I certainly wasn’t expecting the shit that landed in my lap the next day. After the hell that is Sunday brunch in my house, with the grandparents and Cy joining us, I escaped to my garage to tinker with something.

Every year or so I like to upgrade my sons’ bikes because they outgrow them as fast as I build them. I could hear laughter coming from inside and that was good enough for me.

They make me nuts, but there’s no better feeling than having my whole family under one roof. Kat’s in her element because she has more than enough people at her beck and call.

It’s the only time the pothead acts like he has any damn sense these days. For all his bullshit he’s a grandpa down to his toenails. Of course by the time he and his wife leaves I’m gonna have to undo half the shit they did.

The four grandparents, well five including Cy, thinks it’s their mission to outdo one another in spoiling my kids. My sisters and their ilk will be

here later for dinner just to round shit up.

I’ll be praying for Monday morning to come so I could escape to my shop and bury myself in work. It’s the only peace I get these days since Kat and her horde took over my damn house.

“I can smell you coming. What do you want dad?” I picked up my head and watched him, Cy and Drake my father in law make their way down the steps into the garage.

Drake is the sanest out the bunch so I looked at his face to get a bead on whatever fuckery the other two were up to.

“I’ma need you and the boys to come out to my place and help me put this new greenhouse together.” Squirrely fuck. Two guesses what that shit is for.

The only time I ever saw him hopped up like this in the past is when he was talking medicine. I guess you can say the shit he’s into now is a different kind of medicine.

“Dad, you don’t need a greenhouse for recreational weed. Why can’t you just buy your shit from your guy like you always do?” Elena’s gonna have a fit if

I help him with this shit.

“Well I was thinking, now that I have all this free time on my hands I can experiment.”

“How the fuck do you experiment with pot?” He went into some shit that I didn’t understand about strains and what the fuck.

“Never mind, sorry I asked.” I find it ironic that as the son, I’m the one lecturing him on drug use, this shit is all kinds a twisted.

“Does Elena know?”

“Already taken care of.” From his twirling brows shit I didn’t even wanna know how he pulled that one off. Nasty!

Drake wasn’t saying shit, but from all the sighing and huffing I got the idea he wasn’t too pleased. As the sheriff I’m pretty sure the pothead’s weed consumption was a bone of contention, but what’s he gonna do? The shit’s legal.

“Daniel, you got grandkids.” Here we go, same argument with these two. Cy was minding his own but I already know whose side he’s on. Kat swears he’s innocent as a lamb, but what does she know? She still thinks Mengele’s gonna turn out okay.

“So? You’re acting like I’m gonna light up and pass it around. When they’re older if they wanna have a smoke with their grandpa then we’ll talk. Besides it’s a good learning experience. Catalina and I are gonna work on coming up with a cure for some things.”

I almost dropped the damn bike on my foot. He totally ignored my glare as I eyed the pipe he pulled from his pocket. “Daniel, what the fuck!”

“Chill son, it’s just a plant, besides she won’t be smoking it, that’s my job, she’s just going to be doing research.” He tapped some shit out of the pipe and refilled it.

“Dad. My kid is five years old what the hell are you talking about?” Is this what the hell Kat and her mother in law wants? When did I fall down the rabbit hole?

“Don’t smoke that in here.” He grinned and headed for the exit with Cy hot on his heels. I did not save that old man off the side of the street so Daniel could smoke out his damn lungs.

“Can’t you do something about those two?” Drake shrugged his shoulders and looked off in the

direction they’d gone. “What do you want me to do? The law says it’s legal.”

“Drag Daniel’s ass in for being a menace or some shit. There has got to be a law on the books somewhere that you can find to deal with his ass. He’s gonna teach your granddaughter how to grow weed.”

“Now Colt, that’s not what he said.” Now see, that’s why I stay out of shit. He can’t make up his damn mind whose side he’s on. Just like his clueless ass daughter.

The three of them disappeared and I was left in peace once again. That shit didn’t last because there’s always someone coming and going around here.

My sons are always into some shit but at least with them I know my house will still be standing. Their latest shit is making idiot videos which they thought they were going to post online until I threatened their lives.

They were at it again with one of the million gadgets their mother got them. I guess I can’t blame her for spoiling her kids, but must

everything she gets them be a recipe for disaster? She knows nothing about boys.

“Caleb!” I snagged the ten year old as the whole crew ran past me on the way to some fuckery. The older they get, the more shit they get into.

If they did that drone shit over these people’s backyards again and cause them to show up at my door with their shit I’ma either shoot the asshole neighbors or send my boys off to military school.

Kat has no idea what the hell those shits are for, but her sons asked her for it, the SEALs gave it their seal of approval, Mancini with his spying ass thought it was a good idea, and I’m the one who has to deal with the fallout.

“Yes daddy.”

“What are you boys up to?” I saw the struggle between loyalty to his brothers and the ass whipping he was sure to get if he lied to me.

“Um, we’re just gonna go into the fields on the other side of the house. Nana said it’s our property so…” It’s true, our closest neighbor is a little ways down on the other side of us and to the right is mostly my acreage, but they’re not fooling me.

Those drone shits can travel, especially the one they have, that is not a damn toy because in their mother’s fucked up head, the more expensive it is, the better it must be.

After the first complaint I checked the recordings myself to make sure they weren’t spying on anyone like the neighbors thought, and they weren’t but I can see the room for confusion.

I try to be fair when dealing with people, okay sometimes. But their mother and grandparents are a whole other matter.

“If anyone bothers you and your brothers come get me.” He nodded and ran after them leaving me to wonder what had happened to my life. Fucking Kat.

I remember the days of peace and sanity. The days before I saw her doing tricks on a bike, before she zapped me and turned me into this. I just shook my head and went back to my shit.

It’s too late to turn back now, she’s got me by the balls. I did my breathing shit and tried not to lose my mind. Something that anyone who has kids would tell you is a daily exercise.

If I’m not worrying about their future, I’m terrified of their now. My twins are fifteen and I know those two are going to be freaks. The shit they get up to does not bear repeating.

I stay in their shit as much as I do Caitiebear’s and I have to say, my daughter is an angel compared to her brothers.

I can’t say shit because they’re more like me than anything else. I can’t wait for their asses to go off to college. Every other day it’s some shit.

I didn’t even know what my neighbors looked like until my boys started to grow. If I wasn’t getting complaints about them riding hell bent for leather up and down the street on their dirt bikes, it was ATVs on the property.

I had to tell that fuck as long as my kids were on their own property they could do what the fuck they want. He and his sour faced wife weren’t too happy, but what the fuck.

ATVs are meant to be loud and it’s not like it’s at night while they’re sleeping because my kids aren’t allowed outside after dark in this damn horror movie setting. The fucking sun doesn’t know what this place looks like after seven on any given day.

They already think I’m an uneducated thug because of my bikes and my crew who for some reason likes to fuck with them just because, so whenever he gets brave enough to come to my door I live up to his expectations.

Of course in the beginning I tried to be nice, but that only seemed to give them the idea that they could dictate shit to me. So now they know if they fuck with my kids they may or may not live to see another day.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those parents who think their kids can do no wrong, but I was a kid once myself and like I said, I stay on top of my kids’ shit.

My boys are looking for bigfoot and dead bodies in the surrounding woods and cornfields with that drone shit.

A few months ago they’d caught video of a clown in the middle of nowhere, scared the fuck outta their mother, but they thought it was fun.

That’s when they got the bright idea to post it

online, but I don’t trust that shit so I nixed it. When they take their ass off to college they can do whatever the hell they like.

But as long as they’re in my house with their mother and sisters I’m not too jazzed about letting the outside world in. Shit doesn’t make any sense.

Kat with her know it all ass says I’m being too sensitive, but again, she doesn’t know half the shit I do. And I know for damn sure the predators are using that online shit to look for prey.

With each passing year there seems to be something new you have to look out for, especially if you have kids. Things keep changing and not all of it for the better.

The assholes that be don’t seem to realize that the more technology grows, the more ammunition they’re giving the criminal minded among us. As a dad I have to stay ten steps ahead of that shit.

I don’t teach my kids to be kind to everyone and I sure as fuck don’t teach my daughters that be polite to stranger’s bullshit.

I teach them not to fuck with any motherfucker that I didn’t approve while teaching their brothers

how to protect them until I get there.