Another quiet oddity

My youngest son had a weekend trip with his middle school French class to Quebec City.

I never in my life expected to type out that sentence, but here I am.

He hopped on the bus Friday early in the morning, and off he went. Once he crossed the border, he switched his phone into airplane mode (because our cell provider thinks Canadian cell towers cost extra for some reason), and he disappeared. Like it was the 90's or something.

And the house was eerily quiet again. This has happened before, when a different boy left for a trip. It seems that removing one or another has this effect, but it doesn't matter which. I came home from work Friday afternoon and thought all the kids were gone.

Nope. Just one.

Saturday was just as quiet. I got a lot done, including my first sunburn of the year. It didn't even feel hot. Sunday was also quiet. In fact, his bus wasn't scheduled to return until 10PM.

My wife took that one for me. I'm the morning person.

I'm now trying to see if I can always have at least one gone at a time during the summer. Gonna see if I can use this new discovery.

Inspection

NYS requires a yearly vehicle inspection. This is only a problem because people in NYC are worried about the cars they don't have to drive, so the entire state gets a law.

I could go on about that dynamic, but this isn't the time.

I like to drive older cars because I'm tired of needless bloat, feature creep, and they're cheap. (Not as cheap, thanks Obama) The problem is that, while they may last years longer, the inspection requirements don't. I had to get a new van a few years ago because the one I had - that was perfectly fine and would run several years longer - wouldn't pass the NYS inspection without a significant investment. It had to be sold to someone cheap out of state. They're still driving it.

So when I dropped off my car this morning, I waited in dread for the call. When it came, they politely asked me how I was doing.

"That depends entirely on what you're about to say about my car"

I got lucky this year.

Overtime blues

So we've been doing overtime at work, and since I'm the lowest ranking person with a key, I get to come in on Saturdays. Much of the staff has come in as well (who doesn't like the extra money?), but Fridays have lost their spark. When you work on Saturdays, Fridays are just...

Friday

But when you don't work on the weekend, Fridays are

Friday!

It's more difficult to convey in text, just imagine the first is done with a business suit and a bar code, while the latter is done with jazz hands. Either way, we're switching it up from coming in on Saturdays, to staying late on weekdays. I can do that standing on my head, but I'm missing out on either the gym (gym opens late on weekends) or biking in the mornings.

Two down, who's next?

I'm not quoting "The Goonies" with the title, but I did hear it in the actors voice as I typed it.

My chiropractor, who has been out of town since February 4, finally got back into town. When I walked in for my appointment today, half the lights were off and the office felt cleaned out. The radio was off, the TV in the lobby was off. The various medical pamphlets were emptied out. I was led to the only room with the lights on.

The atmosphere was forboding.

He's retiring. The office is getting stripped down. No longer taking insurance, and even his card reader was gone. It was either cash or check.

Who even carries a checkbook anymore? A little paper slip that pinky-swears you have money? Well, I don't carry much cash any more either, so he cleaned out my wallet.

I would have appreciated the warning.

This is the second time I retired a chiropractor. I'm actively looking for a replacement that is either my age or younger. I'm old enough that someone in the field would have a reasonable amount of experience. If you know of one - do not reach out to me that would be weird. How do you even know how to contact me?

Fake tax day

Tax day was on Wednesday the 15th, but for some reason my wife was on the schedule today from 11-5. There aren't any taxes to do, are there? Are they throwing a secret party? (It doesn't have to be a secret, just do it)

My wife makes a paper chain that spans one of the walls in the living room with a link for each day of tax season. Each link has both that days date, and the number of days remaining. Well April 15 day 0 has been up by itself for two days. When she gets home I'm going to take it down and we'll rip it together.

The mom con

My mother attends a convention every year down in Georgia that began around a popular book series. I lovingly call it her nerd fest, but I respect the hustle. It's grown quite a bit, and now my dear mother is in charge of part of the show.

Go mom.

But it also means she's gone for like, a week, and brings more and more of the family down with her every year. I haven't gone (I don't want to), and it's not like my life gets and more or less busy in her absence. But when she gets back, she's not really back for at least another week.

Yea she left this morning. Less than a week after my grandfather's calling hours, she needs to get out of her own head for a while. 

Calling hours

I started the morning with a bike ride. Work was closed today, so I took advantage of a quiet park and rode the lake like I like to. I didn't have anything else to do really. My wife was at the office doing taxes, and the kids were all at school.

That hasn't happened in a very long time.

I haven't seen my aunt Rose in at least ten years, probably more. I have a pair of cousins I haven't seen in at least three, maybe four years. Another that I haven't seen since he was 12, and now he's 21. The last time I stepped into that funeral home was for my Omi's funeral, back in 2002.

He outlived her by a good stretch, completely defying the norm.

I saw a handful of former coworkers that had left the company years ago. There were a lot of pictures on display, most of which I'd already seen throughout my life (I was even in a few of them), but my mother and her siblings managed to dig pretty deep and pull out quite a handful of photos that even I hadn't seen before. Granted, I could tell you where each one was taken and roughly when, but the novelty wasn't lost on me.

Open casket. He didn't look anything at all like himself. I wonder why they do that. Every time I see an open casket at a funeral, what's left doesn't look like the one that departed. Honestly it would have hit me a lot harder if it did.

It was cloudy and a little rainy. My wife took the kids home partway through the calling hours. There wasn't a funeral proper - they're saving that for the graveside service. Wasn't today. I might have been stuck walking home in the rain (in my suit), but my sister offered me a ride. I can appreciate the poetry in the moment, but at my age I'd rather not catch a chill. 

Or ruin my suit. Yikes, my Opa would have teased me for that.