A Matinee and a Hit-and-Runt
We squeeze in a few impromptu adventures around Riley taking the PSSAs.
Riley had to take the PSSAs this week; and, since she's in a virtual charter school, we had to register her to take them in a highly-controlled in-person environment...
...you know, to ensure that students wouldn't try to cheat...
...on an arbitrary exam made by a New Jersey company to assess Pennsylvania schools...
...and having essentially nothing to do with the students' actual developmental progress on an individual level.
The closest testing center to our apartment turned out to be a church on the outskirts of the Franklin Mills Mall.
And when we showed up bright and early Monday morning, the "church" turned out to be the old movie theater...
And, what do you do with a church for the other six days of the week that nobody's praising Jesus? Casually use it as a school and hope nobody realizes it's a movie theater pretending to be a church, I guess.
It checks out on some level... Kind of.
We had a couple errands to run; so, while Riley got to work penciling in bubbles on a scantron sheet—
Or, no wait; it's 2023. I guess they just click radio buttons on a screen now.
—Athennia and I decided to go slumming at the nearby Wal-Mart and Michael's in Philthydelphia...
We passed by the Northeast Philthy airport—which I have a cool little story about (now that I imagine the statute of limitations has long since expired):
Back in 2012, I had a friend whose cousin worked as an air-traffic controller there, and he smuggled us in one night to come check out the tower. A security guard tailed us the entire way, and we had to pose as delivery guys bringing food to my friend's cousin to finally get the guy off our back!
It was a super close call that scared the crap out of us; but then, we spent a couple hours hanging out in a place where few people get to go ;)
Riley finished up a couple hours earlier than we had expected; so, after we picked her up, we decided to head up to the courthouse in Doylestown and visit the Recorder of Deeds so I could pull a few property records and verify the existence of some...
...right-of-ways?
...rights-of-way?
Long story short, we've been looking for a plot of land the last few months, and a couple of the parcels we've found are landlocked; so, a small but key part of the due diligence is, obviously, ensuring that we would have legal access to our own property.
I'm sure we'll do a write-up about that whole process one of these days, but today is not that day.
Anyway, the public servants in the courthouse sure have carved out a remarkably master-like little position for themselves—looking down on the peons from their panoptic tower in the sky...
So then, that $0.50/page is pure profit! That's going right into the Prosciutto and Tootsie Rolls jar; isn't it?
On the way home from Doylestown, we got stuck behind whatever the hell this thing is, that just had to come all the way over from Jersey to do eight miles per hour in front of us...
Needless to say, it was fat and slow. And loud. And crappy. And we were relieved when it finally turned to go be the bane of someone else's existence.
Tuesday morning was largely a repeat of Monday:
Wake up.
Take Riley to the movies to do some math and reading problems.
Try to find something to do to kill time until she was finished.
Athennia and I decided to drive up to Tanner Brothers in Ivyland and then surprise my mom and my Uncle Roy at their church just a little ways up the road. (It's not all big and fancy like the inside of an old movie theater or anything; but, my uncle's the music director, and my mom was there helping him file a bunch of music.)
Then we got another surprise call that Riley had finished testing almost three hours earlier than planned; and so, she had to sit there bored while we raced all the way back down to the slums of outer Philly to pick her up.
We walked in (and grabbed a small popcorn and a ticket to her classroom)...
...signed her out...
...headed back to the car...
...Athennia put it into reverse and was 90% of the way backed out, and—
CRUNCH!
What the actual !@#$?!
Someone hit us!
Athennia and I jumped out of the car to assess the damage...
...and to see what someone with the IQ of a carrot actually looks like!
The driver's side door and the back passenger door opened, and...
Ummmm, what?
Seriously; how many fingers old are you guys?
Do you two have, like... parents?
...A babysitter?
...A wetnurse?
...Anybody?
Finally, the mom rolled out of the passenger's seat...
Full hijab, and all bundled up like she was the only one who'd received a heads up about the impending sandstorm set to roll through any second. Basically two eyes peeking out from behind a Turkish prayer rug,
Athennia and I were still sort of speechless as we mentally backtracked to re-work step-by-step through our perceived reality in which it sure seemed that one of the tykes in front of us must've indeed emerged from behind the wheel.
(Whether it was the six-year-old or the nine-year-old, we'll never know; but, there seems to be no other logical explanation.)
We asked Prayer Rug for her information, prompting her to get on her phone (presumably to her husband) and start the panicked habalababbabalbala act.
In her defense, this could 100% have been an innocent cultural thing—like, I'm just a woman, and I couldn't possibly have the capacity to make a decision on my own.
But, after two minutes went by, I started to get the impression that it might also be the ol' I'll pretend I don't speak English until they give up and go away routine.
So I shrugged and said, "I'll just go inside and grab the cop that's in there."
And, what do you know? License, registration, and insurance were tendered immediately!
Here's their license plate for good measure as well :)
We got a police report and thanked the cop for stepping away from his post for two minutes. (Fortunately no school shootings, church shootings, or movie-theater shootings happened while he was away.)
On the way to pick Riley up, we had already made plans to take a road trip out to Shoemakersville to check out the manufactured housing showroom at Stonybrook Homes.
So, once we got everything sorted out with Prayer Rug—and discreetly let the cop know that we were 99.99% sure that either L'il Wayne or Even L'iller Wayne had been the one behind the wheel—we were on our way...
Mid-afternoons on a Tuesday aren't exactly rush hour at manufactured housing showrooms; so, the general manager Will gave us a thorough tour of four homes—all of which we liked, but only one of which was enough square footage for what we're looking for.
Then we had a long drive home... though this time, thankfully, not behind Alcoa's reimagining of the poop emoji as a utility vehicle.
Wednesday was like Monday and Tuesday, just without any road trips or Middle-Eastern tykes. (And we also didn't have to interface with anyone from the government, which I appreciated just as immensely.)
So actually, it was nothing like Monday or Tuesday—aside from taking Riley to movie-church-school for a few hours.
Then we stopped at McDonald's for horse-meat burgers on the way home, and that was pretty much the highlight of the day.
Saturday, we headed up to Zieglerville to look at a parcel for sale there...
Beautiful piece of land!
As for the price tag on trenching water, sewer, electric, and optical fiber 400 feet through a shared gravel driveway? I'm guessing that will probably be less beautiful. I'll definitely need a quote on that before we consider pulling the trigger!
On our way home, we stopped by my parents' and ordered cheese steaks for dinner; and then Riley and I played soccer and tossed around a frisbee with Steve and Olivia while Athennia stayed inside and hung out with Hannah...
And finally, Athennia made sliders for dinner Sunday night, which were delicious and too cute not to photograph...
