Are you excited or something?
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Excited he’s out of the house! Now his bedroom can be converted into something the parents want! 
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Ahhh boardgame storage.
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Very proud, feels unreal
Gutted he’s not at home, but couldn’t think of a much cooler place to buy his first legal drink.
He’s inter railing. Has had a couple of days in Copenhagen (with a day trip to Helsingborg). Dresden tomorrow and then Prague the day after.
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So, not today, but this was our kids’ first week of school, and our younger kiddo got suspended on day 1.
Somehow, he managed to scale a rolling cabinet up to the top, then knocked out a ceiling tile and climbed into the ceiling of his classroom.
Thankfully he managed to climb all the way back down on his own, safely, unlike the time three years ago when he did this at a different school and fell when climbing down.
We were told to come pick him up, which would need to be a suspension, yet they kept dodging the issue (as needing to suspend a student because the environment is not safe for them makes the school look bad) until I essentially told them he was going to stay there and finish his day otherwise, at which point they agreed it was a suspension.
Then the BS part of this, we got mail from the school yesterday which was the suspension paperwork, which says he was suspended for vandalism. Yes, the ceiling tile broke, but I am pretty confident it was not intentional, which is part of the definition of “vandalism” so we are rather irked at this.
We will discuss it with the school on Tuesday when we have our second restraint debriefing of the year to go over the two restraints they felt were essential to get him down from the top of staircases on Friday. First restraint debriefing was for the same issue, but it occurred on Wednesday.
Great start to the school year!
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Dude.
I would expect Oregon, of all places, to be a little more attuned to, and sympathetic to, the needs of an atypical student.
I’m pissed with you. (American usage)
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I do not like Wednesdays. I drive 1.5 hours to work, teach, drive 1.5 hours home, pick up the foster kiddo from school early, drive 1 hour back-tracking to get him to his weekly visit with his mom, then drive 1 hour back home again. My “reward” at the end of my work day plus 5 hours of driving is usually McDonald’s, which the kiddo loves and I hate.
Tonight I also got my dog dropping a bloody baby rabbit carcass on my bed. She is now locked in the house until I can find the nest in the yard tomorrow and figure out what to do. I also got the news of two school shootings in my country, one of which is already fading into the background with the hundreds if not thousands of other school shootings that happen seemingly every day and the other of which is stirring up political rage and seems likely to be used as justification for yet more violence.
I do not like Wednesdays. I do not like this Wednesday even more so.
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First day of secondary school for my eldest without being so nervous she’s sick multiple times before getting to school!! Woohoo!!
Beating me up with gloves seemed to help this morning!!
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I now have a teenager in the house.
I’m weirded out that I’ve kept a human alive for 13 solar orbits.
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Dang. Put on a red helmet and I think you’d be an excellent Judge Dredd.
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I can’t imagine what it is like living in a situation like that. It all just seems a bit too much.
The fear of living with the threat of deadly violence of that level - I just can’t. But, then again, I can’t imagine living with a lot of the crap out there.
What I will say is this - you have survived this day, you will survive more. And then you will LIVE for a time, instead of just surviving.
Kiddo likes McD’s? Enjoy the time - eventually they won’t want to spend as much time with you (Here I DO speak from experience… 
)
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How am I today? Still woozy, I’m always woozy. But… I’ve had a good day with my Wife playing AH:LCG, (in the process of) repairing my sons PC with him. In other words - he still needs me. And being needed is a nice feeling.
Incidentally - my eldest boy ran his electric bike into the ground, so next weekend I am helping him use a kit to build a new one. Even he still needs me, and he hasn’t lived with us for about 10 years!
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Just had our last meal with Seth before he goes to Uni tomorrow. Not sure how how we’re going to feel tomorrow.
I suppose bursting with pride and heartbroken at the same time.
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Our youngest is off in a couple of days. Apart from feeling very old, my dominant emotions at the moment seem to be sadness and worry.
Which is nice.
(I am optimistic that this will prove to be a temporary state…!)
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I have the weird situation with one at uni and one at college but both live at home. Though next year the uni boy should go to Japan for the academic year. Which is both awesome and (gulp).
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Had a bit of a panic last night when there was a strange thump outside the house. I looked out the window, but couldn’t see anything amiss, and couldn’t tell if the noise had been on our side of the fence, or the neighbour’s, or if it was even near the wall where I’d heard it or if it might have actually been downstairs. I went downstairs and outside with a torch to see if I could see anything. There was nothing to see, but quite a lot to hear as there was a clearly a lot of water flowing into the nearby drain. This rather pinpointed the location, as there’s a fish pond up above! I hurried back up to check on that, and could now see that the water level had dropped alarmingly, and so we rushed around getting buckets so that we could extract the fish in a hurry. When I got outside, I finally saw what had happened – two of the rocks which form a decorative wall around the edge (cemented on, I’d presumed) had come loose and fallen into the water, and were presently pushing against the overflow pipe, which must have cracked. When I removed the rocks, however, the rate of flow slowed dramatically. There’s still a leak, but now only a slight one. So we ended up leaving the fish in the pond, and turning the hose on gently to compensate, which was fine as an overnight solution. I’m not sure how low down the crack is, so I don’t know if it would have fully drained, but I’m very glad that it happened while we were still awake. Someone will be here tomorrow in the morning to do repairs…
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As an American, this scene took a very dramatic turn when I saw a bonfire-on-a-stick and you, presumably in a fur robe or something, hurrying through the night.
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Feeling dismayed about America right now.
It’s funny - you know how England and France stereotypically don’t get along well - which has been more true or less true at different points in history. But here we are America, a mix of English governance/culture and French philosophy, and we can’t get along with ourselves.
–Redacted thoughts which were helpful to write but avoiding politics–
When do we ask: Holy cow, how did we get here? Where does this road go? Do we want to go there?
If we can’t talk when we disagree. If we can’t compare notes when operating from wildly different bases of information and then dig in to hunt down what is true. If we can’t even understand our own beliefs and articulate them as such. If the ends justify any means and the ends themselves are insufficiently scrutinized. Eye for an eye and we’re running out of eyes.
I don’t know what follows that if. I don’t know what to write there.
I don’t know who can bring healing to our rift. It feels like Pax Pamir with everyone fighting over the reins of one rickety stagecoach, but no matter who gets ahold of them the cliff is still ahead.
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When the Soviet Republic collapsed, I remember one BBC interviewer talking to somebody in Moscow who said, “There is a tunnel at the end of the light.”
I also remember some nutjob hack arguing that America is Fine and Everyone is Wrong that’s fundamental argument was “What are the odds that I am living through the exact moment the Roman Empire collapsed? America has been fine for centuries, it will continue to be fine for centuries.”
Which made me wonder if, as the camp fire smoke from the approaching Germanic tribes darkened the horizons of Rome, how many Romans said the same thing. “Surely I am not so unlucky to be alive when the Empire of a thousand years falls.”
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Technically 2 IS “centuries.”
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