Emergencies

Last week we faced a number of emergencies:

- We discovered that all of Vincent’s three online dual-enrollment high school/college classes had “timed out,” after four months and lost the money invested in them. We were able to get Vincent signed up again for one of the classes, at the same reduced rate, although incompletes will now show up on a community college transcript for him. As he tries a third time to complete this class, it’s more clear he will have until the end of February only.

- Contractors for the gas company came to our house to dig up our lawn and upgrade our natural gas links and they decided our natural gas hook-up to our dryer was outdated and shut it off, pending replacement. (The picture above shows the bulldozer they left in front of our house for a couple of days.) We were eventually able to reach our landlord and persuade him to consider covering this, and a plumber was out to our house today to do so. Our dryer should now run after being out of commission for nearly a week.

- Taking some of my stuff up to file in my boxes in the second-floor alcove, I made what may have been a mistake of peeking into Vincent’s room (which takes up most of the second floor and has no door). His room was a disaster area and this eventually led to our first post-Vincent returning argument. We seem to have made up – although I promptly left for a long weekend for work – even though Sunday night (by days of the week) was the one-year anniversary of the big argument we had that triggered Vincent’s ten-month stay with his father in Ohio. Stay tuned.

In the midst of the construction and dryer problems last week, bad weather – including two tornadoes – struck Kentuckiana. Vincent and the dog had to go into the basement, my colleagues with windows had to leave their offices, and Stephanie’s school lost power and then had to spend an hour on the floor in the hallways. Some of the kids were upset, and the events threw the whole week off.

- This past week Grandpa Beck, Uncle Don, Aunt Sandy, and her sisters helped arrange for him to shift from regular home health care, with extra therapy, to hospice care. This should give Don, Sandy, and June extra help but will mean that there are limits to what health-care workers are to do to keep Grandpa alive if he goes to the hospital. More on this later.

P.S. During my last few minutes at the sociology of religion conference my colleagues and I went to last weekend, I managed to inadvertently humiliate my manager, in a way that I imagine he’s still annoyed about. Although I’m relieved the conference – including my presentation and several other projects I was trying to get done by the end of the month – is over, as well as the election (in 20 hours), November brings the final few weeks for me to get things done before my Annual Review – probably at the end of the month – including two Panel reports, a Panel reestablishment time line, and so on. Already my manager seems annoyed that the November Panel survey is obviously going to go out late. And another mediocre Annual Review would not be a good way to go into the next round of layoffs in a year or two.

In up and down health news, Mom tried a new machine that assesses balance this week, and came through with flying colors, impressing her former physical therapists and not appearing to be the resident most likely to fall. On the other hand, I left a drawer open in the bathroom and Stephanie’s foot was injured – and bloodied – in an incident shortly thereafter.

- Perry