Busy week

Last Friday was the last day at work for Mom and the last day of the school year (without kids) for Stephanie. Mom’s colleagues had a modest-sized good-bye party for her, and she went through some more files. She still has a work laptop at home and a very complex table of numbers she’s trying to finish working out.

Monday morning Mom lost the close-to-the-building handicapped parking space she had informally used since she moved to the retirement center and will have to use a space she now has at an outlying parking lot. Along with not having to drive to work, this will encourage her to drive even less frequently. Mom has consoled herself about her retirement by continuing to tackle a host of transition business she’s got to take care of. She’s also begun visiting and participating several different above-ground and in-the-pool exercise classes at the retirement center. Mom hasn’t been swimming since the early 1970s, and so we’ll see how that goes. Mom concedes that she has gotten out of shape and hopes to remedy some of that without straining too much. (Her initial swim class and riding the center shuttle to a shopping mall Thursday didn’t go great.) Mom also faces challenges settling into a dining routine she likes (as practices at the retirement center continue to change) and finding people she enjoys eating with.

Stephanie ended up going back to school every day during the first four days of the week (volunteering all but one of the days). She finished packing up – or bringing home – the stuff in her old classroom and helped the custodians move some of it to the much smaller new classroom she’ll be sharing with another teacher. Tuesday Vincent and the dog went to help her. Vincent has been here for most of the week.

While I was away for the weekend, Vincent’s father – on a moving job to a nearby town – essentially brought Vincent here. Vincent – who still has a job as a Bob Evans dishwasher up in Columbus - was here ostensibly for an informal one-year class reunion of his old high school and a doctor’s appointment. As usual, Vincent spent the first couple of days here out with friends – although this with a friend we approve of - and then was tired and somewhat grouchy much of the rest of the time. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were all eventful. The two kids Vincent hung out with most of the time he was here back in April – who soon thereafter got arrested – had tried to be in touch with him, and stopped by several times. Vincent finally visited with one of them, but apparently told this kid – who is probably headed to prison – that he wanted to take a break.

Then Monday, when Vincent went to counseling – in the end, with Stephanie and Frisco – Vincent, apparently tiring of counseling – brought up stuff from the long past. He’s apparently been going through some of his father’s court records and started a debate with his mother about who was right in the expensive trial we were in vs. his father some 10 years ago. Tuesday and Wednesday Vincent went to the doctor and then an oral surgeon and then set up an early September for having two of his wisdom teeth out (an experience, Vincent recalls, that was particularly painful some 14 years ago for his mother). Thursday Vincent’s father called to explain that the child support enforcement office in Ohio had finally gotten on him, threatening his driver’s license if he didn’t start paying child support, and he enlisted Stephanie’s aid in lowering the monthly amount due (never mind that the final amount to be paid is shrinking in real terms, due to interest and inflation). Stephanie also got out of Vincent that – being kicked out of their apartment for having two extra people (Vincent’s grandparents) for the past few months – they kicked out the grandparents but are now having to look for a new place to live. (The child support enforcement effort may put a crimp in their plan to buy a fancy house in Upper Arlington.)

(Vincent also reprised his knife incident in a very small way by knocking over and braking a glass jar with marbles in it but also surprised us by going to church for the first time in months, for a Wednesday night dinner designed partly to help out people in the congregation – like us – having trouble making ends meet, with a free meal.)

Unsure about how to afford the time and money to driving Vincent all the way to Ohio Thursday (Vincent pitched that we shouldn’t do the usual meeting his father in Covington (KY) just south of Cincinnati), instead, for the first time, we drove him to the Cincinnati bus station and but him on a Greyhound bus for Columbus. This was a trial run and he should be able to do the whole bus route between Louisville and Columbus at some point (but not if he has a lot of stuff). With a driver’s license or not, his father picked him up last night and they got home safely last night. Vincent was to work this morning.

(In the past, Vincent’s father has gotten out of the driver’s license penalty by saying he can’t work – driving a moving truck – without a license and therefore wouldn’t be able to pay child support anyway. But it’s a vicious circle, because when he gets his license back and works, he doesn’t pay any child support either.)

(Because Vincent’s relationship with his friends here has dwindled – except for the friends in trouble who he broke it up with – and I guess except for the guy he hung out with this past weekend – having Vincent home this week – when he wasn’t asleep – especially since Stephanie was home some of the time – was a bit like back when Vincent was on house arrest, in that he was willing to hang out with us and do stuff with us. Vincent and Stephanie watched “Ghost Hunters” and a PBS show about ferrets and their people on TV together Wednesday night.)

-- Perry

Mid-week musings

Good news and bad news: Our church had been wavering on whether to go ahead with a Guatemala mission trip in July, with dwindling numbers on our end, and Tuesday we determined that we have 5-6 people going and we would go ahead and go. A surprise late addition was the Guatemalan American daughter of the man who was a guest pastor for us for six weeks several years ago (her first chance to go home in 3 ½ years). The bad news is that now I have to finish organizing the mission trip (which helps me avoid paying much).

Tuesday I also got my first speeding ticket in 10 years, and in a school zone (I don’t know how I missed that blinking light), which means I can’t just mail in a check and must also go to three-hour traffic school and be even more careful in the future. A fellow church member who is a lawyer contacted me via Facebook and phone and is going to try to help me get the court fee waived (and maybe get out of making an appearance).

On his birthday, Vincent commented on my Facebook page for the first time ever. He was slated to go to see the movie Kick Ass with his father for his birthday. (We celebrated his birthday this past Friday and then went to Thunder Over Louisville Saturday with him.) Vincent said he was slated to start his Bob Evans job later this week. I didn’t ask him about starting his classes (clearly he’d been on the computer) and he continued his hermit line which may mask that he’s bored and depressed and has got no non-family friends in Ohio (and for that matter doesn’t see his relatives on Stephanie or my sides of the family – he seems dead set on boycotting Corey’s wedding this Saturday). Stephanie wasn’t really able to reach him on his birthday.

One of my first assignments at the Presbyterian Center was to write a report for a Presbyterian Panel survey that I had not authored – about attitudes towards reparations. Later on I had gotten assigned a second Panel report – for which I had drafted a small part of the survey – which I’d never finished. More than a year ago I got the transfer/promotion that made me administrator of the Presbyterian Panel (random samples of Presbyterian church elders, other members, and ministers whom we send questionnaires about various topics four times a year), and yet I had not finished that report or any for the three or four surveys that I have worked on since becoming an administrator – something my managers were not happy about and was not good given the impending layoff date (May 14). This week final hard-copy versions of two Panel reports (the long delayed one and one for the first Panel survey I wrote entirely – the May 2009 survey on the Environment) came out and I distributed them. If I can just finish two more Panel reports before May 14 . . .

--Perry

Happy birthday, Vincent!

Today is Vincent’s 19th birthday, which we celebrated with him this past Friday night, when he was still in town. I wrote Thursday about Vincent’s school “progress.” Apparently Vincent’s father has lined up a job at a Bob Evans near Graceland shopping center in north Columbus. Vincent may start this week (even on his birthday?). By days of the week, a year ago today Vincent went to court and essentially escaped with a de facto year of probation, with nothing on his record, and his house arrest ended (and this week he completed the online high school he’s completed most recently). I have called the lawyer about getting his record expunged – after one year – and haven’t heard back.

Mother heard from her manager late last week that apparently there was some paperwork that needed to be completed for her to work at home, and he asked her to stop working because they needed to start with her doctor for that paperwork. Mom was just getting going on some work projects at home, and was sorry to have that cut short. She would also like to finish those by June (her putative retirement month) and is a little worried that she currently is eating up the rest of her vacation days (it’s not clear what to do with these stop-work days). Mom has kept busy, entertaining, going to programs at the retirement center, taking care of personal business, maintaining her medication regimen, getting used to her walker/rolator, meting more people at the center, and exercising at the gym (in the new, post-therapy era). She has also been in contact with the contractors working on her house, and the real estate agent we’re working with will do a walk-through of the house with them this Friday. She will take photos at that time that will appear on her company’s website. Apparently the house will go on the market soon. The real estate agent will stop by Mom later Friday to let her know how things are proceeding. I’m hoping Stephanie and I will be in Tallahassee later in May, and hopefully we can see the house – somewhat transformed – at that time, before it might be sold. Who knows?

This past Monday Stephanie wrapped up a three-week unit in her after-school Culture Club about Korea. I had stopped by the first week to talk about and show pictures and mementos of my 1995 visit with Penny and Serge there. Last week Stephanie had hoped Vincent would stop by to show the kids some Tae Kwon do moves (a Korean martial art), but that didn’t work out. Monday she brought radish kimchee and rice and bulkogi steak she had made, and they had a feast. She had done Korea a year ago in Culture Club, but they did not repeat any content this time, since she still has some kids from back then in Culture Club. Negotiation continues about where Stephanie’s school will put all of the teachers/students they will have next year. Eventually, they may need portable classrooms.

-- Perry