Tag: parenting

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I’m Not High, but I Did Stay at a Holiday Inn Express

Summer and I got up for breakfast this morning, which was pretty much the bare minimum for “hot” hotel breakfast. Then I showered while the girls went downstairs to find some food for themselves. We loaded up, and Summer took the first half of the drive. The girls slept some more, and even I started to doze off quite a bit. We stopped to charge one last time in Strasburg and shared a couple Junior Whoppers next door.

I took the final leg of the trip and had to sit through a bunch of stop-and-go traffic to get into Washington. We made it to the University of Maryland without incident, so I guess the trip has been a success so far. I dropped the girls off at the Student Union building to register while I parked. Luckily there were a couple chargers just across the street, so I parked there and went inside to find them.

Once they were registered, the girls were ready to go back to their dorm. They walked while Summer and I drove their luggage over. We ran into their other partner and her grandmother on the way, so after they registered, we went back to get them back to the dorm as well.

We ended up sticking around in the dorm longer than I wanted. Summer stumbled through the Metro Pass process and probably ended up spending about four times as much money as she needed to before I looked at any of it. I finally talked her into leaving the girls alone to decompress, and we headed across town to find our own hotel.

There was a mob of angry patrons in the lobby, and the staff were clearly frustrated, but handling the situation with absolute grace. When it was finally our turn, I told our girl that she was doing a great job, and Summer ended up going around the counter to give her a hug. We got checked in super quickly and then went around the building to find our room. We took everything up, but then found an ozone generator in our room, with the door ajar. I decided I really didn’t want to leave our stuff there, so we took it all back down to the car and went around the block to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner.

The restaurant was actually pretty busy, and the food was good. They still didn’t give me any celery or carrots, which I never understood. After we ate, we went back to the hotel and found a couple EV chargers. One was broken, and the other was in use. We made our way back up to the room instead, and unloaded before heading back to the university for the opening ceremony.

Traffic by then was horrible on campus. There were so many people, and the volunteers that were directing traffic seemed to be a little slow in that special kind of way. We made it back up the parking garage to charge though, and then walked down to the McKeldin Mall for the ceremony. Nobody was more disappointed by the use of the word “mall” than me. The “ceremony” was a relatively long and boring “thank you to all of these highly important people,” followed by a roll call of all 50 states and some international participants. They ended the ceremony with a parody of a One Direction song I had found the lyrics to earlier in the day.

Summer and I left for the evening and headed back to the hotel. We got settled in, but then the TV wouldn’t work and we had to call the front desk. They sent an “engineer” up to inspect, and he brought a little non-contact voltage tester that beeped at every outlet. In the end, still nothing worked, so he walked the mini fridge to the other side of the room to a working outlet. In his rummaging, we moved the TV and found a couple empty drug baggies under the stand. Several things about our room felt extremely sketchy, but at least our check-in clerk was nice.

I never thought I’d complain about being too cold in a hotel room.

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Gators Out of Water

I squeezed into work today, but things were unusually quiet. It wasn’t long before I learned that they sent everyone home because a water main had gone out somewhere up the road, so the school had no water. I tried to stick around for a bit, but eventually went home since I knew it would take me half an hour to get back home to my own bathroom.

Just after I got home, the mail lady came by with my new sun shades for our cars. I tried them out and settled on using the umbrella type for the Model 3, since I didn’t really have anywhere to store the folding one. Then I decided to surprise the guys at Taco John’s for lunch. I tried to see if Allen was going, but from what I could hear over the phone, he was out doing something else.

I stopped to wash my car first so I wouldn’t be too early, but even when I arrived, I had time to eat all of my food before Zach, Greg, and his wife and kid showed up. They didn’t have a whole lot to say, but I did learn that Old South had burned down. Shortly after they got their food, a bunch of the maintenance crew came in, so I moved over to sit with them once Zach and Greg left.

After lunch, I headed up to see if Eaddie wanted to go driving. She was cleaning and doing laundry, so I helped pick through some crap Autumn had left in the floor when she left. Noah left with the promise of coming back to help us move a grill up from my house. I had texted Autumn to see if she wanted to come get some more stuff, but when she came by after DEP for her school records, she said she still hadn’t unpacked anything. She seemed humbled though, and even offered to come back and mow the front lawn so Eaddie wouldn’t have to do it herself.

After a while, I convinced Eaddie to go grocery shopping with me, and we got everything to grill some burgers and took it back to my house to wait for Noah. We ended up waiting for nearly two hours, but he eventually showed up and we successfully moved the grill. Eaddie got to work right away baking a cake, while I started up the grill. The three of them went back out to get some fries while I mixed up the hamburger meat, and then I grilled everything as quickly as I could.

Dinner was awesome. They were some of the best burgers I’d made in quite a while, and it made the girls realize why I scoffed at the $80 it cost for us to eat at Big Orange the other day. Noah had put on The Guardians of the Galaxy while they were waiting to eat, so we finished watching it after we ate, and then everyone was off to bed.

They drained the swamp.

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On the Subject of Pedestals

Eaddie has been wanting to go out on a hike, so she and Summer decided today was the day. I suggested Pedestal Rock, a place I hadn’t been there since I was a child, because it seemed like an easy enough hike for someone in my condition. They jumped right out of bed and were ready to go, so I took the opportunity to shower while they went to the store to get lunch materials. Then they brought the Model Y over to charge while we took mine up to Pelsor.

Nobody had eaten yet, and I didn’t want to drive for an hour and then hike for just as long before we could sit down and eat sandwiches, so I stopped at Sonic before we got to Dover. It was a pretty middling experience, made slightly worse by the fact that we then weren’t really hungry enough for lunch on the trail afterward.

We walked the Pedestal Rocks trail, which was longer than Kings Bluff. It wasn’t too incredibly hot or humid out, but the slight changes in elevation got me huffing pretty quickly. Even micro changes wear me down really quickly, so I tried to pace myself. We made it down to the rock formations fairly easily, and I took a short break while the girls wandered around at the bottom of the formations for a bit. The hike back up to the car was much worse for me, but once we leveled out I recovered fairly quickly.

The girls ate some pita chips and hummus, but didn’t get out any of the sandwich stuff. I found a large chunk of something in what was left of our cranberry slush from Sonic. It had broken up a bit in the drink, which led me to believe it was a chunk of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, but nobody was brave enough to taste it.

Eaddie was pretty anxious to get back home by that time, so we left. As we got back into town and service, Summer noticed that Autumn had stopped by Adam’s house on the way home from Clarksville, where she had been overnight. It was clear they had spent the night together at her father’s house. Autumn’s lies about their plans pretty well sealed her fate.

We swapped vehicles at my house and then went inside to chat for a bit before deciding to go to Summer’s parents’ house to talk to them first. We felt we owed them the courtesy, but that turned toxic absolutely instantly. We had barely pulled up when Autumn called Summer wanting to know if we were there to talk them out of paying for her band camp trip. It was a short conversation before Autumn hung up on her mother, and then Summer had to talk JoAnn into coming out to talk to the three of us.

Everyone seemed to be concerned about band camp, because that’s what Autumn called them about. Gerald stomped out, white as a ghost, a few moments later and banged his fist in anger. Summer told him we were kicking Autumn out, and he said, “Good! You don’t deserve her!” I think we all felt a brief feeling of relief until he pulled the rug out from beneath us and said she could come live with him. Then he tried bringing up Summer’s past when she moved out of their house, as though that made any kind of point at all. He cast Summer away and told her not to come back. She and Eaddie went back to the car while I stood there in shock.

I tried to calmly explain the situation, but it was clear he wasn’t going to listen. He was locked into blind support of Autumn’s parasitic lifestyle, and she’ll only suffer for it. I told him that I knew they loved the girls, and for some reason his only response was that he didn’t love Eaddie. That just seemed like a cruel and pointless thing to say, and I had absolutely no response loaded for that. We headed to the house to confront Autumn, but of course they had already told her she was being kicked out, so she was packing by the time we got there.

Autumn tried ignoring us at first, but finally came out long enough for Summer to talk to her. After over a year of hearing her say she hates it with us, she said she wasn’t ready to move out, and then turned to me to ask if I was “okay with this.” I don’t know what kind of answer she expected from me after she tried to send me to jail with false accusations. Summer did a great job of laying out the expectations and where Autumn failed to meet them. We gave her twice the amount of time we told her, and then sent her off with her car title and birth certificate. We’ve wasted enough time afraid for our own safety with her around. She can mooch off of someone else from now on.

I think Summer and Eaddie handled it relatively well, but it was hard. I didn’t really expect to tear up myself, but I did while giving my parting words. They took a moment to breathe, and then Summer took me home to get the Murano. While we were there, she called Nick to explain the situation. He played dumb enough that I didn’t even think to be angry at him, since he was the one that allowed Autumn to stay the night with her 15 year old boyfriend. What an absolute putz.

Summer spent a while on the phone in her car when we got back to the house. Eaddie had taken a shower, and we were trying to decide what to do for dinner. When Summer finally came in, I suggested pizza and both of their eyes lit up like it was Christmas morning and they had just found all of the surprise presents under the tree. I ordered some Little Caesars, and spent the next 20 minutes waiting for it.

When I got back to the house, we watched Modern Family while we ate. Then the girls went to bed. New challenges await us tomorrow, but at least for now, we can breathe a sigh of relief.

If it were up to me, we would have given her car to her in cube-form.

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Old Tomato

Things were tense with Summer every time I saw her today. She and I both slept in a bit. She tried to wake Autumn up before she left for work, and of course I could hear mild yelling from the bedroom. Once she left, I had a bagel and then quietly went home myself for the day. I wanted to read up on some Ubiquiti networking documentation, but I could never get myself into it. The best I could do was complete a load of laundry.

I thought Mom was working, but she texted around lunch time and it looked like she was at home. I thought I’d visit her, but I didn’t get out until after my laundry was done. I had to go by Walgreens first for my medication, but that was a failed trip and a phone call to my benefits line, because apparently my insurance paperwork hasn’t made it in yet. I decided not to pay full price and just ride out some higher blood pressure for a few weeks to see what happens.

From there, I stopped to wash my car before heading to see Mom. By the time I got there, I saw the garage was empty and it looked like she was at work. Confused, I headed back home. Summer was home by then, but the girls had been out shopping all day. By the time I got to her house, she said they had left again for the art walk downtown. Things were still tense, and I likened the situation to beating a dog for peeing on the carpet the day before. I told her I was sick of nothing being done. There’s been no accountability. Autumn simply doesn’t understand the difference between not being a shitty person and working to earn something. I’m not going to keep my mouth shut any longer.

I ate some leftovers, and Summer went straight to bed. I just sat there wishing I was at home all night long. What a waste.

First fireflies of the year.