On Saturday...

When your uncle is your father, you might find that some of your siblings are also your cousins. As it turns out, my great-great uncle is also my great-great grandfather, in this sense: My great-great grandmother Marian was married to two men, one at a time. They were brothers, and the first was tragically killed at a young age. The brother, Manuel, spawned my Granny and six of her sisters, who were couslings with two from the earlier uncle-father.

Tonight I am relishing in the memories from my granny's early childhood. The childhood was on a farm north of Shoshone, Idaho, where the Ineases came to homestead, all the way from the Azore Islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. These were the roaring twenties, and then the not-so-roaring thirties when Granny lived her first ten years. Oh, the good old days.

Granny had only two Becker boy grandkids, mostly because she is my maternal grandmother, so the Becker comes from a different family. I am one of those grandsons, and my brother Trent is the other. It doesn't look like we'll be siring each other's kids, since we're both married with spawn of our own, but you never really know what the future has in store for you.

Today, though, my brother and I found ourselves together with a chainsaw each, sawing trunkwood for dollars. It is the last chance we'll have to do that for a while, as Trent and family are trekking back across the USA towards Shoshone, Idaho. Well, they probably won't get as far as Shoshone, but it is a sort of homesteading trip of their own too. I have enjoyed the blessing of living near my broski for over one and a half years, and in that time we've had some good family times. Nicole has shared with Bonnie the ups and downs of Becker life, and we were all tickled to have an intimate part in Little Ila's first four plus months of life, which has brought in this not-so roaring decade. We all ate some Jamabalaya and some homemade apple turnovers, and for now we've bade adieu.

But now you might be wondering about our family future plans as well. They are up in the air. I have forecast another month to finish my most important Baton Rouge project with our Sparrow house. Then we'll have to see what happens after that. Trent was a great help getting done with that, and if money was no issue we would have finished sooner. Of course, if money was no issue I guess I probably wouldn't be working on such a project.

If money was no issue what would I be doing, you ask? Probably setting up an astronomer's delight bed and breakfast observer's ranch in the middle of a lot of land in the middle of nowhere Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, or West Texas. Or Idaho or Oregon or Montana or Colorado. Or I guess Canada or Mexico, or elsewhere, really, if money is no issue. I like the idea of raising our children elsewhere, especially where they may easily become bilingual.

Isaac is working on understanding our English language, and Orry is working out the code we use to read and write it. Annie is working on making sense of an upside-down world where some of the things look familiar and they make lots of coo noises and smiles, but really all that matters is something she'll come to know someday as comfort.

While I'm making up words like couslings, let me also say tha the Japanese Magnolias are wrapping up their lovely Pre-Spring show. I have come to call them Japagnolias. I know, it's only two syllables shorter, but the cadence helps it roll of the tongue smoother.



And, now, I'm another half-day older, not accounting for time-zone changes or that extra second that was sandwiched between 2008 and 2009.

Mmm, those were delicious apple turnovers.

Thank you for reading.