Friendship

Our house (a.k.a. Grand Central Station)

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

This past weekend we noticed it for the first time. My son is now taller than my husband. When did this happen? Has Alex been hiding out in his room for so long that we just didn’t notice? He does come out every couple of hours to eat. Oh, the eating habits of a teenage boy! It reminds me of an old Looney Tunes cartoon with all of the food sitting out at a picnic when the ants come shave through it all. A big juicy watermelon with nothing left but a rind. All the food in the cupboards, gone before anyone else gets a chance to eat it unless it is very healthy.

Alex will be turning 16 this week. I already have an appointment set up for his driving test and we have been practicing. Honestly, I can’t wait until he has his license. I told you last week that he had a birthday party to go to the evening before I had to wake up very early for my 10k. It sure would’ve been nice if he could drive then.

I left this story off with being upset that Alex’s friend PJ’s mom cancelled out of picking up the boys from the party last minute. Well, it turns out that PJ never asked his mom until a couple of hours before they needed a ride. This time it was PJ’s fault. PJ has been hanging out at our house a lot over the past week because he doesn’t have internet at his house. At first, I thought that this was pathetic but now I’m wondering if this is a genius move on the parents part. First of all, their teens never want to be home so they have the house to themselves. Second, none of their kids friends want to spend the night because there is absolutely nothing to do. So they don’t end up having almost a dozen teens at their house like I practically did all weekend. Pure genius! 

Sometimes I fantasize about a quiet and clean house. I am not going to complain though. It seems like Alex is finally hanging around some better kids. Although two of his best friends are moving to different states this next week. 

After the birthday party, Alex tried to convince me that I wanted to have his 3 friends overnight in a tent before my race the next day. Absolutely not! Plus we ended up getting pretty severe storms Friday night. My daughter Angel decided that she wanted to go up north with her friend for the first time alone. I decided to let her since she is old enough to get credit card applications in the mail Geez! 

The girls ended up getting caught in the storm. They were swimming when the sky turned dark as night. They went to a bar and grill to eat and take shelter from the storm. When they got there, the power went out. The waitress lit candles, the chefs couldn’t cook. They told customers to go to another restaurant nearby that still had power. When Angel and her friend got there, it was so packed that there was nowhere to even sit. They ended up following the storm home in a horror movie setting with lightening, bloody orange skies, and branches that grabbed at the car like claws. The storm awoke the animals from their slumber. Angel almost hit a deer and a bear lingered in the middle of the road. 

Sometimes I wonder what the neighbor’s think! Being the parents of 3 teenagers sometimes we have 10 cars in our driveway but no one is home. It is ALWAYS Grand Central Station. The lights are on 24 hours a day. I am the one that goes to bed the earliest and I don’t even consider myself a morning person. My son is turning off the lights to go to bed as my husband is waking up.

Paul has been waking up at 5 almost every morning to work on his lines. He has 450 lines to memorize for the summer play. In less than a month, he almost has all of his lines down. He wakes up before the crack of dawn and sits out on the deck and repeats his lines out loud over and over. Yesterday, he woke up at 4:30. He was out on the deck talking to himself when the neighbor, who gets up early for work, let his dog out. The neighbor glanced down in embarrassment when he noticed my husband mumbling to himself on the deck. Hilarious! People think we are crazy!! With good reason, I guess!

Tonight Alex’s new girlfriend came over for supper. I was finally able to meet her. A mother is almost required not to like any girlfriend that her only son brings home, right?? She seems very quiet and nice. 

Rum Dumb

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

Yesterday Paul and I took the day off of work to celebrate Tom and Lisa’s return home on our sailboat. Tom and Lisa moved to Florida for a year and moved back home last week. Unfortunately, Tom had to work and couldn’t attend his welcome home party. Instead, we had in attendance our mutual friends Cori and her husband Randy.

We decided to sail into town for lunch, spirits, and live music. Harv also followed us on his boat. It was our first sail into town for the summer and spirits were high. It was a sunny cool day with strong winds to push us into town. Once Harv and Paul tied up to the dock, they had their customary arrival drink of bourbon on the rocks. The girls and I drank beer. Paul had a little wine. We were enjoying the music, food, and visiting while the people dressed in business attire eyed us enviously. They had to get back to work. Arriving into town on sailboats always makes a splash. Unknown people took our picture. Sometimes we give tours. Once we even invited a couple on board for engagement pictures.

Previously our boat was known by the name of Rhumb Fun before our boat renaming ceremony. In those days, sometimes the boat was nicknamed rum dumb for any idiotic thing (usually alcohol related) that happened aboard. Yesterday, our boat was the rum dumb. Randy had a little too much to drink. Randy had 3/4 bottle of rum too much to drink. He started drinking before 9 AM. Everyone was able to have a drink or two and be fine. Everyone except Randy that is. I have never seen Randy so drunk.

We noticed that Randy was having a bit of a problem an hour before we got back to shore. He started speaking in what he said was a different language. He started saying how Cori doesn’t love him anymore. He started acting infantile making noises like he was blowing raspberries. As we were motoring into harbor, he kept pulling on the jib sheet line screaming, “Make this boat go faster so we can kick Harv’s ass”. Then he stood up and face planted into the side of the boat almost falling overboard.

Talk about three sheets to the wind! Paul and I assisted Randy out of the boat and off the dock. When Paul let go, he almost fell into the water. Every time I tried to let go of him, he started to fall. Finally I was able to stand him up against his car. It was at this time that he decided he had to go to the bathroom right in the middle of the parking lot as people were driving in. “Hey, I don’t even know this guy”! Seriously, the way I grew up nothing embarrasses me anymore. I just hope that we don’t get any complaints or recommendations to change the name of the boat to Rum Dumb.

Like they never saw any drunken sailors before?? Well, that was a first and hopefully a last!!

The first sail of the season

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

image

On Memorial Day, we were finally able to head out for the first sail of the season. As I posted on Friday, it was too windy and rainy to get out of the harbor so we just sat on the boat and fought. Friday wasn’t a totally wasted day however. Paul helped Harv put the sails on his boat. Harv is the man that did our boat renaming ceremony last year. He is twice my age and couldn’t tackle that job alone.

Harv has become like a father figure for Paul. They are not only sailing buddies, but they are theater buddies now as well. Harv tried out for the summer play and would only accept a part if Paul took one. I may have mentioned this before, Paul grew up without a father. Not only did he not have a father, he never had a grandfather either. Paul’s mom married his step-dad Darryl after he was an adult.

But anyway, back to Monday… It was probably the hottest day that we had so far this year. I decided to go out for a 6 mile run in the morning, my first run after the marathon. My knee ached a little, but I didn’t wrap it. It felt wonderful to be out on a nice day. Hot, but nice! After that Paul and I watched our youngest two kids march in the parade. So I did a couple more miles of walking this time with coolers and chairs. Lol.

This past weekend I found out that my son Alex has a new girlfriend. He hasn’t had a girlfriend since his first girlfriend two years ago in 7th grade. He wanted to spent the afternoon with her after the parade. Angel said that this girl is a quiet, beautiful, and nice church going girl. I haven’t had the chance to meet her yet. Pity the poor girl’s parents, another nice girl falls for a bad boy. Lol. I am hoping that it will change my son’s opinion about church and school, but I am not holding my breath.

After we were done with all of the festivities, we headed out to the sailboat. The weather conditions were absolutely perfect. Harv ended up showing up at the same time that we did. So we took him along on our first sail of the season. It was a glorious day. I was happy to finally savor the warm weather doing two of the things that I really enjoy, running and sailing.

Unfortunately, I was so exhausted from everything going on over the weekend that I wasn’t able to do the other thing that I enjoy, writing. Not to worry though, I plan on writing about it while it is still fresh in my mind during the rainy and entirely boring days…

No sweat!

/ Outrunning my demons / 5 Comments

It has been two days since I ran my second marathon. I have moved beyond the point of thinking that I will never do it again to maybe. I told everyone that I know (and even people that I don’t know) to talk me out of it if I ever decide to sign up for one again. Despite everything that I said, I still might. You see, in my mind I have conquered the 5k, 10k, and half marathon. Since I consistently land in the top 7% of my age group in these categories, the challenge is gone. I have not conquered the marathon yet and it calls to me.

I refuse to beat myself up over a bad time because I really had a good time. I think that I beat myself up enough just running it.

I am sorry if I scared anyone off from running a marathon from my post right after running a marathon. Emotions were running high. I want to share with you honestly everything that I am thinking and feeling here on my blog. It is important to me that I do that. And sometimes those thoughts and feeling aren’t always roses and trophies.

The recovery period after a marathon can be rather intense, especially if you are used to being active. You may have flu like symptoms like I did. Climbing up and down stairs is difficult the first couple of days. You worry over things like bloody toenails. You will get strong feelings from your body that you are sick or something is wrong. It was hard to get myself off of the couch to take a shower. I found that these feelings are a lot less frightening the second time around. Now I expected to feel twice my age.

It was very hot outside the weekend that I did the marathon. This happened after a cold spring after doing a lot of training runs on a treadmill. The weekend before the marathon, we had snow flurries. The week before the marathon, I had the stomach flu that lasted almost a week. Plus I injured my knee on my last long run. I wrapped my knee for this marathon and it really helped. So maybe it was a miracle that I was able to finish at all.

But lets get back to the heat for a moment. I always prided myself on not being a big sweater. I could always go out with the girls on a steamy hot night and not sweat much at all. My friends makeup would melt off of their faces. Sweat dripping off their hair. Mascara lines down their face. Foundation running down their necks. They have to bring purses with extra deodorant and perfume. Sometimes they even need to bring an extra pair of clothes while I remain dry. Not being able to sweat does me no good when I am running a marathon on a hot day. By the end of the race, the alert flag was at red signaling extreme running conditions. People were dropping out of the race like flies. I got through it without even breaking much of a sweat.

Today, I am happy. Halfway through the marathon, I found a running partner. We decided to finish the last half of the race together. Today he found me on Facebook. I found a running buddy during my first marathon too. I can’t even explain to you the bond that can develop with a stranger that is going through the same grueling experience. Emotionally, running a marathon is very intense.

My new friend’s name is Lewis. He was traveling with a running group. There was a women in his group that was celebrating checking her 50th state off of her 50 states of marathon running bucket list. Lewis’s friends were getting wasted. Almost every mile they stopped along the route asking people to bring them beer from their houses. Apparently a lot of people did. One of the guys was pretty drunk. Lewis apologized for his friends, but I found them to be rather entertaining. It took my mind off of my pain.

Along the route, there was an old couch someone threw out. It was a dirty disgusting ripped up 70’s vomit green fake leather kind of couch. The woman on her 50th state laid down on that couch for awhile with a drink in her hand. All the while, the group of drunk runners stayed pretty much at the same speed as Lewis and I. Sad, I had a couple of sips of beer that was given out at mile 9 but other than that I was completely sober. Lewis also said that they stopped for a cigarette break.

Marathons are strange if you think about it. There are thousands of strangers that pay a lot of money to torture themselves both physically and mentally. Each person bringing in their own strengths and weaknesses. But through this common struggle, sometimes a stranger becomes a friend. It is such an exhilarating event, such an achievement. It is the only struggle that I ever went through where I did not feel like I was alone. I don’t think I can adequately explain it.

 

You can’t get that kind of experience from a 10k.

A piece of cake…(or not)

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

I thought I was feeling better…

Last night Arabella had her 13th birthday sleepover. Yesterday was also the third day of my stomach ailment. I was feeling better with no problems after eating a bland diet for over a day. I was symptom free. I was finally hungry. I thought I could handle one slice of stuffed crust pepperoni pizza and a small piece of ice cream cake. Boy was I wrong.

The party itself did not go totally as planned. There were a couple of girls that were upset that they weren’t invited, but I had to set a limit. I am not that much of a saint, or martyr, for that matter. I even allowed the girls to sit out in my hot tub without me (a first). It was a cool night that produced a few snow flurries in our area. 

The girls really enjoyed the hot tub. In fact, almost all of them wanted to stay in it after Arabella wanted to get out. This, and a few other little things, caused some hard feelings. “Nobody wants to do what I want and it is my birthday party” kind of feelings. Arabella became angry and spent some time alone in her room after yelling at her friends. 

The kids came in with wet towels and suits which got water all over the bathroom floor. That wasn’t a big deal except for the fact that one of the girls slipped on the bathroom floor, fell backwards, and hit her head on the sink. Great, concussion watch! I specifically told them no stitches since that is precisely what happened at Angel’s 13th birthday sleepover. Should have added no concussions or broken bones. Besides a few cuts, scratches, and a big bump on her head, she was fine.

I kicked Paul out of the house to spend the weekend with his mom who has terminal cancer and his step-dad. He doesn’t have the patience for all of the noise and excitement. Alex left too to stay overnight at a friend’s house. Angel and I ran the party. After Arabella yelled at her friends, she was so upset that she wanted all of her friends to go home. Angel and I told her that she needed to apologize and get along with her friends. Eventually she did and I thought that at midnight I could finally go to bed. Wrong again!!

Right after midnight, I got sick again. Too much rich food after being sick. I spent the next 2 hours sick. In fact, I was the one that stayed up the latest at the sleepover without any acknowledgement. After that, I was up sick every couple of hours. When I got up at 6:30 AM, I was dismayed to find a couple of the girls awake! Screw it, I had to go back to bed for awhile. I woke up at 8:00 AM to strange noises in the kitchen. Half of the girls were eating a concoction that contained sugar, brown sugar, and hot chocolate with milk poured over it. Gross! 

I thought most of the kids would sleep in until 10 just like Angel’s sleepover. Wrong, wrong, wrong!!!! I had planned on having them roll out of bed around 10 with a large brunch waiting for them of scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, and English muffins. 

Then we would be off for an afternoon excursion at a swimming pool 20 minutes away. The plan was that I would swim laps at the pool while they had fun. I have my first triathlon planned without a lot of time spent swimming yet. C’mon, there was snow this morning. Do you think I am going to jump into open water and start swimming?!? Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes my expectations are too high. Okay, okay! Quite often. Okay, more like all of the time. 

Maybe someday I should write about what I expect followed by what really happened. That actually might be interesting. And I thought that my expectations were realistic!! You know, kind of like that one time when I ran my first marathon. I thought that I might qualify for the Boston instead of barely finishing. This reality check is starting to make me crabby…now back to the story..

So I made this huge breakfast and salivated the whole time watching them eat while I was eating my bland diet. Oh sure, by that time my stomach was feeling just fine. However, I was dead tired from being up half the night because of it. After I cleaned the kitchen and threw in 3 loads of laundry, Angel and I took 2 cars to take the girls to the pool. We couldn’t fit everyone into one vehicle. The rest of the afternoon was pretty uneventful. After the girls went home late this afternoon, I had to crash.

Yeah, I am ready to run a marathon next weekend. After this weekend, it should be a piece of cake (or not). Seriously, what can be more difficult than having 3 teenagers in the house?? Hmmm..

  

Sick pranks

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

Finally, I am feeling a lot better! Not 100%, but my fever is gone. I am almost ready to host a house full of 13 year old giggly girls. The house has been cleaned and sanitized. I haven’t had a stomach ailment like this since I was 6 months pregnant with Angel. I remember spending the night in the bathroom curled up on the linoleum. Before that, I was really sick with food poisoning the day that Paul and I had dinner plans to announce our engagement to our parents. I’m sure this time you will easily forgive me for not being very descriptive in my writing about this. Lol. It was bad enough that I lost 6 pounds in two days. 

Of course, just because I spent a couple days sick doesn’t mean that my stories end. In fact it was quite the opposite. The day I got sick, Angel received a text from someone posing to be my son’s drug dealer. It seemed like Angel intercepted the message in error. It had drop off points and pick up times for a rather large amount of drugs. She texted me a screen shot and I went ballistic. Paul came home briefly for lunch and then had back to back meetings scheduled for the rest of the day. We spent a good chunk of that time troubleshooting the situation. Do we call the authorities? Who was texting these things? Was it true? Then how did they end up texting Angel instead of Alex? What the hell were we going to do? Could our son be a drug addict or dealer? 

It was all a very horrifying experience to deal with for several hours while sick with a fever. It was decided that I would have some sort of intervention with my son alone when he got home from school. Paul couldn’t cancel out of his work meetings last minute. After two hours of sheer agony over this, Angel called and told us that it was just a “friend” playing a prank on her. Apparently her “friend” borrowed another girl’s phone to prank Angel because she thought it would be funny. The girl whose phone was borrowed had a guilty conscience and confessed the situation to Angel. Guess what?? I didn’t find the whole situation funny. I am so angry about it that I never want to see that girl again unless it is to apologize to me. 

I told Angel if she gets anymore prank or harassing calls this year that I am changing her number. First, the guy that was stalking her, then some unknown person posing as a friend, and now this. 

How could someone think that something like this could be funny?? 

That is what I call a sick prank!  

A few good things did come out of it though. First of all, the allegations against my son were not true. Thank God! You don’t know how relieved I am about that. I was thinking such horrible things about him. Nothing about that was right. Second of all, my kids are not afraid to come to us with problems. We generally know what is going on in their lives. Once Angel told her “friends” how upset we were about their prank, they felt really bad just like they should. So in the end, maybe the prank was on them. Sure makes them look like idiots!

The (not so) little things

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

This past weekend we took my mother-in-law out for Mother’s Day. I also took Friday off to spend the day with my mom. We went for a massage then I took her out to Red Lobster for seafood. The rest of the week previous to Mother’s Day, I spent being a mother. I watched my kids perform more days than I didn’t. It was fun but busy, busy, busy.

Paul was gone almost all of last week for work. I was happy to hear that our business friends missed me. They said that Paul was downright boring without me around. I suspected that. LOL. I am the one that is up for anything. Well, except zip lining. I would never do that. I received a message from a friend saying that she missed me at the conference and hoped I was having a great Mother’s Day. It really meant a lot.

Saturday Angel went to state for her solo and ensemble pieces at my old college campus. It was strange walking through those halls again. I haven’t been on campus since I graduated 19 years ago. Nothing really changed much on campus, except for me. I am not the same person that lived on crackers, minute rice, and macaroni and cheese. I was thinking about that as I was sitting in the same location that I used to eat my meager snacks. It was strange being there with my daughter who is close to the age I was back then. Some day I will have to tell you some pretty good stories about my psycho roommates, but I have so many more stories to get through before that.

By the time Mother’s Day rolled around on Sunday, I just wanted to stay home!

We did go to church on Mother’s Day. I sang a solo about motherhood, my two daughters performed in the Mother’s Day celebration as well. Then I forced the kids to stay home and spend time with me. We played indoor and outdoor games. We even went for a family walk around the neighborhood like we did when the kids were small. Except, of course, this time they were not sitting in a wagon, stroller, or in a back pack.

I took joy in the little things. I didn’t want gifts or jewelry, I just wanted everyone to get along for the day. I thought the day went pretty well, except it could’ve been warmer. 

I received my favorite Mother’s Day gift several years back. I told Paul that I wanted him to put up a clothesline for me in the backyard. I have a bit of a laundry fetish. Since my old washer started smoking, I’ve been wanting to write many posts about my joy over my new front loading washer. But I thought I would spare you from that. You’re welcome! Angel and I sat in front of the new washer with a bowl of popcorn for the first load. We lead pathetic lives in WI. I’ll blame it on the cold climate and lack of sunshine. 

Anyway, Paul constructed a clothesline for Mother’s Day. Nothing relaxes me more than hanging laundry on the line and watching it billow gently in the breeze. That very summer, I received a call from the gas company worried that our gas meter was not working right. I told them that I wasn’t using my gas dryer as much anymore. Then they thanked me for going green. Hey, at least my fetish saves the planet! LOL. 

That year Angel was taking an art class in school. She wanted to make me a necklace for Mother’s Day. We came up with the idea that the cord for the necklace could be a clothesline. Then she designed a pair of shorts to be hanging from the clothesline. Maybe that is why I like sailing. There is nothing like watching sheets blow on the lines. Hmmm… 

Sometimes it is the (not so) little things in life that mean the most. 

My friends…

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

Sometimes I wonder, I sit and think. 

I have 3 close friends. None of them know that I have this blog. You probably know more about me then they do. Isn’t that funny? 

I am a private person, although it probably doesn’t seem that way to you.

Sometimes I wonder if they stumbled across my blog, would they like me?

Would they like the real me? 

Patching things up

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

I live in a house that is almost 20 years old. Everything is starting to show its age, but few things need major repair. The carpets, flooring, and counter tops are showing signs of wear. I understand the feeling.

We live in an air tight house which does have some advantages. We never have high heating bills in the winter. However, we have had some major problems with condensation on our windows. On freezing cold days, it rains inside our house. Water pools on our wooden sills.

After a decade and years of condensation issues, our windows frames and sills are rotten. Black mold is growing on the woodwork. Years ago we had an air exchanger installed to pull in the dry air and expel some of the moisture from our house. But the years of condensation have taken its toll. There are a few windows in our house that I am afraid to open because I fear they will fall out.

We have known for awhile that our windows need replacing. But it is a very expensive project. Something that we do not have the expertise to do ourselves. We could’ve hired our next door neighbor to do the project, but decided to go with someone else.

This is one lesson we learned the easy way because someone else learned it the hard way.

Lesson learned: Never hire a friend or neighbor to do a big remodeling project for you.

My parents live in a brick house with a mansard roof. Basically, their roof slopes down to cover the second story of their house. At one point, they needed a new roof for their house. Luke suggested that his friend and his friend’s father (a neighbor) put on a new roof. My parents hired them to do the job. What they didn’t know was that they didn’t have any experience working with a mansard roof and they didn’t know what they were doing.

One stormy evening my parents visited our house. That night after they returned home, at about 11 PM, I received a phone call from my mom who was crying. Who died was my first thought. My mom called to tell me that it was raining in her house. Her things were getting wrecked and there was nothing she could do about it. She felt sick to her stomach.

They found out with the first torrential downpour that their new roof leaked. They had out every bucket they owned, but it wasn’t enough to contain all of the water coming through their roof. The next day they had to rent a dumpster. I helped them haul out all of the items that were ruined from the flooding.

Their new roof leaked! It also looked like crap. Shingles littered the lawn every time the wind blew. It took them months to come back and patch things up. My parents spent a lot of money on the roof. They were thinking of suing the people that did a shoddy job. But they were neighbors. Not to mention that Luke was a good friend of the guy who did the work. They stood up in each others weddings. This caused some bad blood between the neighbors. This also caused problems with the friendship that could not be easily patched up.

Every time my thoughts stray to hiring our neighbor, Paul reminds me of what happened to my parents. Sometimes being a good neighbor is asking someone else.

Thankfully, my parents ended up getting a new roof a couple of years back from someone who has a lot of experience with mansard roofs. It looks absolutely wonderful. Unfortunately, the friendship did not patch up as good as the roof.

Now we are just waiting on a price quote for the new windows. Yikes!

This roller coaster ride

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

Sometimes raising teenagers is like riding a roller coaster. There are a lot of low points followed by high points. Sometimes you are excited to be on the ride and at other times you feel like you are going to throw up. Just when you have had enough, the ride is over.

That is what life is like here every day. The last 24 hours has been one hell of a roller coaster ride. It started yesterday when Angel received a text from her ex. Or at least someone that she thought was her ex. Her ex saw her perform in the musical she was in over the weekend. He complimented her on her part, made small talk, and left. Then the next day she started getting texts. They were innocent at first with questions like where she was going to college. Then things got strange. He told her that he wanted her back. He wanted to meet for coffee. He still had feelings for her, etc… She didn’t recognize the phone number and his sister said it wasn’t his. She didn’t hear back after she told him to call her to make sure it was really him.

We started to worry that she was getting messages again from Jeremy, the guy that was previously stalking her. He would sometimes pose as a friend through text. He even hacked into her boyfriend’s Facebook account and broke up with her while pretending to be her bf. He is going to the same college as her bf which resulted in a fist fight. He threatened to rape her. At that point, Paul called him and told him never to contact Angel again. And Angel told this person where she was going to college. Uugghh!@$#

Yesterday evening she called her ex and he said that he hasn’t been texting her. He thought it may be a girl that liked him. Angel did ask in the text about the conversation that she had with her ex at the show. The person knew  about it, but it was a very general conversation. The girl went with her ex to the show. When her ex confronted this girl, she got really upset. Everyone is denying sending the texts. At this time we think it may have been someone else and not the guy we threatened to get a restraining order against. But we really don’t know. It could be anyone. 

I thought that would be it for the day until we got a knock on the door last night at 10:15 PM. Apparently, Alex’s ex-friend went for a walk last night and didn’t come home. This isn’t the same friend that ran away at the beginning of the school year. This is the long time friend that he is no longer allowed to see because his friend got expelled from school for drugs.

This morning my son got a text from the mother of his ex-friend saying that her son was still missing. She asked Alex if he knew where her son was. Alex replied that he didn’t have any contact with him for the last month since they were not allowed to talk anymore. At this point, she called my son a selfish piece of shit, etc…for no apparent reason.. She was angry and worried. Then Jake’s mom got involved. So this started a round of texting for hours while I was at work trying to actually work. Work was crazy busy. I was dealing with phone calls at work, on my cell, and texts at the same time. Eventually the boy returned home. I hope this is the last we hear from them, but I don’t think so. 

Then my son called me from school saying that he didn’t turn In an assignment. We have been monitoring his grades and missing assignments online. That is a real mess since he missed 3 days from being sick. We don’t know what has been turned in because they are still showing up as missing even if they were turned in. My son said that some were turned in but not graded yet. I love having the ability to see grades online, but it is enough to drive a parent crazy. Unupdated notifications about missing assignments and poor grades blow up our emails. Then the status is not updated for weeks sometimes. 

Then I received another call from the school today. Damn, I cringe when I see that number. Angel was calling for me to pick her up from school. She donated blood for the first time today. Afterwards she felt nauseous and dizzy. She almost passed out in class. This may have been caused by being at the bottom of the weight requirement. She didn’t feel well and couldn’t drive home. I had to pick her up from school. 

Then I heard from the school one more time. This time it was good news. Arabella was chosen to be a foreign exchange student for one week in Japan. It has been a dream of hers since I don’t know when. Last year we hosted a foreign exchange student from Japan for a week and loved it. 

That has been my 24 hour teenage roller coaster ride. I don’t particularly like roller coasters. I like to watch other people ride.