Detritus of Parenthood

We are on the young side of our local peer group, so you would imagine that Wife and I would have been on the receiving end of some sage advice regarding the "Empty Nest Syndrome".  You know, how life radically changes once the last kid gets so tired of living at home that they decamp for some squalid quarters elsewhere.

But it has not actually been as advertised.

Maybe because so many households have the young folks keep popping back in for a few months stay between stretches of borderline economic viability.  For the record in our house gone means gone.  I tell them "This is now a Lifeboat, not a Cruise Ship".

You do notice a few changes.  Milk consumption dropped radically in the post kid era.  We now buy it by the half gallon and sometimes toss a bit of that after a while.  Once we could have used a pipeline run direct from the supermarket.

But like a lot of households we have reminders of the kids all over the place.  But since neither the household nor the kids are typical, these reminders are not the usual sports trophies and graduation photos....

A Russian surplus gas mask sits next to a muskrat trap.  The keen eyed will also note the entire "Captain Underpants" series of silly kids books.

Six pounds of cheese dip.  I seem to recall it was a gift to one of my sons from a long forgotten girl friend.  It is not something you would really want to eat, but one does feel a reluctance to toss it.  Oh, not for any sentimental reasons, just thinking how long you could survive on this holed up in some future unspecified Apocalyptic event.

A monkey carved from a coconut.  This actually could be their mother's fault.  She likes her some Thrift Sales.

A disco ball is just such a convenient place to park a fez.

Uh, this is sort of odd.  The Wrench/Knife of Truth and Justice.  It looks to have been cobbled together from part of one of our combat robots.  With the benefit of hindsight, was it really a good idea to put Mechanized Carnage into the hands of someone with this kind of sense of humor?