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