Two of the best, most-fun stories from around town today
were about Uncle Mark and Aunt Grace.
At the clinic, it was Grandma-Nurse Johnson getting to boss
two doctors around; and tease her grandson outrageously about how much better
Uncle Mark’s first day at the clinic was going than his had. She expects to have Uncle Mark trained in
just a few days! The stories from the
clinic started making the gossip network right away; and Dr. Mark is earning
top grades from his patients so far – including from Ethan and Ehlana when they
had their appointments with him this morning.
For Aunt Grace, her new job wasn’t getting much mention on
the gossip network, but that was fun too; starting this morning when she
stopped in for a little meeting with Mom to pick up her new work computer. She doesn’t know about our involvement in the
lab, and won’t for quite a while yet; but she does know that Mom is her tech
support until they’re ready to hire their own staff; and she’ll be developing
all of their computer systems too. That
has a bonus advantage of giving Mom a big cover job that’ll last for the next year
and a half or two – and give her an excuse to be at the lab regularly once it
does open.
While I’m thinking about the lab anyway, the construction is
humming along; and they’ve started to work on the steel framing above ground. Since there is going to be a lot of visible
progress for the next few months; there are likely going to be lots of people
making regular visits to see the changes – especially the kids and teens. Aunt Grace will be able to see some of the
action through the trees and across the river from her house.
Compared to all of that, my personal report isn’t
particularly exciting; but we did have a fun, relatively tweeird-free day.
Michael came over for Tai Chi; and we were all happy to be
exercising by the river this morning. He
went home for breakfast and morning chores.
While Michael was busy, I helped out with making breakfast and the
clean-up after we ate so that Mom and Dad could take turns getting ready for
the day. Violet helped with Ethan and
Ehlana before breakfast, and worked with me in the kitchen with the cleaning
while the twins supervised us and played on their iPads. After Dad headed to work and Alicia came over,
Violet and I both did a little housework on the third floor and ran a couple of
loads of laundry before she left to meet up with Dillon, and Rowen came over to
hang out with me.
We decided to take Ethan and Ehlana for a bike ride and play
time at the park while Mom was having her meeting with Aunt Grace; starting our
ride with visits to the new section of town and the lab site to check out the
construction action. There were some
other kids watching the cranes lifting and positioning the big steel beams
while the steelworkers did their thing.
I don’t really think about the actual work going on at any of the
construction sites, but it is pretty amazing; and takes a lot of coordination
to keep it all running smoothly. We
didn’t stay to watch the work, and after talking with some of the kids for a
couple of minutes; we rode over to the park and ran around at the playground
for a while.
Ethan and Ehlana didn’t have to try very hard to talk me
into sponsoring a visit to the Emporium for morning snack break supplies, so we
made a quick stop there and brought extra frozen treats home for Mom and
Alicia. Rowen and I were on our own
after that while Mom took Ethan and Ehlana to their appointment with Uncle Mark
and Alicia took a break until after lunch.
The news from the clinic was the top lunch chat topic, but that was a
fairly quick little break because Michael and Tim came over to go biking with
Rowen and me; and we’d sat down to eat a bit later than usual because Mom had
gotten tied up at the clinic talking with Nurse Johnson and some friends.
I wasn’t sure what to expect with Tim today, and I think
that he’s more than a little surprised to discover that he isn’t really very
upset about having Nora break up with him now that the initial shock is wearing
off. Not seeing Nora at all may have
helped him too, and I was surprised that she didn’t track him down to at least
find out if he was acting appropriately devastated.
That doesn’t sound very nice, but then while she didn’t come
to check up on Tim personally; there were friends of hers who were keeping an
eye on us for a while at the park when we were biking the trails; and I have no
doubt that Nora was getting regular reports.
Having those observers didn’t keep us from having fun on the park
trails, and we played there until we were ready to move on to a long ride out
on the country roads. We didn’t have any
followers for that part of our afternoon, but there were two girls watching us
from the bridge when we went for a swim after getting home again. Mom let Ethan and Ehlana join us in the river
when they got home too. She’d taken them
to KidZone for some afternoon play time with their friends so that she and
Alicia could run some errands and do a few extra jobs around the house instead.
Michael and Tim left to have an early dinner before going on
to their ball practice; and Rowen stayed to have dinner with Mom, Dad, Ethan,
Ehlana, and me. After eating, getting
the latest stories from the clinic, and helping with the clean-up; Rowen and I
took the twins to the park again while Mom and Dad went to do some work in the
office. We didn’t go to the park to
watch the Wranglers’ practice, but we did stop there first so that Ethan could
watch them play for a little while. Nora
wasn’t there, and that didn’t seem to affect Tim’s game at all; though we did
have other classmates there, and two of them seemed to be very interested in us
while we were at the ball diamond; and then again when Michael and Tim came
over to the playground to meet up with us after their practice was over.
Ethan and Ehlana didn’t go for a swim with us again when we
got back to my house, but Michael and Tim wanted to cool off and wash off the
worst of the grime from their practice and playground time; so Rowen and I went
swimming with them for a half hour or so.
We went to hang out in the lounge after that, and while Michael had
another guitar lesson with me; Tim and Rowen played video games. When my fingers told me it was time to stop
playing the guitar, we took a break and went downstairs to do the bedtime story
and snack with Ethan and Ehlana. Once
they were tucked into their beds and Mom and Dad had gone back to work in the
office; we returned to the lounge and played video games until a bit after
eleven o’clock.
There were more goodnight hugs and kisses on the front
porch, but Tim and Rowen left ahead of Michael so we could spend a little extra
time saying goodnight without any more of an audience than usual for our little
town. We didn’t spend all that much time
on those extra kisses, so Michael was on his way home by the time Rowen and Tim
split up at the sidewalk leading up to her front porch. We all exchanged some waves and smiles, and I
waited on the porch until Michael was ready to go into his house too before
going in and up to my room after a little side trip into the office for some
more goodnight hugs and kisses.
Though this really is a big day for our future plans, that’s
really about all I have for tonight. I
got ready for bed, played my keyboard for a while, and then climbed into bed
with Mandy and my computer. I’ve only
done a little family business work along with my usual nightly computer checks;
and there isn’t any major work or family and friends email news to report. Michael’s parents still haven’t given us any clues
about their plans for tomorrow, so I’d better call it a night and get some
sleep to be ready for whatever we’ll be doing.
Until next time, this is Magi Master Cassie Proctor; logging
out!
