A day and night of pouring rain; I'm finally settling in for the night after a dozen driving excursions in bad conditions over the past ten hours, all shuttling the kids this way and that.
Two days after his sixteenth birthday, I had a sick boy on my hands today. He had a sore throat, upset stomach, fevers, chills, no appetite and extreme lethargy. Once I had gotten him over here by late morning, he cuddled under a blanket on one of our couches and rarely got up the rest of the day.
He says he's feeling a bit better tonight.
I also took my daughter for a haircut today; she always knows exactly what she wants and the women who cut her hair comply. The new haircut looks great on her.
A sweet friend dropped by a birthday gift for me today -- cookies. She is so thoughtful; I'm always happy to see her and hear how her own sweet daughter is doing.
I shipped off another long interview with an ebook author today. At some point I must link to these pieces from here, in case anyone stopping by here does not have easy access to them.
They are extraordinary, these authors, and an inspiration to anyone wishing to try out writing in the new way that can turn into a self-sustaining career.
My oldest teen continues his devotion to working out at a nearby gym. The line of muscles along his shoulders, upper arms and back is increasingly impressive. I trust it helps him hold the line as a defensive soccer player.
The audit preparation continues. So much stress is generated by an audit. I wonder if anyone in the IRS has any empathy for those ordinary taxpayers like us who end up getting audited not because we have done anything wrong but because their automatic red-flag system is deeply flawed.
Incomplete, duplicate, and confusing documents arrived by the dozens from bank of America. It is my task to organize all of these on behalf of my ex-wife, who is the subject of this audit, so that I can match every deposit into her accounts with its source.
It is a thankless, painstaking process.
But I want to help lift some of her burdens these days, because she is going through a rough stretch for sure.
Our little broken family is under a huge load of stress, truth be told. I can't really blame the kids when their grades start falling at a time like this. Teenagers of highly educated and (previously) successful parents who are now struggling mightily to pay their bills can't help but question what value is an education, really?
Of course, it is of the utmost value, the most important one thing they can achieve at their age is to become as well-educated as possible.
But in today's America, "middle-class" kids are questioning higher education, especially when they realize it will send them potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt just to get an undergraduate degree.
This is one of the toughest battles us parents face, and one I never hear politicians like Obama or Romney address. How do we convince our children to believe that getting an education actually matters?
They see different evidence from their vantage points than we see. They've really not known anything but an endless recession.
I've made the decision to sit out this year's election as a voter. If I hold to that, it will be the first time since I gained the right to vote, in 1968. But no political party or leader holds out anything to help me or my family right now.
This makes me sad. It represents a retreat into cynicism, something I'd vowed to avoid. I don't want to be a bitter old man, but increasingly I understand why so many turn out that way...
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