Firstly, thanks to everyone who made today the best day of sales for the Pants Book ever. Much appreciated.
Anyway…
My eldest daughter is back from France today. High school French trip. When all said is done, I have a photo of her looking at some French ducks that cost me approximately $1500.
It’s actually been rather odd to have her gone for a week, she’s very introverted and self-sufficient, so it’s not like she takes up a lot of time and effort to manage. She’s so introverted, if we wanted to punish her, we’d send her to a party. I was surprised that I wasn’t a little sad she was gone, but as soon as she was back and completely gone from view into her bedroom… it was an entire week for her crushed up with other people, so exhausting… anyway… as soon as she was home, the house felt right again.
Jennifer was a little “on alert” all week figuring that sub-consciously she was always missing something. She has a far more attuned kid radar than I do, in no small part because I’m mildly deaf and simply never could hear the high pitched voices of children in the middle of night asking for cups of water. I’m a heavy sleeper too, so that just makes any hope of me being responsive hopeless.
In fact one legendary night a couple months back a raccoon got up on the roof and over the course of an hour, tore a foot wide hole in the roof, before hitting a crossbeam and figuring out he’d never get through that and giving up. Jennifer and both girls of course wide awake and in varying stages of freaked out by it. The girls spooked by the noise and Jennifer by the imagined cost of roof repair. I provided timely moral support and comfort by modeling unaffected concern and stability… by which I mean entire time the raccoon was directly over my bed growling and ripping up the roof… I slept the blissful sleep of the AMOG.
Youngest suddenly seems like she’s flipped from that “little kid” into being what looks and sounds like a proto-adult. Every single one of her close friends has in the last year had their parents go into some kind of marriage crisis… or had a step-parent suddenly die. Plus the usual boy trouble woes lol. I’ve seen her look at her phone once in a while with a “therapeutic frown” and vanish into her room… or occasionally… head to the end of the driveway for a good 30 minutes.
I don’t know what she talks about. I think there’s this assumed confidentiality thing where I don’t talk about MMSL peeps to her and she doesn’t talk about school peeps to me.
“Crazy people are crazy?”
“Crazy people are crazy.”
I’m so proud lol.
I’m proud of eldest too, though if she ever practices her “gaping bloody wounds” makeup for Cosplay zombies again without announcing it first, I’ll kill her. Special zombie contact lenses too which are f-r-e-a-k-y. One of the cats refuses to be petted by her anymore.
Anyway…
Four more years of teens and high school and then Jennifer and I are supposedly child-free for the majority of the rest of our life. The kids will always matter of course, but I won’t lie when I say I’m looking forward to it being just the two of us. We had this weird courtship in separate countries and just got married cold turkey so to speak. I don’t advise that as a plan lol. But still, we got lucky and it worked and in four years we’ll be mid-forties and done with the kid phase. After that…
…I think I’ll ask her out and we’ll start dating.
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