Tag: parenting

Uncategorised

Delegate

I left the house early today and cruised in to work on Autopilot. Kim was there on her birthday, and we delivered a couple more carts. I tried to take her to lunch, but we ended up just eating cafeteria food. They thought they ran out of orange chicken, so they gave us some chicken strips and fries instead, but then someone else came out the back entrance with some “teacher trays” of orange chicken, so I ate twice. The rice was pretty miserable, but the chicken was good.

Kim spent most of the day cleaning up old work orders, and I was glad that she was taking the initiative to do what she could do without me having to take a walk with her. Of course her days are super short, since she’s gone for lunch duty for what feels like hours, and then she leaves when the kids get out of class. Maybe some day I’ll get bored and actually pay attention to her hours.

I headed home as casually as I had driven in to work, and spent some time charging at home before heading up to Summer’s. Eaddie wanted me to help her with some physics homework, and I tried, but she was already kind of burned out on schoolwork. Eventually everyone made it to bed after an uneventful day.

How does insurance work, anyway?

Uncategorised

Taco Platter

I was a little bit late for work this morning, half because of my own timing, and half because of super slow traffic for the entire drive. I anticipated traffic around Dardanelle, but it wasn’t as bad as yesterday. Kim was there and immediately took me to a room with touch panel issues. It fixed itself, and provided further example of just how unconfident she is about resolving issues on her own. I’m stuck doing things that anyone could do, so nobody will get to the things that only I could do.

The day didn’t go by quite as quickly as yesterday, but lunch time arrived all the same. This time I went for some soft tacos, and apparently they made too many. They put out a bunch of extra food, and a few kids came up and started just grabbing tons more. Kim ended up getting a whole foil tray full of tacos to take home.

For a while in the afternoon, she disappeared to the elementary building to close some work orders. I didn’t expect her to do a ton, but at least it gave me some time to think. Ben called for a bit and I sent him some eSchool upload templates for a script he was trying to fix.

I finally built one Chromebook cart that can be deployed tomorrow, but we still have like 16 more to go, plus the one-to-one deployment for the older kids. I just wish it would all go away. I left a little later than I wanted, confused by who works what hours. Coming home was nearly as slow as it was on the way to work.

I tried calling Fast Glass to schedule appointments to have our windshields replaced, but they never answered. I figured I would stop by the shop, but the doors were locked at least 10 minutes early. We may never get new glass. From there, I caught Summer at Superfast just briefly before grabbing some Taco John’s and going home to do more laundry.

When I finally made it up to Summer’s, she was already in bed. I watered some plants and made more hummingbird food, and then Eaddie finally got home in the middle of my internet chores. She came out later to show me her new backpack, and then wanted to sit and talk for about an hour about school and friends. I finally had to finish up so I could go to bed, so I ran her off.

We can tacobout it later.

Uncategorised

Droopy Roofy

We had our home inspection today, so I had to go home to clean up before the girls came to pick me up. We made it about halfway to the house before I realized I forgot the check to pay the inspector, so Summer turned around. Luckily the inspection seemed to be going quite a bit longer than we anticipated. I wasn’t sure if he just got started late or if it really was just taking him that long to be that thorough. Summer had to stop by Rose Drug anyway, and Nick was still in the attic by the time we got there.

Summer and I wandered around a bit, and Dad eventually showed up. When Nick came down, he let us into the house to continue looking around while he worked. When he finished, he went over some of the worst repair issues he found, and it really was pretty varied. The biggest concern was a drooping ceiling in the living room. Evidently the new roof over the addition was just built on top of the old roof, so the trusses weren’t built to support the shift in weight. He said some of them had just split apart, and needed to be lifted and put back together. He also measured the water pressure at 120 PSI, which was a little more than excessive. I didn’t realize that he didn’t inspect the out building at all until I got his written report later in the day, but that is one of the big repairs that has to happen for us to move in at all.

Dad headed home after that, and the girls and I went to Stoby’s for lunch. As we finished up, I saw Shane from Howard sitting at the table across from us, so I talked to him briefly before we left. Summer had to go to work, so she dropped Eaddie and me off at my house so we could go for a motorcycle ride. Eaddie wanted to see the new splash pad at the city park, so we rode there first and walked around.

It was incredibly hot and humid outside, so I didn’t much enjoy baking in the sun. We continued on to Splash to see Summer, and then rode around the city, up the mountain and down past the arena until we made it back to my house. We were both hot and sweaty, so we decided to get our suits and go to my parents’ house to swim.

Eaddie did a great job driving across town, and swimming was a good time. The pool was still in full sun when we got there, so I propped some floats on top of the ladder and we just hid under them for shade. We talked for a really long time about a whole lot of things, and it was really great. As the shade started to cover more of the pool, it got a little chilly and we decided to get back out and dry off.

We chatted with Dad for a bit inside after we got changed, and he reminded me that it was their anniversary. Mom didn’t want to do anything when she got home from work, so Eaddie and I headed back to the house where Summer was home early after having a pretty rough day. She wanted a pretzel crust from Little Caesar’s, so we picked that up on the way. It wasn’t until we got back to the house that we realized they gave us the wrong order though, so I had to go back. As soon as I pulled up, he ran out with the correct pizza and we got to keep the first one he gave us.

I reviewed the inspection paperwork and talked to Alisha a bit before going back home to pack for the funeral trip. I felt like I needed a slightly larger backpack for the trip, but didn’t want to increase my load to carry. I may just have to leave my Steam Deck behind, but I really don’t want to.

I eventually made it back up to the girls, and Eaddie greeted me at the door with excitement. Just a little bit earlier in the evening, some friends invited her to go with them to play their instruments at a nursing home, and she was super happy about it. We talked for quite a while longer while I tried to wrap up for bed. Tomorrow would be an even earlier day than usual, and I wasn’t excited.

Just don’t die.

Uncategorised

Handbook Policy

Alisha sent us the offer paperwork to decline this morning, but that was just the start of a wild ride. I headed to work and got behind a bunch of slow people, so coming out of Centerville I laid on the accelerator so I could pass someone way ahead of me when the road split into two lanes. Little did I know that tiny speck of a vehicle was a State Trooper. I was going the speed limit when I got to him, but he had me. He pulled over until I passed and then lit me up. It was a short stop with only a warning, and apparently his “granny” works in the cafeteria. No idea if that helped my case, but it was funny that everyone at work knew exactly who it was that pulled me over. Small town.

After I got to work, Alisha sent me a message asking if we still wanted the Sherwood house for $275,000. Apparently after receiving the counter rejection, the seller’s agent thought they might be able to make it work if they could have until Friday, and wanted the offer in writing. I had Alisha send back our original offer with the addition of a delayed occupancy, and we’ll see what happens.

Kim came in late again and picked at a few things. I don’t know how many hours she’s supposed to work, but I guess I can’t complain for what she’s paid. I worked on a Chromebook handbook for most of the day. We went down to the elementary for a bit, but then I ended the day by myself to finish up my handbook. I was pretty proud of how nice it looked, but hopefully we can implement it for this school year.

I was a little sheepish to drive home too quickly, but I made it. I stopped at Casey’s to use some rewards, went home to change, and then went to the other Casey’s for another reward before going to my parents’ house. I ate some spring rolls and chatted with them for a little bit.

I eventually made it up to the girls’ house and tried to wind down relatively quickly, but got caught up going full Matrix mode on a bunch of houseflies that had gotten in somehow. I’ve gotten pretty good with my Bug-A-Salt gun. Then Eaddie came out to chat with me for a little while about her day with Autumn yesterday, lunch with her father the day before, and the negotiation for the house. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day with the board meeting in the evening.

Hi. I’m the guy you hired.

Uncategorised

Family Matters

I cleaned up some more leftovers by making omelets for breakfast. Then we had Eaddie drive us to Gifts on Parkway so she could get her ears pierced in a second place. I went home afterward to clean up, and while I was outside, a Hispanic lady and her son stopped in front of the house and then backed up to pull into Bác Vân’s driveway. I went over to see who it was, and had to break the unfortunate news to her. She had her son get out to translate, but she knew her name and seemed to know how to speak a little bit. Having her son translate so much seemed a little unnecessary, but I figured she just didn’t want to misunderstand anything. She had questions about peaches, and then wanted to know if she could pick a couple, so I grabbed an old hoe from my garage so they could pull down some branches.

Once I got showered and back up to Summer’s, it wasn’t long before we had to drive up to Dover to test drive a used car for Eaddie. We had her drive, and she said she felt zoomy hitting 60 miles per hour. The little Nissan Sentra didn’t seem to be in great shape, and the brakes sounded pretty bad when Summer test drove it, so we decided to pass. I took us back to town and we stopped at Dollar General for some things before going back to the house.

My parents got home a little late, but I headed over and had some more fish soup, and then the three of us stayed up pretty late chatting at the dinner table. Mom did a lot more talking, and I really enjoyed getting to hear her stories. There’s so much family history that she just never shared because of how painful it was to experience, but I think having that context helps us grow closer together and it’s important to know the things that forged her and the rest of the family.

I eventually made it back to Summer’s around midnight, so the girls were long in bed. I had a bit of a bellyache, but made it to bed as quickly as I could.

The Age of Reptiles

Uncategorised

Don’t Be Alarmed

I woke up around seven this morning because I forgot to turn my alarm on for Friday. We switched our off day to Monday so we could have a four-day weekend, but it didn’t even cross my mind that my alarm wouldn’t be prepared for that. I considered rushing straight into work, but ultimately gave in to my desire for a nice shower, and just accepted that I would get to work really late.

When I pulled up, four of the maintenance guys were hanging out on the loading dock chatting, and I talked to them a bit about my car. I offered to give rides, but Toby said he was too sweaty and dirty at the moment. I went on inside, and that’s when the adventure started.

I sent an email to Gary to decline the offer I got from Green Bay Packaging. I didn’t notice his near-immediate reply by email, but a few minutes later he called and wanted to ask about my concerns. We spoke for a little while about the pay I was hoping for, and the fact that I really wanted to talk to the school to see if they would reconsider my position’s salary schedule. He pretty quickly came up from $60,000 to $66,000, with the disclaimer that he would need to talk to the plant manager for approval. I was a little surprised at how quickly that happened, but not nearly as surprised as I was when he called me back just five minutes later with a general manager-approved offer of $70,000. He joked that he liked to keep things interesting, to which I responded that I also had an interview scheduled at ANO. He understood that I wanted to hear out all of the offers, if there is another one, and just asked that I let him know how my conversations go with both of my other interested parties.

I spent the rest of the day troubleshooting, and pinning down the last few devices that had gotten lost in the shuffle, and then sent an email to SHI with a list of serial numbers with specific failure notes. It got really quiet really fast, which made it easier to get back home in time for Summer’s therapy appointment. I thought we would start her EMDR therapy, but instead she said that Summer wanted her to explain the therapy to me so I would know what to expect. That felt pretty silly to me, since I had already done my research the moment Summer mentioned it to me weeks ago, but we continued with the feel-good talk for the remainder of the hour. I left feeling like we could have just watched some YouTube videos instead.

Eaddie needed a ride to dinner with friends and her flute tutor, so I rushed Summer home to take her while I went to my parents’ house for dinner. Mom made fish soup out of some old fish that didn’t taste very good. Dad and I talked for a while, and eventually I made it back home to get the Murano so I could take Eaddie for a drive.

I had her take me to Casey’s for a free drink I won, and then we went further south to find Noah at work. We parked outside and I gave him the hairy eyeball for a while, and then we parked around the side of the building and went inside to sit at a table until he had some time to chat. He had a relatively steady flow of customers, so we didn’t stay long. I had Eaddie drive up Skyline and around the marina before we turned back toward my parents’ house, and then down the road to look at a Mazda 6 we saw for sale the other day. It was quite a bit more expensive than we expected, and it had gotten so dark that Eaddie was having trouble seeing to drive, so we headed back to their house for the night.

I hung out in bed with Summer while she watched TV for a bit, and then got up and found every distraction. I was up until two in the morning, feeling stupid and exhausted for not shutting down earlier. Oh well.

Inconvenient Opportunity

Uncategorised

Aw, Eli’kes it

I had a pretty quick drive in to work this morning, and stopped at Silver’s Food Court for an instant pumpkin spice latte on the way. I thought I had a meeting at 11, which turned out to be later in the afternoon, so I just spent most of the day tinkering with our new work order system. At first glance, I like it a whole lot more than Incident IQ, and it seems to have most of the features we used from that system. Some of it wasn’t super intuitive, but I think that was because it was designed more for the maintenance crew.

Lunch was pretty middling burgers, so I spent most of the day kind of hungry. The lunch ladies have been using up anything they had left before the last day of summer school, so pickings were pretty slim. I did get a bag of baby carrots to snack on next week after they’re gone, but I guess otherwise I’ll be on Soylents for a while.

My afternoon meeting turned out to be more or less a one-on-three, with two of those only really listening in the background. The guy leading the meeting just chatted with me about my questions, and I really got my answers within a couple of minutes. I don’t know if I was just late to the party, or if all of the meetings have been relatively small. I definitely got the feeling that there weren’t many other tech directors participating.

I left work a little bit later than I expected, since I got Howard to beat their competition. I sent another requisition form, and was on my way home behind several speeders that made the trip short. Evidently Eaddie had her jazz flute performance while I was driving home, but she never told either of us that she was actually performing for an audience. By that time, I assumed it was more of an activity than anything else.

As soon as I got home, I changed clothes and headed to Popeye’s to get dinner for the girls. I had to wait over 15 minutes for my food, which seems to always happen there. I was worried we would be late because Eaddie wanted to get back to Witherspoon by seven, but we chowed down and made it. We still ended up watching all three bands. My parents showed up for the last one for Eaddie, and joined us in the center of the front row.

Summer had told me earlier in the week that Eaddie didn’t have a solo, so I didn’t really think anything of it. For some reason I just believed that maybe Eaddie wanted us to be able to hear her better this time because she wanted a particular song recorded. Everyone got super excited when a group of the flautists came forward, with Eaddie to the right by herself, and a couple more to the left of the conductor. I had been recording the entire performance, so I mostly got Eaddie’s backside on camera, but it was my favorite song of the night in spite of her. We were all beaming with pride for her though, and even Mom got out her phone to record her performance. It was also really cool to see all of the bands get to play music by Katahj Copley, who was there to introduce the pieces he composed.

After the concert, we bought a DVD and then worked our way back around to let Eaddie know we would wait for her in the car. Her friend stopped me to say he was reading the blog every night, which was more love than I’ve gotten from either Summer or Eaddie in a long time. They should take notes.

We waited in the car for a while, but then Eaddie finally came out and we headed home for the night. Summer went to bed, and Eaddie sat with me to look through band camp photos for a while before she went to bed. I stayed up later than I wanted on account of having to get up for an interview in the morning, so hopefully I wake up fresh and sharp.

I’m not trying to leave, but free lunch is free lunch, and twenty grand is twenty grand.

Uncategorised

ReCharge

I didn’t have much luck sleeping in today. Summer went to work and I laid around for a little longer, but couldn’t really sleep. I got up and made myself a leftover burger for brunch, and then woke Eaddie up when I finally decided to go home and unpack my things. She had a private lesson in the afternoon, so I didn’t spend much time there. I got showered and then headed back to get her.

I just waited in the car while Eaddie had her lesson, and then I took her back home where I tinkered with the emulators on my Steam Deck some more. I got E.V.O.:Search for Eden working and played it for a while. Mom made bún bò Huế for dinner, so Eaddie and I went over there to eat.

The soup wasn’t quite ready when we got there, so Eaddie sat down and thumbed through a bunch of old sheet music they had. Dad had gone out of town for a wedding, but made it back home for dinner. While Mom was getting everyone’s food ready, Dad accidentally dropped a fresh jar of watermelon pickles they had made, and it shattered all over the kitchen floor. They got a little cut up from the glass, but it wasn’t too bad. Somewhere along the way, I picked up a small, but luckily smooth piece of glass between my toes. They got that cleaned up and we ate.

Summer got home from work and didn’t have her house keys, so Eaddie and I left as soon as we finished eating. We stopped by PDQ to see if Noah was working, and retrieved her key from him. Then we continued to their house for the evening. Eaddie had spent most of the day getting ready for band camp. Summer ate and then pretty quickly went to bed. I played my game a while longer, but tried not to stay up too late.

Rumors circulate among the cucumbers.

Uncategorised

Exhausted, Smelly Teenagers

I didn’t sleep great last night on account of the awkwardness of sharing a hotel room with awkward teens. Eaddie didn’t help either, since she immediately crashed on the couch in the opposite room. I woke up well before my alarm and took a shower. Then when Summer got out of bed, we went downstairs for a pretty good breakfast.

I couldn’t convince a single other person to take a shower, which was kind of my main reason for stopping to get a hotel in the first place. If I hadn’t started to get super dizzy the night before, I might have tried to drive straight through. In any case, we loaded everyone up and headed toward Memphis after a quick stop at a Supercharger just outside of Nashville.

Eaddie had been talking about how she wanted to visit an Ikea, so we went there for lunch. Summer was a little cranky, and the girls mostly wandered around looking at the showrooms by themselves. This was the first Ikea I’d seen that didn’t exist on multiple floors, but it was still a maze to get back to the restaurant. Everyone except Eaddie had a big plate of meatballs. Eaddie ate old, dried out salmon. We spent way more money feeding and taking care of the other kids than I expected, but I wasn’t sure if Summer had a plan for that.

It started to storm really hard while we were eating, so we waited that out before going across town to the same Supercharger we started at on our trip toward D.C. The charge didn’t take very long, so everyone just sat in the car, and then Summer drove us to Brinkley for another charge.

By that time, I had been drinking enough that I was having to stop relatively urgently to find a restroom while we charged. This time, I found myself in the back of a grocery store. Luckily it didn’t take long for us to get enough juice to make the last leg of the trip. We got back to town and stopped at Superfast so Summer could get the Murano home. They left me with the other two, so I took them home before making it up to Summer’s.

It was a pretty quick and quiet night for everyone after that. I watered the plants and stayed up late updating my résumé and dawdling for a while. Hopefully I can sleep in tomorrow to catch up.

Pay closer attention and be more cognizant.

Uncategorised

C U L 8 R D C

I wanted to sleep in this morning, but Summer really wanted to get to the dorm to pick up the girls’ stuff at 7:30. We got everything loaded up and we made it there a little later than that, but still with plenty of time. The girls decided they wanted to go to a “parade” of all the participants, but not the awards ceremony, so we picked up a couple of them and dropped them off at the arena. Then Summer and I went upstairs and actually had to find them in the bleachers anyway. The groups were all separated out, but then were called down to the floor where they swirled around in a chaotic mix of way too many teenagers.

After that, we went back to the dorm to check them out, and we were on our way. Traffic was terrible, but luckily our first stop wasn’t very far away. We topped off while we ate at a place called Oriental Café. The food was decent, and the lady that served us was super nice. I actually didn’t love my General Tso because it was too sour and not hot enough, but at least it seemed fresh. The car kept charging past our set charge point, so we went down a couple doors of the shopping center and the girls got ice cream and cookies before we left.

Our next stop was a charger behind a hotel where we encountered several others charging as well. Then we were on to another charger that appeared to be kind of alone with nothing much around. Across the interstate was a Buc-ee’s that I wanted to visit, but it wasn’t until after we finished charging that we realized there was another set of Superchargers in the same parking lot. I started getting super dizzy and my head felt like I was drunk, but we went inside and it was astounding. Especially for being so late, it was very much alive inside. We picked up a few things, I cleaned the windshield, the girls ate popsicles, and Summer drove us to our stop at a Comfort Inn.

I was pretty disappointed to learn that the charger was networked at roughly the same price as a supercharger. For the cost of the hotel, it could have easily been free. I plugged in and just left it not charging out of spite. The girls had already gone up to the room, so I came up and tried to quietly finish up and get to bed as quickly as I could.

This is why I wanted to power through.