Tag: frustration

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Unmake the Bed

Something sapped me yesterday, because I was sleepy all morning today. I slept super late and then got up to some black coffee, and I made tuna pitas for the kids. Eaddie asked about moving the bed again, but there still wasn’t a place to put it in the spare room. I don’t think anyone else realized how small that room really was, and certainly no one was super motivated to actually unpack what had already been moved.

The kids left every single light on in the outhouse after they got rid of the cat, and I had to send them back out to bring all the blankets and pillows into the house. It seems like things are always left half-finished, and they tell me I’m being mean regardless of how, or how many times I point that out. I assembled the little aquarium stand I bought years ago, and eventually got Eaddie to go through some of the stuff in the spare room.

Noah spent some time online looking for work. He’s been couch-surfing for a little while, which meant his truck has been parked in our driveway long enough for me to find the new tailgate handle we bought for him several months ago, and replace it. Unfortunately, Summer lost the accompanying trim screws that I had been keeping with the handle, so I couldn’t truly complete the job. With the tailgate more or less functional, we cleaned all the trash out of the bed of the truck, and took a tarp and some straps to the old house to load up my bed.

We got everything into the spare room and I started washing all of the bedding before I started dinner. Noah mentioned possibly taking Eaddie out to eat, but he had also been talking about trying to save up money while he doesn’t have a job. I don’t know whether he had considered the cost of food and smokes over time, but it didn’t seem well-prioritized. I reminded him that I had everything for burritos, so that at least took care of dinner.

Summer got home late and tired, but we had to have a family discussion. Eaddie had been a bit contrary for a few days, and mentioned earlier in the day that she had given our address to Beth so she could send gifts. I knew the adults would have to talk first, so Summer and I caught up, then brought Noah in to discuss his plans and expectations. Finally we brought Eaddie in to wrap it all up, but Noah went for a walk because he preferred to keep his conversations one-on-one with her, even though he mirrored our own concerns about Beth.

The family talk was kind of more of the same that we’ve all heard before. I’m a mean, old man that has to have his way, and I never compliment the girls. The floors are still dirty, and I’m the only one that notices the “handwash only” stamped on the bottom of the dishes. I wonder if I’d be happier if I didn’t care about anything.

I’m going to need a specific example of what constitutes a compliment if they don’t count when they’re in response to accomplishing expectations that were previously set.

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Ungrateful Little Shits

I woke up for a little while before Summer, but managed to fall asleep for a little longer after she left for work. The kids were still passed out when I got up and started making coffee, but Noah woke up to the sound of steaming milk. I cooked some sausage and eggs for them, and then cleaned up the kitchen and washed the rest of the dishes before taking a shower.

Noah put on Hacksaw Ridge for them to watch, and was in utter disbelief that we hadn’t seen it before. Once they finished that, I forced them to get up and leave the house with me, and we went to Walmart to look for some clearance Christmas stuff. They left me as soon as we walked in the door, but I picked up what I wanted. I ran into my parents, and the kids ran into Autumn and Adam, so they came back to me wanting to go to Sumo with her.

I begrudgingly let them take off with her while I went to the old house to pack up some things. I loaded up the trunk, took out some trash, and had a tiny, surprise water leak in the master bathroom. I picked up the kids when they were done, and we met Summer at the house. She ate some of their leftovers, so I ate some of a steak with some leftover mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts by myself.

They were all talking in the sunroom, so I spent some time to myself and then went to the living room to watch Interstellar. As soon as the movie started, Eaddie came in and wanted to put out the new tree skirts, and the other two followed and started talking loudly, so I just turned the TV back off and sat fuming in silence.

Summer eventually went to bed, and Eaddie went to her room, so Noah watched the movie with me. Eaddie came out afterward and acted like she was going to hang out with Noah, but then everyone went to sleep instead.

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

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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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Out of Bits

Eaddie found a ride to school today so I didn’t have to drop her off. I got my free vitaminwater from Casey’s and made it to work in time for Kim to fuss about people already looking for me. The frustrating part about that was the fact that she very easily, especially after this many years, could have taken care of the issue. None of it was difficult, but it did require enough ambition to open an application and read a few words.

They had semester tests, so the big ask for the morning was to modify the bell schedule. They extended lunches, which meant I actually missed the boat and barely grabbed some pizza as they were putting everything away. Just as I was going back to my office to eat, Kenny yelled from across the cafeteria that the internet was down.

It wasn’t the internet. It was every single switch, and they were entirely inaccessible. I restarted the UNC service on the controller VM, and eventually walked to the core closet to cycle power on at least five different switches. It made no sense, and only served to frustrate me further.

After work, I fed the fish and brought a couple big speakers to the new house. While I was cleaning them up, I pushed one across the floor and scratched the tile a bit in front of the old refrigerator. Oh well. Summer was working late, and Eaddie was helping at the middle school concert, so I tried to make a dent in some leftovers from before Thanksgiving. Ridiculous.

I spent the rest of the night relaxing to some music and a light show in the living room, in an otherwise dark house until the girls got home.

Floaty

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Center for the Farts

I took Summer’s car to work today so she could keep mine in town. Casey’s had a free Reign Storm (ha), so I picked one up on the way to work and just accepted that I’d squeeze in a little bit late. It was more or less pretty quiet, with just a small group of kids doing some makeup testing in our office, followed by the usual lunch shenanigans. I was pretty scattered again, so it was a lot of meaningless accomplishments and nothing of any consequence was fixed.

Summer went home early with a headache, and got some new messages about reduced power and acceleration in my car, so we’ll tow it to Tulsa for a replacement high voltage battery. I guess I should be happy to rewind a year of degradation, but it doesn’t make me feel really great about the longevity of my car. I noticed Summer had a little dent in the back of hers when I got back home, apparently from trying to open the trunk while the garage door was shut. I almost made the same mistake once, so I couldn’t be too mad at her.

I fed the fish and picked up some tacos to take home for us. Then we went to the high school for Eaddie’s Christmas concert. Autumn spotted us as soon as we walked in and came over to our seats to talk at us. It was super awkward, and I imagined it was a little bit like how she still hangs out around the high school where others can’t just walk away from her.

The concert band was pretty bad, but it wasn’t until the symphonic band played that I realized how spoiled I was from listening to Eaddie’s elective concerts. It really is the difference between a group of really passionate, or at least dedicated musicians, and a public school band. There’s simply no comparison.

Eaddie went out with friends afterward, so Summer and I came home so she could go to bed. I was up a while, in part to try and get the old refrigerator running. I’m afraid the compressor may have finally bit the dust, which is frustrating to have happened after we finally got it situated in the laundry room. Oh well.

It’s obviously the product of favoritism, and not at all hard work.

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Love Your Curves

I slept fairly hard last night, and woke up feeling alright. I had some cereal that didn’t help, and then moved the old television into the sunroom. I started watching The Martian on it, but then quit to clean up the bathroom sink and take a shower.

Summer and I got out of the house in the middle of the afternoon to go shopping and get my LG television from the old house. We went to Bath & Body Works first, and they were super crowded. We had some coupons, but then Summer started picking up things that I felt like she already had at home. I instantly got flashbacks to all of the barely-used bottles of stuff I had to clean out from under Eaddie’s sink and our own bathroom, and probably got a little too upset about it. We grabbed our freebie with a coupon and then I was determined to take us home to pull out all of their soaps, lotions, and other miscellaneous body products.

Instead, we cooled down and stopped at Harbor Freight to see if we could score a deal on some accessories for the new tool chest-turned coffee bar. Unfortunately everything was just over the price limit for the coupon I had, so we left empty handed and went to swap cars with Eaddie.

She had gone to a robotics tournament, so we took the Murano to the old house to get the TV. Summer forgot the moving blanket in her car, so I had to drive back and get it, but fortunately moving the TV itself was completely uneventful. We got it into the new house, and I immediately mounted it to the new TV stand. I couldn’t have designed it any more perfectly if I had tried. The TV hovers less than a millimeter above the center channel speaker, and swivels well enough to get behind the whole contraption to route cables. It’s perfect.

We were hungry after that, so we went to New China for dinner. Eaddie was just getting back to town, but said she was full from eating all day at the tournament. We ate, and then went to fill up the Murano since Eaddie was nearly out of gas. When we got back to the house, I rewatched the last episode of the first season of Loki, and then kind of dozed through some random YouTube until I finally forced myself to get up and ready for bed. The girls had beat me to it by a couple hours anyway.

The Holy Grail of 3D

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Off Task Sequence

Summer started some corned beef in the slow cooker this morning. I made it to work and made some coffee for the day. It pretty quickly turned into a day of people constantly grabbing me out of my office, either to fix the auditorium sound that they broke again, or to help with with personal technology issues. It became even more frustrating when Barry, who had just pulled me off task, wanted an update on a project I’ve been working on, but struggling to complete.

The light at the end of the tunnel was finally piecing together where the image and the task sequence reference each other. It wasn’t obvious or intuitive, nor could I find a place to actually see that information. I had to build it for myself, and could only possibly know how it was built because I built it myself. Even the system itself lacks documentation.

I left work a few minutes early to drive to Atkins and pick up a Chromebook that was recovered by a garbage collector. The lady that called me on Monday said she could leave it at Subway for me, and the guy behind the counter really wanted to make sure I was who I said I was. He was single-handedly using more security precautions than anyone I’ve witnessed at the school. Any school.

The girls were already home when I got there. Summer was in the bath, so I finished wiring the speakers until she was ready to eat. Then we listened to a little bit of music in the living room since I couldn’t convince anybody to go actually get the other television with me. It’s been a zero effort for so many people around me today.

The Chromebook Recovery Tool is the car I drove across two towns to recover it.

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Almost Crafting

I was pretty mentally drained from work today. I’ve spent most of every day just reading, but I finally started digging into Windows Deployment Services today. As usual, the morning flew by, and the afternoon dragged. Out of nowhere, I answered a call from a lady in Atkins whose husband collects trash. She said he brings home laptops and other goodies that he finds, and she recovered one of our lost Chromebooks. I thanked her for taking the time to call, and Summer should be able to stop by on her way through town tomorrow.

After work, I went home to feed the fish, then ran to Harbor Freight for a drain auger. Summer was off work and not feeling great, but I met her at the Neighborhood Market to pick up groceries. When we got home, she took a bath and I had to figure out dinner. I really wanted some higher quality pizza, so I bit the bullet and spent the money on Papa John’s. While I was waiting, I saw one of my old esports kids and his father, so I chatted with them until my order was done.

Summer and I ate, and then she watched TV while I unpacked the new TV stand we bought. Then she went to bed and I watched some artistic folk on YouTube while I assembled our furniture-in-a-box. Eaddie got home late after spending the evening with Eli, and I lost track of time as I finished up. Without the glass surfaces, the stand is super light. Unfortunately one of the screw holes stripped out completely, so I’ll have to decide whether that’s worth a call to the manufacturer.

Just unlock, dammit.

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Depresso

We got up this morning, and I had hoped to get out of the house to do some things. We watched some coffee videos on YouTube, and then I went out to replace the wheelbarrow tire. Summer went to the gym and I played with the espresso machine. When she got back, she and Eaddie left to go shopping. I wanted to go too, but they didn’t want me along because I would drag out their “quick stop.” They ended up taking a while, which upset me as I milled around the house and tried to clean, arrange, and organize randomly.

It was such a nice day out, but by the time they were fussy and hungry, it had started to get chilly out. I grilled some brats and we ate dinner, and then it was more random cleaning and organizing until bed.

Zero adventures today.