My Dear Sweet Sainted Wife made it back to Blytheville with granddaughters Leah-Bo and Alexandra Wednesday night, only a day behind schedule, which is pretty good, I guess. Turns out Alex had some kind of Christmas performance Tuesday night that required her presence in Columbia, so that set their departure time back a day.
Still, that'll give the girls three or four days in Blytheville, which is about as long as they can be entertained in the midst of winter anyway.
As you well know, there is absolutely nothing to do in Blytheville for kids other than school and ball games and such. Come to think of it, there nothing to do for adults, either, other than work and what few sidelines come along to distract us.
There's not even a sauna, but that's a complaint for another time.
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Anyway, the best thing the girls ran across was two really big boxes that formerly housed a couple of giant-sized bean bags My Dear Sweet Sainted wife bought for the girls' Christmas presents ... until she figured out there wasn't enough room on the living room floor at their house for all the stuff already there plus two giant-sized bean bags.
So we'll take them to the river house where there's room -- we can use the extra seating when we meet up there with one of Jeff or Kit's crews on the scene at the same time.
Back to the boxes. The girls taped them together, and with a little design help from Grandma, fixed a pretty intricate door system which allowed for latching as well as release of the latch from the inside. All I contributed to the project was cutting a little peep hole for Leah-Bo to spy out of as necessary.
With a flashlight inside, they had all the comforts of home.
Plus they used up a couple of Magic Markers decorating the outside and it really looks cool.
Nothing like a couple of big cardboard boxes to keep little ones happy.
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Tuesday's Courier News had a couple of long-anticipated headlines, one about the IRS decision to abate a little over $700,000 of the city's penalties and interest due on the city's failure to make payroll deduction deposits; the other reported that results of the State Police investigation of that sore subject was en route to the prosecuting attorney's office.
Any time now, we should know something about something, and I guess that's better than nothing.
What I'm interested in is who's going to come up with the still-more-than-$1-million the city -- actually Blytheville taxpayers -- are getting bamboozled out of due to somebody's extremely irresponsible decision to hang onto the IRS's money. I want fines, jail time or both.
From whom, I don't know. That's what the State Police investigation should reveal.
We still haven't heard anything from the FBI. They are known to be pretty good investigators. Maybe they'll come up with something the State Police missed.
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Due to a day during which I possessed not the first hint of concentration or coordination, Dr. Matt Jones easily collected on our drink bet, bringing him to within one win of evening our career-long battle of the bogeys. The weather has turned cold and it's been know to stay that way a while in December and January, so maybe a month or two off will do me some good.
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I do look forward to some time off the golf course so maybe I can get back in he habit of working out at the hospital. Lord knows (he can tell by looking at my bathroom scale) that I could use it.
dtennyson@blythevillecourier.com