Made It Through The Day So Far

I was determined to make this a terrific day. So far, it really has been!

We woke up, got around, and headed out to grab a quick breakfast of greasy goo at a BK (I had eaten my puree in the car when we first headed out; I wanted to eat it while it was toasty warm from the microwave, wife wanted the french toast sticks, little guy wanted two breakfast sandwiches; we have a policy in the family now where he got one and was told he'd like that because he didn't need that much fat in the morning) and then we went to the festival for a little while first to meet with my parents so they could hang out with the baby dude.

We had the visiting out of the way and little guy got to ride a few rides before we went to FREE COMIC BOOK DAY at the nearby comic store. We had plenty of good books picked up there including a couple for the mini dude and handed off a card to the owner of the comic store as a thank you for helping with the tire during our last shopping trip there; we stuck in a couple Darden's gift cards so maybe he and his wife will have a free evening out on us.

My wife was looking for a book that was supposed to be released recently so we headed to Barne's and Noble. I was proud of myself for not going too crazy with yet more books...I literally have a bookshelf filled with titles I've yet to get through...but I got a magazine and a couple relatively inexpensive titles to add to the shelves. Little Guy got his fill of trains including a new set to add to his own collection and a book or two, then we headed off to lunch at Panera because they have a customer microwave that let me heat up my puree and my wife really loves their food. A quick stop at Target was taken after that and the it was back to the art festival so we could leisurely meander around on our own time.

We picked up my painkillers waiting at the local Walmart pharmacy and we were good to go. I also had spent quite a bit of time on Percocet since I knew it was going to be a big and busy day and I wanted to keep the soreness I've been feeling from getting to me.

Today was really a wonderful, wonderful day. The kid got a little cranky at times but I think he had fun too.

Notice there was just one kid?

The daughter made arrangements to take the SAT's today. I was proud of the fact that she paid for the test herself, followed up on getting things ready for it...although I don't know if she ever prepped or studied for it...she managed to get up on time, she arranged for a ride, and I'm assuming she had supplies but I don't know. When I took it many moons ago I had to bring pencils and such for the test. I don't know if it's still the same way.

I noticed, though, that she got a ride with her boyfriend this morning to the test. The boy has never expressed an interest in college. I thought she'd be driving herself, but I wondered if he was taking the test because she was. Afterwards she went to the art festival with him for awhile; we met up with them there for her to ride some rides with her brother, seeing as she was half the weight we were.

However, all is not gummy bears and rainbows. She had an attitude about infringing on her free time with her boyfriend by having to play with her brother, who utterly adores her. She texted her mother asking if she could go to her boyfriend's house or if she had to go home...mom didn't reply, and instead of assuming she should go home, she went ahead to do what she wanted to do and hang out at her boyriend's house. When her mother did note this in a semi-snarky text message observing that she went ahead and did what she wanted to do, instead of coming home she continued hanging out with boyfriend, and I'm pretty sure the movie's been over for a couple hours now.

This was on top of her hanging out with boyfriend last night after being told to make sure she did the dishes after school...and she didn't bother.

She's also on student council at school and was supposed to be planning some kind of kickball game to take place Friday afternoon; apparently she did zilch planning and zilch work on it, blaming her co-commitee members and saying she couldn't get ahold of them.

I was just starting to get mad there...this girl sent over three THOUSAND text messages on her phone last month. She has instant messaging. Telephone. Skype for free chat/voice/video conferencing. She's at school with these other people. She has access to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, even the school has its own forum server where she could ask for permission to add a topic to host a virtual pow-wow session for planning items. But she couldn't find a way to get in touch with these other kids, the most connected generation in history.

So she's got a surprise ready tomorrow. She's going to be mowing...we need to refill the gas tank and add oil before she's ready to go, as well as remove an apparent mouse nest in the air intake on top of the engine, but when she gets out of work at six tomorrow night she's going to have some mowing to do. After that she can help her brother pick up his room. She's been slacking, pushing her freedoms a bit much, and it's time to pull on the leash a bit.

I kept asking myself if I was justified in being rather angry with her after her recent behavior. I was proud of her for following through with the SAT thing until I found out she was basically using it as an excuse to hang out with boyfriend some more...my wife seems to be agitated with her as well for her behavior so I don't feel too bad. I became more irritated when the wife went to the shed to check on the state of our gasoline stores while I checked the oil on the mower. My wife found that the things the daughter was supposed to have organized a month ago consisted primarily of throwing everything right at the entrance rather than actually organizing things and we were basically idiots for trusting a then-16-year-old with having done the work she said she had done.

So...irresponsible in living up to the resume-padding title of student council member, not doing dishes after she was told twice to do them yesterday, hanging at boyfriend's instead of getting the work done she was supposed to get done, ignoring the not so subtle common sense precaution of coming home first when she didn't have an answer of where she should go, giving the exasperated attitude when asked to spend an hour with her little brother who adores her and hadn't seen her all day, not actually following up on organizing some bags of salt and a couple bags of recyclables and such in the shed (which is her primary chore in the house; trash and recyclables), not taking the not so subtle hint to get her arse home after she finally did ask about it...I'm not feeling too bad about having her spend her non-working hours tomorrow at home doing penance.

Overall this was a fantastic day. The daughter wasn't doing enough to ruin the day. The son had a few moments where the lack of a nap triggered a few fits that threatened to ruin part of the shopping trips, but he settled down after basically learning that whining was going to get him nowhere in getting his way.

I don't know if I could have asked for a better day that didn't involve being on vacation so as to escape our worries for a few days!

I'm tired...extremely very much totally tired. The daughter came home and got a long rambling speech on her future and responsibilities and etcetera etcetera...and while I'm healed quite a bit, I'm still finding those times that surprise the hell out of me where I think I can do something simple and end up going woozy from bending over to pick something up. Apparently running around as much as we did today took a lot out of me; I nearly fell asleep on the couch around seven o'clock. So you can imagine that I'm in dire need of sleep right now. I probably have a number of typos in this post that right now I'm not caring enough to fix...so goodnight, everyone.