Third Time’s the Charm

It seems so very strange to have a house full of teenagers now. When I renovated the house, I built up a playground for the children to play in, not realizing that all but one of my babies would grow up to hate the outdoors. The only ones who use the playground now are Jesse and my brothers when they come to visit. Jesse is not very graceful on the trampoline.

What occupies my sons most are their school work and their own little side projects.

Jeffrey loves to tinker with his inventions. He is always in the garage working on something. He’s taken to selling his inventions at the Landgraab Swap & Sell and thinks that I should do the same with the older bottles of my father’s Bachelor Nectar.

“What is the use, Mom,” he asked me one day, “of having a nectary if we don’t profit from it?”

I have to admit that he makes sense, but I would not know where to begin to sell the wine that we have.

One of Jeffrey’s inventions is a charming little man made out of scrap metal. There is something about him, this little metal man. His eyes are very brilliant and when I asked Jeffrey how me made them, he surprised me by saying he did not know. That the eyes just seemed to ‘be there’ when he was finished.

Eyes are the windows to the soul and if you ask me, this gnome is more man than metal.

Though no one will believe me, I have seen him move… flitting around the grounds like he owns the place.

Jesse has been an attempt at bonding with Isaac and Kenneth.

For reasons that make no sense to me, the three of them have taken up fishing. Neither Isaac or Kenneth like the outdoors, but they both say they want to go fishing with their father.

They started out at the park across the street from our home. It went well and it was close by, so that when the boys got tired of the great outdoors, they could simply come home.

Several months into this little social experiment, however, they decided to go fishing at the cemetery. It’s rumored that there are different fish there – vampire fish and death fish. The boys want to catch one in the worst way. It’s all they’ve been talking about for a while now. So finally, they went – going at night because that’s when everyone says the unique fish were more likely to be in abundance.

The trip was interesting for them, but not very productive as far as catching fish went. They did, however, come with several hundred pounds of scrap metal and stone for Jeffrey’s inventions and the tallest fish tale of them all.

I find it all very amusing, although I am concerned that now all three of them are obsessed with fishing. It’s all they talk about now! Jesse even talks about fish in his sleep!

I suspect the meteor messed with their heads.

And now, dear family archive, I must bid you a farewell. It seems as though my time tell the family’s story has come to an end.

Helena and Jeffrey are young adults now, so now it is time to pass the torch over to her.

We threw them a huge party, though, and invited all of the family to come. My brother’s and Uncle Alexander showed up and all of my cousins and their spouses. Cousin Galen played the guitar and everyone had an awesome time.

Afterward, there was a ton of clean up, and I complained about it to Gramma Bella as I cleaned up the last of the dishes. But I do agree with her that it was worth it. She threw one for mother as well, even though it tapped her resources for the unforeseeable future.

Speaking of tapping resources… I have been a lot of thinking about the house now that Helena is poised to start her own life. The house we have is fine, but there is no secondary master suite for what will be the secondary couple in the home.

So I went to Jesse and asked him what he thought we should do. It might have been the first time in a very long time that we spoke to one another about anything with more depth than a bowl of cereal. The forest of his discontent is very deep indeed, but he still found his way to a clearing where we could talk.

He surprised me by saying that he had some savings set aside from his books, and that, perhaps we could use them for to build a small pool house in undeveloped section of the property.

“We don’t have a pool,” I pointed out.

“We could build one, Fern,” he told me.

I agreed that we could. “But who would live there?” I asked.

“We could lived there, once Helena starts her own family.”

It didn’t, he explained, have to be a huge building. A small pool and a couple of rooms… a bedroom, bathroom and maybe a small kitchenette. Nothing like my beautiful palace, but a quiet and cozy place to sleep at night.

In a few short months, the construction was done, and I must say that I do find the pool house to be a very relaxing place. I often go there just to sit in the wicker chairs and think about things.

Mostly, I think about Helena and how much she is changing as a young adult. I wonder if I really know my daughter at all. We do garden together, most days, but usually it is just me offering her advise on how to clear out the weeds while she works.

Lately, she has been spending time in town, and the park and other places, and hear from my brother Gyes that she has been keeping the company of a young man by the name of Brandon Bartholomew.

It seems to be quite serious, and I know that her family is about to begin.

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Simmer’s Notes: No heir poll this time around, as Helena is the only female and this is a matriarchy, after all. Below are her stats, in case you’re wondering. (Click to view bigger image.)

Tags: alexander bachelor/alexander goth, brandon bartholomew, fern bachelor, galen bachelor, gen 3, gen 4, gyes bachelor, helena bachelor, isaac bachelor, jeffrey bachelor, jesse lum, kenneth bachelor

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Bella On Her Own Terms, Notes from the Simmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.