We overslept this morning. Dominica did not realize that Luciana had managed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and was feeling better after a few days of being constipated and that we would be able to travel this morning so she did not jump out of bed as early as she had intended to. So when we got up in the late morning we were in a rush to attempt to get everyone ready, out the door and off to Knossos to go see the ruins.
We scrambled like crazy, got showered, dressed, packed, out the door, loaded up the car and…. I had left the lights on last week and the car batter was completely dead. We are not going anywhere today.
We all went back to the house and decided that the kids would just have a play day. Maybe we will try the car again on the morrow. I walked down to the corner store and got bread, milk and a few items that we were out of and asked about getting the car jumped. The owner said that I should come back in the morning and his wife would call someone for us to come and jump the car. So that will likely be easy.
I did some posting and a bunch of site work today. Then I took some time and played Portal up till the final challenge of level eighteen which is nauseatingly difficult and impossible for me with the Steam Controller. I will have to save it to try with a mouse at some point. Maybe that way I will be able to do it, but as it is it goes from slightly challenging to impossible all at once and there is just no way for me to do it.
After that I played some Hexcells Infinite, I am now seventy five percent of the way to the big “Infinite Sixty” badge. No idea why I want that, but it will make me feel good to earn. And I finished playing Quell. Liesl came in to join me while I played that and snuggled. She helped me with the game but we were near the end of it so the puzzles were really hard.
Our cell phone service has been down for over a week now. We have no idea what is going on. Because we never drive anywhere we have no idea what might be the issue. Maybe our local tower is down. Maybe there is an issue. Maybe it works the moment we are outside of town. We use wifi at the house and have an old fashioned land line for emergencies so it has not been a big deal, we never make calls with the cell service anyway. Hopefully it works when we are away from the house.
We were all feeling lazy today so it was fish sticks and veggie sticks (like fish sticks but filled with corn, peas and other veggies) for dinner. It was quite yummy.
We actually got the kids off to bed just after ten thirty tonight! We have, for over a week now, had a bedtime alarm. First an alarm goes off to let them know that it is about forty five minutes before time for bed. Then another alarm goes off when it is actually bed time. This has been working great. Before they would stay up way too late and be caught off guard when suddenly it was time to head to bed and be upset that they had not done something that they had been pushing off like eating or watching a video.
Thinking back to when I was their ages, we always had very obvious prime time television that put us into a standard groove. When I was Luciana’s age, it was seven o’clock, once the news was over, for younger viewing. When I was Liesl’s age the shows ran from eight until ten five nights a week. That prime time slot made it super easy to have a set schedule in the evening. Get everything done by eight, sit down and it was Who’s the Boss, Growing Pains, Alf, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Family Ties, Cheers, Taxi or whatever. Two hours, most nights, and you knew each half hour clearly until the night was over and it was time to go to bed. Or get ready for bed or whatever. It gave the evening some perspective. With video games and YouTube and Netflix they do not have that at all now. So the alarms help, in a small way, to provide that. Looking at it from that perspective makes it make a lot of sense to me.
No late night for us. It was after midnight, but not long afterwards that Dominica and I went to bed. Maybe we are onto a good schedule now? It is Luciana sleeping on the floor tonight. Now the girls are competing for who gets to sleep on the floor. They are both like me and like the hard floor and unlimited space but having everyone nearby. Liesl is sad that she doesn’t get to be on the floor but gives up the spot to Ciana willingly. Ciana dislikes being crushed in the middle of the bed whereas Liesl enjoys the extra snuggles.