Last Work Day of 2022

It is Friday, the last work day of 2022 and since QueensCare closes at 3 PM today, I am effectively calling this a TANK DAY. Oh, I'm going to check on emails and TEAMS every now and again but really I am treating this like an off day. So much so that I let Johnnie sleep in until almost 8 AM. And given the choice of eating in for breakfast, iHOP like last week, or McDonald's like almost every other morning, he chose to eat in. As in a duplicate of yesterday morning. And so I made him sourdough toast and bacon. And I made me a bacon avocado and egg sandwich for my breakfast. I didn't actually get Johnnie out of his pajamas until well into the morning, considering we didn't even get done with breakfast until it was already 9 AM but that's ok right? Besides, its supposed to be raining all day. And so just like yesterday I parked him in front of his computer. I know I know, I'm supposed to be doing stuff with him. I figured it was better for him to be in LEARN mode than be watching Garfield all day. And in the meantime I could catch up on stuff. It turned out that what I ended up catching up on was grocery shopping again. I was not going to get stuck this weekend with no food in the house no matter what happens. Still I managed to get Johnnie playing English and Math games at Education.com, and I did notice the stuff he still needs to learn with punctuation and sentence structure and stuff. He did seem to like the game mode and did not hesitate to ask questions when he got stuck. I keep reminding myself that I actually do have him learning 3rd grade material, but then again should I be aiming even higher? Sometimes we all get stuck limiting the potential of our kids, not being aware enough to realize how resilient and adaptable they can be. It is all about motivating him and making sure he knows I/we support him no matter what. Also in the meantime I scan my emails to see any really-gotta-do-this-shit-today stuff. I can't imagine there would be any. I can't imagine there wouldn't be anything that couldn't wait until Tuesday. Except... it is end of the year and there is always some kind of data request from a health plan (that would be LA Care with ECM stuff) and it is always half-annoying and half-amusing to watch Dr Liao fumble around with that stuff. On the one hand, I feel like saying SEE what you idiots do when you let people go. You guys were supposed to fill the gap. You're not filling the fucking gap. But hey is that me being petty? That's also me reacting and making the grooves of a trigger deeper. I see it now. And now I can let it go. I see now how my ego has engaged. And I can now disengage.

I made Johnnie mac-and-cheese for lunch today. And made myself some pasta and soup too. I wanted to make sure he was fueled up because I had it in my mind that we were going to practice basketball again this afternoon. If I was really concerned with his stamina, then the only way to increase it is to keep pushing it every day. And so by 1:30 PM we went down to the garage and did the same drills as we did yesterday. And then we found a section of the overhead pipes that he could sort of tartet as a makeshift hoop. I noticed he was doing much better PUSHING the ball and getting more distance than he used to do. I said what the heck it wasn't raining hard anyway. We headed to Mar Vista Park and there I got him shooting again. Lo and behold Johnnie actually is reaching the 10-ft rim now. Not 100% of the time but considering he couldn't even push the ball high enough as of his eval drill 2 weeks ago, this was considerable progress in my point of view. Heck I thought to myself If Johnnie can improve with his shooting at the 10 foot hoop in a space of a few days, there is no better example for change and improvement than that. I am inspired to improve myself. This was easily the PLAY OF THE DAY. And I got him to work up a sweat too. The afternoon went by quickly. He did his Spanish class, and then Lisa called to pick him up. But apparently she got sidetracked by yet another side project at work. This time boxes and boxes of paper stuff that needed to be shredded because they had kept it from the start of the practice way back in 2009! She met us at Staples so she could drop it off to be shredded. She had over 200 lbs. worth of stuff! And with that I handed off Johnnie and went back home. I did timecards, did my data downloads for next week as my last official work act of 2022. One last day until 2023.