I got to mind the 3 grandkids from Friday afternoon to about 9:30 last night, capping a week that included:
– 2 user group meetings, one of them mine;
– the latest and hopefully last in a series of car repairs;
– a visit (with the kids) to my most understanding Dennisport customer for a quick IT consult;
– a presentation on Technology for Non-Profits at two sessions of the Cape Corps Volunteer Expo;
– an agonizing 5 hour round trip to Hyannis via the b-Bus and
– an escape from the dour, patriarchal cynicism of Cape Cod via a 2-day client onsite in Boston.
The weather was, as they say, frightful last night, a thunder and lightning storm so violent that I unplugged my computers, the cable modem and the router. It’s raining again this morning, what a drag.
The week left a slew of impressions, from the illuminating ride on the b-Bus (apparently used mostly to transport citizens to publicly-supported worksites for the mentally and socially challenged) to joy at being in a real city again.
Oh, and I got a letter published in the Cape Cod Times, and the Mashpee Enterprise printed a photo of Peter and James, aka Jon.
It was great fun to spend time with the kids, and they were well-behaved and good company, spending time outside as weather permitted, teaching me how to play their NeoPets board game, and eating what was served to them without complaint.
I dropped off a huge box of donated paper when I picked James up at preschool, packaged and mailed a late birthday gift to my friend Fran, brought the kids to the playground so they could meet up with a young friend whose little brother had a ball game in the same park, and delivered Emme to her last rehearsal for First Holy Communion, scheduled for this afternoon.
Among the stacks of paper that teeter-totter on my desk, I have, incredibly, managed to find the gift certificate for Emme’s congratulatory savings bond.
This morning, Peter and I are doing a dump run, and I’m going to try to catch up on my Fireworks online class, which I’ve neglected horribly. I have banking business to attend to and some database coding to review.
Some people my age lead the boring lives of the early retired, and I feel sorry for them, in a way.
Without the self-imposed pressure of taking on these labors of intellectual stimulation and personal relationships, I would turn into yet another reclusive crank, the kind who turns routine housework and complaints about minor health problems into a full-time job.