Reality Me

Fed myself and the baby some eggos and refueled the fire. I realized I may have been having trouble with the fire last night 1) due to the way I’ve got the wood stacked 2) It’s time to clean the ashes out and 3) the wood I’m using isn’t really that seasoned and our hotest fires have been when I mixed the very seasoned wood with this more recent wood.

* 13 yr old dropped off at school. He’s in a good mood but going to town with the lip sucking noises. I tried asking him questions to the whole trip to school just to see if I could get him to stop by making him talk but he slips the sucking noises in between words and sentences.

TN State Troopers office has their flag at half mast today. Anyone know why?

Sounds like the baby is up. I guess she’s helping me take the 13 yr old to school. Let’s let the wife have a little extra rest.

Almost time to take the 13 yr old to school.

Today’s goals:

• Brochure for other Developers
• 7.5 minutes of cleaning
• Php total wrapup
• Contact more people on the hidden job network

There.. Brief. Achieveable. We can set other goals upon completing those.

* Have returned from dropping the kids at school. The 13 yr old is up and going. Seems cheery. Yesterday he had totally reverted to institutional behavior.

Wow! There’s a sharp bite in the air today.

Conversations with the 7 year old boy frequently have me concerned about his intelligence…then I remind myself “he’s 7!” Our face I think is fairly intelligent. The 13 yr old reads at a college level, has an extensive vocabulary, and could con most adults; the 10 yr old has an IQ off the charts but won’t apply herself; the 7 yr old is the top reader and challenges one other person in his class for the top speller; the 20 mth old was doing 3 year old developmental milestones at 1.5yrs; the wife has 2 degrees and is very intelligent; and I was always in gifted and talented programs until college where I successfully drank away my intelligence and left myself with a swiss cheese brain.

Today’s 7 year old conversation:

Dad- Have you had breakfast?

7 yr old- Yes.

Dad- What did you eat?

7 yr old- Oh. That’s right. I haven’t had breakfast.

It’s tough to be seven!

Time to help the kids and brew some coffee. Let’s make this a great day!

A New Day!

Let’s start the day off with a PayPal donation link:

This Morning

Woke a couple of times in the night but never enough to put wood on the fire.

Got up at 6am and got dressed. The fire still had some wood in it and strong coals so I refueled it after getting the kids up.

I feel strongly like I’ve overlooked something I should be doing.

Last Night

Had a terrible time getting the fire to light. Sometimes I’m good. Sometimes I’m really bad. Eventually I got it going strong.

At 12:30 I finally decided to try to get some sleep

Tired but awake. Feel like I should be doing something but want to sleep.

10:15-11 – Rushed to load the wife, 20 mth old and myself in the car. Drove to the elementary school and checked out the 10 yr old. Drove to the middle school and checked out the 13 yr old. 13 yr old started asked what he and his therapist could do today and got upset when he was reminded that it was a shared appointment with his sister and her therapist. Yes, we are all nuts. Her therapy sessions are mainly to help her cope with her brother who has asperger’s syndrome. His therapy of course is to help him cope with the real world. Today they were trying to learn to cope with each other.

11:00-12:00 First the wife and I meet with the doctors (one gets floored when we mention that the 13 yr old is back in school) and then the kids. The 13 yr old became so worked up about this meeting that when we stepped back out into the waiting room he was unscrewing a lightbulb in a lit lamp and throwing books hard against the ceiling. He 3 times interupted us to explain that we were taking to long. The end result was that he got targeted in the meeting and came out feeling picked upon.

Here’s where things turn ugly. We were having a pretty jolly day. Now the kids are angry at each other, the toddler is needing a nap and the wife and I are edgy because of the tension. I get in the car. The 10 yr old gets in the car then the wife asks the 13 yr old to put the 20 mth old in the car seat and while he is putting her into the car he wacks her head on the ceiling. The 10 yr old and I are flabbergasted and start trying to explain that the wife needs to tend to her…anyhow, long and short we have a miscommunication and everyone gets upset with everyone else. I turn silent and distant and it takes until almost 3pm for the ice to thaw. Internally I’m thinking this is all wrong and that we should make ammends but the wife wasn’t hearing the words that the 10 yr old and I were saying and when I tried to explain this she interupted me and went off on a tangent and that sent me further into silence. Again, unnecessary anger. We are better now (in part to someone else giving us a common ground to be aggitated about) and that’s what matters.

We take the kids to Chick Filet and then return the fast eater, the 13 yr old, to school. Then the slower eater gets returned to school. Then the wife, the sleeping baby and I travel to Party City for Valentine’s day school supplies; then its off to Walmart where we talk while the baby sleeps in our arms and the healing begins. After Walmart we check on our Geocache, The West Knoxville Travel Bug Hotel and find the last cacher (a local) took 5 travel bugs emptying the cache and causing a traveler from out of state to find an empty container. That’s just wrong. Worse yet they got moved to a member’s only cache that already had 6 bugs in it. We have probably a half dozen paying members in the area. I clean up some garbage and we move on.

The next stop is a public park down a long winding road that is in a very weathly neighborhood where the neighborhood has obviously been designed to encourage this public property to be used as a “private” park. I’ll add that to my political agenda but way towards the bottom. This area would not make a good cache unless approached by boat…hmm.

We return home, play on the computers, I get upset with the 7 yr old because he got in trouble for the 6th day in a row at school but that’s not why I got upset. He apparently kissed a boy on the school bus. The story is the boy was trying to do it to him first and the 7 yr old kissed him on the ear. This would be funny in a way if it wasn’t for the fact that the 7 yr old has already been threatened with suspension for having slapped a girl on the bottom–typical 7 yr old playing but we were told that “school board policy does not permit ‘boys to be boys’ anymore”. The thing that irked me was the 7 yr old was so scared of getting in trouble that he stared blankly at me then said “I don’t know if I kissed him” How could one not know? This dad stuff isn’t easy. It definitely has its rewards but on days you mess up you really feel horrible.

The evening ended with happy children and that is how they should always go to bed…happy!

We will have a much better tomorrow!

Special thanks to Tim! I forgot to link the blogs I created for my brother and sister. Link available in the original post here and in the sidebar. Thanks again!

My brother is a chiropractor and has a wonderful sense of humor. His blog should be a fun read as soon as he gets the hang of it.

My sister is 17 years younger than I am and obsessed with playing tuba in the band but should be a good read for remembering those high school years.

Lot’s of catching up. What day! Let’s start with the current state of affairs:

-13 yr old in bed reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

-10 yr old in bed reading It’s Like This, Cat

-7 yr old in bed reading Hank the Cowdog

-20 mth old being forced to stay awake until 8:30 despite almost falling asleep on her feet but mesmerized by the cartoon Catdog