My Mom, plus Curly has a good day

First, my mom.

I love my mother, but sometimes she is very weird. I've mentioned that she has hardly ever visited us. This is not true of my other siblings, particularly of my brother. Mom will drop everything to visit her one and only son. This is her right. My brother and and his wife and baby live outside of Boston with their two cats. (Mom has her own cat, Honey, who is sweet as her name.)

 (This is Honey, so cute)

Currently, my brother et al are in Europe visiting his friends and her family. (She is German.) And tomorrow Mom is putting Honey at the cat sitter and flying up to Boston. Why, you ask? Why, to cat sit my brother's cats for a week.

I am not making this up. I wish I were. Mom won't come to see us, but she'll put her own cat out and babysit their cats.  So by extension, his cats are more important than my family.

*sigh*

Moving on....

Today I went to Ikea and scored some cheap bowls, plates, and glasses. One of the boxes fell on the floor, and someone got inside.

BTW, this little bad kitten loves to eat corn on the cob and thawed frozen peas. Really. Nom nom nom. He likes regular kitty food too.  He is a strange little kitten.

Now on to the big story.

My son Curly (my problem child) has been useless all summer, unemployed, grumpy and not showing any signs of making any forward progress. But he had a banner day yesterday.

First, DH took him down to take his driver’s license test, which Curly passed. (Curly is 18 and we hadn’t let him get his license before.) Of course, now he wants free access to our minivan, which ain’t happening until he comes up with the cash to pay the additional insurance costs. But Curly was jazzed about the license.

The second thing is bigger.

Our neighbor and longtime friend Bubba works for a cable company contractor. Bubba knows all about Curly and has helped me a lot with managing Curly, especially when DH was out of town. Bubba got his son G (a close buddy of Curly’s) a job at the cable contractor), and the two of them ride in Bubba’s company truck to work every day. Bubba was able to wrangle a job for Michael too! The job is – get this – digging ditches! It’s about all someone with no job skills can get these days. Curly went off to work with Bubba and G at 6:30  this morning, with work gloves, lunch, a hat and sunblock.  Bubba will make sure he behaves.

Last night Curly was so excited he could hardly sleep. I expect he will be asleep very early tonight.

The job is great because:

• It keeps Curly busy and out of trouble.
• He will be too exhausted to stay up late and cause trouble.
• He will earn some money – and pay rent to us.  (And yes, we will enforce this.)
• He may learn the true value of a dollar.
• He may save some money.
• He won’t be so bored and mope around.
• He may learn that skills (e.g. education) are of value. Maybe he’ll figure out what he wants to do.
• He won’t have time to harass his brothers and me so much!

The whole family is delighted about Curly's new job.  It’s all good!