Tag: Kids

Empty Nesters… Again

Bellana is back in Vermont. She left last night and stayed over one of her friends’ house in order to cut down on her morning commute today. At our house she was three hours away from work, and today is a work day for her. I get it. It makes me sad to see her go, but I am also really happy we had her for a few days. Even more so as we had Harry for a few days before that, and their visits overlapped so we had them both for a day. That made me really happy. That was an extra good night.

Jen is working from the office today. I am working from home. That means I am here by my lonesome, just me and the cats. I have a podcast playing on my MacBook and it’s streaming to Home Pods scattered all over the house. I don’t have to pause the podcast if I need to get up and leave the room. Heh heh. Technology is cool. When Jen comes home I’ll shut off any streams that are anywhere other than Harry’s room/my office space.

The Great Heatwave of 2024 is going to become official today. The forecast calls for the temperature in my little city to hit 99 degrees. That will be three days over 90. Heatwave: Confirmed. It is 9:10am right now and it’s already 83 degrees. It’s going to be fun.

The forecast for the rest of the week? Rain and clouds and awful. Back to normal, I guess.

After complaining about crappy sleep for the last week or so, I finally topped six hours last night. In fact, I topped 7.5 hours. It was broken though. I fell asleep at 9:30pm. Not by choice. I just couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore and zonked out. Normally I try to eat something before I go to sleep out of fear that my stomach will get so empty over night that it will hurt. A snack at bedtime avoids that problem, but I didn’t have one last night. My last bite to eat last night was at 7:49pm. I woke up with a bit of a stomach ache at 2:30am. I had a little snack and felt better, but I couldn’t fall back to sleep until well after 3:00. Oh well. I felt really tired when I woke up today (almost an hour later than I had planned) but I feel okay now. Here’s hoping I won’t be totally exhausted today.

Okay, red head. Back to work.

Monday Blues

It is Monday again. Blah.

We had both kids here last night for the first time in ages. It was wonderful. Talk about a full heart, right? It’s over now though. My step son, Harry left for Vermont this morning. He’s on his way home. I was on a conference call when he left, but I got to say goodbye. I’m happy about that at least. My step daughter, Bellana will be here for a couple more days. She’s going out to do some stuff during the day today but she’ll be back this evening. I’m happy she’s here. I was happy that Harry too. I just really love them both and I love having them around the house.

Work has been busy so far today. It will continue for a few days at least. I am planning on working from home tomorrow but I have to go into the office on Wednesday. I’m not sure what my second office day will be this week. I hate the idea of going in on a Friday, but I think this week it will probably happen. I just don’t want to commute two days in a row this week. Especially after doing it four days in a row last week.

I haven’t taken a picture yet today. The photo a day challenge is still open. Where are the cats?

Vacation-itis

We are less than 24 hours away from The Great 2024 Florida Road Trip. Actually, less than 22 hours, if all goes off according to the schedule. I have two hours left in today’s work day, and then four hours of work tomorrow…

…and mentally it is really difficult not to just check out now.

All of our clothes are packed. I still need to hit the grocery store to get some bottled water for the drive, and I need to pack up my weight loss surgery friendly food options, and all of our electronics and chargers and various stuff. Then I just have to load it all into the car and go go go, babie.

The only downside of this epic trip is that these two super heroes won’t be coming with us:

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If there had been a way for them to come along, we would have made it happen. They both have tons of things going on this weekend up in Vermont. We will miss them. We’ll probably bomb them with text messages the whole time so that they don’t feel like they are missing out on anything (hehe, kidding… or am I?).

I’ll just have to fill in the gaps with lots of faux artsy photographs. You know, like ya do.

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So Far, So Good

The birds seem okay with the new bird feeders. So far, at least.

Unrelated note, my step daughter is coming over for dinner. She was in Connecticut with her step mother yesterday so she’s stopping in at our house for a Mothers Day visit with her mother and me. She’s on her way. It has only been a week since we’ve seen her but I don’t care. Every visit is a happy experience and I can’t wait.

Additional unrelated note, the sky looked cool over Home Depot in Salem, NH today so I took a pointless picture just to pointlessly share with all of you. Bless your hearts for putting up with my pointless drivel.

Rain

190 miles, give or take, from our kids to our home…

And it poured rain the entire drive.

The.

Entire.

Drive.

248/365

We are home at last and the visit we had with the kids today was wonderful. One of them has a new significant other as well, and we met that person for the first time. No spoilers though.

Here’s hoping we get more chances to hear Bellana sing with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra in the near future. They are playing Stravinski’s The Firebird in the fall. Does that have a chorus section in it? I freakin’ hope so. (I once was quite the Stravinski guy, but it’s been a while)

The next road trip on our agenda will take us quite a bit more than 190 miles. Florida, here we come!

Magnificent!

The concert tonight was incredible. We didn’t think we were going to see Bellana at all, but Jen ran into her on the way in and we both saw her on the way out. She was smiles from ear to ear. I am so proud of her! She’s amazing!

Now we have to turn our attention to the friggin Bruins who are scoreless after two periods. Also, TBS is celebrating Star Wars day by playing all of the movies. We’re back in the hotel room watching Return of the Jedi. The Ewoks are about to capture Chewbacca and his stomach. I have the game on in a browser. Hopefully the hotel’s shitty wifi will be up to the challenge.

To Do List

  • DON’T BE SICK (not 100% by any stretch right now, but optimistic about my prognosis)
  • Jen and I need to pick up our new glasses. Progressive and transitions? That’s crazy!
  • Drive to Vermont
  • Hear my step daughter sing with the VSO! Wicked!!
  • Continue to not be nauseous or vomit. Very important. Also, no stomach pains. Pretty please.

Birthday Party

Jen and I just got home from a mini birthday party for my father. We booked the assisted living facility’s little dining room and had cupcakes and pie for his birthday. I brought a cupcake from the sugar free bakery so that I could play along. I only took one picture and it has an underage nephew in it so I won’t share it. All three of my nephews and my niece were all there. I really love seeing them. The two oldest kids are in high school now. They are so grown up. Having everyone there made me especially miss my kids, Harry and Bellana. They are both in Vermont while we’re all in Massachusetts. I miss them all the time, but I especially miss them during little family get togethers.

Other than that it was a nice little birthday party for my dad. 83 years old and still going strong. Many happy returns, Dad.

Duplexiversary

On this day in 2008, 16 years ago, Jen and I moved in together. We rented a duplex in Methuen that had three bedrooms. Well… one bedroom might have started it’s life as a big closet, but it was a bedroom in theory by the time we moved in.

I don’t have a lot of pictures of the building. Why? I have pictures of people hanging out in various rooms, but very few of the external. The only good one I could find is actually the back of the house. The left half of this building was our half.

Easter Dinner and Brunch 010
The kids were so little!!!!!

Note, the neighbors who lived in the right half of the duplex had access to that third floor, and rumor has it there was a hot tub up there. We didn’t have any access to the third floor at all. I think it was actually the attic. The other tenant also had a lot more basement space, but what we had was enough. I recorded a lot of RPM Challenge stuff in that tiny little basement space.

We moved in on April 19th. One month and one day later I proposed to Jen, right there in that tiny little back yard by that very gas grill.

Good times. Good times.