School Daze

So Colin started another school year this Monday. Hurray for getting up at the butt-crack of dawn to make sure he's on the bus. -.- Being a working family, we've always had the issue of what to do with Colin in the hours between school letting out and the first parent arriving home. He lacks the proper judgement to be left alone too often or for too long. Last year, we didn't make it on the list for the afterschool program. Daycare centers are rackets, I tell you - we simply couldn't afford the price they charge for afterschool care. And the school wouldn't bus him home on a route that he didn't arrive on, so he couldn't stay with the home daycare we had for Clara. So we had to trust Colin to come straight home every night from the bus and stay inside and get his homework and chores done, all without any adult supervision. Maybe it was too much responsibility for a child of 8, but it was pretty clear that wasn't going to fly for long.

DeAnn took time off work to camp the afterschool program meeting this year, and got him in just under the wire. Now he has somewhere to be afterschool. All's well in another day of wine and roses, right? Well... Not quite. While the program does bus the kids home, the busing doesn't actually start until Sept. 15th. So the parents have to come and pick the kids up... See where I'm going with this? They don't release the kids until 5:20, so the place is an absolute zoo. The first day, there were kids running around the cafeteria while parents formed a big, angry pitchfork-wielding mob outside, waiting for their kids. Second day was not much better. This time, they had formed a line that wrapped around the building and down to the portables.

The only reason I didn't spend an hour picking him up was because I look important. Or rather, I can look important. If you do something and completely appear that you're supposed to do that something, people don't question it. The first day, I simply walked around the mob with a grizzled, managerial look on my face. I'm rather practiced on that one. The second one, I saw the line and said to the people at the back, "Is this the line? Man, they can keep him!" I walked around to the other side of the building, grabbed an empty folder and pen I saw sitting on a table and walked right through the guarded door. As soon as I was in, I set my props to the side, jumped to the front of the line and got my kiddo.

I know, I know... I shouldn't take advantage of the stupids. But it's just too easy not to, and what's the point of having higher intelligence if you can't use it for something. Beside, you'd think that the school administrators would exercise more wisdom in their master plan for herding our children (and the parents with them) off their property. They do, after all, work at a school...

Weekend Intelligence: Modus Eversio

All in all, it was a very productive weekend. I didn't stay up as late as I would have liked, but at least I got some pretty big tasks taken care of, including overthrowing the powers that were in control of my backyard. So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights!

House and Home:

I was very ready for it to be the weekend. I've been feeling pretty run down the past few days and was looking forward to some rest and relaxation. We gamed for a bit together on Friday night, but we had a lot to do the next morning and I ended up feeling pretty burned out, so called it quits early and left D to continue playing if she wanted.

Turns out she met up with her seeester and her hubby and stayed up until 5:30 in the morning... I woke up out of habit at 6 and noticed she wasn't in bed with me. Instead, she was passed out on the couch and loudly sawing logs, every light on the downstairs level was on, music was blaring from her computer and the tequila and margarita mix bottles were knocked over and empty. -.-; Also couldn't help but notice that my work phone was blinking with new message notifications from Facebook... So much for trying to get too much done in the morning. I got a sheet and covered her up, put the dog home, turned off the music and lights and locked up for the night/morning/whatever.

Went back to sleep for another 3 hours until I was stirred from sleep by some loud banging outside my door. Colin was awake, ADHD in full swing, and he was kicking the TV and laughing. D hadn't moved at all, still snoring up a storm. Once I had Colin medicated and dressed, I got him to help me get all the cans together and loaded into the Vue. Deposited my long-overdue mileage check, recycled the cans and picked up some Shipley's. I decided to get Clara up and fed and coffee brewed before I would try to tackle prying DeAnn from the clutches of the couch. Oh and she didn't get up without a fight either. :P Luckily I had coffee and donuts ready, so Hangover Kerith was tanked for the time. Realizing that this severely limited what was going to happen, I asked D to just watch Clara and pick up the kitchen so it could be scrubbed, and told Colin to do the dishes that had been sitting in the sink for days. I then set my sights to the only part of my kingdom where my reign was not complete: my backyard.

It's been awhile since I was able to clearly see my back fence. The tall grass and weeds and all manner of insects and animals had taken over my back yard. Suzie only really had about a quarter of the already small yard to use to take care of her business. In weekends past, I'd tried to mow it down and hit it with the weed eater, only to be met with marginal success at best and epic fail at worst. It was at the point where the lawn mower couldn't handle all the grass and it was way too thick for the weed eater. Last weekend, I went out to price an electric hedge trimmer, but the cheapest they had out of season was $40. Earlier this week, I checked another place and picked one up for less than $30. >:D It would be my method for overthrowing and wiping out the backyard jungle.

Fast-forward to this weekend, and I was standing in what little yard I had left, weapon in hand and ready for an epic battle. I started up by the house and effortlessly carved the overgrowth away. As I worked my way to the far back corner, I set foot in an ant hill and had to call retreat. My foot was pretty messed up, but I was not ready to cede victory just yet. I began my re-approach from the middle of the yard, carving into the tall grass and dividing the brush. Ants and spiders and snakes: oh my.

We really let the yard get way too far gone. It took a good solid half hour, but I returned home victorious and once again king of all I survey, including my back fence. The yard work took it's toll, though. The ants had chewed my foot up pretty good, and it was burning, itchy and swollen for most of the weekend. I also got bit a few times by the rather large spiders we get to enjoy in the lovely state of Texas. And I always get allergy-related sinus headaches when I do yard work. After a shower and a change of clothes, D and I hit WalMart, and followed it up with a nice long afternoon nap.

I made my intentions pretty clear for Sunday, too. After working my tail off on Saturday, I wanted to sleep until we naturally woke up and make the service that didn't involve giving anyone an aneurysm. Verbatim. D joked with me that it really meant getting up when I decided it was time to get up and scrambling out the door to make the 1pm service. But I got up at 10 and let her sleep. Even Colin was still asleep. I gamed for awhile in the quiet of the morning and whipped up some coffee and cinnamon rolls around noon. I felt bad, but I woke D up at noon. I knew she'd be upset if I let her sleep the entire day, as she's been known to do. Didn't get the family all breakfasted until almost 1, so we didn't go to service. We lounged around, gamed, did some minor laundry and basically were just bums all day. Was nice for a change.

In Game:

Soulfire's FNLE was Behemoth KS99's. They went well, except for all the BLM death. Kinda hard to avoid when the primary strategy is to blast it with nukes from squishy BLMs until it dies. He tends not to like that so much and starts hitting back. I felt like the week had handed me my ass, so I crashed relatively early for a Friday night. Keri, however, spent all night in game, drank heavily and woke up half clothed in Valkurm Dunes the next morning. :P

<3 ya hon!

I spent the majority of Saturday game time doing ZNMs, but I did squeeze in a short manaburn - enough to make BLM72 happen. For ZNMs, I popped 2 of my 3 Verdelet's and got both the shield that I really wanted for WHM and BST and the cape that I'm testing out on BLM. That shield is the main thing I've wanted from ZNMs, though - glad to finally have it! Also won the lot on a Water Grip and Brickhouse gave me the Wind Grip he won the lot on for BLM. Picked up a Fire Grip off the AH for 2k, so now I'm 3/8 for the set.

I spent the first half of Sunday burning up Alchemy materials. I was on potions, which is not a very expensive synth at all. I ground out 7 levels on it over the course of the morning, all the way up to the cap at 40. Next is Vitriol, and I'm gonna ham that one up. It's nothing but profit: spend an hour or two killing sapplings and hunting water clusters and selling off the results to an NPC. Completely circumventing the economy is the way to go. It takes too long to try to push all this product through the auction house. I also got in a small manaburn before Dynamis - Jeuno. Which was a complete cluster-flux capacitor. You see what I did there? >.>; Seriously though, we either just failed to bring our A-Game or didn't have enough of the right jobs, but we died waaay too much. Snibe's relic is finally paid, and several people got the relic they were after, but it was a good thing we weren't after the win...

Monday is and so are we! At the butt crack of dawn! That's right, the first day of school is tomorrow, which means we have to resume the old wake up with the chickens schedule. In a way I'm bummed that I lose that extra half hour of sleep, but I'm soooo glad Colin is finally back in school. He's been driving me nuts with his boredom and really needs to be back in class.