He specifically requested to go to my stylist again instead of a discount haircuttery. Schuyler did an awesome job, as always.
New Haircut
Footprints in the Snow
I had just flashed my usual I Love You 🤟🏻 to Connor as the school bus pulled away. When I turned to walk back up the driveway, our matching sets of footprints stood out to me in the morning snow. We wear the same size shoe now: his men’s size 8 tread-marks are on the left, and my women’s size 10 slide-prints are on the right.
This school year is the first that Connor has taken the bus in the mornings since Kindergarten, since the elementary bus pickup conflicted with my work schedule. During those elementary years, I drove him to school — either for Extended Time in the mornings before school, or directly to school on days when I worked from home. Those short drives to school were some of the best one-on-one times I’ve had with Connor, and I had mixed feelings about losing that time with him.
Luckily for me, he still likes having me wait with him for the bus — and not just because I have the iPhone app that shows where the bus is on her route.
Been There Before
It was late Sunday afternoon when the Mustang pulled into our driveway. At first, I thought it was a contractor for a delivery company, but it turns out it was a young lady whose car had broken down.
Once she realized her car wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, she knocked on our front door and politely let me know. Since the temperature wasn’t much above freezing, I invited her into our home to wait for her tow.
It probably came off cringey instead of empathetic, but I told her about the time the transmission on my first car started acting funny. I was a good half-hour from home, and this was long before cell phones, so I ended up using a nice retired couple’s home phone to call my aunt for advice on what to do.
As I was telling my story, I could tell it wasn’t really having the effect I’d been hoping for, so I stopped rambling, gave her some space by the dining room window where she could watch for the tow truck, and went into the other room to continue folding laundry.
My aunt’s advice to me, once I finally got through to her, had been to accept the quart of transmission fluid the nice couple had offered me, pour it in, then drive home by way of every BP station I could find, using the gas card my stepdad Tom had given me to get another quart of transmission fluid at every stop along the way. I did manage to get to within a mile or so of home before the transmission fluid top-up method stopped working, and I was forced to leave my car at a local (non-BP) gas station and just stick a For Sale sign on the windshield. Eventually, a young man and his dad bought it off of me for $50 with the intention of fixing it up for the demolition derby at the county fair. Since the transmission only ran in reverse at that point, and that’s how they roll at the demo derby, it was a win-win for everyone.
Anyway, I hope that the young lady whose car happened to give up the ghost in our driveway finally got to go smoke with her friends. She certainly deserved some chill time after the weird evening she had, sitting in some Gen-X lady’s dining room waiting for AAA.
Turning Over an Old Leaf
Valid reasons for skipping Krav Maga class:
- Doctor’s orders (i.e. no strenuous activity)
- Car trouble
- Fever, vomiting, or diarrhea
- Band concert
- Level 3 snow emergency
- Severe pain and/or inability to move properly
INVALID reasons for skipping Krav:
- Being tired
- Having a bad day
- Not wanting to leave the house
- Still being sore from the last class
- Impostor syndrome
- Depression
Happy New Year 2024!
New year, new techo!
My focus for this year is to do Future Me a solid. That could look different on any given day: organizing stuff now so I don’t have to fuss with it later, re-establishing healthy habits so I don’t have to use mental energy to make conscious decisions about what to eat or how to be active, or even giving myself permission to play a game while I have some down time.
Future Me will be glad to have 2024 more well-documented in my blog than the past couple of years have been, too.