An Oldie but Goodie

Context: This is from August of 2003...a little email I got from my mom (Briggie) about my dad (RFE, Chief) entitled "A New Woman for Dad".

Hi everybody,
> Dad... who is addicted to bread, I am convinced of it now...
> had bread withdrawal tonight before he went to help Joe on his house...
> I bought a loaf 2 days ago and it is gone already and I slipped...
> I did not run to the store to get him another loaf...
> Knowing him for over 30 years (or do I???)
> I was able to tell by the way he swept
> through the house and out the door that he was NOT happy with his woman.
> I am sure he thought about trading his present wife (that is me) in for a
> new model ... so I decided to get him a "New Woman"
> I even placed her on his side of the bed...
> She looks actually pretty cute on the flowered sheet...
>
> Kids, are you ready to meet your "Stepmother"???

See Below.

A Rough Week

Dear Liebe:

Its been a most tiring and difficult week here.
Thursday afternoon I managed to sneak off while Chief
and Briggie were eating dinner (twas fish, so i didnt
beg for bits) before shooting hot date night.

I headed up the road to chase cows or emus or
something big.....But then i smelled rrrrr..rrr
RRRabbit, Brer, Easter, one each.

Now keep in mind that I am very accomplished at
chasing squirrels. they run around in the woods or
fields or lawns....with no underbrush.

This dang rabbit however, went straight into a briar
patch. Naturally, using my superb yorkie little nose
I followed him in there. ...

Well, I had a heck of time with the briars. briars
snarl my superb Yorkie hair. It got worse, so bad
that when i got out of there, I had a big briar
snarled in my belly hair and my hind legs and my tail.
Only my front legs worked.

This was a predicament to beat all. i managed to drag
myself home, and got there just ahead of briggie and
chief at 9pm...Omi thought i was bad hurt.....

And then chief figured it out, When he reached for
his Leatherman....I knew it would be a bad go.
Briggie held me up by the halter, and he cut the
briars into small pieces and then ouch! ouch!, pulled
em off me. agggr...

so as soon as they let me loose i went and threw up in
living room......

This morning, at 5:30 am, i woke chief to get me
breakfast....I knew there was a problem when he
rattled the food can, and NO RATTLE....Oh oh!.

then he started looking for cereal and i heard him
mumbling about ...."Natural flax cereal...fake
Cheerios. Freddy rice bites"....

Liebe, i hope you never have to eat flax cereal and
fake cheerios or rice bites for breakfast...now i know
why chief is cross in the mornings sometimes.

Uncle Charlie

Twenty-First Century

family:

apparently our FULL entry to 21st century took a
mis-step or a wrong turn or we fell off the wagon..

we now know how to vcr tape a program while we watch
it. thats good.

our attempt to tape ie have the thing turn on, tape,
while we were away....

well somehow second segment of 10 commandments ended
up looking like a sitcom in new york city.....and then
the tape ran out.

i thought it looked too easy....kind of like the
promise of turbotax or somesuch, i suppose. here i
was so looking forward to taping

Benny Hinn's easter service at "the Mirage" in las
vegas......darn.

easter cheerup therefore consists of putting bunny
ears on bowling pins, paintin em bright pink, and on
saturday taking them to gun range and .....
well, it wont be pretty

Time Change

Letter to children

Dear children, and associated in-laws and outlaws:

Reuel and Brigitte have finally made it to 21st century! Pacific daylight saving time hit us again…and Briggie was frantically punching the buttons on the clock in the Merc. After some minutes and many miles, she gave up. I reached over, hit SEEK, clock hour jumped ahead one unit, we are there!!!!


Knowledge and skill is wonderful. No longer do we have to drive around for months looking at the car clock and trying to remember if we are forward or back and did we? Nor do we have to unhook the battery in cars and remember to re-fasten it exactly 11 hours later!

And inside the house, wow! That was really a bummer, trying to cut the power in the fall and keep it off just exactly one hour so all the electric timers on everything would synchronize. Springtime is lots tougher in spring when we had to keep things off 23 hours. This kind of solution was only partially successful because then all the automatic dates would be wrong. Is it AM or PM and is it really 5th or now the 6th? Aiiee!

So to Joe and Dan and Martina and Ken and Bryan, all your hard earned training hours and patience in teaching us this complicated stuff, has paid off.

Maybe in a couple years we will try to master the VCR thing hiding under the TV.