Day 52: An Arrival

I forgot to put this up yesterday when I got it. Sabrina handed me this envelope saying "Mom said the mailman forgot to give this to you."

Text: TO ALEX FRUM SAPRIS
Translation: To Alex From...Surprise

Text:

DAD THAC YOU FOR FECX

THTHE PETSI THORPNR

AND LOC WUT I CAN DOO

NAWU

UW BI TH WA (?DU THE FUNT?)

FRUM SABRINA

Translation:

Dad, thank you for fixing the pencil sharpener. And look what I can do now!

Oh by the way, (something?) From Sabrina

(turns out I can't translate the whole thing)

So, I had fixed the mechanical pencil sharpener by squeezing it (you can see a picture of my skeletal hand squeezing a pencil sharpener next to her surprised face)

What a cutie. Pretty good for a kindergartner. She's almost reading and writing.

Well, between Jen and I, we got the kids off to school today. Jen had a morning doctor appointment, and Sabrina had an afternoon one. For the morning appointment, Betty and I fell asleep in the recliner in the living room and dozed, listening to American Analog Set (better than Ambien!) until well after Jen returned.

We did a bit of cleaning in anticipation of our friend David's arrival, and then we went out for lunch. We drove all around Salem with me at the wheel and Jen catching pokemon. Ostensibly, we were looking for cheap drive-thru mexican food, but really, we were just trying to drive to calm the baby down. We found this sign in our travels:

Clothes and hoes. All a playa knows!

(p.s. as a public service announcement, please don't donate to these green boxes. they're evil.)

We got our food, and found a place to park where we could play pokemon. The food was good, but Betty was too fussy and Pokemon too glitchy, so we called it and went home. All three of us fell asleep in a food coma.

Jen took Betty and picked Sabrina up from school and took her to her appointment. Edgar came in the door shortly thereafter and woke me up. Edgar and I were tasked with doing some major cleaning around the house. We put on a record and did good work.

After cleaning, we got in one epic battle between Edgar's and my pokemon. I was overmatched again. (One day... one day, I'll win.) Then, Jen came home with two sleeping girls in the car and a mission to clean the car. She enlisted Edgar's and my help, although I had previously promised Edgar that he wouldn't have to clean the car because he did his job inside. Ah well, Dad is sometimes wrong.

Once we cleaned up all the kid detritus from the car, we loaded the kids in it to head to Edgar's soccer awards ceremony at Donatello's Pizza (aka the Kiddy Casino). I got $20 worth or tokens to dole out during the evening, and the kids set about to spend tokens.

Edgar's soccer coach has 6 kids and coaches 3 soccer teams (kindergarten, 1st/2nd grade, 3rd/4th grade). All 3 teams were there. It was chaos.

coach, plus three soccer teams

But, it was good to get closure on another season of Soccer. Edgar told Jen the other day "Soccer is my passion! I may play other sports, but I will always want to play soccer!". This is interesting (and difficult) for us as parents, who may not see Edgar as the most committed or attentive kid, but apparently he really does like it.

After soccer, I was supposed to run up to my parents' house, but I got sidetracked by the very exciting World Series game that was on. I don't claim to be a big sports fan, but Jen and I love watching the big games-- World Series, Super Bowl, whatever. So, this was a fun one to watch. It was a nailbiter that went into extra innings. The game was tied after 9 innings when the umpires called a rain delay, so at that point I hopped in the car to go.

I listened to the game on the radio on the way up to Portland. It was on 3 or 4 different channels, but they all kept fading in and fading out, so I had to keep switching channels to hear the game. I missed a couple of big plays but caught most of it.

I got to my parents' house, and they were still up and glad to see me. We played a quick game of cutthroat pinochle and my friend David called. His plane had arrived at PDX, so I hopped in the car and picked him up.

David Shelley is an old college roommate. We have been friends a long time, and share musical tastes among other things. David lives in Tuscon with his two daughters, and we haven't seen him in maybe 8 or 9 years.

Last summer, Jen and I flew to disney world for a vacation-slash-work conference. United Airlines lost our luggage somewhere in Dallas. Lost. completely. We completed a week in disneyland wearing the same pair of underwear, and United gave us a small travel voucher as recompense. The voucher would pay for about one nonstop flight anywhere united flies, and had to be booked within a year.. Since United doesn't fly nonstop to Utah, Jen couldn't use it to visit her family. We held it in case we needed to go for a funeral or emergency somewhere, but ultimately decided it was best spent flying our friend David up to visit us.

So, here he is. I had an enjoyable time driving him back from the airport, and we stopped and got some fourthmeal. We chatted a bit at the kitchen table when he got in, but it's well after midnight. We're on for adventures for the next several days. What a fun way to spend the end of my parental leave. Jen is the best for agreeing to (and allowing) this.

Oh-- one more thing-- our homeless guy showed up.

Living on a busy street, we have a lot of strange characters walking by, but this guy has come a few times and actually had the guts to knock on our door. It's a little scary, but we were kind to him a few times several years ago. After a while, we got sick of him coming around and we actually told him to go away once.

Anyways, it must have been three years, and he came back, just before we turned on the World Series. I was in a generous and forgiving mood-- he said it's his birthday, and he has a new job lined up but needs funds for getting a state ID. Who am I to disbelieve him? We can be generous occasionally. Next time, we might have to chase him off, but this time? Happy birthday, man. Good luck with the new job.