May 2019

Nick has goatee like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. The doctor says he's about halfway through puberty.  I didn't know they measured that stuff.  When Brandi told me on the phone, following his checkup, I thought she also said he tested, "90th percentile white", which seems an awkward thing to measure, but he's certainly whiter than other kids. She said, "height", which makes more sense. What matters is he's a good person with a sense of humor, like walking through the Meijer, pointing to the top shelf, and saying, "Look, high Tide."

It was a low-key month, with Robert Brushaber's HS graduation and a quiet Memorial Day weekend.  It's not like we did nothing, just most of the time was tending to the disaster we now call home... sewer collapsed under the driveway and backed into our basement in week six, mold in the attic, missing peak vents, no HVAC for two months and counting, no yard, no working washer-and-dryer for two months (on the second repaired set now.) The neighbors (who are all having their own problems) are going to make us Internet sensations as they keep photographing and posting the shit at our house.  Our issues are setting the pace. Nick thinks it's cool when he can pee in a bucket in the middle of the night because there's no working plumbing, so there's some thrill from all this nightmare.

We made a Taco Bell run late one evening, and I asked him not to get one of those Watermelon Freeze things because he gets so whacked out on the sugar he won't sleep and won't shut up. He convinces me a small one will be OK.  As we start to eat, he leaves the table, and comes back two minutes later with a second one, now one each hand hand. They gave him the wrong flavor, made a new one, and he got to keep both. It was a non-stop evening of blab.  Ugh.

Jason