Dread

Happy Labor Day folks. Hope none of you have to toil today. But I imagine that it's a big honey-do day for many. Everyday is a honey-do day for me. Don't work for a living, but I have a husband, Niks, who is thirteen years older than I, so I need to do a bunch of stuff for him. Help him with his socks and shoes, button any small buttons, like that.

None of that is a problem because I love him, and because I've been married to him for all my adult life, and of course for most of my actual life. So I got The Good Years. The More-Work years don't bother me very much.

However, I'm not that crazy about his one remaining brother, who I will call Owen. 'Cause that's what everyone calls Owen. Everyone calls him Owen. I've never seen his birth certificate. That probably says Owen too. Well, doesn't say anything, you'd have to read it.

Owen is six years older than Niks. So he's now 83. I didn't like him much when he was a whole lot younger, and it's just gotten worse.

He's coming from Alaska to visit us next week. Of course we don't know exactly when. He likes to surprise folks. Once when the kids were little, Nivek came bursting into our bedroom early in the morning, all excited, "There's someone sleeping in our front yard!" he informed us.

"Probably Owen," I said. Yep. I looked down from our upstairs bedroom window, and there was a figure in a mummy-type sleeping bag on the front lawn. It was Owen. He lived in North Carolina at that time, and we live in PA. He came up on his motorcycle that time. Just droppin' in. No notice. Naturally I don't mind. You believe that, no?

He used to have his own airplane. He'd show up unannounced that way sometimes. It was always a surprise to the airport too. No flight plan. No working radio in the plane. Once he had to land in a cornfield because he had some sort of engine trouble. That guy.

I don't like to be a complaining wife. But I can play that role, and I do. Niks somehow did a lot of working late whenever Owen visited. So I got to entertain him. Fun.

Owen talks about the stock market. A lot. A WHOLE lot. Knows everything about the stock market. Except how to make money. Even when everyone else was getting rich in the market, Owen was not. Don't know how he managed that. But, still. He knows it all when it comes to the stock market. And lots of other things.

When he's here he'll be on my PC a lot, checking out the market. Hogging it up. Ah, so, some of you smart ones are saying. She's having so much trouble with her PC, but she hasn't replaced it.

Whenever Owen visits, my PC gets messed up. I don't know what he does to it, but he sure does something. So, I will not be replacing my PC until after he has come and gone again. Nope. Wouldn't be prudent. Besides, I'm that kinda girl. Just a liiiiiiittle bit spiteful.

Since daughter Acton Bell and her husband will be in Mexico during Owen's visit, I'll try to hang out at her house as much as I can. Naturally I don't know the exact day that the brother-in-law will arrive. He changes his plans on a whim. I do believe that he will arrive, sooner or later. There are some things even the great and wonderful Oz doesn't know. One of them being what Owen will do, or when he will do it.

But I do know that I'm laying my plans not to be the one stuck entertaining him all the time. Heh, heh, heh.