Home for a bit, so very nice it is
I’ve been rather lucky lately with how work scheduling had landed. I managed a couple of weeks at home after Korea, one week in the office, and now I’m coming into the second week of this two week stretch at home. Next week will be a week of work, and a lot of it, but thankfully all at home. A ton of wire needing to be run and managed, and they were willing to ship it here since I’ll probably be on the east coast here in a couple of weeks, and that one could be two weeks or a month and some change. No one knows yet.
Anyways, a ton of things have changed since the last letter. It has been over a month after all. I’ve come home from Korea, had some time to relax, lots of uninterrupted time with the family, lots of working from home stuff. We picked up a cell phone for Char to have, but we’re holding on to it until she shows that she can be responsible and listen. You can guess how well that is going. Syd had her birthday with family and friends, and that had a jumper with a water slide. She had a blast, Char wanted to act up that day just to make things all the more “enjoyable,” but it was a good day. This whole week was spent with late late nights getting paperwork done and items ordered for Orlando. A few thousand feet of wire is coming my way for next week, and that’ll be a good amount of busy work to get things prepped. But a week working on the paperwork and prepping at home could save me a week and a half or two weeks work in Orlando, so I’ll take it.
It was nice to come home and see how much Syd came into her own, along with coming into being a toddler all the more. Lots of parroting things, picking up words, and even reading a few for good measure. Fun times though. Char came back and, as per usual, decided that listening wasn’t going to be her strong suit. It was not long until I had to disable the internet to her computer, and it’s also why she has yet to deserve her phone. In fact, I may just sell it at this point and be done with it. I’ve had many days of wanting to give it to her, but then she doesn’t last minutes until I change my mind. Almost as if it’s a self fulfilling prophecy. It’s odd though, since she knows it was meant as an early birthday present, since her birthday falls so close to Christmas, it seemed wise, and she even knows it’s costing us $70/mo to have the line and phone, but doesn’t seem to care. It’s almost as if the perspective of how much that adds up to isn’t clicking… it’s a $700 phone. And each year it’ll cost us $360 to have her line on the plan. This isn’t a “small” gift by any stretch, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly, but she seems to care less.
With all that in mind, I have no idea if I’ll sell it or keep it. But I’m a big fan of selling it and being done with it at this point. Pay off the phone, sell it, cancel the line and save ourselves over $1000. So much simpler to deal with that way. Brooke doesn’t want too and keeps saying give her another chance, but I’m more or less done with chances after this past week. I’d really like to have her deserve it, but she can’t seem to keep her act together for more than 10 minutes. A great example of her lying and doing the wrong thing came yesterday. She asked if she could use her computer after we got home. I told her she should read, but she insisted that no trouble would be had later in the day, when she was told to read. We had to ask her a dozen times over the course of over an hour to get her to actually read. It was actually closer to two dozen and almost two hours. Absurd. Not deserving of a phone if I can’t rely on her to keep her own promises. Tomorrow I’ll bring it up with Brooke again, and we may just end up selling it this weekend. Pay off the phone, delete the line, be done with it. Surely, that will prove the point that this lying garbage isn’t acceptable.
This devolved into a random rant about parenting, huh? No matter though as I am a parent after all. Hopefully one day Char will realize what she’s giving up by pushing our limits. It’s going to end up where she has no electronics in her room again, short of an LED light bulb. Amusing enough, we found an old tablet from 4 or so years ago, still works like a champ. It’ll probably end up being the Syd device for when we’re needing to give her something to watch while doing her hair and other things. A two year old is going to get a device and a 9, nearly 10 year old, will not be getting one that was purchased for her. Funny how that goes.
It’s after midnight though. Time for bed.
Edit: I didn’t even think about it… next night, also after midnight, sitting here thinking about it. I really should point out to her that I had a choice between getting her a phone and a line, getting Brooke and upgraded phone, upgrading my phone to a normal phone from another company instead of the discounted one I picked up so we didn’t have monthly payments on it, or even getting my own, personal gaming laptop so I don’t need to rely on the one from work (for gaming, not for regular use). I picked to get her a phone now instead of waiting 3 months to do it, and I did that over all the other options. I could have even gone as far as upgrading my home PC with a shiny, new widescreen 1440p 144hz monitor, but instead I got her a phone. We could have replaced the living room TV with a TV made in the last 10 years, but we got her a phone. Replaced the washer and dryer with something newer, replaced the fridge with a newer and bigger one, but we got her a phone. Heck, today she promised she’d fix her attitude and barely lasted a couple of hours before she was already off on her own, and then did it two or three more times after that. Maybe we’ll just put her on a Note 2 or Note 5 that we have laying around, or I’ll just get a flip phone and leave her with that.
Love, Papa