On kids, too much stuff – and a Zune/iTunes rendevous

Rob’s been in Vegas for the past four days at the New Media Expo, where Zune has an exhibit. It’s 107 degrees there and 95 here. Not a huge fan of anything over 80. This comes from 15 years in So. Cal. Rob told me he hung out until 3 am with his counterpart at iTunes. You’d think that was corporately illegal – and I love it. Rob’s said in the past that the only person who gets what he does is the guy at iTunes. I bet they really had a wonderful time venting about podcast backlogs. Apparently, there were 3-4 guys from iTunes and just Rob from Zune. I was all, “They outgunned you.” And he joked it took two of them to equal one of him (Rob’s 6′8″).

So C update: In my previous C rant a few posts below, this car-stealing all-nighter happened while Rob was last out of town. So here we go again.

She didn’t come home last night. She went to a party about 8pm. She didn’t say a word – just here and then gone. Of course, I knew she was going from her myspace, but she never told me. So I asked if she were doing anything. “I don’t know.” She just refuses to abide by our small requests. I told her just yesterday again that I don’t mind if she wanted to go out last night, but I just would like to know so I can plan.

BTW, living non-stop with her (as opposed to just weekends throughout her life) has opened my eyes about the damage growing up with a mom of dubious quality can inflict. She has turned into (or perhaps always been) her mom and worse, because of the teenager quotient. She’s 18, but her maturity level is stuck at 15, which means she now thinks she is an adult with rights. She doesn’t have to listen to her parents. She only just started going boy-crazy this past year and there’s massive amounts of drinking, naked photos via text message (I discovered these last night. Never leave a step-parent alone with your cell phone open), something called ‘hookah parties’ (I thought I was saavy in the ways of the world, but no).

She does have an industrious side – she put her resume on Craigslist and got two jobs out of it. She’ll be a lobby receptionist/security at Amgen, a genetic research firm, and a barista at Qwest Field for all the Seahawks games this season.

She starts working A LOT in a few days – six days/week. I’m not going to say anything to her anymore about the things that drive me up the wall: messing with my computer, leaving lights and tv on,  a trash bedroom, wet towels on floor, etc., because she’s going to be occupied a lot soon enough and coming here just to sleep and, in a few months, she’ll have enough to buy a car (watch out, fellow drivers)  and then we’ll never see her.

Yesterday I worked in the garage most of the day. Moving boxes and stuff hauled from one much-larger-house. We went from 2800sf to 2300sf as well as a 3-car garage to a 2-car garage. There is now a small path from one side to the other and things are going on shelves in a thoughtful, orderly manner. We still have too much, though.

 

My Peppermint Patty vending machines are gone! Travis bought them from my Craigslist ad. I cleand them up, but can’t find the keys needed to fill candy and empty quarters. I spent hours looking. Travis is cool and gave me the money, anyway, and I will find those keys and get them to him. So much money lost, though.  I paid over $7000 for 25 machines, did the business for a handful of months, hated it and they sat in our garage for years. I sold them for a whopping $285, which is the cost of just one machine. I’ve been momentarily enamored with several entreprenuerial business opportunities throughout my life (ask me about running a recording studio and flipping houses sometime), so maybe I should learn something here.

I dedicate m relative peace of mind to my own kid – Si the Cat. Si is my buddy. Here he is in one of his favorite spots – the landing on our staircase – where he can keep tabs on all movement. BTW, we had this spindle staircase put in just before we moved in. We couldn’t stand the whole drywall stairway thing and Rob was absolutely resolute that this remodel has to happen, even if the tune it sang was $9000.

Nothing happens with notice

Uncle John

C ran out the door when S honked: “Going to the beach!” “You’re coming back tonight, right?” “Uhhh, yeah.” Well, waited dinner, waited bedtime, morning comes, no call, no text and no C. Reformation aborted. I’m driving her to a job interview today so we’ll see if she shows up in time.

Recycling/Refuse day: I adore recycling and yet why is putting out a 2/3rds empty garbage can on the curb feel wasteful? I want to get my moneys worth, but I can’t produce enough trash. This is a good thing, of course, but still. Even though I had a lot of pressing work, I also didn’t like putting out the yard waste recycling 2/3rds empty so I weeded and deadheaded rhodies for an hour.  Ironically, I’m not without plenty of stuff to get rid of: my garage is full of probably 60 boxes from the move that don’t have a place in the house. I’d say half of them contain items from my mostly defunct recording studio endeavor. Lots of files, books (I donated all my bookcases and most of my books, but I was in the book industry 20 years), 20 Peppermint Patty vending machines that I haven’t been able to sell on Craigslist. I have GOT to clean out the garage.

Today is all about Uncle John. He’s my dad’s brother, 80 years old, lives in Surprise, AZ and just published his book “The Abortion Controversy”. I made a website for it and today I’m trying to square away getting it up on Amazon.com. Must figure out where to send copies and they’ll fulfill orders. This is a huge book – 620 pages, something like 2,000 annotations. He sent 600 free copies to all the members of congress and the senate, as well as other thought leaders. He is a PR powerhouse. He’s been passionate about religious liberty his entire life and, although deeply religious and a pastor, he takes quite a different stance on abortion than anyone would imagine. He is ferociously against the government telling any individual what to do with regards to beliefs such as this.

We talked by phone this morning. In two days, he’s leaving for Bosnia for 5 weeks. We have family over there (he’s full Serbian, I’m half – our last name was Bogdanovich) and he published a book on religious liberty in Yugoslavian (well, one of the languages from that region) and distributed thousands over there. He’ll be conducting several weeks worth of presentations in several cities. The man just got back last weekend from a month cruise around Greece and the Med. He loves that area and took his kids (my cousins) and his grandkids – spent about $35,000 on that trip. A lot of his funds come from the LIttle Debbie (snack cakes) empire. Little Debbie (now in her 40’s) is a second cousin and just got married last year.

While we were talking today, he told me how he starts his day at 4am, walks, eats his flax, doesn’t ever take any medicine and controls his blood pressure through diet alone. He is SO healthy, having never touched a drop of alcohol, never smoked, always a vegetarian. We’re Seventh-day Adventists, so it’s a way of life for us, although I’ve certainly stumbled off that health road from time to time. He told me the story of losing Wyn, his wife and my aunt. Not to the brain tumor, which had disappeared, but to a steroid overdose in treating the tumor. While talking about her final two days, he stopped, choked up, it was so, so sad. She told him, “Take care of yourself and don’t be sad. Something good is going to happen in two days.” She had a great day the next day, on Sabbath, with family and passed away early Sunday morning. This was in the mid-90’s, right about the time I married Rob. Aunt Wyn was an effervescent woman, stylish and kind. Uncle John remains in love with her and, when asked, will tell you he will never date or get married again. That’s commitment.

Uncle John

Landmarks

I’m so happy with our new home in West Seattle. From the balcony, I can see the towers of the corporate buildings for both Starbucks and Tullys Coffee. If those aren’t stalwart Seattle institutions, then let’s add on that Rob works in another Seattle landmark every day – Microsoft. And we rejoined Costco after many years unannointed and shopped at the very first Costco warehouse, which is right across the street from Starbucks corporate. Interesting fact, Costco is first company ever to grow from zero to $3 billion in sales in less than six years. Today, it’s $64.4 billion and 537 locations. 

 

Our home is on the left, on 5th Ave.

Wherefore

Wherefore: for what purpose. For me, primarily. For the few that care to know me, somewhat.

I can be forgetful and memories, creating and reliving, are valuable to me. My goal is to blog moments, facts, mundate, thrilling, whining, reasoning out, daydreams, plans.

Therefore, welcome to my cabin.

The clock strikes drama

Nothing like bringing in the midnight hour aimlessly driving dark residential streets in search of a tragically wayward stepdaughter, “C”. How it happened:

Yesterday morning, I took the Camry Hybrid to the Toyota dealership for its 40,000 mile service. Before leaving, I found C in the media room, remote in hand, TV on all night, sound asleep on the sofa. I turned it off, stashed the remote so she couldn’t find it and grumbled as I left. I hate that she won’t sleep in her bed. I hate that the TV is on non-stop when she is home – in this case, from 6pm until I turned it off at 9:30am. Food dishes scattered about.

Anyway, after the car servicing, I shopped at Fred Meyer and Big Lots. Fun to find the familier in my new community. I’ve been in West Seattle all of three weeks (moved July 21). I arrive back home at noon to find the garage door stuck partly up – and where is my gold Camry?! I’m in disbelief that it is missing. C took it? Yes. I search the house. Back patio door left ajar. Great. She took the car and left the house open to robbers.

I check phone logs and see she made contact with S, her best pal and cohort in unbecoming behavior. She made no call to me. She knows we do not allow her to drive. She knows we expect her to tell us where she is going. There is no courtesy or responsibility shown. She found my hidden car keys and took off to be with her friends.

Rob was in San Jose, speaking at a panel on mobile video at the “Digital Hollywood” conference. I think that factored in to her decision to split. I made him aware and he texted her to return the car immediately. She didn’t. I picked him up at the airport at 10pm and we started tracking her down, with help from her mom. We heard she was meeting friends at a parking lot in Sammamish and we got there close to midnight. We asked some nice boys hanging in a big group. They knew her but didn’t know where the party was. We called her and S several times. They didn’t pick up. We called a guy we had a number for, woke him up – poor guy – and he texted C that we were trying to find her. We drove around looking for our car in dark neighborhoods. Finally, I got through to S and she handed the phone to C. To her credit, she guided us to her location and came out to the street to meet us. I immediately got in my recovered car. Meanwhile, Rob and C talked for several hours on this dark country road in front of her friends house. It was amusing to hear the incessant, deep croak of a bullfrog from the pond along the road while they hashed out the strife.  I listened as best I could from my car, not able to go anywhere as I was in unfamilier territory.

C is, in my opinion, on a very bad path. As Rob said, he’s skeptical the boat can be turned around. She is comfortable with lying, but not good at it, condescending, sarcastic, she belittles her dad, contradicts herself, feels sorry for herself in a manipulative way. cries, whines. Several times I nearly got out of the car to get involved, but stayed put. It’s not a place for stepparents. I felt very bad for Rob from the way she talked to him. He was his usual calm, reasonable, thoughtful self. She knows his demeanor and uses that to push buttons hard and practices no self-control.

We finally left close to 3am. Even how that happened is a snapshot of C’s awful behavior. While they were talking, some friends came out of the house, laughing and chatting. She walked away from Rob mid-sentence and joined them and wandered back to the house. No ‘goodbye’. No plan to come home then or whenever. Rob waited, then pulled along side me and we pondered how long to wait and what to do next. With a confusing mixture of hurt, stress, bewilderment, disappointment (and from me only, anger), we drove to our home in West Seattle. What a long day for Rob, who had a full day at Microsoft that started in just a few hours.

To me, C’s life is hurting her and impacting Rob in a destructive way. While not eroding our relationship, having C suppposedly living with us is hard to handle.

Ah. The wherefore of this blog was to get this out of me and documented. Maybe looking back on this and future C dramas will serve us – somehow.