The takeout takeaway

Success. I sold him the idea of hanging out at home playing video games while I went out and picked up our order. Had the same problems, though. I got there when they said it would be ready - it wasn't. I waited around for an extra 20 minutes, and when I got home with it, four items were missing.

Fortunately I had them all skip ordering drinks and I just got a few bottles of their favorite carbonated sugar and we all called it a draw. I was both worried about carting around a bunch of disposable cups full of iced sugar water, and half worried they'd be wrong anyway. 

He had a good birthday. 

Fifteen again

My second born is turning 15 this week. It should be easy to reconcile that with my current age of 24, but I still look at birthdays with a strange combination of joy and existential dread. 

He gets all the joy, though. But his dinner request was Friendly's, which is fine except the only one left in this town has terrible service. (Let's all wait 40 minutes to get your order messed up anyway) I'm going to try to convince him to do takeout. I'll let you know how it works.

Lost another one

Another funeral. Soft spoken man I knew from church my entire life. He was always doing for others, didn't even want a funeral. 

Honestly, the people that don't want anyone making a fuss over them when they go are going to be the ones with disappointed friends and family if there isn't even a little fuss. Come on man, it's not for you.

What struck me was the dichotomy in what was said about him. People in the church spoke highly of his constant and continuous work with the missionaries in the area, helping them however they needed. His family spoke more generically (none of them, except his widow, are involved in the church at all), but his granddaughter said everything without saying much. 

She always wanted her grandfather, but he was always giving all of this time to... *this church*. It was brief, but it was the way she said it. In that moment I saw a little girl that just wanted her grandfather, and she grew to resent it. That was the moment that I realized that endless selfless service can lack balance and cost you just as much.

The Windaween haul

My kids braved the icy rain and blustery winds. The winds themselves died down a good bit before it got dark, but it was still rainy and the rain was still icy. Still they ventured out. Decked out and wrapped up they decided to brave the elements to beg candy from strangers.

It really is a weird event.

Our road is the entrance to the neighborhood. If we head south, it's a smaller subset of roads that can easily be covered in an hour. If you go north, you can stay out until the lights start to go off. Typically, we've led them south, because if anyone tuckers out they can go home when we pass by. It happened when they were younger than one or two of them would tap out and the others would continue onward. 

The entire time we were out, we saw four other groups of kids. That was it. After half an hour, we found that houses were absolutely dumping candy into our kids bags. At the hour mark, we had finished the southern section and they were done. They could carry no more. I was alright with that, because I wanted to get out of the rain anyway.

Windaween

Ah yes, Windaween. Similar to Rainaween, but instead of rain the predicted weather is 36mph winds. First of all, nobody is sick this time, so that's a bonus. I'm grateful that none of the costumes double as wind sails (inflatable dinosaurs, boxy robots, etc). I'm also glad that it's on a Friday this year. They can get all the stranger supplied junk they want, then I don't care if they stay up half the night watching Halloween movies and eating junk food. In fact, I expect them to.

Everyone bailed again

So, the two friends that I helped with their paperwork? One of them had a shotgun and no idea how to use it. For a while she didn't know where it was, either. She liberated it from the house when took her kids and escaped her abusive ex.

Wisdom

She found it, and we all saw it as a great excuse to go shooting again (part of my helping with paperwork also included taking them out shooting so they could get a good idea of what they liked). Once again, everyone bailed on me. Once again all valid reasons (new job - yes go do the thing. Migraine? Yes, this will make it worse and if you're not having fun then why are you here) So as I was ready to call it, another friend was apparently sent to fill in.

Didn't see that coming. Whatever, he's cool and we don't get to hang out much so off we went. Bro is a crack shot and fun fact: we have the same first name (spelled the same, too)

Literally nothing went the way I expected it to but everything was fun anyway.

Everybody bailed

Two of my friends wanted to get a NYS pistol license, and slicing through the bureaucratic nonsense to help them overcome this direct infringement on their constutionally protected rights is something I'm good at.

(The more the clown show in Albany tries to make it harder, the more motivated I am to help people overcome it)

So the gun show was today, and they were going to go with me. Both of them, separately, cancelled on me. Their reasons were valid, but it still left me flying solo. My brother was also going to go, but he kept texting me all morning about one delay after another - right up until he, too, cancelled.

I am an extrovert, I do things with people. I do not count as people.

I still ran into four people I knew, so that counts.