Let Them Wear Cake

The day is a blustery, wet, wintry one here at the northern end of southern nowhere and I couldn't be more happy and content.

The better part of the last week was reluctantly spent down on the Redneck Riviera for the occasion of my second grandson's first birthday. Had it been up to me to schedule and execute the trip, it would have been a much more rapid one than the four days with 9 hour drives at either end. Miss Brenda wanted to spend some time with her folks and there's no way I'm gonna begrudge her that. When I issued her latest set of orders, she consented to let me drag her up to the hills of Mississippi and away from her folks and our growing gaggle of grandkids with the clear understanding that she could go for a visit anytime she wanted and stay for as long as she wanted. I checked and she was within her rights--there are no limitations on the leave and liberty privileges extant in her pre-nuptial enlistment papers; a grossly negligent omission on my part.

So, despite the fact that we are in the middle of two concurrent and relatively brief hunting seasons for which I yearn during the remainder of our annual wobbling orbit around ole Sol, Miss Brenda and I strapped our car to our posteriors and drove to Florida. Actually, we had a VIP in the back seat on the way down to the coast. Caleb Thomas Gregory, the hope of 21st Century civilization, fearless ladder-climber and bug-catcher, had spent the last three weeks with his Nana and Pop and was sufficiently spoiled for return to his parents. During Caleb's stay with us, the Colonel documented a heretofore unknown property of physics wherein at approximately 0900 each calendar day, following introduction of copious amounts of glucose into the bloodstream via a bowl of Sugar Sticky Crunchy Crumbly Yummy Os, a three-year old boy actually multiplies himself three-fold. When I remarked that I didn't remember our boys being so rambunctious at that age, Miss Brenda remarked with the exasperated tone that I have only heard her use with me and therefore have come to know and love as my own special reserve, "You were never around when our boys were that age!"

Saturday we celebrated Caleb's little brother Taylor's first birthday, complete with the ritual face-smearing and hair-encrusting of cake icing to the twitter of camera shutters. It is a wonder the children in my family are not more confused and conflicted--at their early birthdays we have always encouraged them to wear their cake and then at later birthdays fuss at them for being so messy. We have dozens of albums replete with photos of cake-covered toddlers at which we coo and chortle, in between admonitions to those same now older progeny to quit making messes.

Anyway, I'm back happily on my ridge at the edge of nowhere. There's hot coffee in my mug and quiet in my cave. I should be able to make it without a grandson fix for at least another month or so. Yeah, right.

Wonder what Miss Brenda is up to right now?