No kids tonight

About a month ago, well a few weeks ago anyway, X informed me that she needed to pick up an extra shift at the hospital. She told me that the date would be tonight. She asked me if V and M could spend the night with me at the apartment so she'd be able to pick them up for school tomorrow morning.

How could I have said no to that? Obviously I couldn't have and told her, as I always do, that the kids are always welcome here.

So tonight was the night. She was going to drop them off around 18:30 in order to get to work on time for the start of her 19:00-07:00 shift.

EXCEPT...

as I was getting dressed after work (I work in a clean room, silly, and have to wear scrubs) I noticed a new voicemail message on my cell phone. Sure enough it was X informing me that the kids would not be coming over this evening, since she was not going in to work tonight after all. She advised me that she was sick with a fever.

Both of the kids and I were disappointed at this turn of events, but hey what can you do?

I got an opportunity to talk briefly to M first, to say hi and the like. V was in the middle of doing some of her homework and wanted to finish the part she was working on. X asked me to call back five minutes later.

When I did talk to V she told me that part of her homework every night is to read something for fifteen minutes. When I was on the line the first time, she had four minutes to go. V was also excited because she is learning how to write in cursive and has learned something like five lower case letters, so far.

I asked her to demonstrate for me when I see her on Friday, so I can see for myself how she does. I love it when my kids show enthusiasm about their schoolwork and hope it continues throughout their school years.

But we shall see how that goes....

So I got an unexpected night to myself. No surprise there, really.

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I went to the evil empire tonight to get my hair cut. While I was there I needed to pick up a combination lock for the gym locker room but of course forgot all about it while I was there. I did see some neat things that I might choose for M's birthday in less than a month, so it was not entirely a wasted trip.

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Now pretty much everyone at work knows that I am leaving in a few weeks for another job. I like to think that I get along with everyone and that they'll be sad to see me go. But who knows? This company survived before I got there and probably will long after I'm gone. Or maybe not...