After Christmas, we slowed down and did nothing. The morning after we got back in town I took the kids for tacos and to Ramsey park. For the New Year Eve celebrations, we lit a fire and sat around in the back deck with the kids and Ava and Tim and Karen (and Zinnia by baby monitor). My first alcohol free new year's eve since probably 9th grade. Not by choice or by design but because I was too lazy to get up and go make myself a drink and besides there were s'mores. Yes - it's going to be that kind of a year.
I started work on a tree house. Vivian and Evan saw me build the fence from hell at Carol's over a period of six months. So expectations are low. But if Evan catches me not looking particularly busy at any time of the day or night, he says "Daddy - can you build the tree house?" Yesterday he decided to take matters into his own hands.
On the second day of the new year we drove to Wimberley to spend the evening with Jen and Travis at a cabin they had rented in the hill country. The kids soaked in the hot tub while Travis and I soaked in some whiskey. Which brought my self non-imposed alcohol-free year to a sudden and premature end.
Yesterday was the first day of school. Vivian and Evan were singularly underwhelmed and unimpressed with the idea of getting back to school. The most excitement they managed to muster was when they tried to identify the characters in their Star Wars cereal for breakfast. I know. We've seen the movie twice and have fallen deep into the merchandising pit, all the while complaining about how mediocre the movie is.
Jo worked with the kids to review their twenty fifteen year. For "My Best Idea", Vivian wrote "No Gans [sic]". Vivian has a strong anti-gun streak coupled with very poor spelling. On January 1, it became legal to open carry in Texas. She thinks it is odd that we should allow people too young to vote or too intoxicated to drive to carry. Evan completed the sentence "I like to spend my time..." "With my Mom and Dad". Not as idealistic as Vivian, but oh so sweet.
Today I made my list of shit I need to get done. The to-do list for the three houses alone are two pages long. Make that three pages when I add my dad's house in Hyderabad. One miserable small item on the list was to install the new microwave. Our old Dacor had popped, crackled and finally snapped while I was in India. For the last two months we had returned to pre-microwave times. It has been strangely easy and satisfying to heat things in a pan on a gas flame. But one needs a microwave. So I ordered a Panasonic in the size closest to the Dacor. The Dacor trim alas didn't fit because the Panasonic is five eights of an inch taller. And ordering a trim kit from Panasonic would have cost almost as much as the microwave and required me to rearrange the woodwork of the cabinetry. I decided to stuff the Panasonic microwave into the existing cabinet and force the Dacor trim around it. I drilled out rivets from the trim and took it apart, filed the cabinet wood down an eight of an inch, moved a cabinet door up by another sixteenth, took the rails off the built-in rack and replaced them with three quarter inch boards, and finally put everything back. So I had to take a photo and take the rest of the day off.
The good news is that I won't need to make another list at the start of twenty seventeen. I'll still be working on this one.
I started work on a tree house. Vivian and Evan saw me build the fence from hell at Carol's over a period of six months. So expectations are low. But if Evan catches me not looking particularly busy at any time of the day or night, he says "Daddy - can you build the tree house?" Yesterday he decided to take matters into his own hands.
On the second day of the new year we drove to Wimberley to spend the evening with Jen and Travis at a cabin they had rented in the hill country. The kids soaked in the hot tub while Travis and I soaked in some whiskey. Which brought my self non-imposed alcohol-free year to a sudden and premature end.
Yesterday was the first day of school. Vivian and Evan were singularly underwhelmed and unimpressed with the idea of getting back to school. The most excitement they managed to muster was when they tried to identify the characters in their Star Wars cereal for breakfast. I know. We've seen the movie twice and have fallen deep into the merchandising pit, all the while complaining about how mediocre the movie is.
Jo worked with the kids to review their twenty fifteen year. For "My Best Idea", Vivian wrote "No Gans [sic]". Vivian has a strong anti-gun streak coupled with very poor spelling. On January 1, it became legal to open carry in Texas. She thinks it is odd that we should allow people too young to vote or too intoxicated to drive to carry. Evan completed the sentence "I like to spend my time..." "With my Mom and Dad". Not as idealistic as Vivian, but oh so sweet.
Today I made my list of shit I need to get done. The to-do list for the three houses alone are two pages long. Make that three pages when I add my dad's house in Hyderabad. One miserable small item on the list was to install the new microwave. Our old Dacor had popped, crackled and finally snapped while I was in India. For the last two months we had returned to pre-microwave times. It has been strangely easy and satisfying to heat things in a pan on a gas flame. But one needs a microwave. So I ordered a Panasonic in the size closest to the Dacor. The Dacor trim alas didn't fit because the Panasonic is five eights of an inch taller. And ordering a trim kit from Panasonic would have cost almost as much as the microwave and required me to rearrange the woodwork of the cabinetry. I decided to stuff the Panasonic microwave into the existing cabinet and force the Dacor trim around it. I drilled out rivets from the trim and took it apart, filed the cabinet wood down an eight of an inch, moved a cabinet door up by another sixteenth, took the rails off the built-in rack and replaced them with three quarter inch boards, and finally put everything back. So I had to take a photo and take the rest of the day off.
The good news is that I won't need to make another list at the start of twenty seventeen. I'll still be working on this one.
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