Tag: parenting

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“Banquet” Is Just a Fancy Word for ”Dinner”

Summer stayed home today after dropping the girls off at school, which let me stay in bed a bit longer. I couldn’t really sleep though, so I got up and started looking for more jobs. I got a couple rejection emails, but only for two out of the four applications I submitted, so I’m still cautiously hopeful for the other two. I saved a few other listings, but for some reason I’m afraid to apply for too many at once, and in reality that’s probably just making me lose opportunities.

I steamed some rice and fried up some leftover pork chops for a nice lunch, and eventually made it home to clean up after Summer left the house to get some work done. I picked Autumn up after school and brought her home, but Eaddie stayed for robotics, which had a banquet scheduled for the evening.

Once it was time to go, Summer and I went to Walmart for some desserts and then headed to the high school. The banquet was pretty neat, and they had catered Taco Villa for dinner. While we waited for everyone to show up, I talked to Ethan for a bit about my predicament with the school. Then once they were ready to kick things off, we ate, celebrated the students, and watched them present some awards.

We had to wait for Eaddie to help tear everything down at the end, so I got roped into helping set the cafeteria back up. While we were doing that, one of the older parents noticed my Woot! shirt. It was raining pretty hard by the time we were ready to leave, so I got the car and picked up Summer. Then we drove around the building to get Eaddie and one of her robotics friends from downstairs, and dropped her off on the way home.

Summer stayed up late reading over Quiz Bowl questions while Eaddie and I watched an episode of Breaking Bad. Then it was off to bed while listening to the rain.

I am the one who knocks!

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Páusé/Résumé

We dropped Autumn off at Dwight again today, but then went to my house to swap cars before dropping Eaddie off. She had made a comment yesterday about not getting dropped off in the Tesla, so I figured, “why not?”

I tried not to get too comfortable once I got home. I’ve spent too long wallowing and getting distracted. I got to work building a timeline of my career with the school, and felt pretty good about what I had. It may be false confidence. It usually is.

Bác Vân and Doug were outside all day working in the yard, and I wanted to go out to help, but I was afraid of getting too distracted. Instead, I only left the house to get some tacos for a late lunch. Then I got to work translating my résumé from the old Word file. I was worried about how it would look in Google Docs, but they improved the DOCX conversion, and I was able to copy and paste in large chunks instead of having to hand-type everything again. The hardest part by far was making the last, intentionally blank page, though that seemed counterintuitive.

Autumn had asked in the morning to go to the junior high concert after school. I confirmed with Eaddie that she actually wanted to go, but then Autumn wanted me to shuttle her boyfriend around afterward. I just knew she only wanted to go for that reason, so I shut it down. It was such a surprise when she decided she’d rather just go home after basketball practice instead of sticking around. I took her to Taco John’s for a cheap dinner, where Patrick came around the counter to chat for a bit when she went to the restroom. Then we made it back to my house just in time for Summer to pick her up and head home.

I waited the rest of the evening until Eaddie was ready to be picked up from the concert, and then we headed up the hill as well. I warmed up some leftovers for her while she chatted in bed with Summer. Then I had to change some settings on her iPhone to get MMS messages to work. Evidently the phone remembered that the Fi app was installed with my account, and wouldn’t associate with her data. With that, everyone was off to bed, leaving me to dawdle online. It may be time to do something about the attention deficit.

Never quit never quitting.

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Low Charge

I had to get up early to get the girls to school this morning. Autumn went to Dwight, and Eaddie went to the high school. Then I went home and stayed up to do a little cleaning and laundry. I also tried to research what would be involved in installing my Tesla wall connector, which didn’t seem too bad, but I really need to find an electrician.

Overall I was pretty disappointed in myself for not being more productive. I could have done more, but I just had trouble keeping focus. It’s too easy to get sidetracked until the next responsibility comes up.

Summer came back to town for work in the afternoon, so I picked up some Taco John’s for us and we ate at Superfast. Then I went back home to wait for her until it was time to go to the girls’ midwinter concert. Both of us had trouble staying awake for the first band, but the Symphonic band was much better.

After the concert, we got frustrated with the girls because they kept running around with their friends instead of seeing their family. Eaddie kept trying to come up with some other plan to avoid going with either us or her father. Autumn of course wanted to take her boyfriend out to eat with him though. We ended up leaving alone, and Summer dropped me off at home.

The Model 3 was taking forever to charge, so I investigated that for a moment and found an error that it slowed charging because it detected the outlet was getting too hot. I unplugged it for a couple minutes and then got it going again, so hopefully my house doesn’t burn down.

I finally made it up to Summer’s for the evening, followed by Autumn, and then Eaddie since she went with Maristella instead of her father. I have a bit of anxiety this week over deciding whether to try and meet the work crew at Taco John’s, and then the CPPC meeting the following day.

Fight depression.

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Shitty Universe

I only slept from about three in the morning until about seven, because Autumn was talking loudly to Summer right outside the bedroom door. I felt incapable of sleeping by the time everyone left for school and work, so I got up and eventually made myself a burrito. I looked for some jobs and chatted with several people. Travis was the only person from work to text me, since we didn’t have each others’ phone numbers already, and it was really nice to hear from him.

I would have liked to be more productive, but I just felt sleepy and groggy all day long. I was definitely too hazy to do anything too cognitive, and my emotions cycled through confidence, frustration, anger, depression, anxiety, and doubt. As the clock ticked on, I finally made it home to shower before having to get the girls from school.

It seemed clear outside, so I took the car for a wash before going to pick up Eaddie at hour-early dismissal. She responded that she had stuff to do for robotics while Autumn was at basketball practice. That nearly messed up Summer’s plan to start teacher conferences as soon as the doors opened.

I ended up getting Summer from Superfast, and then coming right back to the high school to try for conferences. As we pulled through the parking lot, I saw Travis and Sarah walking into the building, so I circled the lot and we happened to see Eaddie. I wasn’t in the mood to fight the stars and their twisted plot, so we took Eaddie to a friend’s house to work on their National History Day project. Then we went to Staples to get her a flip chart before going back to the high school to get Autumn from basketball.

We went back to get Eaddie and took the girls home, and then went to Las Palmas for dinner before going to conferences much later than we originally planned. Those went well, and I shared my news with lots of old coworkers, to a surprising variety of responses. The kids are lined up, but I’ve got more work to do tomorrow. I took Summer back to the Murano at Superfast, went home to trade vehicles myself, and then made it up to their house for the night. I thought I’d crash earlier than I did, but at that point I wouldn’t turn my nose up at going to sleep “on time.”

Collect the facts.

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Parenting 401: Teenager Wrangling

Thomas had a meeting with some of our guys right outside my door this morning, so they shut me in. It didn’t seem like anything too serious, so I didn’t really get the whole shutout thing, but it was fine. Afterward I went to Crawford to take care of a couple things before lunch.

I tried to get Dale to come to Taco Tuesday with us, but he said he couldn’t make it. Allen happened to find us there though, and he had a lot to say. The food was pretty good today, which was an improvement over last night.

When we got back, I spent some time with Special Services, but couldn’t actually get their signature pad working for their application. Apparently the documentation specifically calls out that they do not support signature pads, so we had to take the “L.”

The rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet, but relatively steady. I cleaned up some old tickets, but I’ve got some more important ones that I really need to wrap up. Most everyone left right at quitting time, so I rushed Tammy out, and then went to my parents’ house to help Dad put the gate back together.

We chatted for a while, and then I finally made it home to swap cars before heading up to Summer’s. She made salmon and Brussel sprouts for dinner, and then Eaddie started on some homework. Autumn was supposed to be at a basketball game, but I caught her driving around to the back side of the high school again and finally convinced Summer to catch her and Adam in the act.

We loaded up, and I dropped Summer off at Autumn’s car. Autumn immediately freaked out, but Adam calmly got out of her car and into the Murano with me so I could take him home. The drive wasn’t too awkwardly quiet, and the conversation with his father was probably a little too easy. At least we didn’t catch them actively doing anything too bad. I told them I understood just wanting to hang out with some peace and quiet to talk, but that if they say they’ll be in a public place for an event, they had better be there.

The girls met us back at home, and we talked to Autumn some more. Who knows if it will do any good, but at least there wasn’t any screaming by the time we got back. All things considered, she seemed to be in fair spirits. By that time, it was off to bed for everyone.

It’s clobberin’ time!

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Band State of Mind

I woke up around four in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I dozed off a couple times for just a couple minutes, but nothing substantial. It was a wonder I didn’t drag harder throughout the day than I did. I ran home to clean up, and then Summer came down for our trip to Hot Springs. We stopped at Hardee’s for breakfast first, and then we were on our way in the Model 3.

I felt confident enough in our ability to find a charger that I didn’t even bother changing my charge limit. We left with 90% and got to the convention center with right around 60%. I started off testing autopilot on the curves, but quickly gave up because it made me nervous, and I enjoy driving through the curves anyway. Once we got to The Hotel Hot Springs, the parking garage had a few Tesla destination chargers available. I parked next to an older red Model 3 Performance, which was kind of cool. Unfortunately the Sentry Mode never caught them leaving, so I never got to see who was driving it.

Eaddie was evidently staying at the Embassy Suites on the opposite end of the convention center, but we didn’t learn that until we had waited a few minutes in the wrong lobby. We finally found her, stowed her belongings in the bus, and then made our way inside to watch the concerts. We ran into Reece and Christina inside, and chatted with them for a bit. Summer wanted to watch some of the choirs, but they went on the same time as the other bands, so we had to switch auditoriums and spent the rest of the day in the arena.

The orchestra was actually pretty awful. Eaddie figured it was mostly the acoustics, but I was pretty sure it was the average skill level. The non-string instruments simply didn’t know how to play when they weren’t the majority. There was an immediately noticeable improvement with the concert band, but the one to beat was the smaller wind symphony, in which Eaddie played. They did a fantastic job, and I hated that we had to fight the cold and the harsh lighting fatigue just to watch them.

After the show, I got the car and picked up the girls. We were hungry for something uniquely out-of-town, but Eaddie just wanted a hamburger. That was when I remembered seeing an A&W on Google maps, so we made our way across town only to be disappointed to learn it was built into a gas station. In spite of the location and the completely over-it staff, the food was actually really good. The burgers tasted fresh and held together well. The sriracha cheese curds were a nice surprise. The root beer was phenomenal as always. It just made me want to sell everything and open one myself.

By the time we finished, Eaddie was ready to head home. We made it downtown, and the girls needed a restroom, so I stopped to get water while they took care of that down the block. Then we made it home in a flash. Eaddie apparently outgrew getting car sick, so I probably lost more money due to rubber on the road than what I saved by only having to pay for fuel to drive one way.

It was a quick run for beds once everyone got back home. I fought sleep long enough to get my own chores done, and then I was down for the night.

I got the powah!

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Caught Between Two Cranks

It was rainy again for most of today, but I spent most of it in my office working on some Adobe troubles. It seemed really quiet otherwise, aside from a couple walks to the Support Services building. We had our usual Taco Tuesday, where a couple of the maintenance guys had beat us there. Then we saw Melinda and Matt come in as we were leaving.

I wasn’t much more successful in the afternoon, and it dragged on a little bit until quitting time. Summer said she should be out of work by five, so I thought we could visit with Mom and possibly take them to dinner. When I got to Superfast, she said she still had some work to do and that Eaddie changed her mind about going to a basketball game.

By the time I made it to Eaddie, she had changed her mind about three times, and then wanted us to take her to New China with Gavin. We were alright with that plan, but then the restaurant was closed and we wound up at Stoby’s.

We eventually made it to my parents’ house, but Mom was dozing on the couch, not feeling well. We made it to my house to trade vehicles, and then up to Summer’s where everyone wound down super fast. Autumn was out late with her boyfriend, and I called her out for parking on the opposite side of the campus during the game. I didn’t want to be up when she made it home, so I wrapped up quickly and hit the hay.

The problem is, we’re much smarter than you.

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Get Grounded

I got up this morning and grilled little burritos for everyone. Autumn of course only ate half of hers, since it had more than beans and cheese in it. Afterward, Summer made it to the gym. I should have left right away, because then I could have avoided Autumn asking permission to go out to eat dinner with their father. I felt like she was scheming as usual, so I left it up to Summer.

When I got home, I started pulling switches apart and climbing up into the attic to trace wires. There was only one line of Romex coming into the garage light switch, and it went straight up to the light, which then went to either western outlet. This confused me, because I couldn’t find where it went back to the breaker box. After some poking around, I figured the northwest outlet went to the outside light and then up to the breaker.

Summer showed up for a bit, and I showed her what I was working on. Then she left and Dad came over to help. We continued poking around the outlets and eventually pulled three unconnected ground wires out of the north outside light switch. With them disconnected, I have absolutely no idea how the outlet ever worked at all for charging my car. If it was never ever grounded, then it should have always failed.

Once we had that all patched up and at least reporting correct, we moved inward. Most of the outlets inside the house reported some kind of issue, either with an open ground, or voltage where there should be none. We did a bit of trial and error, but never actually got anything fixed. It did make me feel quite a bit better about doing the work ourselves, though. It shouldn’t be terribly difficult to fix it all ourselves. The trick is to not wait until it’s hot.

Eventually Dad headed home and I went back to Summer’s for the evening. The girls went out for dinner, so Summer warmed up some leftovers for us. When the girls got back, we had to get on to Autumn for talking back and sneaking around with Adam, who she took to dinner with their father. It’s clear she’s still manipulating information, but that entire side of the family is TA.

Summer and I watched a bit of YouTube comedy for a bit, and then I took a shower to get some of the grime off of me before bed. I’d love to get a good night of sleep for once.

Srsly, YTA, literally, no cap.

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Not Grounded

Both of the girls had school stuff today, so Summer and I had the day to ourselves. Autumn left to help at an away robotics tournament, and Summer had to get Eaddie to the high school for all-state band in Conway. She wanted to go to the movies, and we couldn’t decide whether to go here or in Conway. Eaddie thought she might finish super early and be bored all day, so we leaned toward Conway, then to go here, and ultimately not go to the movies at all.

I went home and climbed up into the attic to investigate wiring. It looked like both of my wall outlets in question went straight up to the outlet above the garage door opener. It showed to be an open ground as well, and I could trace it back to right around the light switch. It may be a super easy repair after all.

By the time I got cleaned up and ready to go out, Summer just wanted to stay in. I pressed her, and we met at Shell for gas before going to Colton’s for an early dinner. I didn’t think I overstuffed myself, but I felt super full the rest of the evening. We came home and she watched TV on the couch and then in bed until she fell asleep.

Eaddie ended up making sixth chair in the first band, so we were pretty pleased with her. Once they got home, we wound down pretty quickly. Eaddie had a bit to chat about, and then it was off to bed.

It’s like it has its own field of McGravity.

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You’ve Gotta Be Shirtin Me

I woke up to a call from Thomas this morning, and apparently the robotics tournament was completely offline with a lot of cranky people. I got around and headed home in case he needed a hand, but he said he got things going, so I started some laundry.

I finished all of six loads for a total of 75 shirts washed before I made it back up to Summer’s. I got a few other things cleaned up as well, and then Summer made spring rolls for dinner. They turned out pretty good for her first time, and Eaddie enjoyed them as well. Autumn was gone to a school dance for most of the evening.

As bedtime grew near, Eaddie and I decided to start Breaking Bad as we waited for Autumn to get home. She tried to stay out later after leaving the dance early, and claimed to make it home half an hour late because she fell asleep at Adam’s house. I had no interest in listening to her excuses, but our second episode was nearly done anyway. Then it was off to bed.

Absolute Parasite