Tag: Step Kids

Change of Plans

Today was supposed to be a trip up to Vermont to visit the kids. Lunch with one and a swapping of warm clothes for summer clothes for the other. Alas it was not to be… yet. Next week. An ear infection and a stomach bug have derailed the plans for today, but we’ve already rescheduled for next week.

Instead, Jen and I took a crack at the mess that is Bellana’s room. When the cellar was flooded the first time we started storing stuff in her room. When the cellar flooded the second time we continued to use her room for storage. We didn’t do it a lot, but we did pile up some stuff. We spent a good chunk of our Saturday morning getting rid of crap we don’t need and finding new homes for the stuff we might need in the future. The cellar, specifically.

My back is killing me from going up and down the stairs. That’s okay. I’m at my desk in the bedroom with the window open enjoying what is probably the last moments of decent weather. I hate fall. The leaves are starting to fall. Bite me, mother nature.

Oh well.

Baseball at 4:00, hockey at 7:00, guitar at?

Awake

Still awake. I wanted to go to sleep early but it wasn’t happening. Oh well, I’ll keep trying.

I just watched the first episode of Y the Last Man on Hulu. Color me hooked so far.

I wish Major League Baseball had booked game one of the ALCS for tomorrow instead of Friday. I have all this built up hype and no where to put it.

I still don’t know why the NHL season opened on the 12th but the Bruins don’t play until the 16th. Is it a TV rights thing? The NHL is back with ESPN for the first time in something like 300 years. Figures. NBCsn streams to an iOS app. ESPN only streams to subscribers. Jerks.

I mentioned we are going up to Vermont on Saturday. We are bringing cold weather clothing to Bellana (and bringing warm weather clothes back home with us) and we are meeting Harry for lunch. I can’t wait. Weekly FaceTime calls are great, but I’m looking forward to actual face time.

Okay, I’m going to put some music on and see if I can sleep. Talk to you all tomorrow.

Pep Band

We found out yesterday that Harry has joined the UVM pep band that plays at hockey games.

I also found out that the athletic director responsible for my boycotting UMass Lowell athletics is no longer the athletic director.

I’m going to have to drill Harry on attendance and social distance policies and Covid safety at UVM games because of this:

I would LOVE to go and hear Harry play, even if I am secretly rooting for the other team.

Excitement

I was about to start writing something but tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead started. We need to wait for a commercial break. Hold on…..

….okay, commercial break.

We had a FaceTime call with my step daughter tonight. Always great to check in. She was telling us that she got accepted into a research project. Jen asked her what they were working on. It was all casual conversation like.

As soon as the question was out though, Bellana lit up like the sun. She started talking about the project with a level of excitement that was unreal. It was amazing to witness. She was thrilled.

She is so clearly studying the right subject. 100%.

At one point she was talking about cloning cells. I was going to ask if she could clone Patches. Just before I did, Patches walked into the room and vomited about 20 pounds of puke onto our nice hardwood floor.

Yeah, maybe we don’t clone Patches just yet.

More Nothing

Another lunch break with out much to talk about. We had plans to go up to Burlington to see the kids this weekend, but the weather is looking bad and thanks to Covid we want to stay outside so we’re looking at rescheduling. I guess I don’t quite need to have Bellana’s Fall laundry done tonight after all. I’ll still try though.

This is going to be broken record-esque. but my back and my shoulders and my legs are killing me and I haven’t don’t any of my exercise yet today. Not good, Robert. Not good.

I started a new candle yesterday. When I lit it again this morning I started a time lapse video. I’ll post it later today and you can bask in the glory of the glorious gloriousness of the candle burning time lapse iPad video.

This has felt like a super long week, but it hasn’t been particularly long at all. I think the start of October just makes everything suck. Not that September’s generally any better. Hang on to it as long as you can though. Don’t leave, September! Stay with me!

I haven’t a clue what I’m talking about anymore.

Okay, back to work. Lunch break is over.

Thursday Morning Musings

It’s September 30th. How the hell did we get here so fast? Yesterday and today the outside temperature when we woke up was cold enough for jackets. It just sucks. Covid ate two summers in a row, but they both flew by so fast anyway that I feel like we would have missed them even without Covid. Crud.

I forgot to mention this yesterday, but yesterday was the 11th anniversary of our buying this house. Our 11th Homeownerversary, if you will. I didn’t do anything to celebrate then, but I did today. I went downstairs to do laundry. While downstairs I looked for leaks and water on the floor. I didn’t find any. Oh happy day. I think there is probably some water under the floor tiles in a few spots still, but nothing visible. I need to run the dehumidifier for a few days to clean up the hidden stuff (in theory at least. Will it work? Who knows).

We are going to see the kids this weekend. Bellana asked if we could bring up some Fall clothes for her. I offered to wash everything first. Big mistake, Robert. There is so much laundry to do. So much. Mountains and piles and piles and mountains (I am exaggerating, yes, but there is a lot of it. A lot). I hope to have it all done tonight.

We missed the new What If last night. Jen was tied up at work and by the time that was wrapped up and dinner was done Harry was busy with homework. We’ll try the watch party thing again tonight. Last night we were going to mess up the tradition by not having burgers, but we can fix it tonight. Jen suggested veggie burgers. Consider it done.

And now, on to work. Happy Thursday, folks.

The Empty Lunch Break Post

My lunch break is ending. Time to throw up a post.

I got nothing.

Nothing at all.

The last three days have felt like the longest six months ever, har har har.

Jen asked me a question about a Lizardfish show from a few years ago. I had to go to the Lizardfish website to get the details she wanted. Turns out the domain has expired. Did I know that? I think I did. lizardfishmusic.com is no longer a thing. Lizardfishmusic.wordpress.com is though. Turns out I never added the 2/1/20 show to the list of past shows. There’s a post for it, but I never took the next step and added it to the list. I’ll fix that. While I was there I took a second to add a new post saying that we’re missing it. Because we are.

My back is killing me. My neck is killing me. My shoulders are killing me. My legs are killing me. My feet are killing me……. and I still have 28 minutes of exercise to do today. Yikes!

We are planning a drive up to Vermont to check in with the kids and deliver some seasonal clothing. The closer we get to the weekend the more excited about it I get. I’m really looking forward to it, even if it requires me to do a shit ton of laundry. Can’t wait.

See? I had nothing to talk about.

A Downside of Weekend Work

So there is a hidden downside to working around the clock over the weekend.

There are a bunch of podcasts that I like to listen to during the work week that release new episodes over the weekend. This week I’ve listened to all of them. Now I have nothing to listen to during my actual work shift tomorrow.

Bummer, dude.

Unrelated to work, there was good news today. First, we got to see Bellana for about five minutes. She was passing through town and stopped in to say hello. Second, we had a FaceTime call with Harry! Both kids on a random Sunday! If only I had had a chance to shower and change out of yesterday’s clothes! Also, if I don’t get a haircut soon my head is going to collapse under it’s own weight. Keep an eye on the news. The headline will likely be, “Red Head’s Head Implodes. News at 11:00.”

Sad Calendar

We had an event on our Google Calendars showing the custody schedule for the kids. Our weekends were marked Kid weekends. Dad’s weekends were not marked. We could look as far into the future as we needed to and instantly know when we had the kids.

Jen just canceled the event.

We don’t need it anymore. When they come home for visits we will work out who gets them when on a case by case basis. In general though… we don’t need that calendar event anymore…

…and it makes me super sad.

Holding it Together

The first half of the work day was nice and busy so I didn’t have time to freak out over the future or anything freak out worthy. The afternoon might be a little slower, so I could let my mind wander to things that scare the hell out of me.

On the upside, we’re going to try to do our Wednesday burgers and Marvel thing with Harry. Jen and I are planning on having burgers for dinner after I finish work, and we’re going to sneak in today’s episode of What If while we eat. It’s not set in stone yet, but Harry is going to try to join us via an group watch thing. He won’t be here with us, but he’ll be watching with us. I’m looking forward to that enough that I haven’t even let myself look up the topic of today’s episode. It is not set in stone yet, of course. He might not get back to his dorm in time. That is perfectly all right though.

The floor in the cellar is still wet, but when I last went down stairs to check there wasn’t a lot of standing water. I’ve gone there 2-3 times this morning and vacuumed up whatever I found. Also, the dehumidifier has been working it’s tail off. I know that at some point after I leave tonight the dehumidifier will be full enough to auto-shut off, and then there will be nothing to fight the flood until I come back tomorrow night.

It’s going to be a long second half of the work day. Then once I get to my parents’ house it’s going to be a long night taking care of things there. Then tomorrow… I don’t want to talk about the rest of the week because I am afraid of jinxing things. Shut up, fat boy.

Okay, back to work. The email is piling up and I have a couple of meetings to get to.

Rock on, constant readers*

*Constant readers! It just popped into my head! In a post a couple of days ago I was trying to remember the phrase Stephen King uses to address his readers in his afterwards. Constant readers! That’s it! Kick ass, Mr King!