Tag: parenting

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Like a Teen With a Learner’s Permit

I thought I was onto something with Metro by T-Mobile this morning. Eaddie and I left the house a little early so we could get to Clarksville, which showed to have the only retail store within 75 miles. When we got there, it was an old Radio Shack, run by a singular, super old guy. It was neat to see a store like that again after losing our Radio Shack nearly 20 years ago. Having Eaddie along prevented me from browsing around more, but it looked like a neat place that made me nostalgic for the times that Dad and I used to go for parts.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have any of the iPhones we wanted, so we made our way out of town, where I dropped Eaddie off at Gavin’s. Then I headed back toward home and decided to stop at my parents’ house for some food. They still had lots of ham left over from Christmas, so I ate that in front of them. Mom got eyebrows tattooed on, but they were incongruent and misplaced. I don’t know why she bothered, but I disliked them very much.

I continued home to do some laundry until Summer finished up at work. Then she came to get me, and we went back to my parents’ house for some spaghetti. It wasn’t ready as early as I expected, so by the time we finished, it was about time for me to head back to Clarksville to get Eaddie.

Summer dropped me off and went on home for the night, and I ran by the car wash to get some of the grime off of my car from the ice a few days ago. The trip on Enhanced Auto Pilot was absolutely infuriating. There were cars and trucks on the road, but hardly any traffic to be concerned about, and plenty of room for navigating between the lanes. Still, I ran into places where my car wanted to continuously change lanes, back and forth, back to back. There was no one to pass, or anything to avoid. It just kept changing lanes, and nearly made me miss my exit.

It was a fun drive through the curves through the hills, but I had to watch for deer. Once I secured Eaddie, we ran home to change and then headed home for the night. Autumn stayed the night at Hannah’s to dog-sit, though she spent the entire afternoon at the pet store. Otherwise it was a relatively early night to bed.

Who is also, possibly, very drunk.

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Ring Ting Tingling, Too

I had a rough start this morning and wandered into work a bit late. Fortunately there wasn’t a whole lot going on, but I did have to get Dina a computer to get back to work. As it turned out, she had typed in her email and password into a phishing site, which promptly nabbed her information. I thought she was mostly safe, but it wasn’t long before we realized she had saved all kinds of banking and personal account passwords to her work Chrome profile. I just felt incredibly bad for her after that.

I kept pretty busy the rest of the day with seemingly random things. Zach came to tell me that he and Greg were going to lunch with some Hector buddies, so I just skipped altogether. I did leave to get a freebie Monster from Casey’s, but then made it back to the shop wanting something warm, so I made some oatmeal and a bagel.

As the day wound down, Thomas ended up kicking everyone out a little early. I wasn’t really sure what for, but I wasn’t going to argue. I had to get home and change for the band’s Christmas concert anyway. Summer picked me up on the way, and we met her parents and my dad in the back of the theater.

The concert band was godawful. There was no way around it. They surely hit some of the notes. Eventually. The symphonic band was much better, but was still not quite as good as I remember them being in the past. Overall it was a fine show though, and the girls all awkwardly waddled around taking pictures in front of a Christmas tree afterward.

After Summer dropped me off at home, I decided to just stay in for the night since it was already pretty late, and I hardly ever stay home anymore. I decided to try some praline Bird Dog on one of my fancy new craft ice balls, and it was great. I wish the balls were a bit bigger, and didn’t have a little divot on one side, but after some melting they actually look pretty cool.

Little ice comet.

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Thank You, Tech!

I barely squeezed into work today, but it was quiet enough that it wouldn’t have mattered even if I was late. I handed out rambutans sporadically throughout the day as I thought people might try them. Then after some coffee, I went across the street to check on Kayla, and then went to Dwight for a single work order.

Evidently the teacher had moved to Sequoyah, but the location in Incident IQ never changed, so I had to hand the ticket off to Kyle. I made it back to the shop a bit before lunch, and then I took Zach and Gary to McDonald’s so I could get another one of their Smoky Quarter Pounder BLTs. Several of the maintenance crew were there, and Tyler ended up hanging out with us through the rest of our lunch. It seemed a bit like maybe he needed something to do.

The afternoon wasn’t too dull, because I got a bunch more work orders that I was able to mostly complete from my office. Autumn called after school to ask me to get Eaddie while she went to karate, but then I couldn’t actually find Eaddie when I got to the band room after work. She eventually came out, and I took her to my house to trade vehicles.

While we were at my house, I cleaned out the shrimp tank a bit. Then we stopped by Popeye’s for the girls. I met Summer at my parents’ house for some more egg rolls. We chatted with Dad for a bit, and then we made it home. Eaddie was working on homework, and I helped her with some Python code. Autumn got home late and made a beeline for her room as usual.

I tried not to get to bed too late, because I was pretty tired. Everyone else still beat me to it. I’m already looking toward our next break.

But our teacher is in another building!

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Space Parade

It took me a little bit to get settled into my office today, but once I did, I spent most of my time on the phone with Kayla. There wasn’t much else going on though, and I enjoyed the work I was doing. When we moved all of the bus drivers to hourly pay rates, the district neglected to plan how payroll would be done. As such, Kayla has been processing reams of paper timesheets for every single person that drives a bus.

I got a quick Google Sheet put together with her, and then Zach pulled me away to lunch with Thomas and Greg at Brangus. I had the half chicken salad and remembered how overpriced it was in comparison to the other lunch options. Then I was right back on the phone with Kayla once we got back.

They let us out an hour early to avoid getting stuck by all the people lining up for the parade. I went by Ridgewood and actually got to lend a hand in cleaning things up a bit for the soft open on Saturday. Then I left to swap cars before going up to Summer’s.

We finished up most of the Thanksgiving leftovers and then made our way to the parade. We were early, but not early enough to avoid parking a block off of the main strip. We opted to stand in the middle of a side street once they blocked it off, and that earned us a view from the front row.

The parade itself was super spaced out, with tons of gaps between several of the floats. The high school band was first, so we got to see Eaddie. Then we waited until Autumn passed with the JROTC, and immediately left. The girls actually finished up shortly after that, but didn’t get home until later.

Summer watched the last bit of Weird with me, and then I started UHF before quitting at the first commercial to get ready for bed.

Space mining!

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Chill Day, Stressful Night

I woke up early this morning after very little sleep so we could get breakfast before we checked out of the hotel. I anticipated a crowd on account of the concert, but after stressing over Summer not wanting to wake up, we found the steakhouse to be relatively empty. Breakfast was good though, and we had our fill before heading back to the room to get ready for the day.

It took us a little bit to leave, since neither of us had a plan for the day. We ultimately decided to head toward home, and then I suggested stopping right inside Conway so I could go to PetCo. We ended up going through several of the stores in that strip mall, including Sam’s, Michael’s, and Ross. We even found a neat tabletop gaming store, and Summer picked up something to do for Christmas.

After shopping around for a few hours, we went to On the Border for lunch, and my chicken fajitas tasted completely unseasoned. The rest of the food was good though, so I made do with some black pepper. Summer finished her tacos pretty quickly, so they must have been a lot better than what I took home for leftovers.

After we ate, we went to PetCo and I picked up some ghost and “bee” shrimp to take home. Autumn didn’t get Eaddie from flute practice, so we had to make it back in time to get her. I had Summer drop me off at home so I could tend to the shrimp, but I guess Autumn gave Summer the wrong time to get Eaddie. Summer ended up coming to get me, and we went up to the house to unpack. I went back home in the Montego, traded some more water for the shrimp, and then took the Model 3 to get Eaddie and Maristella. We took her home, and then went back to my house to finally put the shrimp into my tiny, old shrimp tank. I’m hoping they enjoy cleaning up the algae that I can’t get under control.

Eaddie and I chatted, and headed on home for the evening. Autumn eventually showed up after karate, and predictably wanted to argue about who does the most chores around the house when Summer asked her to walk the trash down to the curb. Summer decided it was time to unveil my chore tracking spreadsheet, and suddenly Autumn didn’t care about seeing how much anyone did around the house. She just knew that she did more chores while we weren’t around than any of us did. I managed to steer that conversation into less hostile territory, and we’ll try to publicly track chores for a while to see if that helps.

Other than that, I spent most of the evening stressing out about my refrigerator delivery. I never got a call to schedule, but eventually Julie got a text with a two hour window. I touched base with Ben to remind him, and everything else was on the up-and-up. He offered to let me take his truck and a furniture dolly, so that mitigated my stressing over needing the Murano to tow a trailer while Summer needed a way to get to Cabot for the day.

The girls all made it to bed reasonably early, but evidently Eaddie was still up when I did a late-night model reset. She came out for a bit for some help getting reconnected, and then I did my best to get to bed before two in the morning.

Too distracting. This is my brain all of the time.

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Da Boiz

I woke up a bit early today after staying up to late last night. Eaddie was up before I was, and made herself breakfast and started cleaning house. Both of the girls were having their boyfriends over, so they had to get everything cleaned up before then. I tried to clean up some leftovers for breakfast, and then went home to shower before meeting Summer at Walmart.

Summer went to the gym, and then had most of the stuff picked up for chili by the time I found her. Then we made a quick run through the rest of the store before heading up to the house. Gavin showed up in the early afternoon with a flower in a vase. Eaddie had fallen asleep again because her head cold was draining her, but she got up and I eventually took them to the Valley Park Center to wander around.

Adam didn’t show up until after I left to pick up Eaddie and Gavin again. Then they played some Mario Kart and watched TV until it was time for me to take then to Pasta Grill. When I got back, Summer had chili ready for the four of us. Adam was well mannered enough, though he didn’t eat much. Autumn warned us that he was a picky eater, but he let slip that his father took him to CiCi’s before he came over.

After we ate, the four of us played a game of Monopoly. Adam seemed to enjoy it, but was mostly quiet and didn’t seem to fully understand all of the mechanics. We taught him about making monopolies, and coached him through buying houses. I tried to get the game going pretty quickly, so it was a good time until I had to go pick up Eaddie and Gavin again from the train depot.

When we got back to the house, the two couples split up to watch two different TVs. I laid down in bed until Summer came in to find me, and then made me periodically wander through the house to mind the children. Gavin had to be home by 10:30, so Eaddie and I took him home in time for that. We saw lots of deer and a raccoon, but fortunately nothing jumped out in front of us. I had to make Eaddie ride up front with me on the way back, but then she was super talkative for the whole drive home.

We stopped by my house to get the Montego and my neti pot since her head cold had just gotten worse all evening. Right as we turned onto Main Street, we could hear and feel that the car had a flat tire. I pulled over in front of GameStop, and the rear left tire was completely flat. Summer had to come pick us up for the evening, and we’ll have to go back tomorrow to try and air it back up.

Adam was gone again by the time we got home. Autumn was in her room. Eaddie showered and went to bed. I chatted with Summer for a bit, and then it was off to bed for us as well.

Just be a well-rounded, good-intentioned human.

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Upper Elementary, My Dear

We met at the shop for projects this morning, since teachers had a professional development day. I was sent with Josh the Wanderer and Travis the New to the intermediate school, so we could swap out docking stations for teachers that were still hanging on to old Lenovo Thinkpads from the high school. It was long and tedious work, but was broken up with some leftover breakfast in the teachers’ workroom.

Josh kept getting sidetracked while Travis and I split up and deployed docks all morning. We had a touch panel install as well, but it ended up being a faulty panel that had to be replaced again. While we were in the building, Josh found another projector out as well, so that had to be swapped in the afternoon.

I loaded Thomas, Zach, and Gary into the Model 3 for lunch at Arby’s, and it noticeably hampered my launch acceleration. I think it remains that Tammy has been the most excited about the new car. I was still full from breakfast, so I just got some Loaded Diablo Fries, which were barely hot at all. Zach and Gary had the Diablo sandwiches, but reported the same.

The afternoon dragged as well, and we didn’t get to leave early as we had hoped last week. I felt hot, sweaty, and gross all day, so I was excited to go home. I started a load of laundry while Summer headed home from Conway. Eaddie was still with her friends and would be out trick-or-treating all evening.

As it got late, I went to my parents’ house to hang out with them until Eaddie was done. They had a few kids come through while I was there, and apparently I had missed Eaddie and her friends by a little bit. She wasn’t ready to go home until an hour after we all expected, and I wasn’t thrilled to be out so late. I picked her up a little before 10 and we took Autopilot home down Skyline. It made it all the way to the end of the mountain and then bailed on the sharp 90ยบ curve at the end. We swapped vehicles, and then it was home for bed.

Who’s driving this thing, anyway?

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New Committee, New You

I forgot that we had our CPPC meeting this morning, so after a while at work, I had to run home to grab my Pixel for some superior notetaking. I actually got the time for the meeting wrong too, so I started walking over about 45 minutes early. I stopped in at Transportation to talk to those guys briefly, realized I was way early, then got my Pixel, and finally arrived back at Central Office. I was the first one there by a longshot. Then Justin and Justin came in. Judy brought some donuts for us. We very nearly didn’t have a quorum, but Ginni showed up along with two more administrators, and we dug right in.

I volunteered to do the secretarying again, and to my dismay, I didn’t have the right strings pulled to get Justin as our president. I’ll guess I’ll have to go for that next year. As far as the meeting went, we sped through most of it after confirming that everyone had a chance to read the changes. There wasn’t a whole lot of jibber jabber until Janie wanted to express distrust over the wording of our bonus announcement. Ginni was quick to passive-aggressively shut her down, and everything else passed with very little formality.

The rest of the day as pretty quiet. Josh and I were the only two around for lunch, so he took us to Stoby’s, where Gary coincidentally was meeting some other friends for lunch. I spent most of the afternoon working on my CPPC minutes, but had to walk back over to Central Office to take Gary a replacement UPS battery. That ended up being a faulty power outlet, so he had to call an electrician to come out tomorrow.

Autumn was supposed to meet with a recruiter after school, but changed her mind to hang out with her new boyfriend under the guise of “not feeling well enough to meet the recruiter.” This caused a conflict with Eaddie, who wanted to get home to do good kid things, like homework. I was actually able to get Summer on the phone, and she called to set her straight, and then talked to me a bit while she was on her way to Target to try and find some clearance Sony WF-1000XM3 earbuds for Eaddie.

Since Autumn took Eaddie home, I left work in pretty high spirits and great weather, so I took the bike across town and ended up at AT&T to see my old crew. Hope and Nicole both came up to give me a hug, and I spent most of my time chatting with Kevin. I hung out there for a little while until Kevin finished his shift. Then I headed on home to change before going to my parents’ house for dinner.

Mom had just gotten home from work, and they were outside looking at the ditch where they had a tree service come and clean out a couple of big trees that have been there since my childhood. I hated to see them go, and I worry about continuing erosion, so hopefully it was for the best. We went in and warmed up some curry, but Mom ate something else again. Dad and I chatted for a while, and eventually I had to head over to Summer’s to help Eaddie with her science homework.

On the way, Summer asked for food, so I ran by Lowe’s quickly to see if they still had the headlamp I had reserved over the weekend. They didn’t, so I left and picked up a burrito at Taco Bell before making it up to the girls. Eaddie came out, and Summer didn’t want to wait to gift her headphones. Then I helped with the homework, and everyone was off to bed.

I’ve waited my whole life to be a parent that knows everything.

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What a Breach

I woke up fairly early this morning and laid in bed until Summer got up to make biscuits for breakfast. I finally finished up the gravy I had saved from a couple weeks ago, which was only a little bit questionable. Afterward, Eaddie came out for help with some math homework. I didn’t remember doing matrices as a kid, but it seemed to make sense to me now. I finally got the achievement in Into the Breach that I’d been working on for a couple weeks, and eventually Summer got ready to take me home and go to the gym.

I spent a little time outside cleaning up inside the Montego, and then poked around in the garage to get Eaddie’s bike out. I don’t know why the tires seem like they don’t hold air for very long, but I got them aired up as well. I eventually wound up in a bath, and Summer brought Eaddie over to bike. I felt much better afterward, and then we loaded up the bike rack and headed to my parents’ house for chow mein.

Eaddie met us there on her bike and ate, and then wanted to ride across the neighborhood to try and find a friend’s house. When she got back, we loaded the bike up and came back to my house to unload. Then they went home while I did a couple loads of laundry.

Summer called a little later and said that Autumn hadn’t invited her to senior night, and in fact wanted to have her grandparents walk her onto the field. It didn’t mean anything to me, because the majority of the students don’t have a senior night in the first place, and because Autumn hasn’t really done anything in particular for us to be proud of her anyway. She’s done everything she can to make our family life hell. I understand why it upset Summer, especially since Autumn wouldn’t even have a senior night herself if Summer hadn’t refused to let her drop out of band. The whole thing is a power-play, and honestly I’d rather avoid homecoming week anyway.

Move along.

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Taco Bout It

I’ve ridden a bike to work all week because the weather has been so nice. It may be jacket weather in the mornings next week though. This morning’s meeting was our first that required an agenda from Zach and Gary. Zach took the lead, which he took awkwardly. It was pretty easy to tell that he was given direction without purpose. After the meeting, everyone else went through the shop and cleaned all the flat surfaces.

I didn’t have a whole lot going on, but I decided to go through and clean out my stale tickets after that was mentioned during the meeting. Then I wrapped up a couple other things I had been working on, and I was basically done with projects for the day.

When lunch time came around, Zach wanted CJ’s. I rode my bike behind them, but got lost in traffic. By the time I got to CJ’s, they had already left for Cracker Barrel because there wasn’t an empty seat in the house. I left the line and went after them, but got another message that Cracker Barrel had a 30 minute wait, so they had gone ahead to Brangus. I opted out at that point and went back to the shop to eat my leftover Slim Chickens. Evidently Brangus didn’t work out for them either though, because the line was out the door. They ended up at La Chiquita, which wasn’t busy because as I’ve said before, it’s not particularly good.

The afternoon was super quiet, and I had trouble killing the rest of the day. Autumn had been at Dwight all day for her educators class, but called to say she could take Eaddie home. I asked her to drop her off at her hair appointment so I could go scrap the metal I had been hanging onto for so long. I ran home at quitting time and made it to Cunningham just in time. I was disappointed that I only got $15 for the lot of it, so I probably won’t be saving cans any longer. It’s just not worth the storage space.

Lelan finished Eaddie’s hair before I even got halfway across town to pick her up. I was surprised that it was still so long, but Eaddie said she really liked it. She sent us home with some tea tree shampoo because she still picked out some nits after all this time. I figure Eaddie has just accepted a symbiotic relationship at this point, because she doesn’t complain about itching, and nobody has really purged the house.

We went home for a bit, but Eaddie immediately started talking about ice cream. Autumn was in her room, but eventually came out to mow. As she finished, Eaddie and I decided to go to Bocadillos for tacos and ice cream. On the way, Eaddie saw Noah at work, so we stopped by PDQ to see him for a bit on the way back. While we were there, I saw the guy I passed the other day on an R1 that looked just like mine.

Summer finally made it home, so we headed on home ourselves. We tried stopping at Tropical Smoothie to get her some food, but they had shut everything down. We ended up at Wendy’s instead, for a reliably good burger. Summer was up surprisingly late watching TV, but we only saw Autumn out of her room once, and Eaddie disappeared as soon as we got home. I was pretty tired myself, so I went to bed relatively early.

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