Page 48 of 59
The other night, in Max’s tent bed before sleep, Max was reading “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” to me. We read most week nights for 20 minutes. After 21 minutes, I told Max that he could stop.
“I don’t want to. Not yet. “
We read another 5 minutes.
I’ve been waiting for this moment.
Afterwards, I continued reading “The Sandman” comics to him. We are now on #8.
Tonight we watched Planet of the Apes TV series, “The Legacy” from Oct 11, 1974 (when I was four years old). The best part was:
We were lying down in Max’s tent bed in his room on Mueller Drive. Max’s head was on my shoulder. Elliot was lying on my chest and stomach — he’s still small enough for his whole body to lie on me!
Just lying there together, watching in peace, was wonderful. The only thing missing was Karolina.
The three of us watched together. Elliot had no idea what was going on; he probably didn’t understand most of what was said, but I’m sure the apes were novel.
Max seemed to enjoy it. We’re watching the entire 1974 TV series again; last Max saw it was a couple of years ago.
Old computer props from the 70s or 60s? According to Starring the Computer, these are real panels from an IBM AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central built in the 1950s and used as props in the 70s since they were obsolete in ’63 or ’64.
I picked up Elliot at day care yesterday. I peered into the classroom window to watch him without his knowledge. The teachers saw me but knew what I was doing, so they did not tell Elliot.
All the children were sitting in a circle around Erin. Erin was reading to them.
Elliot stood up and went to the other side of the room. He was the only child who left the circle.
He pulled a book from a shelf, put it on a toddler table, and sat in a little toddler chair at the toddler table. He opened the book and turned the pages slowly, one by one, looking at the pictures.
I entered the room. He didn’t see or hear me until I was just a couple feet away. Then he was all smiles and started to come around the table to me. I reached out and picked him up over the table, hugging him. He layed his head on my shoulder.
Then I took the book he’d been looking at, flipped it around and we looked at it together. On one page there was an elephant going down a playground slide. Elliot got very excited, pointing and talking baby talk. It was clear he recognized the slide. Then he started laughing, maybe realizing how silly it is for an animal to go down a slide?
It was a beautiful moment for me!
Little more than a week ago, Maxi went to Gaga for the weekend. In the airport, we saw this:
“Does that plane have a target so the enemies know where to shoot?”
And Max asked: “Does that plane have a target so the enemies know where to shoot?”
He got his braces off 1 week ago today:
Braces removed on Dec 17, 2019
Karolina will be getting a gold crown soon.
Max: “Can I have your gold tooth when you die??”
And then later, “was there ever a Blodgett who was wealthy?”
Is Leonardo Da Vinci (he can’t pronounce it but we understand) more famous than Meow Wolf?
Did he make the woman who everyone steals in France?
Today I went to Thanksgiving lunch at Havern School with Max. Yesterday he wore his zoot-suit pajama onesy. It’s been a fun week for him.
He made a stuffy in art class; it was on the lunch table. We say with Jackson and his father, and Max’s reading teacher whose name I do not remember. They just finished reading Lemonade Wars with Max, Jackson, and Liam. They are starting the sequel.
We’re moving. There is stuff all over the floor of my office.
On the floor are some framed photos of my old family. Parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, even older ancestors.
There’s a wonderful hand-colored photo of my mother as a baby. It must be from 1943 or 1944.
Elliot pointed at it. At first, I thought he was pointing to his baby door jumper:
He loves to swing in that, and it was on the floor near the framed photo. He sometimes points at it as a way to ask me to mount it in the door and swing him. But as I went to pick it up, he shook his head.
So I picked up the photo of my mother thinking he couldn’t possibly want that… but he did. He took it from me and kissed the baby in the photo. He brought it to his lips and kissed. He only learned to kiss a couple of months ago. He kissed his grandmother. I was crying inside and about to cry outside.
Then I decided to swing him on the baby swing after all. He loved it as usual.
After a little while, I took him out and Karolina walked by. I told her about the kiss. I was holding Elliot in my arms this time, and bent down to get the photo once more. Elliot took it close to him and kissed my mother again. Karolina BEAMED while I cried.
I received this yesterday from a man in Hamburg:
Hi Eric, I am using FoxyProxy every day and I think this payment is overdue. Would you please send me a proper commercial invoice to nils. goroll@uplex. de ? Thank you, Nils
Hello Nils,
Thank you very much for the generous donation for my software! No one has donated anything near 200 EUR before. Usually it is quite small, and not very frequent. It is very kind of you! I’m attaching the invoice you requested — never had an invoice request for a donation, either 🙂
Do you use FoxyProxy on Firefox or Chrome?
What features do you want to see (if any)?
If you would share what you use FoxyProxy for, I would be delighted. Of course it is not necessary but I like hearing how my baby is used in the world.
Thank you again so much — it renews me, and when I need motivation to make the next FoxyProxy release, I will remember Nils Goroll in Hamburg.
Eric Jung
Colorado, USA
Going to Cincinnati with Max. We’re going to a Schaier wedding.
On the way, in the car:
Max: you know those 10 laws?
Me: (Remembering what he is currently learning in school): you mean the Bill of Rights?
Max: “Yeah, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of clothing, and the others?”
I asked Max what it was like before Freedom of Clothing. “You have to wear wigs and dress like the old times (he means men in 1700s England). Either that or like the guys in Pirates of the Caribbean.”
Me: “So the women who have to wear Burka… Clothes over their whole body and head and face… Do they have Freedom of Clothing?”
Max: “No”
On the airplane
Max is studying the safety instructions and he says he’s loves reading them (they are all pictures). He is trying to buckle my seat belt. Now he’s watching the safety video and checking his seat belt is tight.
Today we closed on the sale of the house at 1562 Red Draw in Cordilllera. It was an awful experience all the way through, especially on the final day.
I’ll only mention a couple of events that happened today, but there were many other complications throughout the last 30+ days to reach closing.
1. We unfortunately agreed to patch and paint holes. Karolina accidentally used the wrong paint color in two rooms (upstairs tv room, upstairs bed room), and the paint in the dining room also didn’t match exactly (as mentioned in the contract, they should be exact) because the walls had faded while the paint in can did not.
We initially agreed to $250 credit for there 3 rooms. Then the buyer’s broker walked through the house Sunday night and said every room had this problem.
Brooke, our realtor, said she’d go to the house in the morning to see, and she would fix the spots herself with matched paint from Home Depot is necessary.
She got to the house 10:00 on Monday (closing at 11:30) and said the problem was too serious for her to fix.
We got her mother, Pam, on the phone, who was in Paris on vacation. They both put on the pressure to increase our $250 credit.
“You need to close”, said Pam.
I threw out $500, and Pam didn’t think that was enough. She wanted me to justify the number and was pushing for more but would not suggest an amount.
Meanwhile, Brooke had texted $500 to the buyer’s broker. During this discussion with Pam, he replied that the sellers would accept $500. Yay, right?
Karolina insisted she would not sign the closing documents until this paint agreement was signed by the buyers.
“YOU NEED TO CLOSE”, said Pam.
We agreed to give them $500 towards it in a signed document not part of the formal closing documents. Including it in the closing documents would force the whole deal to be reviewed by the buyer’s lender again, forcing a 3+ day delay… Then we would not be able to buy 715 Mueller Drive in Highlands Ranch.
So we signed the paint agreement (so sign the buyers), closing documents and thought everything was done…
2. I get a call from the title company around 2:30 that the buyer’s lender wants me and Karolina to sign a document that says something like, “we know of no other money changing hands outside of the closing documents.” Without it, they wouldnt give he funds to the buyers.
Well, clearly this statement wasn’t true. Penalty for lying? Fine and/or prison.
But our realtor, Brooke, insisted this $500 was another transaction and not part of the closing. I wasn’t comfortable with that. The document had the same date and even the address on it.
I could not reach Karolina.
I sent the documents to our realtor for 715 Mueller Drive, Adrian Dedering, to get his opinion. He immediately said he would not sign, which reinforced my feelings.
I told Brooke again that I don’t want to sign it
“YOU NEED TO CLOSE. YOU WILL BE IN BREECH OF YOUR OBLIGATIONS. YOU WILL LOSE THE ESCROW MONEY” and an insinuation that I’d have to pay the realty company there commission, anyway.
She called me back with John Slifer on the phone, while I conference Adrian for support (Slifer did not like that and was pushing to understand why Adrian was on the call).
John asked some questions about the deal. I explained I didn’t feel comfortable signing. I didn’t want to go to jail over the this. Brooke didn’t speak.
At this point it was 3:30. We had 90 minutes to resolve this or the house would not be sold (title company closed at 5:00 PM).
“Will you sign the lenders document if we can get the buyers to void the agreement?”
“Absolutely”, I said. “Be creative.”
He said he’d call me back. When he did, Brooke did not speak again.
“Brooke will pay the buyers $500 as a closing gift. You don’t pay anything. We don’t want any paper trail. The $500 agreement you had with the buyers won’t voided, but it won’t be executed, either. When all this is over, maybe you could send Brooke a nice thank you gift.”
Whew. But I still knew of another deal outside the closing document regarding the transaction, even if want anything we were paying. I still didn’t really want to sign the lenders document.
I called the title company, about to say that I was resady to sign. Before I could, the title agent said the lender agreed to give the money even without that signed document: they had provided it so last-minute, that they must have felt like they screwed up (we should have been given the document earlier).
I said we’d sign it and send it tomorrow because we didn’t have a scanner. Maybe even take photos instead… I couldn’t reach my wife, anyway, to get her signature.
We’re not signing that… Ever.
Karolina made a chicken pot pie in celebration. She carved the words, “FUCK THEM” into the crust.
Elliot LOVES to chase me and Max with the lobster gloves. He also does this with a shark glove (then I call him shark baby).
The other day, ISIS’s leader and founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—the world’s most wanted man, was killed US forces.
Max and I talked about it in the morning, while I drove him to Havern.
In the evening, we watched a Trump’s press Max conference about it.
Max can’t say the Bahgdadi right, or he doesn’t hear it correctly. So he calls him Big Daddy.
Max and I are sleeping in the master bedroom, just the two of us. We played a lot of Sim City 4. This was the first time Max played without destroying his city. “But I did something else bad. I took out huge loans”.
I did not even know you could take out loans in this game, and I’ve been playing for years.
After he bought a Mayor’s Mansion and limosine, he drove around the city throwing money out of the car. Then he bough a White House with his 200 million dollar loan, while reducing the amount of money spent on roads (so they roads had lots of pot holes after a time).
I texted this to Whitney, who he had just spent the weekend with — first time seeing baby Johannes! And Whitney replied:
We also watched the 13-minute documentary about the world’s most dangerous amusement park, Action Park in New Jersey, which I went to every summer as a boy.
We are having a blast together but did not make it to the swimming pool as planned 🙁
Dinner at Marco’s Pizza!