Vincent’s father had invited him to go to Florida with him for a week last week but we pushed Vincent to stay and work more on his classes and help his Mother out at summer school. Vincent’s father ended up not calling Tuesday anyway, but called Sunday – finally headed down there, where his parents have moved to again – to ask Vincent if he could at least stop by and visit with Vincent Sunday evening.
We ended up having a decent sized argument with Vincent again, since he pushed to go with him again. An underlying issue is that Vincent’s friend Samantha is gone, and it’s not clear whether – unless they break up – Vincent would still want to go after she returns (unless she went to, which we’ve discouraged). But Stephanie really does want help with school – on this, their second and final week (math camp), and Vincent still hasn’t finished an on-line class since World History in April. Vincent was somewhat honest, at least implicitly: he did very little work for months and has recently started working some – 1-2 hours a day – but really that’s only four days a week. He argued that math will go quicker (I’m now sure he’ll be timed out of his math class) because for the English class – even though it’s more interesting and easier for him – he has to do some reading and writing – He’s been reading “The Lord of the Rings” series to compare this with “Beowulf.” He said he wants to finish and go to high school but he’s in no hurry to do either (which seems obvious enough). At some point he threatened to go anyway or to stay and not go to school with Stephanie – against the backdrop that if he goes he can’t come back to live with us (on top of him getting no job – though he’s got one these two weeks as Stephanie is paying him $10 a day to help her for a couple of hours plus he gets to work on on-line classes on the computers that are faster at school than the desktop at home is) – and Stephanie also mentioned the possibility of turning him in for not getting school work and – while he was gone – not going to counseling. At times Vincent has claimed he could still do school work while with his father but we’re very skeptical about that.
Stephanie was also concerned that Vincent’s father might end up getting a job and staying in Florida and then – if the idea was that Vincent was supposed to come back – we would have to end up going down to get him.
Stephanie ended up giving away some of the store by saying Vincent could go visit his father in Ohio after he comes back and after he helps her for another week (with no stipulation about class completion). That way – although he couldn’t visit with his grandparents – he could visits cousins etc. and if we got stuck going to pick him up it wouldn’t be so far away. Of course, who knows what Vincent’s father will really end up doing?
On Father’s Day evening, however (Vincent and he used to get to spend the day together in Ohio when it didn’t fall on one of Vincent’s father’s weekends), Vincent’s father did surprise by NOT getting lost on the way to our house and NOT showing up really early or late. I warned Vincent that Lazer Blaze was closing soon, and so Vincent’s father ended up whisking him off – but apparently they went to Bardstown Road, one of Vincent’s hangouts (and toured around by car or on foot?) and ended up going to the movie theater where the three of us saw “The Taking of Pelham 123” earlier this week to see the Will Ferrell movie “Land of the Lost” (and apparently got some food in there). Vincent made us nervous by turning his phone off during the movie and getting home at 12:30 a.m. (he had earlier pushed for staying home Monday because he figured he would get home late – but not that late). I didn’t fall asleep until after he got home – although I figured Vincent’s father had come to his senses and decided not to keep driving all night to Florida but to spend the night in an affordable motel in Louisville and Vincent ended up staying with him – or Vincent had decided to go on to Florida. Besides movie theaters (which I didn’t think of), there’s not a lot open on Sunday nights at midnight in Louisville. Vincent hadn’t taken any stuff with him, but he also hadn’t put clean sheets on his stripped bed. But Vincent also had tried any last-minute school work to try to convince us – he spent the last couple of hours before his father arrived watching the last episode of the R-rated vampire porn TV show that Stephanie bought, going out for a walk and a smoke, and playing video games. All of this made me wonder as I sat in bed and worried about this and other things: catching up with things at work, whether to go back to my surgeon about my would-be hernia, whether Stephanie should go to the conference in Las Vegas in July, etc., etc.
We ended up having a decent sized argument with Vincent again, since he pushed to go with him again. An underlying issue is that Vincent’s friend Samantha is gone, and it’s not clear whether – unless they break up – Vincent would still want to go after she returns (unless she went to, which we’ve discouraged). But Stephanie really does want help with school – on this, their second and final week (math camp), and Vincent still hasn’t finished an on-line class since World History in April. Vincent was somewhat honest, at least implicitly: he did very little work for months and has recently started working some – 1-2 hours a day – but really that’s only four days a week. He argued that math will go quicker (I’m now sure he’ll be timed out of his math class) because for the English class – even though it’s more interesting and easier for him – he has to do some reading and writing – He’s been reading “The Lord of the Rings” series to compare this with “Beowulf.” He said he wants to finish and go to high school but he’s in no hurry to do either (which seems obvious enough). At some point he threatened to go anyway or to stay and not go to school with Stephanie – against the backdrop that if he goes he can’t come back to live with us (on top of him getting no job – though he’s got one these two weeks as Stephanie is paying him $10 a day to help her for a couple of hours plus he gets to work on on-line classes on the computers that are faster at school than the desktop at home is) – and Stephanie also mentioned the possibility of turning him in for not getting school work and – while he was gone – not going to counseling. At times Vincent has claimed he could still do school work while with his father but we’re very skeptical about that.
Stephanie was also concerned that Vincent’s father might end up getting a job and staying in Florida and then – if the idea was that Vincent was supposed to come back – we would have to end up going down to get him.
Stephanie ended up giving away some of the store by saying Vincent could go visit his father in Ohio after he comes back and after he helps her for another week (with no stipulation about class completion). That way – although he couldn’t visit with his grandparents – he could visits cousins etc. and if we got stuck going to pick him up it wouldn’t be so far away. Of course, who knows what Vincent’s father will really end up doing?
On Father’s Day evening, however (Vincent and he used to get to spend the day together in Ohio when it didn’t fall on one of Vincent’s father’s weekends), Vincent’s father did surprise by NOT getting lost on the way to our house and NOT showing up really early or late. I warned Vincent that Lazer Blaze was closing soon, and so Vincent’s father ended up whisking him off – but apparently they went to Bardstown Road, one of Vincent’s hangouts (and toured around by car or on foot?) and ended up going to the movie theater where the three of us saw “The Taking of Pelham 123” earlier this week to see the Will Ferrell movie “Land of the Lost” (and apparently got some food in there). Vincent made us nervous by turning his phone off during the movie and getting home at 12:30 a.m. (he had earlier pushed for staying home Monday because he figured he would get home late – but not that late). I didn’t fall asleep until after he got home – although I figured Vincent’s father had come to his senses and decided not to keep driving all night to Florida but to spend the night in an affordable motel in Louisville and Vincent ended up staying with him – or Vincent had decided to go on to Florida. Besides movie theaters (which I didn’t think of), there’s not a lot open on Sunday nights at midnight in Louisville. Vincent hadn’t taken any stuff with him, but he also hadn’t put clean sheets on his stripped bed. But Vincent also had tried any last-minute school work to try to convince us – he spent the last couple of hours before his father arrived watching the last episode of the R-rated vampire porn TV show that Stephanie bought, going out for a walk and a smoke, and playing video games. All of this made me wonder as I sat in bed and worried about this and other things: catching up with things at work, whether to go back to my surgeon about my would-be hernia, whether Stephanie should go to the conference in Las Vegas in July, etc., etc.
-- Perry
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