A New Week

Hello and welcome to a new week. It’s Monday. I definitely have a case of the Mondays. Urgh.

I had some work to finish up this weekend. I wrapped it all up at a little after 10:00pm last night. Way to wait until the last possible minute, asshole. I then watched the season finale of Westworld (WhatWhatWhat Happened??) before turning in. It was a lot later than I had hoped to get to sleep and as a result I overslept quite a bit this morning.

I was still up early enough to get to most of the stuff I needed to do. The exercise is done, breakfast is made, but the bed is not made and there is laundry to put away. I sort of lived out of a laundry basket today and I don’t like that.

Harry is off work today. Jen is sort of off work too. I am not. I have a lot of stuff to do. I was hoping we could all take a day off together and do something fun, but I am not sure it can happen now. I’m kinda sad about that. We only have about two weeks left with Harry, and half of that time will be spent at his dad’s house. I think we might have run out of time for an extra adventure type day. I guess we’ll just have to drive up to Vermont some weekend day next month and just kidnap him for a while. Sure, that sounds like a plan.

What else? I don’t know. I have work to do. I’ll try and think of something else to write about that can fulfill my goal of boring the internet to tears. Huzzah, boys and girls.

My Step Son is Good People

We have gotten into the routine of watching Marvel and Star Wars shows on Disney+ with my step son. If he’s home we watch together. If he’s away at school we have watch parties so we can watch together. I love it. I love being able to share my fanboy geekdom with him.

The other day we had a FaceTime call with him and I asked if we were going to watch MoonKnight together. Yup. We made a tentative plan to watch the first episode tonight at around 8:00pm and we were good to go.

Today he sent us a text. He wanted to know if it was okay if he watched MoonKnight with his friends. He said they were excited to watch it too and he wanted to know if we would be okay with it if he watched it with them.

19 years old and he wants to make sure it’s okay if he watched a TV show with someone else. Correct me if I am wrong, but he is the single nicest person ever. My step son, Harry, is just good people. Through and through.

Of course it’s okay if you watch with your friends! Jen said that it just means we’ll have to talk about the series when he gets home. I forwarded that along in the text thread and he agreed. We’ll deconstruct the shit out of it. Then he added that we’ll be watching Ms Marvel as we do it.

Yeah, we will!

Harry is good people.

Wednesday News

Oh, it’s Wednesday again. When we dropped off my step son at his dorm last week, Wednesdays were the days I was most worried about in terms of being sad because he’s not around. Wednesdays are the days that the new Marvel TV show episodes hit Disney+. New Episode days (they used to be Fridays, but Disney changed it for some reason) have been spent in the living room eating burgers and fries for dinner while watching the latest. That dates all the way back to WandaVision, which seems like ages ago, but was really only a few months back.

On the ride home from Vermont I said to my wife, I’m not looking forward to Wednesdays when he’s not around for Marvel and Burgers night. Sad face. It’s okay though. I can be sad for me and thrilled for him at the same time. He’s starting day three of his University Academic Career today. Put simply: He’s the man.

Tonight is a parent sitting night for me so I will be staying over there. I’m super nervous. There are things happening over there that will hopefully resolve all of the out standing issues but I am scared shitless to write about them out of fear of something going wrong and all of it falling apart. I’ll keep my mouth shut for a while longer. Hopefully only a few days.

I just vacuumed up Lake Asshole. The dehumidifier is running and I’ll empty it as soon as it fills. We have another hurricane remnant on the way tomorrow. I haven’t checked the forecast yet today but as of yesterday the potential for tons of rain was very high. I need Lake Asshole to be as dry as possible before I leave tonight.

I keep forgetting to take the trash barrels in off the street. Trash pickup was yesterday afternoon and the barrels are still out there. Remind me to take care of that, will ya?

The potential for freak outs over the course of the rest of the week are very high. Just be warned. If I start losing my shit in the middle of the night while I’m at my parents’ house and have no one to talk to about it, I’m going to unload here.

Okay. Time to punch in to work. I have a bunch of meetings on the schedule today. Here’s hoping that distracts me from all the other shit for a while at least.

Happy September. Summer is officially over and Winter has officially begun. San Diego is calling me and I am not sure I can resist her for much longer.

Only Two Days Left

Harry just left for his father’s house. He will be there for five days before coming back here on Wednesday.

He’s here on Wednesday and Thursday, and then he moves into his dorm on Friday.

There are only two days left.

Sad face because he’s going away. Excited face because I can’t wait for him to take on college and frankly make it his bitch.

The Final Sunday

Well here we are. Today is the last Sunday we have with Harry before he leaves for college. Next Sunday is with dad, and the Sunday after that he’ll already be two days into his college career.

So we’re being weird today and driving up to the New Hampshire lakes region for some mini-golf and some wandering and exploring. It’s kinda our thing. The wandering and exploring, not so much the mini-golf, but that’s our excuse-destination.

Pics will be shared, I am sure.

Off we go!

Flake Day

We have had the most glorious flake day today. Jen and Harry and I are just hanging out together. There is comedy on the TV there is a cat lounging on the couch, dinner was Japanese food, there was a trip to Best Buy for college supplies and it’s pretty much the best day I could possibly have.

Saturday Morning

I slept in my own bed last night. Actually, I slept in A bed last night. My wife was with me. My step son was down the hall in his room, my cat was crawling all over us and purring like a purr machine.

We watched The Suicide Squad last night. It was awesome but too gory for Jen and she had to bail. Sorry sweetie. We then watched the episode of Parks and Rec where Letters to Cleo played the Unity Concert and Kay Hanley winked at whatshisname and Jen and Harry thought it was funny because me and Larry and Mike would have KILLED for a sliver of attention like that back in the 90’s. I bet Mike still has that water bottle that he took from the stage after a show at… The Paradise? Was it a solo show at The Lizard Lounge? I forget. I just remember that show at Merrimack College when she eviscerated the schmuck who was trying to slam dance (pick your spots, moron) and she stopped the show to tear him a new one and the three of us all simultaneously concluded that she is in fact the greatest front person in all of rock and roll past, present, and future.

Today I cleaned up the trash off the yard after the rodents knocked over the barrels again. Harry was nice enough to do it yesterday and all his hard work was ruined by a family of plague and rabbis infested squirrel pricks. Then I vacuumed up Lake Asshole in the cellar which has been forming for much longer than I ever let it form before, and it’s still smaller than it was regularly getting… so that’s good? I guess?

And while doing all of these chores I was just so friggin’ happy that I was doing them at my house for my family and not doing them at my parents house.

It is so good to be home.

Long Day

I’m a little more than half way through my 48 hour parent sitting shift. I have been here for approximately 28 hours but I swear it has felt like 9,000.

Nothing bad happened today, it just seemed to drag on forever. My father has been fine. The home health worker sat around bored for most of her shift, but she was able to pitch in with dad on the couple of instances where he needed a little help. My mother hasn’t had a bad day pain-wise, but memory wise has been difficult. They were supposed to go and get their haircut at 1:00pm. My sister was going to come over and pick them up and drive them to the appointment. On the way over the woman who cuts their hair called her and said she was on her way to the house. What?

So instead of my sister and my nephew coming over and then everyone leaving the house but me, every one stayed and we added the hair stylist too. It was really hard to work while all 600 people were here. My step son coming over for lunch made it all better, but I ended up putting noise canceling headphones on and cranking the volume so that I could almost shut them all out. It didn’t work that well, but it was better.

The whole time the hair dresser was here my mother kept asking her how she found them. She was constantly insisting that this is not her house even though all of us assured her that this is the house she’s been living in since 1969 or so. She wouldn’t have it. She was positive she wasn’t in her house and she didn’t know where she was and therefore the hair dresser should not have been able to find them. My father whispered to me that she is getting much worse. She is. It’s heartbreaking and it’s awful.

Tomorrow is another day. They have another appointment in the afternoon, but it’s a tele-health appointment with their primary care physician. My brother is going to come over and take the call with them. I have a meeting at about that time so I don’t know if I will be able to join them. My father has been plowing through bottled water this week and we ran out of his favorite kind. Also, strangely, he is craving Rice Krispies. My sister stocked up on both today and will bring them by tomorrow. My goal is to focus on work as much as the situation will let me, and then when 6:30-7:00pm finally arrives I will get the fuck out of here, go home and watch The Suicide Squad with my wife and my step son, and not come back here until Tuesday night.

I need this to be over. I need to spend time with my wife. I need to spend time with my step son before he leaves for school in a couple of weeks. After that, I need my fucking band to get back together and that can’t happen while I’m parent sitting. I need this to be over.