The Ides of March

Kevin and I have been trying extra hard to get Riley to spend "family time" together recently (particularly in light of recent events). Last Wednesday night we managed to get her to agree to watch a movie for the first time since she backed out of watching The Crow with us even after pinky-swearing Kevin that she would watch it (which he insists that he will never forget).

So the good news is, we watched a movie together.

The bad news is, it was 30 Minutes or Less and it was pretty terrible (although Riley didn't seem to mind as much as Kevin and I did).

The next day Riley opened up to Kevin while I was at work, telling him how badly she wanted to go see Taylor and Ahlina. Then she pressed again on Friday, and Kevin assured her he was not going to play "good cop, bad cop" and undermine my decision. But Riley and I had a long talk later that evening, and I tried again to explain my position and reassure her that it has nothing to do with her even though it feels like she's caught in the middle of everything.

Saturday was a weird day. We had tentative plans to try to get out to a park or something, but I had put off the laundry and the grocery shopping for several nights by that point on account of wanting to prioritize Riley's mental health during this whole fiasco with Taylor and my mom instead.

So I was out for most of the afternoon, and I gather that Riley was still sad about not being able to go see her sister. Then Kevin started to get agitated as a result of "wasting" an afternoon of gorgeous weather, and it was just a weird day overall.

I tried my hand at making a chicken gnocchi soup with garlic, spinach, and fresh parmesan cheese for dinner though, and it was absolutely incredible!

On Sunday Kevin insisted that we do something to get out of the house and to give Riley especially a chance to take her mind off of everything. Since we've already taken her to most of the nearby-ish malls, Kevin suggested that we pop over into Jersey and check out the Quaker Bridge Mall that's only marginally farther away from us than Neshaminy is:

Kevin and I may not have fully managed to keep our sheep noises to ourselves as we passed the Apple store:

And I thought of my best friend Em when I saw this giant T-Rex at the Lego store. Then we grabbed "bourbon street" cheesesteaks from Charley's Philly Cheesesteaks for an early dinner:

Riley begged me to get her some Dippin' Dots, which I was going to do until I saw how much they wanted for just a dinky little cup ($5.00, plus a surcharge for paying by card, which I would have been doing).

I suggested we just go somewhere for actual ice cream on our way home, and she was content with that. In the meantime, Kevin insisted on getting this picture of an unnecessary exclamation point:

On our way out, we spotted a celebrity of sorts! But, Kevin and I couldn't decide: Which Koopa kid do you think he's supposed to be?

After the mall, we stopped by Dick's Sporting Goods because I've been wanting to get Riley a good pair of hiking boots ever since Kevin and I upgraded our "park-going" footwear early last summer.

But it turned out that Dick's only puts out a display model for each shoe they sell, and you have to ask an employee to go get you anything you're interested in trying on. (And this is all in a confined space with countless other people tripping over you while you're trying to go about getting laced up and deciding whether or not you actually like each given pair of shoes...)

I knew right off the bat that it was not an environment Riley would do well in. But just as I was about to suggest that we head out and save the trip for another time and place, Riley cut in with her displeasure at the process of having to untie and take off her own shoes to try on any boots she liked.

And I guess after mostly biting his tongue with regards to her "moping" for more than a week now, Kevin finally boiled over. He just kind of shrugged in disbelief, asking Riley how any of that came as a surprise, since she knew exactly why we were here (for her to try on shoes) and she must have surely shopped for shoes before and had a general idea of how the process worked (you take your shoes off and try a few new pairs on to find something you like).

Then he lamented what he perceived as a "lose-lose" scenario, feeling like the entire month so far has been "a giant mopefest" where Riley endlessly pouts about being bored and stuck at home, but then continues to pout even when we're actively out doing something.

He concluded with another shrug and asked Riley point blank exactly what it was she wanted us to do, since he felt we had covered the entire spectrum of doing nothing, doing something, and everything in between.

To make a long story short, it basically took everything Riley had in her not to burst into tears. So we decided to leave and I said I would take her somewhere else sometime during the week. And we just headed home for a while, and then Kevin and I ran out later in the evening to grab us all dessert from Rita's right around the corner.

Then Riley kept to her room for most of the evening, and Kevin and I started Season 4 of The Tudors (having blown through Season 3 inside of a week).

The next day I woke up not feeling well at all, so I called out of work.

I had expressed interest to Kevin over the weekend in learning more about privacy, and particularly the implications of the information that Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have revealed.

So first we watched Laura Poitras's documentary Citizenfour that covers the initial week she and Glenn Greenwald spent with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong (and also examines the cases of several prior whistleblowers and the surveillance programs they exposed).

And then a few hours later, we watched the (fictional) 2013 thriller The Fifth Estate which portrays the relationship between Julian Assange and the early WikiLeaks volunteer Daniel Domscheit-Berg.

It was an okay film. I found it somewhat hard to follow, and Kevin said the portrayed events are relatively one sided anyway (since Daniel's book about his time at WikiLeaks and his falling out with Julian was apparently the primary source consulted in making the film).

But having watched Citizenfour and The Fifth Estate in the same day, Kevin jokingly suggested we "continue the trend":

So, what's next? The Sixth Sense? Then Se7en? Then Eight Millimeter and 9\(\frac{1}{2}\) Weeks?

Tuesday afternoon while I was still at work, Kevin texted me that he and Riley were apparently "cool again" after she came into our bedroom and asked him to explain what the various data points of her ethnicity results from Ancestry.com meant.

Kevin treated to dinner that evening, but it required us to venture over the Calhoun Street bridge into Mordor:

We arrived in one piece! Not even any bullet holes in the car!

I dropped Kevin and Riley off to order the food and circled the block a few times to avoid having to pay for parking. They called when they had dinner in hand, I met them just around the corner, and then it was time to get the hell out of there ASAP!

In all seriousness, Gyro Express is only two miles and some change from our apartment. And Riley loved her chicken fingers, and Kevin said his lamb gyro was top notch! (I still wasn't feeling great, so I didn't eat.)

That brings us to today. The middle of the month.

Lucky sliced Riley across the face this morning (inadvertently) while she was trying to trim his claws:

And we ordered dinner from Bambino's only to find that they have raised their prices and cut their portion sizes. So, we were less than impressed, and we're not in any hurry to go back.

It's been a rough day and a rough week in general.

I know we normally save the cat pics for the end of the month, but I feel like we need some positivity right now. And since Riley and Kevin constantly send these to me during the day while I'm at work, it's not like I don't have a thousand cat pictures at the ready :)