ation(Gradu + Reloc + Cultiv)
Taylor graduates high school and heads north. The rest of us... eat Qdoba.
If you multiplicatively distribute the "ation" to the three terms inside the parentheses, you'll get Graduation + Relocation + Cultivation.
Taylor learned how to do that in math class this past year... unless she's already forgotten how. But let's be honest: you've probably all forgotten as well ;)
Last Friday the 7th, Athennia skipped out of work around 11:30 and brought Taylor back to the apartment to get ready for her prom later that evening...
Athennia, Riley, and I got her a graduation card—as did my parents—and I also had a parting gift for her, which I got so she can treasure all the riveting moments we spent doing tedious high-school algebra together :)
Taylor said she was going for a "Poison Ivy from Batman" vibe, and I'd say she pretty much nailed it.
We're not really sure what vibe Ahlina was going for...
Maybe one of the kids from Newsies?
Meanwhile, Riley had gone to her friend Kassie's for a sleepover...
...which left me and Athennia some rare time alone...
...which, 99% of the time, means an impromptu field-trip to Qdoba.
It was a pretty painless drive over to Bensalem, for being rush hour on a Friday evening. And it was well worth the trip...
Our bowls were the best bowls in the history of Qdoba... even better, if I'm going to be honest, than all our great experiences back in the Larry and Nai'mah days of 2022 when we used to go to the Langhorne location.
Look at these absolute monsters!
As we got back into our area on the way home, some crazy girl in a Honda felt the need to try to cut through the Sunoco parking lot at West Trenton Ave and Plaza Blvd to get in front of us as we were turning right onto Plaza...
Literally just this little corner of the parking lot, as we made our right at the light! The light was green, we had our turn signal on, and it's not like we drive slow by any metric.
If Athennia hadn't anticipated the girl's plan, we probably would've been T-boned right through the front passenger-side door!
But instead, hilarity ensued a block or two ahead, when the girl had the audacity to lay on her horn because the person in front of her wasn't going fast enough for her liking... and so Athennia decided to do the same to her...
We watched a few episodes of The Handmaid's Tale and called it an early night since Athennia had to be up at dawn the next morning to make it out to Millersville for Taylor's graduation ceremony.
Originally, the plan was for Taylor, Ahlina, and their friend Jeremy to head out to Millersville in Ahlina's car while Athennia traveled separately in her car.
But unsurprisingly, the girls were running dangerously late getting ready (and Ahlina was apparently a visibly-nervous mess... perhaps because she's driving out-of-state and on unfamiliar roads, all without a license?); and so Athennia volunteered to drive the three of them out in her car instead.
She said the ceremony went well though... and Taylor has officially finished high school!
Later in the afternoon when Athennia got back in the area, Riley was still at Kassie's house and we had another free evening on our hands.
I was craving Domino's, and then we shot over to Saladworks so Athennia would have a chance at avoiding a gallbladder attack. While we were passing through the vicinity of BJs, she mentioned that the membership she shares with her mother was about to expire in a few days... but she wasn't exactly keen on renewing it, since we have no idea what's been going on with Lou for the better part of the past month—much less what could happen going forward.
I suggested that we just take five minutes to pop in and pay for a new membership in our own names.
And so, we did.
Later we watched The Handmaid's Tale; and then, after several hours of putting up with distant party music so loud and obnoxious that even Athennia got annoyed, we hopped in the car around 11:30 P.M. and drove around the block to try to pinpoint the source.
Doing this by car proved fruitless; so we came back to the apartment, parked the car, and walked down the street instead... But, even after moving several blocks in the direction of the music (at which point we were reaching the outskirts of the drug-infested apartment complexes down the street that are even more low-rent than ours—where we didn't exactly want to be out walking at that hour) I realized that the music didn't actually sound any closer to us than it had from our bedroom.
That's when it dawned on me...
(Literally half a mile from our apartment, as the crow flies!)
...And, sure enough, I checked their website and there was some sort of concert going on until midnight.
I can only imagine how loud that music was for the people actually attending the event.
Sunday the 9th, we had my cousins' Liam and Ellie's birthday party at Pete and Alissa's house.
But on our way there, Athennia, Riley, and I stopped by Lou's trailer to say goodbye to Taylor since she and Ahlina would be heading up to Connecticut later in the afternoon.
Kudos to Taylor for knowing how to smile for a photo: She nailed it in every single one. These other two just seem to have some sort of complex where they turn into deer in headlights anytime a camera's pointed at them...
I finally got a good one (mostly)...
Then it was onward to the party!
We ate. And drank. And mingled introvert-style (which is to find some seats in a corner somewhere and basically stay there the entire time).
I convinced my mom to play cornhole with me, but the picture Athennia tried to get apparently didn't take.
Then I played soccer with Crawford until some little yellow kid came up and soaked me point-blank with a water-gun for no reason. Given the choice of punting him into the power lines or walking away, I decided to walk away.
And eventually it was time for cake. Thanks to Athennia for taking pictures :)
Pete and Alissa are taking the kids to Disney World next month; so we got them Disney-themed birthday cards with a bit of cash in them that they can use at the park.
And when we left, Pete raided the alcohol cooler and loaded us up with a bunch of leftover margaritas and such "for the road" (his words).
Basically nothing worth mentioning happened on Monday; but on Tuesday, I got to catch up with my friend Richard for the first time since back in February.
I'd love to say I was up at the ass-crack of dawn overflowing with excitement; buuutttt it had a lot more to do with these clowns who showed up to start chiseling away at our neighbor's house.
Imagine my embarrassment, thinking of the many, many times over the last 39 years that I waited until after 10:15 A.M. or so to fire up a lawnmower, bang on crap with a hammer, et cetera.
When lunchtime rolled around, I was craving a burger; and, since it was my turn to buy, I insisted that Richard and I change it up and grab a couple of mediocre burgers at Red Robin... for nearly $50.
As per our usual, we went for a 90-minute walk at Five Mile Woods afterward.
We ran into this little guy... or girl...
...And then it was back home to try to get some work done amidst the sound of a dozen guys hammering on the neighbor's roof.
...And walls.
...And pretty much anything and everything else.
Wednesday the 12th, I headed over to my parents' house to transplant the plants from Richard. But first...
Our garden was looking downright atrocious!
Half was overgrown, and the other half was... undergrown. Our spinach was bolting...
...And the mustard greens (which I haven't even planted for three years at this point) were choking out our garlic...
So, it looked like I had more work to do than I'd thought.
I harvested a bunch of spinach—plenty for us and some for our vegetarian-gymrat neighbor Jeff as well—and then I ripped out the mustard.
(I'd planned to harvest mustard greens for Jeff as well, but the leaves were all riddled with holes from insects—and I don't give people stuff if I wouldn't personally eat it.)
The garlic should be much happier going forward though; and I got to harvest some basil that's growing faster than I'd anticipated—as well as some peas I found surprisingly still going strong in the shade of our tomatoes...
Then I planted Richard's plants: more tomatoes, more basil, and of course some Vietnamese coriander that has a citrus-y cilantro taste...
And finally, I snipped a few sprigs of rosemary...
...and a bit of oregano...
Also, when Athennia arrived after work, she got these these two pictures of a spider in one of the garage trashcans...
But...
Before Athennia got to my parents', she met Angel in the parking lot of the Hatfield Wal-Mart—midway between her job and his house—and finally took custody of the reimbursement check for our earnest deposit for the Kutztown property.
During their brief visit, Angel let it slip that real estate hasn't been too kind to him lately... and so he's running his own landscaping business and also works at his brother's tiling business!
...which really, REALLY explains a lot as far as why he hasn't been working out all that well for us as our realtor.
...and why I can almost never get a hold of him before 5:00 P.M.
...and why days sometimes go by before I get a response whenever I do reach out to him.
...and why, with precious few exceptions, he never seemed to be available to accompany us to look at the various properties I found and researched and we decided we wanted to see.
...And, having worked with him for 13 months, I've found that the Ahn-HELL pronunciation is decidedly applicable here.
But as a realtor, he just seemed to consider us his last priority almost right from the beginning... to the point that we were already planning to cut ties even before he basically flat-out admitted to Athennia that, yes, we were basically his last priority.
So, as soon as this check clears? It's time to part ways.
Athennia and my parents and I had barbecue chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn for dinner—and my parents made a plate for us to take home to Riley.
Yesterday was uneventful; but this evening when Athennia got home from work, we went around the corner to the bank to deposit the check.
The sky over the bank parking lot looked positively inviting...
...so, we thought, why not venture all the way over to Qdoba to grab dinner?
For a few minutes on the highway, it looked like the heavens were parting the skies, and Hurricane Angel would prove to be warm and benign and guide us to thy perfect light...
But, by the time we pulled into the Qdoba parking lot, it was clear that Hurricane Ahn-Hell had come for blood!
This was some high-stakes, War of the Worlds-level carnage just waiting to happen...
Luckily, if there's one thing Hurricane Ahn-Hell would do well, it was to move slowly and regard us as its last priority; and so Athennia and I made it inside, stood in the slow-moving line, and ordered our meal without issue.
...that is, until we got to the cashier and Athennia swiped her card to pay.
The card-reader took a few seconds to process the transaction; and then, at the exact moment that the word 'APPROVED' flickered across the screen, the power to the entire restaurant went out.
But then, the little high-school girl working the register shrugged and insisted, "Oh gee, you know? I'm not sure if that went through."
With that, the backup generator kicked in, the power came back, and the cash register printed out our receipt... which may as well have been a message from the universe to the cashier, saying...
No. You're wrong. Shut up and give us our food!
We snatched our bowls and high-tailed it out of there before anyone came up with a reason to change their minds!
But, stepping foot back outside, we saw that even that brief delay could yet prove to be costly: The power outage had given Ahn-Hell all the time he needed to surround us...
We made it maybe another 45 more seconds, before all Ahn-Hell broke loose! Here's some award-winning footage...
As usual, Riley was too good to eat Qdoba and insisted on only the finest-quality cuisine—from the Morrisville McDonald's.
So we had to make a pit-stop there and try to decipher the drive-thru clerk begging for spare change in Little Trenton-ese...
We made it home alive and enjoyed a hard-won meal.
But perhaps none of us enjoyed dinnertime as much as Odin did...