Do you think he'd enjoy working and living outdoors for part of the summer? I ask because a lot of conservation corps have summer programs for high school age kids that last somewhere between 2-8 weeks on average. More than anything the programs aspire to give the participants self confidence and follow through by doing project work in national forests, national parks, and other protected areas. One of the greatest things about it for kids that struggle with follow through is that they get to see tangible results of their hard work. Also because of the nature of the work it requires working together with peers to accomplish. Of course it may not be for him but then again he might love it.
Well, he wants very much to get a summer job and make money. I don't have any objections to this, he'll learn that you don't get paid just for showing up and being appreciated because you're standing there breathing. One can hope. But it is looking more and more likely that he'll have to get a GED, he's failed and is failing a number of courses, otherwise if he only had failing grades in a couple of things, he'd be in summer school.
Can't hurt, I figure, to start getting some job experience. His road is not going to be an easy one, I don't think.
I'm definitely feeling how it must have been for my Mother in dealing with me, and with one of my brothers that she raised...she never really knew how to handle teenagers, make us do anything we were supposed to do, and I don't honestly know either. Yet in both cases of me and my little brother, once we were adults, we realized we had to do it for ourselves and we got going...we both have had bad luck in our choices of marital partners. I've talked enough about my marriage, my little brother is in a bad one, too, they're in their early 20's and struggling in a number of areas. It's pretty likely they'll divorce sooner or later. But both of us got jobs, decent ones, forged a path in that respect at least.
I often think about "if I could be plopped down at any point in my past knowing what I know now, what would I do differently" mentally rewinding to different points where I feel I made mistakes. I regret that I messed up in high school, that I didn't learn to drive until age 24 (and I had the benefit of driver's ed in high school, which my kids do not!) that I didn't bother to get any jobs when I was a teenager, I gave myself no head start at all, and had to desperately scratch and scrape and figure out how to survive when I got kicked out of the nest right after I graduated. College, at that point, wasn't even something I could consider, I had no idea how to even go about getting in. I didn't even understand how to use the health care resources available to me. Heck, I got pregnant, and got no prenatal care for the first 4 months, because I didn't realize you needed to. My Mom moved out to where we were at, and she was shocked and got me hooked up with a doctor and all. Like there I was at 19 years old thinking you just waited until your water broke and then go show up at a hospital. LOL! God, young people can be clueless.
But I always know, had I done this and that differently, the results of those changes...maybe better, maybe worse. Sometimes though, in the persistent tendency I have to go over and over the past, I nearly feel like I will surely be reincarnated into a parallel universe where I must relive my life and apply whatever lessons I learned this time around, like we have cycles of living as the same person over and over, and I have these thoughts because I am trying to imprint information, to take with me to the next try. Not that I solidly believe any such thing, it's just a FEELING I sometimes have.
I'm sure that's a movie that has been made at some point, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has thought such thoughts.
But here we are, and my sons will have to make their own way somehow, just like I did.
Zen and I went to Game Night on Friday and played Cards Against Humanity with my new stuff in the mix. It was fun. Oddly I find that my enjoyment of the game often depends so very much on who is sitting at the table. Normal people who just play a normal game, it's like meh...whatever. But then occasionally you get someone whose delivery is just fantastic, or who is delighted by the jokes because they're new to playing the game...and it really makes it so much more fun. We had a guy join in at one point, who is usually one of the most socially awkward people I know, he has a sort of stutter, and he's just...awkward. No better word for it. But one of the first cards he played, he delivered so superbly, with just the right sort of dry tone and pauses in the right places...the card was, "A man, with the head...of a goat...and the body...of a goat..." (I put the ellipsis in there to express how he read it.) Had one of those moments where I out-of-control laughed, I think my eyes even teared up. That was awesome.
Magdlyn: Regarding the dryer... I have no idea how old it was, and I suspect it is repairable, but the property management for this place has had a history of sending out incompetent repair people. When we moved in, it wasn't drying effectively from day 1. A guy came out and put a temperature probe into it and ran it. He said, "Well, it heats, and it tumbles, so if there's a problem, it's a clogged ventilation system, and that isn't something I fix." Now the vent is unfortunately one that runs straight into the wall and from there I don't know the route it takes to the outside, whether it exhausts out the roof or out of the wall somewhere, or what. I've asked them to send someone to clean that out, and they haven't yet, but I asked again and I'll be calling them again today. When I swapped out the dryers, I checked the tubing and it seemed ok, and I reached as far in as I could, into the duct, and couldn't feel anything obstructing it.
And of course that does not explain the loud god-awful screeching noise the old dryer was making.
So we replaced an old Kenmore with a newer (but not brand new) Whirlpool dryer, which I got pretty cheap, and which is covered by a year long replacement warranty. So if anything goes wrong with it, I can take it right back and they'll give me a comparable model to replace it, no questions asked.
Gotta say though, the ex and I bought cheapo appliances in 2008, like the cheapest ones we could find (new) at the time. And those lasted us for several years, and I think we eventually gave them away, still working, to some friends-of-friends who wanted them. Then when we moved into the house we bought in 2012, they had really fancy expensive upright front loading high efficiency machines...and we had all sorts of issues with those. Seems for regular (not gentle) use, a $300 generic will do ya better than a $900+ fancy new thing. *shrug*
