Last Week of April

Unrelated to anything else this week, Kevin's been waiting for a Willow poster he bought with the Etsy gift card Kelly and Steve gave him for his birthday, and he insisted that this display of brilliance by the postal service make it to the blog:

In other news, Taylor and I have been talking on the phone a lot, and she and Ahlina are really thriving up in Connecticut :)

Earlier in the month she made a list of all their expenses to see how much of a surplus they have at the end of each month to start building up some savings.

More recently she's been asking me to mail her birth certificate and social security card to her so she can go about getting her license, applying for a credit card, and other such grown-up activities.

I've been hesitant to mail those to her apartment or to Ahlina's mother's house (since you may recall that Ahlina's mom fraudulently opened lines of credit in her daughters' accounts and absolutely destroyed Ahlina's credit in the process, and I'm certainly not about to give her the chance to do the same to Taylor!)

Kevin suggested that the girls just pay for a PO box for a month so we can send the documents there and they'll never leave USPS custody until the girls can get there to pick them up. Taylor was intrigued with the idea of a box, because apparently it's hard for them to get deliveries of any kind at their apartment. So now they're considering splurging for one indefinitely.

They're working a lot of double shifts, Ahlina's working on getting a new car so Taylor can inherit their current one, and the girls have really done a LOT of growing up in the year since they moved up to Connecticut.

Kevin and I are both supremely impressed and very proud of them!

They were headed to an Easter dinner when Taylor and I talked the other night, and I asked her to send me some pictures of her dress:

Kevin and I have been walking 2.5 miles every night after dinner. One night this past week we saw two ducks in someone's front yard:

Then on the last leg of the walk I took a hard fall when my shoe clipped the side of an upended sidewalk tile, and I just barely managed to get my arms out in front of me to break my fall and avoid coming down face-first on the concrete.

Morrisville really needs to fix their sidewalks. Highest property taxes in the county, and the roads and the sidewalks are all in disarray.

It kind of makes you go hmmmmm.

By last Thursday Kevin and I upped our walk to three miles.

Then on Friday I didn't feel like cooking dinner and I brought home Qdoba and McDonalds.

Kevin's not one to let Qdoba go by without taking a picture:

That was a big meal, so we walked 3.2 miles later that evening.

On Saturday I cleaned the bathroom and vacuumed the living room carpet. Then Kevin took over and vacuumed the sofa, the cat tree, and our bedroom.

Odin is not exactly a fan of the vacuum. Here he is defending his territory:

Sunday we stopped at the Fairless Hills Garden Center and stocked up on plants, then headed over to Catherine and Ron's.

We planted (4) tomato plants, (4) basil, (2) oregano, (3) rosemary, (1) cilantro, and (1) lemon verbena. We wanted spinach and cucumbers too but they didn't have any.

We had dinner with Catherine, Ron, Kelly, and the girls. Then Kevin and I went for a three mile walk in his parents' neighborhood, where the sidewalks are pristine (except in the five or six places where the sidewalks just mysteriously end.)

Then Riley had PSSAs the last four days of the month, at the old movie theater by the Franklin Mills Mall like the last two years.

Kevin and I dropped her off there Monday morning and then headed over to the Neshaminy Mall. We parked at Barnes & Noble and then realized we were hungry, so we decided to walk over to the Dunkin on the outskirts of the other side of the mall (maybe half a mile away).

That was like an adventure through a post-apocalyptic sci-fi film:

Boscov's was a happening place: There must have been 20 cars there!

At least they had more customers than homeless people though:

Kevin said this used to be a Genuardi's when he was a kid.

But I guess they paved paradise... and realized there was already a parking lot... and put up a Perkins bus instead:

Now it's just a hole in the ground. Literally:

But there were some turkey vultures hanging around:

We cut through a patch of weeds into the Dunkin parking lot, and Kevin remarked that everyone sitting in the drive-thru was probably 100% under the impression that we were two homeless people.

Oh well.

We got some coffee and half a dozen doughnuts, then started the trek back to the car.

AMC was even busier than Boscov's:

Then there was this hapless idiot who couldn't hit his parking space even in a completely empty lot:

Kevin has a strict "pain for the guilty" policy, so here's the license plate:

Just as we were about to dig into our doughnuts, I got an email from Qdoba. And I looked at Kevin and reminded him that Qdoba was right across the street from us right now.

So over the course of about 0.0000003 seconds, we hatched what you might call a 'Plan B':

Riley called to say she was finished for the day just as we were leaving Qdoba; so we headed back to pick her up, gave Taaro a ride over to Sam's Club where his mom was shopping, and then headed home.

We stopped at Good Stuff Thrift on the way back, just to see if we found anything cool.

We found an accident waiting to happen:

Later on Kevin and I went out to Michael's, then drove past my mom's trailer on the way home. We found an accident that had already happened:

Later that night Kevin and I were headed out for our walk when he called me to the bathroom to check out the clover mite on the nightlight bulb:

My cousin Irene called on my way home from work Tuesday to ask for an update on my mom. Then she jumped down my throat when I said I don't have contact with my mom (or my sister or uncles) due to their toxicity. But finally she apologized for having jumped to conclusions, after I reminded her of all the crap I went through with my mom in my teens and twenties, and then everything Kevin and I went through with her, my uncles, and Taylor and Ahlina in more recent years.

Our conversation ended on a more positive note though, and hopefully we can visit her sometime in the coming weeks. As I was wrapping up the call though, Kevin came out to the living room when he heard me come inside. And he looked out across the parking lot to the dumpsters and asked me, "Are those kids graffitiing over there?"

We decided to go around the corner and grab dinner at Wawa but stopped to investigate on our way out. And, yes, four little black kids had graffitied the fence next to our dumpsters in broad daylight and in plain view of multiple cameras:

We got to Wawa and found an open parking space in front of the store, except that some black Taurus with tinted windows had parked a foot over the line so that I couldn't get out of my driver's seat once I had parked.

I was about to just move somewhere else, but Kevin said he could see someone in the driver's seat of the Taurus, and he insisted we wait and see if that person was waiting for a passenger to return (who definitely wouldn't be able to get into the car with us parked right next to the door).

But then this black woman got out of the driver's side and was walking inside, giving us a dirty look as she passed, like she thought we were too close to her car and we were in the wrong.

So Kevin put his window down and retorted:

So then the woman threatened to call someone to "ticket" us, which I assumed meant she thought she was tight with a cop, but Kevin shrugged and said, "Well I don't know if that's some kind of black slang for calling someone to come fucking assault us or something. So, how about this: I'll just call 911!"

The woman had by now gone inside Wawa, but she must've realized pretty quickly that Kevin was finished playing games and was genuinely on the phone with the 911 dispatcher. So then she came back out with a cup of ice (too poor or too afraid to stick around long enough to actually purchase anything, I guess). And she got in her car with no further comments.

But the best part was when Kevin got out to try to get her license plate at the dispatcher's request... only to have her put the car in reverse and back up for the entire length of the parking lot, past all the gas pumps and everything, all to prevent him from getting her plate.

Oh well. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

We went inside and ordered our sandwiches. And as we were walking out with our food (probably ten minutes later by that point), I asked Kevin whether we should stick around and wait for the cops, or just leave.

But with that he saw a police SUV drive past the store, so he went out and flagged the officer down.

We explained that the woman had been gone for some time now, but the cop noticed Kevin's shirt:

In order to think, it is necessary to risk being offensive.

— Jordan Peterson

Riley and Taaro made plans for Riley to go back to Nina's after the PSSAs on Wednesday, and then Kevin and I got to take a riveting drive down Roosevelt Blvd into Philadelphia to pick her up that evening.

More red lights, homeless people, and idiots than you can count.

Finally today was her last day of testing. And even though it's technically May now, we're just going to tack it on here because that makes more sense.

Kevin and his mom dropped her off in the morning and then had breakfast together at the Club House Diner in Bensalem, where he says their waiter Chris had a great trying to prank them by insisting that he'd have to calculate the tariffs on their bill at the end of the meal :)

Then they drove through the neighborhood where Catherine grew up, and checked out the bridge over the Neshaminy Creek on Brownsville Road that work has recently started on to replace it:

Being the gentleman that he is, Taaro walked Riley to the car for the fourth day in a row. And Riley hates pictures, but Kevin managed to sneak a couple before she noticed:

Lastly, we've got a month's supply of cat pictures for you. Buckle up!

Odin watching TV:

Penny sitting pretty:

Odin hogging the toys:

Penny doing Penny things:

Odin getting ready for a bath he'll never forget?

Lucky and Odin lyin' around:

Penny being silly:

Odin in the sunlight is magical:

Lucky and Odin lounging around again:

Why did you interrupt them?

Now they have to go find somewhere else to sleep:

Penny just slept for a year. She's not tired anymore:

Lucky and Odin back in the living room:

Odin's ready for pets. But don't stop until Simon says!

She stopped before Simon said. He can't believe this:

Sorry buddy, the pets are over. And so is April.

But May's another month ;)