Hahaha, well, I need possibly job people to think that I'm on the up and up.

I understand! I kept filtering wildly on my page just in case anyone was looking at my page while I looked for a job. However, there are a few people roaming the planet I'd just like to not encounter again. I have an online portfolio and am also on LinkedIn for job search purposes.

I am signed up on LinkedIn, but it's kind of the saddest profile ever.

Omg... so I'm at my friend's house and her dad totally got upset with her - and in the process he blew up at me. -.- Like yelling at me and calling me rude and etc etc etc... -.- I'm not going to be the one to sit by and let him berate her.

He did kind of apologize - which is more than I expected from him. But I'm still upset. :(
But at least he apologized.

Well that's...awkward.

Yeah. :/ I'm on edge as well - as all of are. So I know that didn't help. The reason I'm here is I needed a break from home as dad's working a ton and mom's still in New Mexico with my grandma. I'm good at hiding when I'm stressed and upset, but I guess this was one thing that just broke me.

But I don't appreciate him yelling at me telling me that I'm disrespecting him, and blah blah blah and he's the elder and I need to learn to respect him. :/ People like that really bother me. :(

Sorry hon.

It's just kinda thrown me off for the rest of today, I think. :/ And he was also yelling at everyone in front of his 4 year old grandson. Which I told him, up front, when I Did say that I accept his apology - that I don't really like that he was yelling in front of the 4 year old.

To be honest, yelling is kind of normal for me.
Anyway, time for me to get to bed.

The kid has had a rough life. And this is normally his safe haven.
Sleep well.

Man, I'm very achy today and I have a lot of physical things to do. I'm supposed to bathe Maddie today. She's easier than Fizz, but it still means bending over the tub for at least half an hour. And that's really hard for me to do. I may just brush her, express her glands, and call it good.
I also got a call from the family that pays poorly but expects a lot of work from me. I really wish I didn't like them as people so I could just turn them down for tutoring. I'm taking the "limit them severely" form of standing up for myself. And I'm avoiding talking to them via phone because they always talk me in to more than I can handle. I'm trying to force them to text so I can have time to think in between requests.
And the User Event is in four days and I think I'm going to kind of have to do all of the last prep for it. Heh.

But other than that, I'm good!

Gah. Dealing with a 16yo who wants to be a spud and a 5yo who wants to play constantly. Rain is pouring down once again, so we can't explore the woods. AND we are watching Samurai Power Rangers. Again. I will be folding towels and hiding soon.

Steel - no idea what to suggest about the family. I think what you are doing helps set a boundary.

(now I need to intervene with the kids once again... grumble)

Haha, oh goodness. Hooray for summer?
Yeah, I wish I had set better boundaries with them to begin with. But they were my only students for a while.
I'm going out to dinner with the parentals. I'll be back to chat in a couple of hours.

Have fun with the parentals!

Totally hear you about your situation.

I appealed to them by being pitiful. I am really not 100% better than I was this weekend. They are creating lovely collages out of construction paper.

Collages are fun! I was never very good at them as a kid because I wanted to make them "neat".

Yeah, and if they weren't so nice, I could just lay down the law and say "screw it". But they're *really* nice.

It's really hard to be tough with nice people, particularly when you're keenly aware of their circumstances.

Soki wound up making a puppet from a paper bag (with much discussion concerning tail length) while Otto tried to use cardboard boxes in lieu of the balloons he has on hand. I had to stop target practice before someone lost an eye. Mark is taking my car tonight because of the weather - can't use his motorcycle and his car seems to be losing some sort of axle part (if this was an OLD vehicle, I could tell you what it is, but this is a car created in this century, so I am clueless about the suspension). Tomorrow we are going out on an excursion or I may have an even more intense day of "you are in my face" from one of my kids. I love them, but they are so different about personal space and drive each other nuts.

It really is. And hell, I helped their oldest fill out his FASFA. I know how much they make a year. But I just can't keep doing everything they want me to do for $10 an hour.

Aww, that sounds like fun! But even my sister and I had to be thrown outside in the summer for the sake of not murdering each other. It's just kind of a sibling thing to get into each others' faces, I think.

Sucks that hubster's car is having issues. Newer cars are sooo much harder to work on. Everything is more specialized, and more tied to computers.

I love all of the safety features on new cars along with the computerized systems, but they do make it difficult for me to figure out if there really is a problem or it could be a malfunctioning sensor. Mark worked on dirt track race cars, so he's more familiar with some systems than I am. When he described what he was hearing while driving and told me what he thought the problem could be, I had a deer-in-the-headlights expression. Just couldn't visualize it - which he thought was funny.

Back in the early 90s, I owned a '61 Studebaker Lark. Loved that car! The body was in great shape, but it had mechanical problems. Mind you, this was before the Internet was prevalent along with a decent distribution system for older car parts. Finding parts and a reliable mechanic was a nightmare.

Yes, the kids are just bored with looking at each other. We're going for a ride today. Destination unknown since I'm low on funds and Otto thinks that car ride equates with a trip to anywhere to buy toys. Just getting the out will be good and we may stop at a favorite diner for lunch.

Yeah, my first car was my dad's old truck. A 1980 Plymouth Arrow Sport. Because "sport truck" was apparently a thing. Even in 2001 when I was driving, we considered buying another one off of a vacant lot just for parts. It's a great truck, but my dad drove it hard in Colorado as a teenager and it was never babied. So some things just needed replacing occasionally. Someone actually tried to steal ours for the same reason.

Good luck on that ride. Let's hope it does its job.

Sport trucks were definitely "in" during the 80s along with Jeep-inspired vehicles. A friend replaced her ancient VW Cabriolet - held together with more bondo than any sane person would consider - with a Suzuki Samurai. But I hear you about scavenging parts.

Started raining, more like a downpour, so I am waiting a little while longer before we head out. Otto is enjoying yet another Megaforce Power Rangers (Super Megaforce, I think) and is content.

Haha. It's such an absurd concept to me. I just call it the midget hippie truck. It's kind of a burnt orange with "racing stripes" and it has my weird touches to it now, too. Leopard print seat covers (they were really necessary, sitting on duct tape in Texas in the summer was just not an option) and left wing bumper stickers on the tool box. Because all of our trucks eventually get a tool box installed.

Oh Power Rangers. My sister and I really liked the originals back in the day. My sister a little more than me. I was a Zorro and Hulk kind of girl. She was a little more "Ninjan Turtles" (as she called them) and Power Rangers.

I had to laugh about the duct tape and toolbox! Both are prevalent here, but Bondo was on nearly every older car I saw when we lived in MA. The salt tore cars up. My first husband was a huge fan of AMC vehicles. He was in the process of restoring a Gremlin and it was very duct tape/bondo. He covered all that up with blue acrylic paint. I did suggest spray painting it silver, but he vetoed the idea. I think he didn't want to drive around in something that looked a bit like a disco ball. For some reason.

Mark just left for work on his motorcycle. Just started raining and it sounds a bit like hail is hitting the house. He was determined not to take my car because it's just not as cool as the bike. He should be fine... and yeah. I am cracking up a bit.

Hahhaa, it's pretty awesome, man. My Karmann Ghia had a lot of bondo on it. But I'm rubbish with cars. My aunt gave it to me when I was 16. It was supposed to have been fixed up more when she gave it to me, but things happened.
I drove it twice, because it wasn't street legal. I loved to look at it, but it wasn't the car for me. I'm perfectly happy with my Hyundai.

Taking a motorcycle in the rain. *shakes head in disbelief* Silly boys.

I know! He goes through these periods where he "has to" because he hasn't been on the bike for a couple of days. He has some rather shockingly orange raingear. The plus side is there are fewer deer running into the streets when the weather is like this.

My first car was a 1971 Buick station wagon. 8-track player, pleather seats, and the fold up suicide seats in the back. Cheesy faux wood paneling. I think the only things I could listen to while driving it were sound tracks from Fiddler On the Roof, My Fair Lady, and Sound of Music. I had a Sex Pistols tape that was overplayed, but that was about it. Hard to find 8-tracks in the early 80s that were "current". And an AM radio. It was great when my friends and I wanted to go to a drive-in, but definitely not the cool car. It also had the misfortune of attracting huge tumbleweeds and dragging it. I lived in fear of tumbleweeds igniting the underside of the Beast.

Yes, I was very cool in that station wagon and did the Dance of Joy when the power steering failed and my parents decided to let me drive my mom's old Maverick. Although the 70s did produce some cool hand-me-down cars, I never was that lucky! I currently drive an SUV/urban tank. Lousy gas mileage, hence my perpetual hermitude.

Oh I was WICKED excited to drive the minivan. My sister and I LOVED that van. Because you could fit ALL of your friends in it. So we took everyone to lunch. Haha. I didn't get the Hyundai until I graduated college.
It went Plymouth Arrow Sport, Lumina Minivan/Plymouth Arrow Sport traded off, the Ford Contour I bought off my aunt, and then finally the Hyundai. Two out of my four cars have been standards. I actually taught my sister to drive a standard on my aunt's car. She never drove the Arrow. I really like standards, but I have to say that in the day of cell phones it's nice to have that hand free.