Memories, Boynadoes, and Grandbrat 4.0

Management’s Yearly Christmas Column

We are down to the home stretch this week. The Messenger office is working overtime to get two weeks of stories together hoping to squeeze a few days off before the new year. Packages are being delivered into the late hours and our beloved editor is busily picking up the slack at home and at work. So while he is otherwise preoccupied, we turned to Management for her annual Christmas column.

We have a sign outside our back door that says: “Please excuse our mess, memories are being made.” I thought that should be fair warning for anything encountered beyond our doorstep.

I marvel at the well-kept homes I see on a daily basis and wonder to myself how in the world folks really do that without a full-time cleaning crew and gardener. As we get closer to Christmas, I anticipate calmly preparing our home for a magazine worthy celebration; but something happens in my translation of “magazine worthy.” It just seems fairly obvious to me that magazine worthy means Better Homes and Gardens, House Beautiful or Country Living. Unfortunately, the magazine I come closest to resembling is Mother Earth News. While there is nothing wrong with that publication, I just don’t envision hatching baby quail in our kitchen and using the crock pot as an incubator as activities that will prepare our home for holiday guests. “The grandbrats will love it!” exudes the editor as another memory is made.  My memory will be of the feed dust that has covered every surface including the spider webs in the corners, but hey, memories are being made!

The small boynado that descends on our home each week is most certainly memorable. A state of rowdy disorder descends as Reckless, Fearless and Dauntless emerge on the scene. In most cases I cannot tell whether their shenanigans are by their own ingenuity or instigated by the editor—their illustrious Faux Pa. I found one of my solar lights in the crawl space under the house. When I was scratching my head and deciding which grandbrat was to blame, Reckless, the oldest of the three declared that Faux Pa needed a light when he was working on the plumbing. So now I’m caught in a conundrum. Do I praise the brat for his quick thinking? Or do I admonish him for not finding the flashlight? Or, did Faux Pa instruct him to get the solar light because they could not find the flash light and it never got put back? In which case, who is to blame? Reckless or Faux Pa?

As I carefully exited that scenario without losing Grand Ma’am points I courageously invited Fearless to help decorate our Christmas tree. It took two days and some wine-ing on my part. The thought of putting my favorite ornaments handed down from my grandmothers was quickly tossed aside but thankfully not broken.  If it was flashy, gaudy or cheap, it made the cut—often on the same branch. I felt my left eye start to twitch as Fearless hung the ornaments from his fingers and flung them onto the tree as he giggled. I’ve nicknamed him Fearless because of the lack of fear he has of plucking my last nerve. Faux Pa moves in rather quickly with a refill and the kid is safe again.

Meanwhile, Dauntless, who was napping, has mastered the door latch and has slipped outside on the windy, cold 20-degree day in search of his merry band of brothers. No ladder is too tall, no rooftop is too steep and heaven help us if there happens to be a ladder leaning against a rooftop. This kid should have been a member of the starship Enterprise. His unformed, unspoken goal at two is to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before– including his parents and grandparents, which is pretty far considering his Faux Pa.

Faux Pa managed to corral the young explorer who was wearing nothing but a t-shirt and a diaper, as he passed the chicken pen heading down to the back forty. Undeterred by his lack of clothing, his nap time was over and he was on a mission.

We will have Grandbrat 4.0 arriving shortly. He’s coming into a rowdy bunch. Nameless will have a few days to be coddled, but then it will be time to Boynado Up. I’m sure he will be up to the task. The question is, will we?