She's leaving home (bye, bye)

The day we brought her home from the hospital. 

Renaissance festival, October, 2000. 

Airborne, 2003

All American Girl, Summer, 2009

Horseshoe Bend, Glenn Canyon, AZ, March, 2010. 

Drum Major, 2015

Senior in High School, February, 2016

High school graduate, 2016.

 About three weeks ago, my 18 year old daughter borrowed my pickup. We loaded her bed and her dresser and a bunch of clothes and other odds and ends into it, and she drove it away, with her boyfriend in the front seat. She had spent her last night in her room, and was moving into an apartment with one of her best friends and a friend from work.

She's not ready. Financially, I don't really believe that she's making enough to cover school expenses (though she has a pretty decent scholarship), car, rent, utilities, food, and sundry. She is taking on a good $5000+ in new expenses per year, just for the ability to say that she's moved out, even though her commute to college has only shrunk from 12 to 3 miles, and about the same for work.

I know-- kids want to feel grown up.  And she has a full-time job, and she pulled off a 4.0 GPA in her honors program at university this semester. She's a sophomore. She just bought her own Honda CRV. She's a great kid, and left the house with no animosity for her parents.

So why was I sobbing in my living room for five minutes after she left? Is this what I've become?

Okay, maybe I was the one who wasn't ready.


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For what it's worth, the recently remastered release of the Beatles' _Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band_ album is absolutely worth a listen. Particularly have I been listening to "She's Leaving Home." (The hotlinked version isn't the remastered one; you'll have to get the album or find it on Spotify or Google Play Music.)

Why do they even make that an option?

My KitchenAid dishwasher is a pretty good dishwasher. I can say without a doubt that it is the best dishwashing machine that I've ever owned or had access to. Kinda knock the dried stuff loose on the dishes before loading it, put in one of those AWESOME Cascade Action Pack soap pods*, make sure the reservoir is topped with Dollar General brand rinse aid**, and my dishes come out shiny and clean and new-looking. I never have to re-run the dishes through in such instances.

That is, unless...

...Unless someone has selected the buttons to turn OFF the High Temp Scrub and Sani Rinse.  Then, your dishwasher is running with whatever hot water it gets IMMEDIATELY upon turning on the water valve (it doesn't let it run til it gets hot), with the soap, and that's it. Unless your dishwasher is way different from every one that I've ever seen, it has three things going for it, to get your dishes clean: Hot water, pressure, and soap. It has no scrubbing brushes. If it did, then it could do as well you do when handwashing. Truth is, your dishwasher can get that water a lot hotter than your hands could bear, if you'll let it. And therein is its efficacy.

In the bottom of your dishwasher is a heating element. If you select "High Temp Scrub" (as it's listed on my washer), it heats that element up while the washer is filling with the wash water for washing, and runs that heating element for the whole time that it washes, to get the water really really hot. Thus, it can get those dishes super uber clean. If you select Sani Rinse, then your washer will run the heating element during the whole time that your dishwasher is rinsing your dishes, to get that rinse water hot enough to sanitize. If you select "Heat Dry", then your washer will run the heating element for a while after the rinse water is drained away, to evaporate the rinse water faster.

So here's the problem: My wife NEVER turns on these options. She turns them all off. Why? Because she's a worrier. Wives will do that; they'll worry about getting screwed over again, like when they bought into that whole "I'll bet that he'll look distinguished as he ages, and will eventually grow out of this whole 'let's work for the public and make Jack for money' thing that he's got going on" philosophy. Oh, no. She won't be fooled again. Now, she's Miz Cautious. She's not running the risk of a repeat of that time those times when her Prized Tupperware got a little bit warped melted around the dish racks and had to be scraped and chipped loose. So now, regardless of the absence of such plastics. Regardless of the fact that any plastic stuff could be moved to the top rack and saved from the proximity to the heating element, my bride of 15 years turns the heating options to OFF when she runs the dishes. 

Which leads to Suck and Fail.

I have to admit: I do a lot more dishes than I used to, just to get the damned things run correctly. Maybe that was her plan all along.

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*Worth every dime. We came across some packages marked down, but I'll get these from now on, even if I have to pay double. No more powder caking up, clogging up the spring-loaded door flap to the soap dispenser. I don't care if these things cost triple what I've been paying. It's a good product.

**I never used to use rinse aid, but I have to admit that it makes a difference, and the store brand seems to work just as well as Jet Dri or Crystal or whatever. A bottle usually lasts me several months. The reservoir takes about a month to drain.

Somebody hand me a tournequit.

And perhaps some Quick Clot.

I'm hemorrhaging money.

I expected, when I bought this house, to have to repair the foundation.
I expected to have to work on the air conditioner.
I expected the repair of the holes in the walls and ceiling (courtesy of the previous residents who were foreclosed on).
I expected the roof repair.
I expected the replacement of every square inch of flooring and counter top.

But now come the plumbing problems. I replaced the clean-out yesterday. I busted a hole through the floor in the kitchen yesterday, and am trying to dig out a sewer leak, exploring where I'm pretty sure the leak will be, instead of paying $580 to use the leak-finder service.

My hand is getting writer's cramp, writing all these checks until the money dries up.

Bah.

We're living in the future.

Tamara links to Sippican Cottage, where the proprietor asserts that this ain't a bad time to be alive.

I've been saying this stuff for years. It sucks to live today for some reasons, but those reasons are offset by the fact that we're livin' in the future, man.

Cell phones have changed the entire planet in the last decade. In my profession (police), we've seen it change the way we receive and answer calls, and the way that we respond to them when we get there.

Computers-- especially laptops-- have changed the world. Hell, I'm at home, and I'm not even using my desktop. Why should I? the little notebook does it as well, and I can pack it with. In my patrol car, I can bring up a suspect's mug shot, criminal history, and what he paid for his house, without even invoking privileges given by the badge-- I'm doing that on the public side, through Internet Explorer.

My tired old Honda that's 11 years old and has almost 200k miles on it still gets 32 mpg, when I drive it like a bat out of hell.

Telephone service is cheaper than it's ever been in the history of ever. I can talk all day long to my friends in other states on the reasonable flat fee that I pay once a month.

Flush toilets. Air conditioning.

Clean water is taken for granted, my entire life.

I ate homemade lasagna Friday night. Unimpressive, right? But the pasta was a favorite brand of whole wheat. The cheeses were chosen among an impressive variety of them, still with an eye toward reducing the fat. The garlic was fresh but I didn't have to grow it. The basil was fresh from my windowsill. The pork sausage was made in my kitchen with a food processor a few minutes before we made the pasta dish. The oven was digitally regulated. The sauce was frozen, but was defrosted in the microwave. The food was dirt cheap, compared to my yearly wages.

Beer: It comes from all over now. And there's competition to make it better. Even when I was first legally able to buy beer, a good selection was a rarity.

Same for coffee.

Seafood: We who live inland can now enjoy it, too.

Entertainment: Shows are a LOT more complicated than they were as recently as the 1970's and '80s. Back then, 4 main characters was a LOT, with 8 being very complicated. I heard somewhere that that 24 show that some of y'all watch has over 40 characters. Huh. People are smart enough to keep up. Who knew? Also the variety is a lot better. Used to be, you had some goofy comedy, some game shows, maybe a western, and some cop shows prominently featuring car chases.

Music: Download. Order. Plug in an MP3 or burn a CD or whatever. It's an anomoly to have to cue a tape, these days. And setting a needle in a groove is a lost skill. Which I don't lament.

For better or worse, free speech is utterly guarenteed, with regard to obtaining access to information. Also, it ain't hard to publish an opinion, these days. Yes, there are draw backs to removing the vetting process of an editor or publisher, but there are benefits, too.

Computers are dirt cheap, relative to a few decades ago.

I'm relatively free from concern about contracting communicable diseases. While AIDS sucks, you have to participate in activities that I exclude myself from, to get it.

My daughters have a pretty good chance of living lives in which they are not constrained in their life choices, merely because they're female.

There's more. A lot more.

Quit yer griping. Yeah, there're problems. But check out the bennies.

On the other hand...

Bad: I woke up earlier than I had planned to this morning, because of someone banging on my door and ringing my doorbell.

Good: When I got to the door, I found the Big Brown Truck of Goodness driving away, having just left a Package of Happiness for me.

Bad: I was up, and would never get back to sleep.

Good: Now that I was up, I got to open my Package of Happiness.

Bad: This would lead to me making a mess, and getting involved in a minor project. It also feeds my addiction.

Good: But, yay! Feed my addiction!

Bad: This crap is costly.

Good: But, yay! I paid for it last week. Source is here.

Bad: That box looked awfully damned small for the $30 I spent having it sent to me.

Good: Did I mention that the Stuff. Is. Here?!?

Bad: Well, they over-taped it and over-sealed it and I'll be lucky if I don't cut a finger off getting to the...

Good: ...pound of Guatamalan Vista Hermosa Peaberry, pound of Mexican Malinal Washed, pound of Costa Rican BCT Dota Select, and pound of Hawaiian Kauai-Reserve green coffee beans.

Bad: Now I had to decide which to try first.

Good: This is a problem? Every coffee drinker should have such a dilemma.

Bad: After roasting, grinding, filtering, boiling, pouring, stirring, steeping, and pressing, it took me 26 minutes to finally have a cup of Guatamalan Vista Hermosa Peaberry coffee.

Good: But what a cuppa.


Bad: While moving the supposedly ziplocked bag of Guatamalan Vista Hermosa, I slung about a quarter lb of the hard little beans all over my hardwood kitchen floor. Which really needed to be swept. Wow. Look at how far those hard little beans will bounce. To the living room, even. Huh. I wouldn't have guessed.

Good: I could pick it all up, right?

Bad: The floor needs to be swept BADLY. And mopped. I'm not consuming this.

Good: The Black and Decker 7.2 V DustBuster is the first example of the DustBuster that I've ever seen that was worth a crap. And we just got one for Christmas. This thing is mighty powerful, and is a wet/dry vac, too. Impressive. The battery life is surprisingly long, as well.

Bad: Should I recycle the beans out of the dust chamber? Should I? No, of course not.

Good: I made the right decision. Into the trash they went.

Bad: There goes about $3.00 US and a good pot of coffee or two.

Good: I've got more.