Well, first for the week in review. Kevin did in fact rise with the birds, he left the house at 5:30 Thursday morning. I know because I woke up when the garage door opened. So he drove all the way to the hotel at King of Prussia, in the snow, only to be told that they had enough cars to bring all the bags back to the Y! He was furious. First, he had just been told the night before that they needed his truck. Second, one of the drivers later complained that her car was packed so high she couldn't see. When asked why she didn't put some in his car, she responded, "well he got there later, and we were done."
??
They knew he was coming, and he was there by 7:30am. The kids didn't even leave the pool to head home until 10. This is a typical example of too many chiefs. Kevin was the only Indian in the equation.
But he got over it and went to the pool to watch them practice for a while. They were back home before 1 and Megan had a good long nap before we went to dinner. Brian had a big anxiety/depression attack during this time, brought about by several factors, not the least of which I am sure was the tremendous amount of schoolwork he has had over this break. Also, apparently attendance in Catholic school is dangerous to one's psyche because of constant reference to death and beyond.
Also, Megan had some friends coming over and for the first year ever, his New Year's Eve was not planned for him by us, other than dinner at a seafood restaurant followed by sitting around listening to Megan use his beloved XBox to play RockBand with her friends. I believe all of these things combined to bring him to a meltdown, bringing to mind the phrase 'depression hurts' from the pharmaceutical commercials, as well as 'life sucks and then you die,' which seemed to be how he was feeling. Probably sort of like - why am I suffering through all of this work if I'm just going to die and be gone anyway, why does it even matter?'
So he had a headache and was all shaky, but he had no fever. We had a long talk about all of it, the schooling, dying, friends, and all of the above. In the end he sent a text to a friend from middle school who was home with nothing to do for the night. We dropped Brian off there, and then the kid came here later, and slept over. Not his favorite plan for a night but at least he did something. Today he seems to feel better. He's working with Kevin on the last of his packets, his algebra study guide. Once this is done, he just has his World War 2 project (just!) This is a 20 page slide show on the role of the soldiers in the war. Ain't gonna be easy. But at least it's for extra credit. Even if he doesn't do it, he is still passing the class, but he'll need to do extremely well on the midterm.
The midterms themselves are a frightening prospect for him, not having any idea what to expect. We even did discuss the possibility of his switching back to the public school, and I told him I would never have a problem with that, but he will always finish out the year that he is in, and the switch has to be made for the right reasons (as in not because he just doesn't feel like doing the work.) We also discussed how he has to finish out a whole year anyway, to know if he likes it - how he may look back at this time in a few months and think, 'well it wasn't really so bad, because now I am out two weeks before the public schools in the summer!'
And in other news, James is flying in today. The Doll had asked Kevin to go pick him up because the weather was bad. So now the weather is fine, but Kevin is picking him up - luckily just at the shuttle drop. Although the plane has landed and we haven't heard from him, so who knows, maybe she forgot to tell Kevin and she's just going to go. It wouldn't surprise me. She loses all sense of consideration for others when James is in town. For example, consider dinner tonight.
I asked what we were doing, as in, are we seeing them - so Kevin called the Doll and asked what they had planned. She responded that she had made spaghetti for the two of them (we are never invited to her house for dinner, but that makes sense, I suppose) but then wondered if Kevin was asking because he wanted to take them out. He told her that he didn't want to TAKE them out (maybe she should see our balance sheet) but that he had thought maybe we could GO out. To which she replied, 'James and I will just have the spaghetti.' Then she added that she had made too much sauce and frozen some, and would give it to us in case we needed to make more sauce out of it. Makes you feel warm and fuzzy!! HAPpy New Year!
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