Tag: family

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Radio Silence

She said we weren’t good for each other. I asked for some time, and she said she would think about it until the end of the day.
But she had already thought about it for much longer than that. I just didn’t know it.

She said I hurt her feelings when I joked. I asked her if she would talk about things and work on it with me.
She quietly shook her head.

In a relationship that should be two people communicating, she chose not to communicate.

She chose not to work on us, expecting instead to fall into some effortless fairy tale fantasy.

If something is wrong, you have to say something is wrong. You can’t go on telling someone they’re perfect in every way, and then expect them to know that something needs to change. Some people are more compatible than others, but no matter what, every single relationship is a choice. Sometimes that choice requires a lot of hard work.

I wish I had been given a choice at all.

Thanks for your support.

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Premonition

We’ve entered the stage of heavy dreaming and suspicion. I find myself wanting to know absolute truths. Do I question what’s in front of me, or do I just let it go now without a fight? If I fight, is it worth the struggle, or is it best to leave it all behind?

I’m at a disadvantage when I assume the best in people. I’ve grown sarcastic and cynical, yet assume honesty and take everyone else at face value. I guess that’s my fault. Everyone’s got a story. I just wish it wasn’t so hard for people to share it sometimes.

I tried to separate myself this time as a precaution, and I thought it helped at first. Maybe it did. Or maybe it was my undoing.

Or maybe it’s something else entirely.

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We’ll All Float On

I tend to not let myself get too excited. It helps to mitigate the disappointment when shit goes sideways.

Only days until the finish line. I let myself get excited. Summer was finally here. We were supposed to leave for New Orleans today for the quiz bowl tournament. Not only was I excited, but I spread that excitement to my friends, and they were excited too. They’ve been asking me about our plans, and letting them know I wasn’t going was splitting myself open again every time.

I let myself get excited. Summer had so much in store for us. For the first time in such a long time, I was looking forward to the future. We were going to take a trip to Wisconsin to pick up the girls after their stay with her sister. It was going to be such a fun trip. I was so looking forward to it.

The support structure is here in full force. Hardy and true. Built to withstand so much worse.

But even a clean break leaves things broken.

So, are you coming to the game?

Traditions

What are Traditions: Mother’s Day 2018

I’m absolutely exhausted after today. We got up this morning and checked out the yard to get an idea of how to tackle it in the afternoon. Summer helped me get my 55-gallon tank outside for cleaning, and then went home to receive the girls. Once they got cleaned up, they came over with some Taco Bell before we started on the back yard.

It was pretty tough getting the girls to do anything. Autumn was particularly whiney about the whole ordeal. Eaddie was a little more willing to receive direction. Summer did the lion’s share of the work with the power tools while the girls did a bit of raking and picking up after Summer clipped the larger plants with the cutters. I managed the fire and did a little bit of trimming, and spent a bit of time cleaning fish tanks when we found some baby box turtles.

The yard looks better than it ever has, and I’ve got the wood piles mostly down to what I can manage to burn in a few bonfire events. I think I have some better ideas on how to tackle projects for the kids now too, but time will tell.

When we finished, the girls went home to clean up while I picked up outside. I filled the fish tank that will be used for the tadpoles, but didn’t have a chance to mess with the canister filter. The box turtles are in a box with some damp leaves and a tray of water until I have a suitable terrarium for them. I’m still not sure where to put them, though.

I went to their house as soon as I got out of the shower, and we met my parents at La Huerta for a mother’s day dinner. It went pretty well, probably in part to how tired the girls were. They wanted to pay for their mother and I was going to pay for my parents, but Mom ended up making Dad pay for everyone. I guess I’ll have to work on that, too.

Yard work sucks, but so does life, and then you die.

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That’s not snoring. That’s the sound of me dying.

We slept in a bit this morning until the kids all went to hang out with Nick. Summer started some pulled pork barbecue in the crock pot, then I dozed off in her lap while she caught up on Stranger Things so she could watch it with the kids. She went to the gym for a bit before everyone got home, and I watched Moana while updating an old laptop I hadn’t used in a while.

Once the kids got back, they all went to drop Noah off and to get an assortment of gifts from Summer’s parents. She had started some pulled pork barbecue in the crock pot earlier in the morning, which we ate once everyone got back home. It was too late to start an episode of Stranger Things, so we watched New Girl, sent the girls to bed, then caught a couple episodes of The Office before I headed home.

When I got home to my hot house, I discovered I had been invaded again by ants. This time, I lost my apple fritters. I dusted the perimeter of my house with ant killer in a fit of rage, then cleaned up a bit before bed. At least it managed to cool off pretty quickly inside.

Can you imagine an Asian that is bothered by the sound of filing nails???

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RJHS hosted – for 10 points – what team’s car show?

After a fit of a night, I got up this morning to go to Summer’s quiz bowl car show at the junior high. We had too many last-minute ideas that we just had to write down for next time, but she and the kids did a great job. They had a pretty decent showing, and I even managed to get Allen and Kristen to show up together.

After the show, I went home until it was time to head to Summer’s house to watch the kids while she and Jenna had a girl’s night out. They went out for dinner, then a show at Front Street while the kids and I watched the first half of the first season of Stranger Things. Summer was ready to come home around the same time we finished our binge session, and then it was bedtime for all.

“This might be too scary for Mom.”
    – The ten-year-old

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Runaround Shoe

Summer went to her half marathon this morning, and it was up to me to get up with the kids to meet her before she got to the end. I watched her on Google Maps as she raced past miles 2, 5, and then 10 by the time I made it out of the shower. I got everyone up, and we drove to Hardee’s where I was going to grab some breakfast and wait for her to run by, but we spotted her just as I parked, so we drove closer to the finish and walked up to find her there. She finished in just two hours and 12 minutes, and paid for it the rest of the day.

We got the girls back home, then I left to clean house and prepare for Jesica’s visit and a Suddenlink appointment in the early afternoon. They arrived at the same time, with him being about half an hour early for his two-hour window. He was super cool, and I ended up helping him run a new line from the pole down to the house. In the end, I was left not much better than before. Three of my 32 channels have a sub-optimal SNR, which evidently causes my modem to completely stop responding until I cycle power about once a day. He left me with enough cable and four ends to re-run my inside wiring, since I already have plans to run a bunch of cable in the house anyway.

Jesica had to leave just before he finished up, and then the girls showed up shortly after that. Summer was still suffering quite a bit from the marathon, so Autumn and I went to her parents’ house to feed their clowder of cats. We stopped by 10Box on the way home to pick up some food for the next day, then made it home to pick at leftovers. My parents stopped by with some bánh mì that everyone but Autumn tried and loved, and we settled in for an episode of Cosmos.

The girls went to bed, and I loaded up some PUBG with Clint, Aaron, and Jack to round out the night.

THE END IS NEAR!
    – Guy in a T-Rex Costume

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Hungry Sunday

I tried to make some Ramsay eggs this morning with a side of strawberry shortcake and grapes. It turned out alright, but it would have been better on toast. We watched several more episodes of The Office before we had to pick up the girls and get them home.

We stopped by KFC for a late lunch, then I installed some games on Summer’s computer before heading back home myself.

Mom made phở for dinner, which was a delicious surprise, especially after I had been talking about phở with Steven at dinner the night before.

I ended the night with some Overwatch with Clint. This weekend went by faster than I had anticipated.

Money money money…

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The Great Dying

Everything seemed perfectly normal up until bedtime.

It was a pretty slow day again. I ended up driving through McDonald’s for a late lunch Happy Meal. Nobody else has really been around all week. I guess it’s been alright to recalibrate my eating habits.

After work, I came home for just a little while before heading to Summer’s for dinner. Some of the tadpoles were hitching a ride on a piece of celery that was bobbing up and down in the water, so I made a funny video of it.

Summer made chicken and bowtie alfredo, then we all played a super long game of Uno before the girls went to bed. The rest of us watched an episode of The Office, and then I came home.

I checked on the tadpoles just before going to bed, and much to my dread, over half of them looked to have perished. There were just mounds of them on the floor of the fish bowl. I spent a couple hours trying to sort out the living from the dead, but they preferred to mingle. I rigged up a bigger container for confirmed live ones, then sank a smaller container with the rest of the mix so the live ones could swim out overnight, leaving the dead behind. We’ll see how it goes in the morning, I guess.

Everything was great until it wasn’t.

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Ready Player Three

Several members of our team were out today, so we didn’t have a meeting in the morning. Instead, we just worked in our buildings all day. Those of us that were there met up for lunch at Chick-fil-A. When we walked in, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house, so we left and went to Zaxby’s. Surprisingly, everyone seemed happy with the alternative. I saw John and Melissa, along with Jennifer and the rest of the family there too.

The other kids were spending the night with friends, so Summer dropped Eaddie off with me while she went to the gym after work. We went to my parents’ house to pick up some frog eggs my dad scooped out of the pool cover, then spent most of the rest of our time trying to find a small fish tank to put them in. I couldn’t find the one I had in mind, but had a fish bowl that suited them fine.

When Summer got here, we went to Conway for dinner and a movie. I still had a $10 birthday reward for Marketplace Grill, and then we watched the late showing of Ready Player One. The movie was pretty great, but I have a strong need to go back and watch it again frame-by-frame so I can find all of the characters and references. I’m sure someone will have a list by the end of the week.

Here’s the deal, Wade. You’re something called a ‘human being.’ That’s a really smart kind of animal. Like every other animal on this planet, we’re descended from a single-celled organism that lived millions of years ago. This happened by a process called evolution, and you’ll learn more about it later. But trust me, that’s really how we all got here. There’s proof of it everywhere, buried in the rocks. That story you heard? About how we were all created by a super-powerful dude named God who lives up in the sky? Total bullshit. The whole God thing is actually an ancient fairy tale that people have been telling one another for thousands of years. We made it all up. Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
Oh, and by the way… there’s no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Also bullshit. Sorry, kid. Deal with it.