"Why, Soitenly!"

Jan and I drove up to Stockton over the weekend to visit with Randy and his family and to play in their Sunday night bluegrass gospel singing. I finally broke down and picked up a mandolin and learned enough chords to get me by a couple of songs. The mandolin is a great sounding instrument, but I have a LOT to learn before I can say I play mandolin along with guitar and banjo … and I barely can claim banjo status these days due to not practicing very much. Most of what I practice is for the praise band at Chorus Church and these contemporary community churches … for some strange reason … don’t use a banjo much in their worship. Go figure??

Anyway, as you know, we always enjoy time spent with Randy and Beth. I also returned the mandolin on Tuesday because the lower strings caused a rattle. Didn’t notice that until Randy pointed it out. Give the guy a doctoral degree and he starts trashing your instruments … sheesh.

After much research I finally decided to go with a rather non-traditional mandolin (acoustic / electric) made by Ovation. I was sure if I got one, it would cause some minimal rift in my relationship with Steve Hay since he is a purist when it comes to bluegrass instruments, but I talked with him the other day and he actually had some good things to say about the Ovation. Even played one for a while in a bluegrass band.

Enough of that … these letters are supposed to chronicle the grandbabies.

While Josh and Heather were taking some much needed time away in Hawaii, Lilly was coming into her own! She found a plug in air freshener with a country apple scent and somehow managed to get it all over her. Smelled like a cheap French cat house the rest of the day. Not that I know what a cheap French cat house would smell like, but it just seemed the right description for the moment.

Monday night when I was helping Janice not only get the babies down, but also trying to get the trash out to the curve for a Tuesday morning pick-up, Janice placed a trash can at the top of the stairs on the stair side of the gate that keeps the babies from going downstairs unannounced. Lilly crawled over to check things out and stuck her hand through the gate just far enough to push the trashcan over, spilling dirty diapers and used wipes all down the first flight of steps and onto the middle landing. In a way I was sort of proud of her! Up to this point, she’s been so quiet and reserved.

On Tuesday evening, Josh and Heather’s flight home was delayed, so we brought all three of the children to our house so Janice could shower and wash her hair, and to just get them out. At one point, they were all three sitting at the kitchen sliding glass door, looking out at Chipper. It was a Rockwell painting waiting to happen. I grabbed my iPhone to capture the picture only to have Chipper decide she was no longer interested in those little people on the other side of the glass.

Then I heard Logan screaming! Not the kind of squealing he likes to do just to hear himself squeal. Not the mimicking squeal to echo Jackson’s squeal, but a scream of either pain or aggravation. I turned to see what was  happening and saw that Lilly had him pushed up against the wall by the door and was trying to eat his face! She does that a lot … trying to eat things. Sofas. Chairs. Ottomans. Anything she can get her tooth into. The way Jackson and Logan tend to run over her at times, I think she finally let Logan know she was not going to be the pushover any longer. I did rescue Logan before he looked like a scene out of a Hannibal Lecter novel.

On our way back from Stockton, I got a voice mail from Jackson. He needed a guitar pick. Didn’t want a pick … he needed a pick. Josh says the twins were making so much noise, Jackson couldn’t hear himself playing his ukulele they brought back from their trip to Hawaii.

He needs a lot these days. “Grindaddy, I need your iPhone.” Not, “Can I see your iPhone,” but a need to have it.

Anyway, on Tuesday night, we took him over to the house to look through my picks and get the one(s) he needs. He liked the green ones. But there is a story even before the pick story … we had removed his car seat for our trip to Stockton and had not put it back in the car. That bothered him very much, so when we got to the house (yes, Janice held him on the trip from his house to our house), he would not even go into the house to look at picks until we got that car seat put back in the car! “Jackson needs car seat” he told us.

I need a new mandolin. Why doesn’t that work as well for my needs as it does for Jackson’s needs? I need a grandfather to fix my needs!

As for one of your grandbabies, we stopped on the way back from Stockton to have dinner with Jessica and see her apartment now that it’s all set up. The last time we were there was moving day and it was chaos! She is considering a change in vocation now that her two year commitment to the school has been fulfilled. Her supervisor does not want to lose her, but she can make so much more money in a private sector and have the opportunity for advancement that she doesn’t have now. Plus, many of the companies will pay for her graduate school, whereas the school is only helping her with part of the tuition. Something for us to keep in our prayers.

Maybe we can get Jackson to call some of these companies on our iPhone (he knows more about those phones than we do) and tell them they “need” to hire his Aunt Jessica. It seems to work with me.