things like that, but the government had just been after the money because it was the easiest to take and disappear until taxes and stuff were dealt with.

Dad and Mom had gotten all that stuff straightened out and moved Mom’s part that she inherited up to the “Old Homeplace” until Mom was ready to deal with it. Like I said, Mom could be emotional, but she was more fragile after Tessa and her crap. It messed with her self-esteem and just everything else. Because of all of that and because they were starting to feel their age, Dad got some tax and estate advice and had Mitchell’s name, who was eighteen by then, put on a lot of our parents’ accounts and other assets. He was also listed as the executor of their estate and Tessa was removed as a beneficiary because Dad was just finished with the emotional roller coaster and wanted it over with. Except for one document the lawyer missed. That one missed document comes into play.

A couple of months later Dad and Mom thought they had everything fixed, and they were very relieved that life was starting to settle down. I know that’s how they felt because they were smiling and laughing again, something that had been noticeably absent for a while. Oh, they’d grin and they still hugged us but you could see the confusion and sadness behind their eyes even when they didn’t mean for you to. But it had gotten to a point where I think we were all turning a corner. Further, Dad and Mom had vowed they were going to work on their own relationship instead of letting all the stress they’d been under for so many years do any more harm. And they weren’t just talking about it, they were doing something about it. They were in some marriage seminar thing, and it seemed to be doing them a lot of good.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Part 1C​

The night the world decided it was going to take yet another left turn into insanity, they’d gone out for a date night. It was an assignment for their class and there were a couple of other husbands and wives there. I remember thinking that it was so weird to see Dad excited to go out and socialize.

The craziness didn’t just happen in our area, it happened in multiple places around the country at once, but for a while only what happened to us that night registered in my mind. A jihadi wearing a bomb – former student at USF that had been unable to get his visa renewed – walked into the kitchen of the restaurant where my parents and their friends had been and … they’d been sitting at one of the budget tables near the kitchen … and they all died instantly. The entire group just … sigh. It hadn’t been closed-casket funerals, but it had been close. Mitchell had been watching the news and saw Dad’s car in the parking lot and … that’s when the next episode of As the Stomach Turns started for us.

I don’t mean to sound flippant. I know Mitchell used to say, “Tone it back before you need a straight jacket.” You can say I am just as emotional as Dad and Mom, just in my own way and I couldn’t always catch it before it came out at less than constructive moments. I knew never to be disrespectful, that was a family rule. Even if fireworks were going off inside, I wasn’t supposed to spew at other people for things that weren’t their fault. Personal accountability was a really big thing in our house. No excuses, no rationalizing, no pointing the finger at other people for “making” me act a certain way. I think it was Dad’s way of trying to undo some of the things he’d had to deal with growing up. I had to learn that my anger was mine to deal with. But still, you’re a kid and sometimes it gets away from you. Snark was my bane. It was both a bad habit and a release valve. That might be okay for people that make their living as a comedian, but for normal everyday sorts of interactions it isn’t always healthy or constructive. Or so says all those stupid self-help books I used to read ad nauseum trying to fix myself. While they didn’t hurt, Mitchell helped me more than those books ever did, ever have, and I suppose that is about as good as you can say about a big brother. I still hear him in my head when I most need to. And it was to Mitch I turned after that night because there wasn’t really anyone else.

Mom had a brother, our uncle, and he was an okay guy, but he had some genetic health issues that were getting bad. I really don’t want to say he was weak, but in some ways he was. Both physically and emotionally which is a bad combo even in the best of times. His autoimmune disease had already been acting up between my grandparents dying and his wife and stepdaughter dying of covid within weeks of my grandparents of their own autoimmune issues. And then my parents dying the way they did, his autoimmune stuff caused his body to really go haywire from all the stress. He still tried to help Mitchell take care of things, but he could only do so much and then he would collapse. Mitch was under a lot of stress himself because he had to keep working and going to college too. Neither his job, nor his College Dean, would approve a leave of absence. That sucked for Mitchell and left a lot of the day-to-day heavy lifting to me. At least the house stuff. Mitchell did try and include me with the other stuff, but it kinda weirded some people out.

My parents did have a lawyer lined up, but Mr. Jones could only guide Mitchell, he couldn’t do the work for him because Mitch was the Executor of the Estate. Obviously Dad and Mom hadn’t meant for him to have to take that on when he was still so young, but you don’t always get your way when life happens. It was Mitchell and I against the world and protecting the Twins while we were at it. When things came up, we tagged teamed. We tried to keep life normal, but the truth is, things would never be what we used to think of as normal ever again.

Then the next blow came. I remember Uncle crying that he couldn’t take us so we wouldn’t go into foster care. He’d been rushed to the hospital, and we were told it was a matter of days to hours. His organs were shutting down and there was nothing left they could do. However, as we visited him every day, we found out that one of the last things Uncle did was put Mitch and I on all his financial stuff so we could take care of each other until Mom and Dad’s insurance paid out. He’d even paid for his own funeral expenses in advance first so we wouldn’t have to go through it all again. That’s not all he did. He spent hours telling family stories and Mitch had the great idea of recording all of it. See it was stuff like that Mitch was good at and that made me wish we’d done more of when everyone else in the family was alive. We had some things, and all the pictures Dad and Mom were forever taking, but when you have some, you always want more.

The adulting that Mitch was doing really paid off but there was a problem; Mitch was an adult, but I wasn’t yet. However, at the lawyer’s suggestion, we decided to fix that by getting my emancipation. He warned us it might not work but like Dad always said, you don’t ask, you don’t get. We got all the paperwork figured out, filled out, turned in, and amazingly on my sixteenth birthday I was granted my emancipation with no one objecting.

People “objecting” had been our biggest worry. Well, Mitch called it that to be polite. I called it people sticking their stupid, busybody noses in where they didn’t belong. What people would have bothered? Somehow it got back to the people at our old church. Mitch tried to tell me that “they had good intentions.” I say they were just a bunch of hypocritical do-gooders that cared more about seeing themselves wearing a cape and spandex than they did about actually doing the right thing.

I know they knew well in advance of the emancipation being granted because the Youth Pastor had called to speak to Mitchell. Mitchell knew how to be diplomatic when he needed to be – a talent I lacked at the time - and whatever was brought up, I’m pretty sure he gave the Pastor a few facts he hadn’t had about the gossiping and what it had caused and the real facts. Mitchell shut down the interference that had been brewing and no one ever said anything again. As a matter of fact, that Youth Pastor left the church not long afterwards to go to another one up in Nashville and they had a hard time replacing him. Read into that what you will.

Even one complaint could have derailed our plans but for once things turned out to be a whole lot easier than we were told they would be. Mitchell explained to me afterwards that he'd written everything that had happened down, essentially had proof through some screen shots of social media that people hadn’t realized he’d kept, and had some of the same stuff about what had been gossiped about our parents. It might not have been blackmail, but it wasn’t anything less than insurance either.

Then to make up for the non-SNAFU there came a big one to kick us in the head. The original lawyer that helped to set up my parents’ estate plan somehow, someway had left Tessa’s name on as a beneficiary in a single place; the house we were living in. She otherwise didn’t have anything to say about anything else because of some exclusionary clauses, but that didn’t stop things from going butt upwards. How they found out about that remains a mystery to this day. I have my suspicions but that’s all they are. What we came to understand shortly was that Doug definitely wanted the house and said since the law was what it was, they were moving in with us, lock, stock, and barrel, and with Kid #1 and Kid #2 that we hadn’t known about. And that they were going to be In Charge.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Part 1D​

Mitch rarely got as mad as Dad could get. Or let me rephrase that. He didn’t show his emotions the way Dad did. But he was so angry when the lawyer said “oops” about what his now retired partner had done, and that the situation couldn’t be fixed. The Judge gave us a month and then they were going to be allowed to move in. But Mitchell did manage to get it so that they couldn’t have access to anything for that entire month. They’d wanted to come over and store some of their stuff and take some measurements and all the rest. Well, that wasn’t happening, at least not on their timeline. And that’s when Mitch got sneaky to go along with his mad.

It was only our house, the physical structure, not the contents. It wasn’t the shed and carport area at all. And they couldn’t do anything about anything else including Mom’s garden stuff and Mitch’s trees in the big pots. The Judge had been firm on that. The Judge had also been firm on the fact that they could make no changes or renovations to the property without our prior consent, and it had to come out of their own pocket. In a hurry we packed up all Mom & Dad’s stuff, all the kitchen stuff, everything in all of the rooms but our bedrooms including most of the appliances, and took it all to the house in north Florida. Then he doubled down, and we packed up most of our bedrooms and all the stuff out of the oversized shed that Dad had built to hold all his business equipment. We also took the yard equipment and everything, like all of Mom’s plants, all her gardening tools, and stuff like that. We even dug up most of Mom’s plants, or at least those that would survive transplanting where we were taking them. Mitch even helped me to take Memaw’s succulent and cactus plants so they could be put in the greenhouse at the Homeplace. They fit around all of Mitch’s stuff. It took two enclosed trailer loads to get all of Mitch’s trees and plants. Those were his stress relievers and there was no way I was going to stand back and watch Doug mess with all that stuff.

Doing all of this took cash so it was a good thing we’d already had buyers lined up for the business vehicles and I started driving Mom’s little minivan. That also dropped the auto insurance down which helped. The twins – Knox and Natasha (Nat for short) – were still young enough they were sharing a bedroom, so it didn’t look nearly as empty as Mitch’s and mine. And we were going to move our family to the North Florida homeplace once Mitch finished college and could get a job in the hospital up there, we just needed to be able to stand it until then.

What is it that Memaw used to say? The surest way to make God laugh is to say you had plans. Boy, ain’t that the truth. We were on our last week of packing things up when Mitch got drafted into the military medical corp because of all the stuff going on in the world that I’d been trying to ignore. Well, Mitch hadn’t been ignoring it and the draft was one of the things he’d been worried about without telling me he was worrying about it. And then on top of that, our uncle died. He’d held out longer than anyone thought though he never left the hospital, and it felt like the world was coming un-freaking-glued all over again. Uncle hadn’t wanted a service. He’d just wanted to be cremated and then someone figure out what to do with the ashes, same as Mom and Dad and our grandparents. Our family is a little odd about that I guess. No one wants to be treated like an ancient Egyptian and worshipped where they were buried. So after Uncle, Mitch and I needed to figure out what to do with five urns. We’d decided to bury them in North Florida at the family cemetery, but it took a permit from that county we hadn’t gotten yet. One more thing we had to be the adult about.

Before Mitchell left, we’d tried to get everything that needed doing locked down. He’d even done everything but stand on his head and recite Shakespeare backwards to get all of the paperwork finished so that he could force a sale of the property (our home) but the Judge nixed it. He gave Tessa and her husband one year to buy us out. Doug was trying to come up with something to blackmail us with and decided it was going to be custody of the twins since Mitch wouldn’t be there. Well, the judge spiked that move … sorta.

That’s when I tossed the bomb that I would be living in North Florida to maintain my emancipation per the court’s stipulations. I knew I could do it, but this judge decided to add more stipulations.

First off, the custody would be split; I would get them one week out of the month and all summer and all major holidays including a week at Thanksgiving and two weeks at Christmas. When Tessa and Doug squealed about that the Judge gave them the hairy eyeball because Doug traveled a lot for his job, and we found out that Tessa was going to have Kid #3 which hadn’t been in their plan and was part of the reason for them trying to get the house.

“And this way there will be no misunderstandings that Miss Musgrove is a live-in housekeeper or babysitter.” Thank you very much Judge because by that point Mitchell had reported for Basic Training and Tessa, Doug, and a bunch of other people had told me just how helpful I was going to be. Yeah. Right. Don’t think so Charlie Brown.

A lot of people tried to stop me from leaving. Even Mitchell second guessed it until he realized that he was being manipulated. People tried to stop me from doing things left and right because no one seemed to understand that what had happened to our parents and afterwards had changed me and “grew me up” as Uncle called it. One of the things that Tessa tried to stop me from doing was taking the twins and going to see Mitchell graduate from Basic and then get his assignment. Then she tried to say she would come with us, but Mitchell didn’t want her, and sure didn’t want Doug there. In the end, despite them petitioning the court, because the date fell on “my” week, they couldn’t say anything. For the sake of how things happened I’m glad we didn’t have to miss those few days together as a family … or what was left of our family. Mitch was going to someplace he couldn’t tell me. And for some reason I was scared. Bad scared. And with reason.

 

[CGTech]

New Story!! Yes!!!

 

[Mr Bill]

Quite a fine start. Thanks

 

[Kathy in FL]

Part 2​

Dad used to say, “Life limps on like a baby carriage with one square wheel.” Yeah. It did. Mitch had been gone one month and I was taking uncle’s stuff to north Florida since his house had finally closed and it needed to be emptied. Most of it was the stuff that he’d inherited from my grandparents like all of Granddaddy’s tools, guns, and things like that. Had Tessa known about the guns she would have had a major freak out. Good thing she never thought to ask what happened to Dad’s. I also wound up being responsible for deciding what to do with my aunt’s and cousin’s stuff. I tried to ask my aunt’s sister but she said just get rid of it since there wasn’t anything valuable … or so she thought. I tried multiple times, but the woman wasn’t interested in living through her grief again or something like that.

My uncle had spent good money on things like concert memorabilia and stuff, plus there was some jewelry my uncle had purchased when they’d been better off. My cousin had just gotten a car and I sold it to pay off the debt and there was money left over because it had been a classic mustang my uncle had fixed up for her. I suppose I could have kept it but Mitchell said no; that the insurance on it would have been impossible. There was also a motorcycle and a few other things like that. I also had to sell their house which went fast to an investor, and for more money than even the realtor had expected. I had to figure out the taxes but Mr. Jones, the estate lawyer, knew someone that would help with all the accounting. I learned a lot from Mrs. Keplinger and it came in handy and still does.

The Estate Lawyer had managed to keep Tess and Doug out of the inventory and the other paperwork, including Uncle’s, and he did it as a freebie to make up for the screw up by his old partner. All he did was file a response with the court to Doug’s request (demand) so it isn’t like it was much extra work, but it went the extra mile, and it wasn’t something that I could necessarily do myself and make it stick back then.

I drove back to Tampa for the next load and the bottom dropped out. The neighbors wound up calling the cops because I was screaming and yelling, and Doug was showing his own butt. People had come to tell us that Mitch had been killed when the medical helicopter he’d been flying in had been shot down. Tessa and Doug had known for three days and hadn’t called me to come back. The twins were a mess as they’d wanted to call me and hadn’t been allowed to. The estate lawyer had a field day with that one. And so did the Judge. He cleared up all the little “gray areas” that hadn’t been writ in stone.

Not all of it went my way. The Judge wouldn’t change the custody situation or give Tessa and Doug less time to buy us out of the house, but he clarified in court proceedings that they had to pay the court their portion of the property insurance and property taxes monthly, that they couldn’t apply to the Estate for anything else, including their utility bills, since Tessa wasn’t a beneficiary of it. He also cleared the probate. This gave me full control of the estate, full control of Mitch’s estate, and his portion of my parents’ estate on behalf of myself and the twins.

The Judge also made it so that Doug couldn’t send the twins to public school. They wound up having to do it, but it was through the state’s Virtual School … and Doug would have tried to do the same thing to me only I was just turned seventeen, dual enrolled, and had been since I was thirteen. I already had my AS as a paralegal. I also almost had a second AS degree in general bookkeeping.

So, there I was, seventeen and I just couldn’t stand living with Tessa. She cared for the twins, but I just about hated her. I did hate Doug. And I was getting that way with Doug’s parents even though I used to love them as they were some of my teachers at church. To the point that they really needed to think about how much I dreamed about them dying just like nearly everyone else I really had loved. I came to understand Tessa and Doug a little better as time went on but back then I could have really pulled a Lizzie Borden on them and probably not regret it all that much. Doug had made it so that his kids feared me so even had I found some way to stay I probably would have had to live in the shed or sleep in the twins’ room to keep those kids from pitching fits. I mean they were barely more than babies and he still did it. Doug had some wild hair that I was “unstable” and then made it out like he was relieved I wouldn’t be living there but that he was also opposed to me having custody of the twins because of it. Bull honkey. I got tired of their rationalizing and making excuses when things didn’t fit their view or narrative.

What gets me is that Doug wasn’t that awful of a person. I know, I know; pick a line of thought and stick with it. Just for some reason only known to God and the cosmos Doug had taken a dislike of me back when he and Tessa were dating. Mitch told me it is because Doug can’t stand that I’m as smart as he is, maybe smarter in some respects (Mitch’s words), just not as driven to get ye ol’ stupid degrees and show off about it. I think one time I might have asked Doug why he needed a piece of paper to hang on the wall if he was sure he was as smart as he needed to be. Yeah, another time my mouth ran over. Or maybe it was everyone chuckling and thinking what I said was funny. Whatever. Or however. It isn’t that I wasn’t “driven” or that I was somehow not living up to my full potential, which is apparently a major sin in his and his family’s eyes, I’m just motivated by different things. I don’t need other people to recognize those types of accomplishments. It’s not that I don’t think they are okay, I just don’t happen to think they are the be all and end all that some people do. Doug and I used to be polite to each other but that ended the day he and Tessa pulled their crap with my parents. By the time Mitch had died I wouldn’t have spit on him if he was on fire and he had the only cure for some deadly disease I had.

I’m telling things like they are, not like I want them to be remembered. I really could be hard on people. But then again, people had been hard on me. I could have been different, made things easier, and life would have been easier had my parents and Mitch lived and not left me in charge of myself and the twins so early in my life. But I didn’t get Door #1, I got Door #2 and that’s just my life.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Part 3​

Before I go too much further, I suppose I need to explain about the homeplace in north Florida. First off, it is what is left of a farm owned by my however many greats grandparents. One time Mom looked it up and I am a Tenth-generation Musgrove living in Suwannee County. A hundred and twenty acres is all that is left of the original farm – what they would have called a plantation back then – and what is left at that point was broken down into four forty-acre parcels. Eighty acres is leased out to a neighbor for them to keep their cows on for grazing. Forty is planted in pine trees and it produces pine straw which is gathered once a year and sold by the bale. Dad used to take care of that stuff after his parents died but I had to figure it out for myself this year. The Crew Boss was pretty nice, he’s been doing it like forever and walked me through it, so the twins and I have those two streams of income separate from the money in the estate. I also have a part time job that brings in some money.

$300/acre after taxes and expenses x 40 acres in pine straw = $12,000 yearly
$75/acre after taxes and expenses x 80 acres for leasing pasture = $6,000 yearly
$200/day x 5 days a month x 12 months = $12,000 where I work for a law office plus the odd additional day here in there that I don’t include in the budget because it is not guaranteed. Total of approx $30,000 per year to work with – property taxes and insurance left me roughly $20,000 (before federal income taxes) of income coming in that I could use to take care of the twins the week out of the month and the summer that I had them plus holidays. The other expenses would be coming out of the Estate.

Dad was a smart man about financial stuff and all of us kids had a pre-paid college plan bought for us before we turned one year old. For our birthdays (until we turned 18) he also bought a gold or silver coin (Silver in the early years and gold when he and my parents became better off) that were kept in the big safe for safe keeping. Tessa never got hers. She traded them to Dad for money for their first home. Whatever. He also had life insurance on both him and mom and he’d put his inheritance from his parents in a trust and we’d also had our own family trust. Granddaddy and Memaw also had insurance and assets that had to be dealt with and then there was my Uncle’s Estate which created a few headaches but not as bad as it could have been. When Mitch and the estate lawyer sold off the book of business from Dad’s business as well as some of the equipment that was particular to the business, all that money got funneled into the Trust while some of the other money from the other two estates didn’t because they were below a certain amount and didn’t get taxed to nothing so that was a financial cushion on top of the other stuff. I’d learned a lot from Mrs. Keplinger and still called her for advice on a few things like getting someone that was as smart as she is as an accountant in North Florida to keep me out of the hots with the government busy bodies. Dad starting things out the right way and with first Mitchell, and then me, continuing to do so has made things a lot better than the deep hole we could have fallen into and been left with nothing.

Now let’s get down to that final forty acres. The first thing is the old Southern-style house. This branch of the Musgrove family used to be pretty well off and had a nice plantation home[1]. Then my dad’s great uncle … his father’s uncle that inherited the house during his generation … was a lawyer and gentlemen farmer and brought the old homeplace into the 21st century, sorta; more like late 20th century. Only his wife and daughter died in a car crash, and he went a little crazy and he became a recluse, and he doesn’t even show up in some of the other Musgrove family lines histories.



My dad’s parents inherited the house from him – Martin Musgrove – since by that time there was no one else in that line, but my grandparents lived in Pasco County and weren’t interested in moving. Instead of moving back to the old homeplace, they rented out the pasture area, planted the pines for a future income only when the lumber market fell through the floor, they just left them, and they are now huge and pretty much protected from being cut down by the State Forestry Division. When my grandparents died, Dad inherited the property. When I was ten years old and the twins were about a year old, my parents started thinking about getting us out of Tampa and moving to the Ol’ Homeplace. By that time Tessa was no longer traveling with us as she was in college full time. She never saw all the changes to the property; she only remembers the worst parts of it.

Anyway, that year my parents started planting lots of trees and bushes. Some of them were just for repairing the landscaping (like dogwoods, redbuds, magnolias, camellias, azaleas) and some were to replace trees in the old orchard (apples, apricots, pears, peaches, cherries, plums, figs, kumquats, limequats, jujubes). Mom also planted a lot of edible landscaping: domestic blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, marionberries, kiwis, grapes, elderberries, and passionfruit, and persimmons. There was an area of old pecan trees as well. Pecan trees can live to be 250 years old and can supposedly produce up to a hundred of those years. I know at one time the family sold pecans so it may be a potential income stream in the future as soon as I get everything else figured out. There are a lot of moving parts that I’m learning about and trying to learn how to manage.

An example of this is that after Tessa dropped us as her family, Dad repurposed the money that he had been using to pay for her college stuff and other living expenses at home like her car and health insurance, towards building mom a screened in gazebo and a large greenhouse and added a really big steel barn with a concrete floor and rehabbed the old carriage house that had been attached to the “Big house” by his father’s uncle. Mrs. Keplinger went above and beyond teaching me to track every penny going in and coming out to see how it would wind up being taxed, or how it could be used to keep things from being taxed.

The other thing that changed at that point was Mom. Tessa really hurt her. She started having problems with depression, the same way her mom did. She started telling me things like it was up to me to carry on all the family traditions. So, when we were at the Homeplace, she would have me help her go through the family “heirlooms” and junk and start labeling who the people were in the pictures and stuff like that. It also started happening more and more when we were home in Tampa too, and Memaw got in on it as well. Mitchell and Dad tried to help when they could, but they were guys and didn’t always get it. Maybe it was a female thing or maybe it was just the way Mom and Memaw were. I’m trying to take care of all of that and not dump it on Knox and Nat or any hypothetical kids I have some time in the far-flung future. Back then I looked at it as something I could do for the family, and I got the idea that Dad was grateful all things considered. I’d get an extra hug on occasion and even Mitch would fist-bump my shoulder to let me know I was doing a good thing.

One of the big projects was that I helped to scan all the family photographs and old documents and to get them labeled so they could be searched. So, when Mom or Memaw wanted something, they asked me to find it and hopefully it was labeled well enough I could find it before they started crying like it was lost and would never be found again. The crying would get to me, so I learned to “redirect their bad energy” using techniques I learned in self-help books. I’ll admit it wasn’t all altruistic, it made my life easier too and honestly one of the few things I’m honestly scared of is falling down that same hole when I get older. It is one of the things that really bothers me about my anger.

Another project I took care of was I took pictures of all the heirlooms and stuff and built a database with a picture of it, where it was located, and the story behind it including where it came from. I printed it all out and it is in binders too, just not as up-to-date with prices, because Memaw claimed she was no good with computers. But she could do amazing things on her phone so I’m kinda doubting it and it was more about fear of computers.

Some of the stuff they thought of as an heirloom used to drive me buggy. Why would anyone care about some pressed flower that came from a vacation umpity bump years ago I never understood. I did it to humor them. But I’ve since kinda tossed more than a few things and “updated” the inventory.

It wasn’t just that sort of stuff though, I had to learn to sew, crochet, knit, and stuff like that. I also had to learn to cook all the family recipes and I helped to put together a family recipe book. And I had to do it until they said I was doing it right. I doubt I’ll ever be as good as Mom and Memaw, but I can hold my own in those areas. I’m kinda also as bad as them about having too many projects going at the same time, picking up the one that I feel interested in or just finally get the bug to finish. Or in some cases I am now finishing their projects they never finished.

In other words, I had to learn and do all the things that Tessa was supposed to take on but was never interested in. They wanted me to be Tessa, but they wanted me to be the version they had expected her to grow up to be; a modernized version of them, I guess. I could have had some sympathy for Tessa if she’d just handled it different. I mean if I, with my mouth, could deal with it then she could have; she simply chose not to. And I guess that is where my story really starts. Trying to figure out how to be me and not just a version of my older sister like everyone seems to think would be best. Yeah. Right. Not happening. Period. Exclamation point.

---

[1] Southern Style House Plan - 6 Beds 6.5 Baths 9360 Sq/Ft Plan #20-2173

 

[CGTech]

Love that house Kathy!

 

[Griz3752]

Ms Kathy, have you ever considered changing your screen name to something like "Katch me if you can"?

The K in katch in honour of all the years of KiF.

 

[Siskiyoumom]

Very cool story. Love the floor plan on the Ole Homeplace. Are there hidden rooms?

 

[sssarawolf]

Lol, OOOOKKKAAAY, I am at the end of what is here so far. Thank you.

 

[Capt Dan]

outstanding Kathy you have a wonderful talent God bless you.

 

[Lake Lili]

Thanks Kathy! Great start!
Lili

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 1​

For three weeks out of that first month (December) I worked and slept and that’s about it. Five days a month I worked at this general law office at the county seat that did mostly real estate law, but they also did a fair share of family law and wills and things like that. I went to Church services on Sunday at a local place but more out of habit, and because I promised Mitchell I would, and more to prove that my old church hadn’t ruined that part of my life than for the right reasons. I also went to have a place to take the twins when I brought them to north Florida when we weren’t going on an adventure of some type to give them something to look forward to.

First thing I did before I left town was to give the twins two phones. Two is one and one is none, or so Dad always said. Basically, it was in case Doug found one of the phones and took it away, they’d have the back up. I made sure there were plenty of minutes on both phones, but it was mostly for texting me and we figured out a system and codes they could let me know they were okay with, or if they weren’t. The phones had emojis so they could give me a smile or a frown or an angry face. This became especially important when Doug and his parents tried to limit any contact with me between visits. Oh trust me, I got with the court on that one and it backfired on them bigly. The judge ordered a lawyer – yeah another lawyer (gag) – to see that the twins got a twice-weekly call. The lawyer set up the call using a program that recorded it in case the judge had any questions. Man oh man, there were some hacked off people about that one but oh well, you play Russian roulette sometimes you get the bullet. And this included the fact that the judge decided they didn’t get calls while I had the twins. Burnt some biscuits but I didn’t gloat, much to everyone’s surprise. By that time, it was becoming more important to set a good example for the twins than it was about me getting my way 100% of the time. Is that maturity? Meh. I had just learned I needed to pick my battles.

My “change in attitude” was viewed with a lot of suspicion by people that had no reason to be involved with the situation. And obviously, they were only getting one side of the story. It took everything I had and then some not to let go with both barrels at the people who would try and manipulate me through texts and social media, but I just pretended I was at work dealing with difficult clients. That helped, but I still wound up with a headache at the end of some days. I’m telling you I used the “block” and “ignore” features a lot. I also learned to make it so they couldn’t “see” me either.

The next thing I knew that would be coming was a home visit to make sure that the homeplace was “habitable.” I figured it would go like someone would innocently complain on behalf of Tessa and Doug because they were too nice to do it themselves. Gag me. But I was learning, oh yes I was. Those difficult clients at the lawyer’s office were teaching me things about dealing with people whether they meant to or not. And Mr. Barnes, the senior partner, was as well.

Mitch and I had done a lot of organizing to get all the new stuff into the house, but those three weeks I took it into overdrive. The bedrooms for the twins and my bedroom got a lot of work done on them. They were clean if undecorated as everything was still in the master bedroom like Mitch and I had set it up temporarily. I sprayed the house for bugs about once a week with some stuff Dad used to use; the kitchen especially. I could empty two or three rooms in the house a week and I moved that stuff to the barn to go through when the twins weren’t around. It also meant I could put stuff in there and let off a bunch of bug bombs to kill nasty, creepy crawlies so none would come back in the house. I ordered the pesticides in bulk from an online source, the same one Dad has always used. In fact, I continued to use Dad’s account because they wouldn’t have sold to anyone my age had they known. I had it shipped to a PO Box in town to keep from having people know where the Homeplace was. And when I found I had a lot more duplicates of things than I needed, I started organizing all of it and making piles that I would sell or some that I would give to charity. I would empty a storage tub and repurpose it as I went. It made things easier.

By the time I was going to get my custody time, I had most of the bottom floor emptied (or the boxes in the rooms were what was supposed to be in that room). I also had three of the bedrooms upstairs emptied and what I hadn’t emptied yet was closed off and could be locked to keep nosey people out. Although that was more about the twins’ safety than anyone’s curiosity.

I’d read up on what would be checked in a home inspection, and I paid special attention to no tripping hazards, I put safety gates on the stairs, I made sure there was fire escape routes from each room, and I had a schedule I kept like religion for keeping things (and rooms) clean even if they were bare. The house didn’t have to be a show piece, I just needed to keep it hygienic, bug free, and fire/child safe. Yeah, bugs were an issue, but I just kept cleaning and spraying chemicals that broke the bugs’ breeding cycle.

Thankfully I didn’t had any problems with mice. There are a lot of owls on the property that keep the population down. There is also a fox den somewhere, but I’ve never found it. Mitchell said he’d seen fox kits lots of times. He thinks (thought?) the den is over near an abandoned house near the highway and they just come this way to hunt. Red Shouldered hawks also hang out during the day and leave the night to the owls. Seriously, I don’t care why I haven’t had mouse problems, I’m just glad I don’t. Just to be on the safe side I also sealed all the food in hard sided containers like glass jars and canisters or decorative tins, or just put it in the frig, and I always wipe down the counters and everything else with Lysol spray or 409 or other disinfectant cleaners. Overkill? Maybe. But it doesn’t hurt either. One day I heard a woman complaining that a mouse had gotten into her make-up so now even the little bit of that that I have stays in a tin when not in use. So do my hairbrush, comb, and toothbrush and toothpaste. Gaks me out just thinking about the grossness.

When I wasn’t playing gopher and fill-in receptionist at the law office, or organizing the house, or finishing school assignments, I was doing research on what I could do with the twins. I promised them adventures and by gosh adventures I was going to give them. I wanted them to have memories like I do of Dad and Mom before life got so hard.

Because I’m not twenty-one, which is the age most places require for reservations, I had to be sneaky and use the boondocking practice most of the time. I know people that can make fake IDs, but I decided to not go that direction. Yeah, it might be who you know in this life, but it is better not to have to answer for stuff like that when you are trying to prove you are the right person for your little sibs to live with. The adventures were and are a lot of work and planning, but it is worth it. My first custody time was in December/January.

I’ve figured out a way to help with the age-factor when we are adventuring. I didn’t get rid of the van that Mitchell was rehabbing. I probably could have sold it for no small chunk of change, but I just couldn’t do it. See, he was going to turn it into his “apartment” or something goofy like that. I think Dad was mostly humoring him but at the same time I think he was proud of Mitchell for doing most of the work himself since Mitchell wasn’t normally the “handyman type” as he was wanting to be a physical therapist or something else in the medical field and that was about all he thought about. Dad thought it was good for him to branch out into other interests, and I suppose it did help in a way, and when Mitchell needed help because he couldn’t figure something out it was always Dad he asked first. So, it is like having the best of both of them still taking care of us. It drives good and the new guts that Mitchell and Dad put in it means that it doesn’t have that many miles on it.

I drive the old minivan (or sometimes my Aunt’s old Vespa) most of the time but when I go to pick up the twins and take them on an adventure, that’s when I take the van, but I did have to make some adjustments to it. Mitchell was all clean lines and whiteness. He was definitely not the messy or frilly type. He was a bit OCD, but then again so was Dad. I think that is one of the reasons that the Homeplace used to drive them a bit buggy (no pun intended). They got bogged down in all the little stuff, and the big picture sometimes got away from them. Um, I’m different. I had to do some stuff, so I wasn’t forever crying over memories, you know, break the cycle of things being like they used to be.

I got the van decorated using some youtube DIYs and it really can be an apartment if when we need it to be; like a motel room on wheels. The twins sleep in the loft bed above the storage area, and I sleep – yeah I’ve had to use it a few times when the fumes in the house were too bad – in the fold out bench seat.

I took the van down to Tampa and stayed at a boondock location that I found online in Land O’ Lakes to test my theory out. It required a free reservation in advance, but I grabbed the last one available for when I needed it. It was a Wednesday night and I got lucky. It fit into my plans perfectly. I had a meeting with the Estate Lawyer during the morning, then the Custody Lawyer in the afternoon. I managed to sneak in a bit of shopping between the meetings at Bravo, a budget grocery store Mom used to shop at when they had loss-leaders and sales. It is where she got most of the specialty food items she and Dad kept on hand for just in case; canned butter (from the Caribbean section), particular soups like canned Spanish Bean Soup (Cuban section), canned cheese (also in the Caribbean section), and different drink powders (from all over the place).

I surprised the twins by showing up for their Christmas production at church that evening. My gosh were they excited when they saw me grinning at them and giving them two thumbs up. They weren’t the only ones I surprised and that had been the plan to put off any kind of problem that Doug and his parents were planning … because I’d come to understand their strategy and I wasn’t averse to turning it back at them.

The lawyer assigned by the Judge knew the sitch and knew I was spiking Doug’s ability to screw with the custody and visitation thing. We’d discussed it that day at his office and I realized, while he was most definitely strict, he was sympathetic to my side of things; especially after I explained that I was trying to do the right thing and would play by the rules he and the Judge set. The lawyer helped me by showing up for the production as well – he had a niece and nephew in it – and that’s when I found out that not everyone at the church was on board with what happened to my parents and the results. Or maybe it was just in hindsight they realized what they’d help to create and regretted it. Whatever.

Because the lawyer was there when I said I was there to take the twins a night early since Doug had already told me they weren’t doing any Christmas with the twins since they’d be with me. The fact that the information came out in public shocked a few people that hadn’t known exactly how it was being handled. Then when Doug’s parents tried to say they wondered whether the old house was habitable (just like I figured someone would), the lawyer said that I’d been sending pictures and documentation to his office and the Judge’s to show all the work that had been occurring. And when they asked to see it, he flat out told them that it was neither their business nor Tessa and Doug’s, that the Judge’s office had already approved everything. You could smell the tail feathers burning and the looks on their faces would have curdled milk, especially on Doug’s sister.

I made my getaway with the twins after stopping to let them pack up some stuff. The lawyer followed us over which I’m thankful for. With the lawyer there Doug had to give me a key to the house where they’d changed the locks, as well as the security code on the gate and alarm system. They weren’t supposed to do that, meaning changing locks as well as locking me out in other ways, and certainly not without notifying me and the lawyer’s office. The lawyer also put them on notice that he’d be addressing that with the Judge’s office first thing in the morning. I made sure the twins took anything that was special to them because I didn’t trust that it would still be there when they got back. I didn’t particularly want to believe that of my own sister, but I could believe that Doug would do it and would be able to justify it, so I was careful. Add to that Doug’s sister was way worse than him and was three times as sneaky as I was to learn. I’d heard her say publicly that with the twins out of the house, it would be a perfect time to do some deep cleaning in that area, she’d even graciously help, inferring whatever people wanted to read into it. I was relieved to get out of there and we were all given notice that the lawyer expects his rules to be followed with an “or else” attached to the mandates. Fine by me. Contrary to popular opinion, even back then I knew how to stay out of trouble and working with Mr. Barnes at the law office was teaching me how to get workarounds when I need to.

 

[Griz3752]

Very cool story. Love the floor plan on the Ole Homeplace. Are there hidden rooms?

My money is on "really big steel barn with a concrete floor and rehabbed the old carriage house"

Nothing for certain but my strong sense is there's quite a prepper streak in Mina's branch of Clan Musgrove.
Pure speculation of course . . . . . . . .

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 2​

I got the week of Christmas and the first week of January back-to-back, so I had two weeks with the twins. That first three-hour drive back to north Florida was brutal as I had to hear everything that went on when I wasn’t around. Actually, when Doug was out of town it sounded normal-ish. But when Doug wasn’t working out of town everything seemed to get twisted up. He made them re-do any schoolwork that he didn’t find up to par regardless of what their virtual teachers considered it, or even how Tessa felt about it. He was on them for every little thing. He was constantly telling them stories about the faults of our parents and how he and Tessa were trying to correct things to the “right way.” They finally petered off when we got off the interstate and on the county road that led to the Homeplace. Despite the dark they knew where they were, and they were dealing with memories since they hadn’t been there since before Mitchell had left us.

First off, they were surprised that I’d finally hooked up the automatic gate system Dad had always meant to install so he and Mom wouldn’t have to get out and unlock and open the gate in the middle of the night when it was dark, or the weather was bad. It was solar powered but had a backup battery system hidden inside the cavity of a big “fake rock” as well. From the first gate we own the road, and the first part is narrow back to the first turn, then it opens up. The road to the house is a little over a mile long but is dirt and grass and even most of the old timers still living in the area have forgotten about it. The really tall pine trees and live oak trees hide the house from all the neighboring properties, not that there is anyone living on those properties. They are zoned “ag” and most of them are either cattle, more planted pines, or hay fields.

Knox asked, “Who mows the road?”

“I do Goofus. Wanna learn to drive the zero turn?”

“I wanna learn to drive the tractor,” he said.

“Ha! Let’s start with the zero turn. I’m still figuring out the tractor. Plus, it is kinda blocked in by all the stuff in the barn.”

Nat asked, “What stuff?”

“I’ve been cleaning and organizing the house. It was always on the list of chores to do when we came up but for whatever reason never got done. You remember how it was, we’d empty a room only to fill it back up with stuff from someplace else. It can’t be that way anymore. And I want you guys to have your own bedrooms since you are older now. We’ll get into all of that but let’s get to the house first.”

After going through the second gate that leads to what we call the main-forty, we pulled up to the garage and they were so tired they really didn’t notice anything. I said, “Hey, I know you are tired and kinda fritzing out and everything, but I need you to take a look at something.”

They’ve always been pretty easy for me to pull a prank on, and this was no different. I pulled the van in and I got out and threw the breaker to the outside power before coming around and getting them out. I took them outside like we were going through the front door instead of through the Carriage Hallway and then hit the button of the clicker on my key ring and prayed that it worked as planned.

“Wow!!!!!!!” they both yelled in surprise. I didn’t know whether to fall down laughing at their reaction, or cry that all the work had been worth it. You could have seen the house from space it was so lit up with Christmas lights.

“You likey?” I asked with a grin.

“Yeah!!!!!!!”

I laughed. “Well let’s get inside. It is kinda late, but I have some other stuff to show you.”

And boy did I. I had just about a gazillion Christmas trees of all sizes all over the house. Okay, slight exaggeration but there were trees in every room, including miniature ones in the bathrooms. They were all decorated except for the big tree in the main living area. Memaw and Mom both were kinda zealous with holiday decorations, so I hadn’t had to buy anything at all. I’d even found the boxes that held Nana and Poppy’s décorations.

Pointing in the direction of the big tree I said, “This one is for us to do tomorrow if you want to. I already put lights on it but … I mean if you want to.”

Nat asked quietly, “With all the special ornaments just like always?”

“Yeah. And sloppy joes and tater tots for dinner and we can play Rudolph and Frosty on the boob tube while we are decorating it. I’ve even got the fixings for Lime Sherbet Punch or Hot Chocolate depending on the weather.”

They both started crying while they hugged me, and I’ll be honest and say I almost did as well. It was a family tradition that we hadn’t done last year because of all the stuff going on. In fact, last Christmas only happened by going to church. We were in the middle of so much sad craziness. Looking back on it, Mitch and I regretted not making a way to pull it off, but we didn’t. And now Mitch is gone, and it isn’t something we’ll ever be able to change but I had promised myself that I would do better, and it looked like it is something that the twins needed … both the Christmas traditions and me doing better.

I took them upstairs to their rooms and said, “Look, I know they are kinda empty and plain right now, but this is part of your presents. You get to choose your colors and stuff like that, and I’ll get it done as soon as I can.”

“We … we can’t sleep with you in the big bedroom downstairs?” they both asked, crestfallen.

“Uh … well you can if you want to. Same as always when we were up here. I still have the beds in there. I just thought since you were getting older that you wouldn’t want to and eventually you’d want your own space, the same way Mitch did.” They liked that – me recognizing they were getting older and stuff – but I was also glad they still wanted to camp out with me since I hadn’t really had time to get much of anything else done. And … I missed them too.

For this visit we mostly stayed in north Florida. We needed some quiet, and some family history being the same, but we also needed to talk. They weren’t that old, only eight years old, but they still needed to be part of the plans I was making.

We talked and I asked them what they wanted. I read stories where little kids needed to have a say and not even the judge had asked them what they wanted. Neither had the lawyer. Not even Mitch had asked. I mean I get it, being the adult sucks, and sometimes you just have to do things without anyone else’s input, but I wasn’t an actual adult yet and I needed them to want to be part of the plan I was coming up with. I, as much as them, needed to be a family and keep the ruckus down to a dull roar so that I’d have the energy to deal with things with a good attitude when trouble did happen.

It turns out I kinda worried for no reason, at least not about some of it. They wanted to stay with me. They don’t really know Tessa despite her being our sister, and don’t like Doug at all. Are kinda scared of him on some level even though I don’t think they understand why, and I don’t think Doug is doing that part on purpose even if he is a jerk to me. He’s just a big guy and bossy and full of himself and doesn’t think anyone knows better than he does. Everyone else likes him and respects him a lot. I just lost respect for him, and I think he senses it and that and the rest of the situation kinda bleeds out onto the twins.

I told them, “I wish I could make that happen right now, but you understand what the judge has said. Right?”

“Yeah, you explained it. Everyone explained it. They always talk about the way they want it to be,” Knox said with an eight-year-old growl. “How come you are the only one that asked us what we want?”

“Because I’m smarter than your average bear?” I said trying to tease him out of his anger. Out of all of us Knox could be like Dad … a lot.

Nat said, “You know what we mean.”

Getting more serious I said, “I know. I just don’t know how to explain it. I just figure I would have wanted to be asked, so I’m asking you.”

Speaking for Knox and as much as for herself Nat said, “Well, we don’t want to go back there. But … I guess you can’t change that.”

“Not right now,” I told them. “But as soon as I turn eighteen, assuming you still want to, I’ll talk to the judge, and we’ll make it happen. But I’m about to tell you something and I need you to understand. Thing is, we can make plans, but we need to keep them to ourselves and not tell anyone, especially not Tessa or Doug, or anyone that will tell them. Do you understand?”

“Why?” Nat ask while Knox said, “Kinda.”

“Okay, how’s this? I don’t want to lie. I don’t want you to lie. Lying is really bad. It isn’t something that Dad and Mom would have ever wanted us to do and even though they aren’t right here with us, I still think we need to act like we did when they were raising us. To try and be good people and stuff. Mitch wanted to keep being that way too.”

“They’re not here,” Knox said caught somewhere between anger and tears. I saw Nat lean against him the way she does when she is trying to support him and make him feel better … bleed off whatever painful feeling he was having.

“Not here, here,” I agreed. “But they can always be here and here,” I added pointing to my heart and head. “Sometimes you just have to deal with the way things are even when they don’t feel fair. And right now, lots of things feel not-fair for a lot of reasons. But we’re going to work on what we can change and learn to deal with the things we can’t change. Remember Dad saying that after Granddaddy and Memaw died?” They nodded slowly. “Well, that’s what we are going to do. But at the same time, they are our plans and right now they are no one else’s business. If too many people find out about it, they might try and meddle and get in the way of us doing the things we want to the way we want to.”

“Doug,” Nat said quietly. “How come he doesn’t like you?”

“I’m really not sure. I can guess but I could be wrong. I think it has a lot to do with me not seeing him the way he wants people to see him. He … he doesn’t hurt you, does he?”

“No. And he … there was a kid at church that was bad. Really bad. Doug went and talked to his mother when he started trying to be bad to us. So … I guess … Doug isn’t bad … but he just acts like we’re stupid and don’t know how to act.”

Completely understanding (Tessa had already told me about the kid getting moved out of their class), I sighed. “Try and not let that get to you. I don’t think you are stupid. In fact, I think you are pretty smart and cool and don’t get the credit you should. You’ve been through a lot and even though you are still technically a little kid, you haven’t let it break you. Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think you are perfect either, but since neither am I, we’ll need to work on making sure we get along. And I need you to try and stay out of hot water when you are with Tessa. It will just make things easier on us in the long run and keep them out of our plans just in case they have a different idea of what our futures should hold.”

We started a written list so we wouldn’t forget our plans and it is on the bulletin board that Dad and Mom always kept those sorts of things on in the kitchen. One of the things that we decided is that they need to keep up with their schoolwork and try to do as well at it as they can even if it is something they didn’t like. For my part I promised to keep doing my job at the law firm as long as they would have me, and do the other stuff that I need to do to make sure they have a home to come to. With that agreed to, I brought up my idea of having adventures for them to look forward to.

“Adventures? What kind of adventures?”

“Well, we’ll still need to be careful with the money. What we have needs to last a long time, including whatever kind of school or training you guys eventually want.”

“What about you? Doug’s parents keep saying you dropped out of school and haven’t graduated from high school and that if you aren’t careful you are going to just be dumb and rudderless for the rest of your life and not live up to your full potential.” It sounded like they were repeating something they’d heard.

I gave them a nuclear eye roll for that particular opinion and said, “Shows what they know. Er … this is one of those private family discussion things so don’t repeat the way I talk. ‘K? It’s rude and might get people in our business.”

Nat bit her lips trying not to smile but Knox didn’t let anything stop him from laughing. My mouth is kinda notorious.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 3​

“Anyway, about that,” I said trying to get back on topic because it was getting very late, and we were all starting to run out of steam. “I’ve been dual enrolled for a long time. You guys know what that means … I’ve already been in college for a while despite not being college age. I already have one college degree and I’m finishing up my bookkeeping degree online. As long as school gets me what I want – a job that I at least halfway like and that can support us without using up all of the Estate – I’m not going to worry about getting anymore unless it helps me to do something else that I want to do or something I need to do like a special business license or certificate or something. We’ll figure that out if the time comes, for now, once I finish the bookkeeping degree, I have as much as I want or need.”

We discussed what “adventures” could mean and they gave me some ideas of things they’d like to do, and I said we could talk about it more but that I’d definitely keep their wants in mind.

That entire week leading up to Christmas was jammed packed with holiday things. The Tallahassee Winter Festival, the Gingerbread House Extravaganza in Jacksonville, the Suwannee Lights in Live Oak, we went to Lowe’s and Home Depot to look at the giant Christmas decorations you could buy when I had to pick up a few things for the next project on the house, we made Mom’s famous Everything But the Kitchen Sink cookies, and I took them to the church for Christmas Eve services. Plus, all of that was on top of decorating our own Christmas tree and letting them put a few more lights on the outside of the house.

At the Christmas Eve service I was getting a little worried about what we would do on Christmas Day. All the stores and parks would be closed, and I knew the twins were due a bit of a holiday hangover and some memory sadness. It was Knox that heard about a last-minute service project the church was asking for volunteers for. There was a bunch of National Guard people that were away from family and had nowhere to go. They didn’t have a base to belong to per se, so communities were stepping up. The church was going to put a feed on, and I asked the twins if they were up for it.

Nat who was the more sensitive about such things said, “If Mitch … you know … I would hope someone would be nice to him.”

Knox, her protector, put his arm around her. “He’s got the best. He’s with Jesus throwing a real birthday party so we gotta be happy for him.”

“Mom and Dad too?”

“Yep, and Memaw and Granddaddy and Uncle and everyone else up there. So we can help do that down here.”

Surprised at his depth of understanding I told him, “When you’re right, you’re right. Let me see if there is still room on the list.”

Oh man, was there and how. We helped with a Christmas brunch that ran into an early dinner. There were games for most of the day, a couple of different tele-stations set up so people could watch the Christmas parades, the dog shows, and then the college football games. I guess whoever organizes the National Guard got a clue and made sure everyone got a present. And one of the bigger hits was a communication station that I helped to set up. Everyone got to phone home and I set up some filters so that sometimes they were wearing reindeer antlers, elf glasses, or Santa beards while they were facetiming their loved ones. It was pretty funny and just stuff that I’d done for my own family at different times. It wound up that helping those people, most far from home, helped me as much as it did them. The twins thought it was pretty cool as well.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 4​

After Christmas I told Knox and Nat not to worry about undecorating, that I’d take care of it since I made most of the mess. They asked if we could leave one of the trees up all year like Memaw had only changing the decorations to something new every month or so.

I said, “We’ll give it a try. I have her decorations and stuff here somewhere. Maybe we can find them while we do a little rearranging and organizing. I gotta have some help with some of this stuff.”

So that’s what we did into that first week of January. We started as we meant to go. Clean up and organize. They enjoyed having a say in how the house was going to be decorated and where all our stuff was going to go. They also used my computer to start school back up and make sure they were keeping up.

I think one of the hardest things I have ever done was take them back to Tampa the first time. The lawyer surprised me by being there when I got there. He was just reinforcing that the rules were going to be followed because apparently Doug had tried to pull some shenanigan while I had the twins and the Judge’s office told him enough was enough with an “or else” attached to it. I didn’t find that out until after we’d set the dates and times of the arranged, twice-weekly calls and a good thing too or my mouth might have caused a situation.

In part, Doug was trying to control things by trying to shave days off my “week,” saying what time I could and could not pick them up, make demands on what they could and could not do when I had them. This was instigated by some research that Doug’s sister had been doing. That was the first time she interfered – or tried to – but it was far from the last, and it set the tone and made me even more cautious and determined to get them out of the twins’ life and mine when at all possible. The problem was I had to be careful because, despite how I might make it sound, they were just a bunch of do-gooders determined to believe they were right and do something about it. I didn’t believe they were right but that was just one more strike against me apparently. Their definition of “right” fell heavy on the side of what they believed things to be, not necessarily how things really were. Dad said you get that a lot in churches where people sometimes get more about believing in things that make themselves feel better than really about being better regardless of the way it made you feel.

But we got it all figured out and I headed back to the Homeplace lonelier than I’ve ever felt. I had a laundry list of things that needed doing to keep myself busy and not depressed, and an emergency call-in by Mr. Barnes of the law firm asking if I could come in an extra day to help them “unfarkle” some estate paperwork since I would understand how important it was and be sympathetic with the client. He really did say “unfarkle.” He’s kinda crazy but not in a bad way and I guess that is about as good as you can say about a boss.

 

[Jeepcats27]

Thank you for the new story and chapters!

 

[feralferret]

Great story so far, Kathy. Thank you.

 

[CGTech]

Lovin' it Kathy!

 

[Lake Lili]

Thanks Kathy! Would this Mr. Lawyer Barnes be related to the very skilled Mr. Barnes who appear in other stories? I have become rather fond of him and his assisting your heroines.
Enjoying this story a lot.
Lili

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 5​

“Thank you for coming in Mina,” Mr. Barnes said as soon as I came in the back door of the house that had been turned into his law office. The place was built in the 1940’s and was pretty big. It still looked like a house on the outside but since it fronted one of the main roads in town it was definitely part of the commercial area, plus there was a big sign in the front that said “Barnes and Musgrove”. A different Musgrove family but I guess we are all related if you go back to the original Musgrove family ten generations back. I got enough questions about it when out of towners had to come in for depositions.

Mr. Barnes said, “Please tell me I didn’t cut short your time with your siblings.”

“No Sir. I just dropped them off night before last. You said there were estate papers?”

He nodded and his Colonel Sanders goatee momentarily got caught in his double chin until he smoothed it out again. “I have the files in the conference room. At issue is the age of the estate. It belonged to the heirs’ great grandparents and then sat in probate until recently because several family members were fighting over it, only the probate has outlived most of the family. There are only a couple of heirs remaining. We are representing the man who doesn’t want to put it all on the auction block since it has been in the family for several generations.”

“How many are on the other side?”

“Two. His surviving brother and a sister who hasn’t lived in the area since she went away to college. They just want the money a sale would generate.”

“Can the client buy them out?”

“Curtis has done well but, at the moment, he doesn’t have the liquidity to do that, and unfortunately the other parties are unwilling to wait, and Judge Bell wants the case to finally close. Additionally, I think they are overvaluing the property. The house has been poorly maintained, really is little more than a shack without utilities and adds no value, and while the acreage is quite large about half is in a flood plain and unbuildable.”

I made a face. “They’re hoping to sell it to a developer?”

Mr. Barnes snorted. “I’m not sure they’ve thought it all through and are getting advice from people that don’t know this area well. From investors that are simply looking for ground to flip for a profit to other unsuspecting buyers. The brother lives in West Palm Beach and the sister in Naples and neither seems to be willing to understand that land valuation here is considerably different.”

Not the first time I’d heard that kind of story. Dad had run into the same thing since he’d taken over managing the Old Homeplace. And my bookkeeping class had a project that covered the topic as well. I said, “Wow. Well, let’s educate them with current sales data plus land restrictions and the rest. But here’s a possible thought, does your client have anything he can trade them for the property in question? Dad did something like that once and it save taxes on top of that.”

Mr. Barnes got a little more interested and said, “You run a current sale report and I’ll take the other idea to Curtis.”

Before the day was out the other brother and sister agreed to a trade (it was some existing pastureland that became superfluous if the client got the inherited land) and Mr. Barnes was hurrying the paperwork through before anyone could change their mind. “That was a very creative report young lady.”

I gave a small grin. “Part of my father’s business was real estate investing. I watched him wheel and deal and he said using actual sales numbers and not just advertised potential was the only way to figure out if you were going to make money or lose money on a deal. Annnnnnd, using the outlying numbers and then finding the mean more than the average could give you some leverage in your negotiations.”

He parked an eyebrow in his hairline, still pretty healthy despite all the white he cultivated, and said, “An unusual understanding in someone your age.”

My grin turned into a grimace. “I’ve been forced to learn things the hard way since my parents and brother died. Sometimes a little creativity will go a long way to getting your way … or at least the way that helps you the most. But you still must be able to look at yourself in the mirror, so honesty is a need, not just a want.”

“Agreed. Someone should make that a Lawyer’s Creed next to the Ten Commandments and The Lawyer’s Prayer. Now my Dear, would you do an old man a favor and have dinner with me?” He sighed. “The doctor is on my case for eating too many microwave meals. I have a table at the Brown Lantern reserved but no desire to eat alone.”

It wasn’t that I was uncomfortable with Mr. Barnes as a boss, but I wanted – needed to be careful with my reputation. “Mr. Barnes, you aren’t an ‘old man.’ You are my uncle’s age, and he was my mother’s younger brother. I know the ladies in town consider you a catch. And to be honest, I must be careful because of the custody situation with my siblings. I can’t afford the gossip nosey people could cause.”

His eyes lit up with humor and then he said, “Perfect excuse to call my sister. She’s in the same boat as I and maybe I’ll finally be able to get her to come out a bit. Excellent suggestion.”

Well, I hadn’t made any such suggestion, but I’d met his sister at church, and she did seem kinda sad. And as such things go dinner wasn’t bad. The place is a local hang out with normal food rather than some fancy restaurant and it turns out that Mrs. Padfield was interested in genealogy and had mine out of me before dinner was over with – or at least as much as I remembered off the top of my head – and was THRILLED I TELL YOU to find out I was a direct descendant of the Suwannee County Musgrove Family. Yep, and she said it all in caps too. She was also shocked and then further thrilled when I was able to fill in some holes in the picture part of the family tree and some other townspeople.

“Simply amazing. James, I am so glad you talked me into this. The girls are going to be in raptures.”

The girls were apparently a crew of older ladies that act as local genealogist/historians as well as cemetery experts and decipherers of old documents.

“Are you sure you don’t mind me posting these Honey?” she asked.

“Mrs. Padfield, these people are all passed on. If it isn’t going to hurt them, then I don’t see what the problem is.”

Showing an unexpectedly cynical side she responded, “Oh you would be surprised how secretive some people can be when it comes to their family history. We’ve even gotten letters threatening legal action about posting some public documents.”

“If the people are dead then they can ‘letter’ all they want. If it is in the public domain and/or part of the civil records, there is no hiding it. Even your social security number is publicly available as long as you’ve been dead a few years. As far as what the records might reveal, if you didn’t do it, it isn’t your shame to bear. And sometimes shame is all in the eyes of the beholder anyway.”

“Exactly,” she said with more vigor than I’d ever heard her speak. Apparently she’d run into a few things over the years.

Small towns close down earlier than you find in places like Tampa, and I’d gotten used to it fast as even the grocery stores were all closed by 8 pm. Rumors were that it would get earlier with Congress having decided to get serious about winning the war and everyone expecting things to get a lot more expensive. Apparently, things were going to work like the parks and close at sundown. All of that I’d learned, and no small amount of other gossip, as we’d sat around eating and people would come by to say hello how good it was to see the family out and about. Mrs. Padfield patted my hand and said, “You’ve been adopted.” I let it go to be polite, but it made me more aware of what the twins must be feeling. It made me more determined to not making them feel like they were in a tug o’ war with no input.

I got home and locked everything up. I’d planned on getting more work done in the house, or at least getting boxes ready to move out to the barn in the morning, but I’d promised Mrs. Padfield to look for some pictures of people, and decided to do that and because I needed to think about some of the stuff I had heard during dinner, including prices of things going up.

I sat on the bed with my lapdesk and got to work doing the things that Mom had taught me during her version of home ec … pulling up sales flyers and trying to map out a menu from the loss leaders. I also tried to find the addresses of the U-picks that Mom had always taken advantage of when we were at the Homeplace, and I knew I had a copy of the spreadsheet of when things were supposed to ripen around here someplace in the stuff that I had created at Mom’s request. I also created a new spreadsheet to track fuel prices and a note to get the fuel cans for the lawn equipment and tractor filled up and keep them that way. By the time I put my adulting lists away for the night I had a massive headache that reminded me I also needed to get the OTC stuff and put it where I could get at it, especially the Excedrin, Motrin, and Advil migraine relief pills. Before I turned out the lamp, I also added Pepto-Bismol to the list as Mitchell had used the last of it (acid indigestion). Mitchell was like Dad, everything settled in his stomach. Me? I grew up saying I had a stomach ache in my head.

I was overwhelmed and it took me a while to wind down and fall asleep.

 

[CGTech]

Thanks Kathy!

 

[Mr Bill]

Fine update to a great story. Thanks

 

[Jeepcats27]

Thank you Kathy!

 

[Freebirde]

Thanks Kathy!

The twins are at an age that they might have a small pet. Tessa, Doug, Doug's sister, or his parents have any phobias? Like spiders, snakes, or rodents? I know it could cause problems, but just wondering.

 

[TeaMom07]

Thank you Kathy, this one is shaping up to be an adventure.

 

[Mr Bill]

Freebird you are really bad.

 

[Jeepcats27]

So what kind of recipe is the everything but the kitchen sink cookies? It sounds like it is really good?

 

[20Gauge]

bump

 

[Freebirde]

Freebird you are really bad.

You think that's bad, be glad you don't know the things I keep to myself.

 

[Mr Bill]

Keep on keepin on then

 

[Kathy in FL]

So what kind of recipe is the everything but the kitchen sink cookies? It sounds like it is really good?

Everything but the Kitchen Sink Cookies

When you're in the mood for something deliciously sweet, try these "Everything but the Kitchen Sink" cookies.

www.marthastewart.com

 

[Jeepcats27]

Hmmmm, I need to go grocery shopping tomorrow! I only have a fraction of the ingredients!

 

[Kathy in FL]

Chapter 6​

I had a hard time getting up the next morning but since I was a practicing adult if not an actual one, I had to set a schedule and stick to it on my own without someone else being there to make me with a whip and chair.

I got up and it was cold, a lot colder than I was used to it being in Tampa. Rather than running the heater to heat the entire house since there was only me, I practiced some economy and just put more clothes on than normal … t-shirt, flannel long-sleeve, and a fleece sweatshirt. Definitely added a beanie and thick socks with my mukluks inside or my Carhartt work boots when I went outside. I also just used the midget microwave to heat up the leftovers from last night’s dinner rather than cooking something fresh like I would have if the twins were here. In fact, I added to my “to do” list to think about trying to find an app that would let me plug in recipes I used on a regular basis, would put them on a calendar, and then would create a grocery list from that. I also had other heavy-duty planning I thought about last night that was coming up on being necessary. Mom had always had a monthly menu stuck to the side of the frig with magnets, so everyone knew what to expect … and what their chores were if they had kitchen duty. In scouts we had called them caper charts. But since I didn’t have a patrol to share them with, I just stuck with calling it my to do list.

While I ate limp fries and the half of the bacon and cheese hamburger I hadn’t finished because of all the gabbing and interruptions by people stopping by to say hello and trade gossip, I looked over the notes I’d written the night before. I was already getting overwhelmed again until I decided to treat it like a school project or one of those projects Mom and Memaw would always come up with.

First, I needed a better way to stay organized. The bulletin board was fine for simple stuff, but it was already getting too messy and full. So, for me organized meant creating binders with dividers and pocket folders. Mitchell and I had already done that for all the financial and estate stuff. I suppose I could have done a lot of it online and with the computer, but Mitchell was kinda tech averse unless it had to do with the medical school he had intended going to. Dad had also been that way with his business since he didn’t trust banks and the government not to start snooping. The reality? Well, it was kinda a joke and kinda not. It was actually a total pain in the butt.

For some reason Dad and Mitch had this blackhole around them with tech stuff. Seriously. They killed watches just by wearing them. Their computers were always doing weird crap. Their phones? Every update seemed to do something intentionally weird and unnatural. Mitchell was happy to leave that stuff to me and not to brag, but I’m more than just decent at it, but more because I was forced to learn than from inclination. It was bad enough when they “broke” but to have them get “broker” from someone’s frustration? Yeah, it was easier just to learn to be the “tech fixer” in the family. Someone needed to.

I suppose this is as good a point as any to admit to having a backup plan to keep an eye on the twins. It had been Mitchell’s idea but only because he knew I could pull it off with no one the wiser. He’d read some book on how they put cameras in hospital rooms for pediatric patients to make sure their families weren’t messing with their treatment but the cameras were set up so no one realized they were there. And I rigged it to cell signal rather than the home wifi because Doug sometimes turned off the house internet if he thought too much time was being spent on things that didn’t help you live up to your full potential. Of course, he had a hot spot that he could use, the rule was only for everyone else in the house since he needed it for “work”. I know for a fact however, based on some of the twins’ complaints, that Tessa and Doug watched movies at night in their bedroom and they sure weren’t work-related.

The twins’ bedroom has crown molding running around the top of the wall and ceiling. I hardwired in a miniature, wide-angle security camera I bought from this place that sold spy toys and security gadgets. It even had a backup battery for just-in-case. Yes, I know it sounds creepy. Nunya business though. It was just another way for me to keep an eye on the twins. It also made them feel better. It wouldn’t work if they were older, but they weren’t and since I recorded everything and then dumped it if it wasn’t something I needed to keep as “evidence” it just became one of those secrets, so we didn’t have to lie. They were stinkers on occasion because I had screwed a picture our family under where the camera was as additional camouflage, and they would wave or tell it goodnight and they were actually talking to me. I told them to imagine that I was waving back and telling them goodnight as well. Knox considered it a joke, Nat found it comforting. Like whatever works and stuff.

But despite being able to do all that tech stuff I still fell in Dad’s corner when it came to things like keeping financial records as offline as much as possible. I couldn’t get away from some of it, but I could certainly keep some types of records offline, or at least keep my own records so no one could then go in and change stuff and say I was wrong. I learned early in college that you had to keep records of everything because electronic records got lost and mistakes got made more regularly than they should. When most of your money is just digital on a card, you really don’t have the option to be totally archaic and non-tech, no matter how you might feel on the subject.


Long explanation to say I needed to pull out all the office supplies to start organizing my life better. And I knew I would keep them in the big antique safe that was behind the wall between the old billiard room and the master bedroom closet where Mitch had stored the financial and legal papers in a fireproof filing cabinet in that same space. That closet is also where all of Granddaddy’s, Uncle’s, and Dad’s guns are stored. They were in locking chests, but I knew that wouldn’t suffice if someone went snooping. And because of some stuff that I heard on the news and read online, I also decided I needed to learn to shoot. At least I knew who I could ask to help with that. Mr. Dunst, the Crew Boss that taught me how to do the stuff for the pine straw, had offered to teach Mitchell. If he wouldn’t teach me, I was sure he’d know someone who would.

Another thing I decided was that organizing all the food that was in the house and taking an inventory of it was something else that couldn’t wait. All the stories about inflation, deflation, recession, prices, scarcity, and all that etc. more than concerned me. And I had no one I could talk to about it. The people online on some of the forums acted like if you were under the age of 45 that you had way too many screws loose to mess with. Other people acted like if you were over 30 you were too far gone in the other direction. As selfish as it may sound, I missed Mitchell so bad right then I nearly couldn’t do anything more constructive than cry like a baby. It took me a bit to pull myself together.

The power went off pretty frequently at the Homeplace, even during what is now considered “the good ol’ days”. That’s why first Dad’s great uncle, and then Dad had upgraded and installed a big propane generator. The tank for it is huge and we used to call it the Giant Hippopotamus when we were little. Dad had even painted it grey and added a couple of silly “eyes” on one end and painted a “tail” on the other. I knew that the tank was nearly full because Mitchell showed me how to check the gauge and everything the way Dad had taught him. He even made me take pictures and write the instructions down and keep them in a folder called Emergency Measures. There was also a room off the garage that has a freakton of batteries in it where I can store the solar energy from the panels on the carriage house apartment roof. Dad had taken the batteries in from an investment property he flipped. The batteries were for running heavy-duty warehouse equipment, but they work for solar energy storage as well.

Problem? Dad’s tech black hole or whatever you want to call it. Every time he tried to mess with it, it wouldn’t work right, and he got so frustrated he stopped messing with it until he could hire someone to set it up and show him what he was doing wrong. Mitchell always said he should have just had me do it, but I think Dad thought of it as a safety issue. Plus, no grown man wants to think his barely teenage daughter can do that stuff when he can’t even touch it without having it go haywire and make strange noises like a chicken with hemorrhoids.

So, the solar power system was something else that needed to get put on my “Do It Now” list along with all the food. And speaking of food, even I had noticed how expensive that stuff was getting because I’d started to do it so Mitch and the twins and I wouldn’t starve because fast food was draining us dry for a while. Mom and Memaw had always collected fruit from the trees here on the Homeplace and gone to the produce stations and stuff to have things to can when they didn’t get enough out of the gardens they had. I decided it was going to be very smart to continue to do that as soon as I could because the twins had really scarfed some food during the two weeks I’d had them, and sandwich meat wasn’t exactly cheap even if it was easier than thinking. I wasn’t ready to start a garden yet, but I could try and do the bulk grocery shopping like they used to. I added to collect coupons and stuff to my to do list and I spent a little time every night online finding recipes and coupons for good food, but also to make it cheaper than buying the frozen stuff at the store. I added keeping an eye on Sav-A-Lot as well because they would have meat sales at least once a month, even though the sales prices didn’t look anything like they had when I was learning this stuff from Mom and Memaw. My brain was finally unfreezing, and I started getting good ideas instead of fritzy fears.

So, when I thought of sandwich meat it brought up sandwich bread. The one thing Mom and Memaw had never done was bake their own bread as they considered it too much trouble, but they both had bread machines for just in case, and they even shared a grain grinder. I decided that was something that I could learn to do and added going to the library to see if there were any books on using bread machines if I couldn’t find anything online[1]. And when I took a glance, holy smokes, just making some basic notes there were fifty different recipes I wanted to try. To my running grocery list I added bread flour, bread yeast, oil, and some basic seasonings that I’d seen mentioned in a few of the most basic of the recipes.

It was just one thing snowballing into another which was why I was late going to bed, dealing with dreams, and waking up bleary eyed. By the time I had cleaned up the leftovers, added more items to my grocery list and menu that would last me for about a week with stuff already in the frig, and hung a few sticky notes on the kitchen cabinets of where I wanted to start putting stuff, I decided I wouldn’t say no to a cup of hot cocoa in place of lunch, and needed to do more than spin my wheels and write on sticky notes.

The first thing I did was tackle the room that was supposed to be a library. I opened the boxes in there and put the books on the shelves. They weren’t in any particular order, which made my brain itch, but at least it emptied boxes and started looking more like what the room was supposed to be. Mom had gotten the old, silverfish and bookworm eaten up books out of there a long time ago but had never gotten around to doing more than that. Mitch and I had gotten the old moth-eaten rug out off the floor before we started stacking boxes of books to be put away. I dusted as I went but polishing the shelves, buffing out the dings in the wood, and organizing the books was just going to have to wait until I had more time on my hands or when the twins were there to be extra hands. I sprayed the shelves and sat out a bunch of borax before the books were put away, but that was a necessity.

That was a good couple of hours spent and it kept me warm. I was also able to get a lot of cardboard out of the house which made the bugs sad and me happy. Next, I took my life in my hands and went upstairs to start emptying a new area of the house that as far as I know had never been touched, not even by Mom and Dad. The finished attic area.

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[1] 60+ Delicious Bread Machine Recipes - Bread Dad

 

[Lake Lili]

Thanks Kathy! I love what your characters find in your attics...
Lili

 

[Mr Bill]

Trash or treasure, that is the question.

 

[Kathy in FL]

Thanks Kathy! I love what your characters find in your attics...
Lili

I finally got around to cleaning mine out year before last. Most of it left by the previous owner including things like pavers, bricks, and tiles. Lord it was a horrible mess.