Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Bugs


For a couple of years we’ve had these spider-cricket bugs sometimes down in our basement. But in the past week little flies/little flyings ants/termites have started invading our first and second floors. The kicker was Monday when Vincent heard what sounded like a swarm – of bees/wasps/termites/flies – in the attic around the wall from his bed. Vincent fled downstairs to Grandma Martha/Jon/Simon’s bedroom – also the computer room – which he last slept in several months ago when the heat didn’t work one night. This also conveniently places him next to the computer, where he can check for instant messages from Samantha or his friends in Denmark. He had pretty much quit corresponding with them after he started hanging out at Sam’s all the time. But I realized he not only misses Sam, but also several other friends of his were among the half a dozen present and former Brown students who went Monday to Denmark – during this hiatus from the official exchange program (several dozen people went last June). So he misses Sam and other friends and he misses going to Denmark. Stephanie says he wants to go back next year but I don’t think anyone will be going back next year and he’s certainly making no progress paying Grandma Martha back and paying us rent, let alone saving $1,000-2,000 for a summer Denmark trip.

Stephanie got annoyed with Vincent last week and threatened to kick him out if he doesn’t get more school work done or get a job. D-Day, in my mind, will be later this summer when he may get timed out of at least one of his classes. If he gets timed out of one or definitely both classes or gets kicked out of the school and still doesn’t have a job, I think we should definitely consider taking a break from each other. Complicating things somewhat: Our next door neighbor – after a couple of years – took her 20-year-old son back – he’s apparently working and going to AA. After getting kicked out of Manual after the first year, he managed to graduate from the local high school before she kicked him out for being obnoxious. Also – momentarily pushed by Vincent to explore other options – I did find a way Vincent could probably take the General Education Diploma exam – going through a diagnostic program through Kentucky’s public TV network and then taking the exam at the community and technical college – that Vincent could graduate by GED – assuming he could pass all five sections including the math section – and thereby possibly get into Indiana University Southeast, Western Kentucky University, or community college, all of which apparently take GED diplomas. Now, if Vincent didn’t score well enough on a math pre-test, he’d need to do some assigned math review/exam prep, which might start to looking like what he’s doing already. Vincent seems to have relented and Stephanie is less excited about the GED diploma – but it’s way better than him not graduating at all, and I don’t see how he’s going to get through five or six more on-line classes, especially hard ones like math. We liked the idea that he could enroll in these dual enrollment classes and get college credit almost for free. But if he never finishes high school having that college credit won’t help anything.

Back to the bugs: Our landlord authorized us to get a free inspection from St. Matthews Exterminating – late this morning – and we hope we don’t have termites (in case we might have to move out for several weeks for the house to be “tented” – which my landlord in FL refused to have done). However, this sort of thing always presents landlord-tenant ambiguities. If it’s something more routine, who pays for it? If it’s termites, if the landlord pays for tenting, who pays for alternative lodging and food for us? Ugh.

-- Perry

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