Tag: anger management

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Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda

It was rainy all day, so I don’t know what I expected. I got to work early, and Kim got to yapping. Otherwise it was relatively quiet all day. I was a little scattered when trying to dig into a project, so I had basically zero feeling of accomplishment all day. When I left work, I got a message from the Tesla service center that said I had 48 hours to return the loaner vehicle before I would be charged a rental fee. That felt a little dirty after they had my car in service for 31 days. I wished I had known the details of the lemon laws much earlier.

I continued straight home to pick up Eaddie, and we went to my parents’ house so Dad could practice taking some photos before her school dance. She fussed every time we brought it up, but when we finally got there, we had a little bit of fun with it. Noah got to the house just as we got back home, and I left to get some more things from the old house.

I stopped for some tacos on the way back home, and Noah and I ate. Then I tried unpacking and organizing a little bit while everyone else settled in for the night. Just before bed, I finally went out back to check the basement for water. I should have gone out days ago, because there was another foot of water in there. Unfortunately, my boots were only waterproof up to half that height. I can’t believe the seller said they had only used the sump like three times in their time in the home, because I’ve used it that many times in less than a month. I’ve got to plumb that thing in somehow.

I’ll never understand how some kids seem to hate showers. Frakin nasty.

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Stationary Turkey

I cleaned up the kitchen this morning, and had a burrito to finish up all of that stuff. I had put a turkey breast in the refrigerator last night, but it was still frozen this morning. I pulled it out and eventually got it thawed enough to stick it on the rotisserie I got a while back. Summer went to the gym, and then came back to take Eaddie dress shopping for her upcoming dance. The rotisserie didn’t work quite right, and appeared to be used, which was why I got it at a discount on Amazon. Unfortunately the motor sounded like it was skipping gears, at least in part because of my poor balancing. I ended up stopping it and letting the bird cook breast-side up.

Once the turkey was cooking, I ran to the old house to feed the fish and pick up a few more things, including some more fire wood. When I got back, the turkey was about done and Summer was finishing up some mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts. The turkey was a bit tough and dry, but tasted good and had a nice, crispy skin. Too much went wrong, so I have lots of ideas on how to make it juicier next time.

I cleaned up the kitchen, and then Noah showed up late and ate a ton of food. An incoming ice storm had us out of school the next day, so I started a fire and we watched two episodes of The Brothers Sun. Then Summer went to bed and the kids put on trash YouTube while they stared at their phones on the couch.

I don’t think they understand how much it infuriates me when they do that on my nice TV. They literally don’t make 3D TVs at all any more, and this is the best one they ever made. I’d really like to preserve it for high quality shows, instead of just letting it burn in slowly while they’re not even watching it.

We had the bedroom ready for Noah, but he slept on the couch again after blowing through like four cans of soda. I don’t think that kid drinks water at all, and I wish he’d quit just helping himself to our stuff whenever he comes over. It frustrated me the last time he came over, when he said I was micromanaging, because he doesn’t understand that we simply want him to respect our home and our things. It’s hard enough teaching the girls how to care about having and maintaining nice things, and then he comes over like some kind of entitled vagrant.

Tomorrow won’t be much fun, but at least there’s no school.

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What’s New, Tom Jones?

Eaddie wanted to cat-sit for a friend, and the best this mean, old man could compromise was to let her keep it in the shed out back. Eli came over, and they went to get it. Summer was finally ready to go do a little shopping today, but that ended up being a bit of chaos. I should have known better than to brave the stores two days before Christmas.

We skipped Harbor Freight because I didn’t have a coupon. We went to Lowe’s to try and find a tree skirt, but they had precious little left. We wandered some more of the store, but didn’t get much. Next was TJ Maxx, which was an absolute zoo. The parking lot was completely full, and the checkout line wrapped toward around and about halfway toward the back of the store. Walmart wasn’t much better, but we made it out with a couple hundred bucks worth of groceries for the week. It took us much longer to get out than in. On the way home, we stopped by the old house to pick up a few more things, including a radiator to warm up the outhouse.

The kids were in and out of the house to tend to the cat while Summer made dinner. She kept telling me the ham wouldn’t take long to heat, but in the end we had cold, slimy ham and lumpy instant potatoes with some of her usual Brussels sprouts. I was able to save the potatoes, but only after everyone else had their food. I’ll have to warm the ham up better the next time we eat it.

Afterward we went out to try and coax the cat out of the corner. Eaddie made a pallet to sleep on, but gave up and came inside. She was upset with me for most of the night because I wouldn’t let her bring the cat inside, so next time there won’t be a compromise.

Always the bad guy.

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I’m Yellin Timber

I woke up really early today after a long night, and didn’t really feel the need to go back to sleep. I made Summer a coffee when she got up, and she eventually pushed me to get cleaned up so we could go to the store. She wanted to make Chicken Florentine, which appears to be capitalized for some reason. She and Eaddie set up the Christmas tree while I was in the shower, and then Summer and I went to Walmart to shop around a bit.

I was pretty hungry, so the first thing we did was stop and try the new Krispy Krunch Chicken inside the Walmart. The chicken strips were awesome, but the jambalaya was pretty dry and lackluster. Once we finished there, we picked up some Dirty Santa gifts for her work parties, and then got stuff for food.

We stopped by the old house on the way home so I could feed the fish and grab a few glasses out of the cabinet. Then Eaddie started baking some pumpkin muffins when we got back. Summer cleaned up a bit around the house and then helped with the baking. It was a little late by the time they finished, and Summer had to sit down for a little while and wanted me to try and execute her dinner plans.

I wasn’t thrilled with that since I wasn’t really excited about the meal anyway. Then we realized she had forgotten to pick up sundried tomatoes. It hadn’t been a very good day, and this just made me crankier, so I decided I wasn’t cooking.

After a while, Summer got up to cook herself, so I prepared to go back out to the store. Just as I was getting dressed, I heard the loud crash of the Christmas tree falling behind the TV and smashing at least one ornament into shards all around the area and into the back of one of my subwoofers. I spent a while cleaning that up, and we eventually disassembled everything to throw the tree and its broken stand away.

Dinner was actually very good, though the amount of cream in the sauce nearly caused me trouble. Eaddie’s muffins turned out pretty sandy, but I think she was at least taking those to school so they shouldn’t sit around the house. The girls went to bed and I stayed up for some peace to myself before bed.

Talk to me, ooh-ooh, talk to me.

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That’s No Mop

Summer had a 5k this morning, followed by some work in Conway. I got around to cleaning up the laundry room so we could move the spare refrigerator there. Eaddie left for Fall Fest with Eli, and I just stayed behind and mopped that one room nearly a dozen times. Summer bought one of those spinning mops, and I had an absolute fit with it. The handle was too short to begin with, but then it kept sliding down as I would try to scrub the floor. The bucket didn’t hold enough water to get very many passes in, so I just kept soaking up the floor a bunch and then pulling that water back up.

At one point, the spinner broke and I had the worst time trying to rip the thing apart. I nearly ripped it apart in anger and threw the thing away. I did eventually get it back together and got into a little bit of a groove with it, but I still think it’s inferior. It’s impossible to scrub the floor with it. The mop handle itself is just insufficient.

The water got between the wood tiles and kept coming up through the cracks for the rest of the day. Dad came over to help me move the refrigerator, and Eaddie and Eli showed up just in time to help manage the doors while we twisted the refrigerator through the door. Then Summer showed up while Dad ran home to get a set of standard Allen wrenches. She disappeared to unwind while Dad and I got the treadmill apart and moved to the office.

Summer got the fridge cleaned up and I put the shelves back in. It was already pretty late, but I was really hungry, so I picked up some Wendy’s. The girls behind the counter looked like they were having fun, but they were also being pretty inefficient. They got the food out eventually though. Eaddie was home by the time I got back, and chatted with us while we ate. Then everyone went to bed while I fought with one of our Fitbit Aria 2 scales that quit syncing weights.

I’m going to be furious if this refrigerator dies now.

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Booked, Flooded, and Fed

I was early to work today, but then Kim texted right after eight to say she wouldn’t be there. Things were really quiet, and I stayed reasonably busy without distractions. The kids hit my car with balls multiple times after lunch, which made me pretty angry. The first time, one kid threw a basketball and it bounced really high before hitting my front-right quarter panel. After that, some kids were playing with a soccer ball in the field between the parking lots, and one of them lobbed the ball way high and out of the area where it bounced over a girl and then bounced on my hood multiple times. I don’t know what to do other than park in the elementary lot or possibly in the agri area and walk through the building.

At the end of the day, I spent about an hour on the phone trying to book a hotel for the conference. Unfortunately the Embassy Suites were booked solid, so I had to book at another hotel a couple blocks away. It’s going to suck not having meals and everything right there, but hopefully the weather will be nice enough to walk.

After work, I stopped by the old house to feed the fish and pack up some things for my computer desk. Just as I got to the new house and went in to ask Summer to help me unload, the skies opened up and flooded the driveway. It was clear we would have to start by cleaning out the drain pipe, and then come up with another solution for the water as it creeped up to the opening of the garage. The water didn’t stick around long, but Summer’s boards to get over the gap floated off.

Once the rain calmed down a bit, we unloaded and then went out for dinner. I wanted some steak, so we went to Western Sizzlin’. Summer had a pretty bad headache afterward, so we didn’t go to the old house to get the desk like I wanted. I took her home instead, and almost took Eaddie some food to the football game before she changed her mind. I dawdled on my phone for a while after that until I finally went to bed.

Don’t bother getting out of your rocking chair to tell me what I already know.

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Pixel8ed

I slept reasonably well through the night, so I was surprised at how tired I was when I woke up this morning. I had another annoying shower, fighting with the hot water again. Then it was a McChicken Biscuit kind of morning for the drive to work. It was a bit of a struggle getting Kim to focus, which was especially bad since Denice was in the office for most of the day. Summer sent me a picture of the back of her car where someone must have hit it with something and gouged the paint a bit. She tried to look through the dashcam footage, but couldn’t find anything.

I spent my entire day working on VMware again, and with Gary’s help, I got my log files cleaned up, and everything was working again. I learned quite a bit, but there’s still so much more. They had a pep rally in the afternoon, and then school let out for a three-day weekend that I really needed.

After work, I ran straight to the new house to get my Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Watch 2. I spent most of the evening setting them up, until the girls got home and I went out to find some food. I went to the Neighborhood Market to see if they had anything interesting in the deli. They did not. Then I went to Kroger and ended up getting some brats to grill.

Summer was asleep by the time I got back, so I ate by myself, tinkered for a while longer, and then finally went to bed late.

Every day, there’s something new.

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Consoling

After being late yesterday, I was actually really early today. I backtracked to Wendy’s for breakfast this time, and still made it to work several minutes early. I decided early on that I wasn’t going to get any work done, all to focus on moving things out of my office and into the front office with Kim. I started by moving some things around in our storage room, and I think I might have a reasonable plan for how to make the storage more easily accessible.

I skipped out on lunch because ham and cheese wraps sounded awful. I survived on coffee and lemonade and stayed an hour late until I got almost everything out. There was still one set of cabinets with some toner in them, but I don’t even know what they went to, so I figured that can be a problem for Monday.

We decided to keep the television console, so I queued Kevin up again. I thought he was going to be later than he was, so I started to go get some food. He texted me just as I left the house, so I turned around and went to the new house to pick up my straps. As soon as I got there, I realized the girls never took them out of the Murano after they unloaded, so I had to go back to the high school to get them while Eaddie was at a football game. I met Kevin at his place since I was already right by him, and we took his truck to get the console.

The power was already shut off, so we were working in the pitch black. Somehow we managed to get it loaded onto the truck, and I grabbed the lawn mower as well. There were still a few small things to get that Summer didn’t grab, but I figured that would wait until the next day. We got the console and mower to the new house, and then Kevin took me back to my car.

I finally stopped at Arby’s for some dinner, just as it approached bedtime. I’ve been a constant state of exhaustion, and the Big Game Burger I got was kind of a disappointment. Summer was up and mentioned a centipede in the bathroom, but all she did was cover it with a towel and surround it with shoes, hoping it wouldn’t get away. Then she got confused about what kind of bug it was. In fact, it was a centipede, and we were lucky it didn’t crawl away. I dispatched it and then took a shower, taking time to clean a whole bunch of gunk out of the crevices while I was in there. Of course water went everywhere outside of the shower while I did that, so I had to suck that up with the Bissell too. It was super nasty.

Frustrated yet again, I struggled to get to bed for the night. It wasn’t entirely fair, nor was it entirely unfounded. It feels like another week gone by, and not much closer to feeling like home.

It’s just not my year.

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You Don’t Have to Go Home

Somehow I lost track of time this morning after staying at the new house, so I was 15 minutes late to work today. I didn’t really accomplish anything again, because I was preoccupied with moving stuff out of my office. I still can’t believe they’re just fine with cutting my space in half. It would be a résumé-generating event if I hadn’t just updated it already.

Overall the day went by pretty quickly, especially the morning. There’s still a lot to move tomorrow, and if nothing else gets done, oh well. I messaged Kevin on the way home to see if he would be up for helping me move the last of the big stuff from Summer’s old house, and he said he could later in the evening.

I stopped at Casey’s for some free M&Ms before going home for a little while to charge. Then I stopped by my parents’ house for some phở for dinner before going to the new house to find Summer ready to settle in for the night. I motivated her to go to the old house with me so we could prep for Kevin, and Eaddie went to a Tech band concert.

We finally got Summer’s bed apart after taking out way more screws than were required. I honestly don’t even know if we’ll be able to put it back together properly. It’s going to be well and truly rigged at this point. The whole thing was really just supposed to slide apart.

Kevin showed up and helped me take two loads to the new house. We got the washer, dryer, and bed the first trip. Then Summer stayed home while Kevin and I got the deep freeze, kitchen table, and a couple other random things. Summer will have to go back for a little more, but unless we decide we want to bring a couple more cabinets home, we’re done. I just wish she had listed them for free so they could go somewhere useful.

After Kevin left, I hopped in to try the shower to get some of the sweat off of me, and I’m pretty sure it took a couple layers of skin. It felt like I was drowning the entire time, and there was no way to adjust the water pressure down. It was so high-pressure that it was difficult to change the spray pattern.

Eaddie and I chatted for a little bit while I did my stuff on the computer, and then I did my best to squeak into bed by midnight.

But you can’t stay here.

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Eviction Notice

I had a fairly rough night and morning, and woke up hungry, so I stopped at McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin. The first thing I did at work was assemble another Chromebook cart for our own use, so I could give the one we were using to the library for checkout devices. It wasn’t much later that I received an email from the assistant superintendent that the superintendent’s wife would be needing my office next week, and that I needed to get things moved.

The front of the office looks better now, but there simply won’t be enough room there for everything we have to spread out at different times of the year. Time will tell, I suppose. We had a plate of mushy “tater tot casserole” for lunch, and some guys came to install more security cameras without anyone’s knowledge.

I left a little bit late and ran to the new house to meet John so he could quote me on another Wall Connector install. He suggested we might want to update the panel as well, so we may be looking at around $2,500 for that, plus another $1,500 for the charger. We don’t have time to dawdle, but we also still have to get the last of Summer’s stuff moved, and some drywall guys in to fix the ceiling. Nevermind actually having furniture.

After he left, I cleaned up a little bit outside and sprayed some bug killer after I found a huge trial of ants leading up the deck and across the side of the house. They were on a mission to get somewhere, and I wasn’t going to have it.

Once Summer got home, I replaced her shower head, and then spent the rest of the night feeling incredibly uncomfortable in the dining room. I just didn’t want to be there.

There’s no place like home.