Rain and the FRB Day

I woke up this morning to the voosh sound of cars going through wet pavement road. That would be rain in the forecast today, although it actually said light drizzle. For the first time this year I made Johnnie wear long pants and made him take an umbrella to school. He protested about the pants, but by the time I was dropping him off, it wasn't a light drizzle anymore. It was real rain and pretty hard too. Fortunately, he had his classmate Julian walking in ahead of us with his mom. I told Johnnie to follow them and then took off as soon as he made it in the gate. With the rain and everything, of course it would take longer to get to downtown. I had to start at the Westlake North clinic this morning because that was the stop of today's roadshow. It was a a rather subdued one this morning which was kind of a far cry from the usual contentiousness of past Westlake North Roadshows. This group would usually whine and complain about us, about not getting attention. But not today. Maybe they're all exhausted seeing as they hadn't had a manager since late summer. Anyway, the TownHall went by pretty quick and next thing you know I headed to the next TownHall stop, which was the Q TownHall at the FRB. It was FRB day anyway. Only this time, that Q TownHall really did take up an hour. My part took only 5 minutes, and I was hoping to head down to the gym to get my usual Wednesday workout in but I couldn't. The TownHall took too long and before you knew it I was accepting an invite to have lunch upstairs from some of the C's. Eloisa mentioned something about wanting to start up the lunch crew again from the pre-Covid days. Those days of course had Trailer, and Barbara, and usually Art and Alan DeJong. The last couple of folks are not with the company anymore, but today it was Eloisa, Dr Liao, Marina, Starlette, and Rody. A new group to be sure. Its always good to break bread with your team. Outside of work is where true bonding starts, even if simply on a surface level.

As usual I stuck around until about 1 PM and then headed home. By then it had not only stopped raining but the sun had actually come out and it now felt warm even. Now that the work had been done for today, I focused on the 2nd part. Yes, we still had to go to Lisa's office even though Hayil had once again moved today's Spanish class to 

Friday. That is now routine after all. Today I actually had to do some homework because I had promised Johnnie I'd find a way to sell his artwork online. I think it's pretty cool that he has learned about trading his skills <or at least the fruits thereof> for money. As I tell him always, you have to sell something or do a service to others that they will pay you for. That is how you earn money. And so he had an idea that he wanted to sell his art. And I told him I would get it online for him. I knew there were websites that let you do that, websites for kids specifically. I just had to find them. And then of course Johnnie still has to create his art. But we were both excited for that activity actually. And so even though we still did go to Lisa's office, hopefully to have dinner with her of course. It was like we wanted to get that done with and get home to do the art stuff. We just didn't tell Lisa of course so she wouldn't feel left out. But then leave it to her to do the Lisa thing. That would be lingering around the office and doing stuff she could easily be doing tomorrow instead of making us wait for her. And then she springs the news on us that she actually has a 7 PM game. For the life of me I simply couldn't understand why she is lallygagging around the office AND making us wait knowing full well she had to get out of there earlier than usual today. We waited and waited, and when she walked into the kitchen and got an apple out of the fridge and bit into it, I snapped. "Are you kidding me right now?" Which simply got me the response question that somehow "I was being a jackass". I snapped even further. I told her not to do that <call me names in front of Johnnie> and was very clear about it. I mean what the fuck where we doing there anyway is the question I keep asking myself every single god damn time she does this. I still can not reconcile the fact that Lisa has no ability to see what the people around her are experiencing. Or that she cares. Heck when I called her out on calling me a jack-ass it was as if she didn't recall actually saying it. EVEN JOHNNIE blurted out that she had called me that. Which is why I was pissed. I decided to go to dinner anyway despite being mad and off-balance. And I got a very insincere-sounding apology from Lisa. I knew it was the best she could do. Since she did not have any time, which of course I knew was going to happen, we ate quickly at Panda Express. She ate most of the food I bought for she and I, and so I just resigned myself to making a pizza for myself when we got home. At least we did get to do Johnnie's art work. And he finished to pieces tonight actually. A dragon and a self-portrait. I was excited to publish them on the website I found: KidArtwork.com. by the end of the evening, I had kept my promise. I had his art up online and he and I were both pleased. It easily wiped out the crap residue of Lisa's shitty actions. And we both went to bed happy about the evening  We liked the end, not the Lisa part. And when she came by to pick up Claire at my request she was in tears. oh what now? Apparently she played really badly and nobody would pass her the ball. What can you say to that? Johnnie did his best to comfort her, giving her multiple hugs and all. But after a little while even he said, that's all I can do for now Mom. That's we all can do. And off we went to our happy world, and off she went to the negativity of her choosing. Hard to believe.