Sheep Guarding Llama

My first full day with the family back home.  This is great.  I feel so much better.  Today was a day to do nothing but relax and hang out together.  Mostly just spending time in the living room.  Lots of snuggle time.

Got the kids to bed at a decent time tonight.  Tomorrow is Friday.  No idea what is going on with the work situation yet.  Still just waiting to find out.  It has been a long month.  Not likely to hear anything tomorrow since it is Friday.

Today is the big day.  I get to see my family again.  I got up this morning, did a tiny bit of cleaning, caught up on email, showered and was pretty much out the door right away.  It is a long drive to the airport and the girls are arriving late this morning so there really is not very much time to spare.  I was out the door at about nine forty five.

On the way out of Cortlandt I stopped at the Maple Ave. Deli and grabbed an egg and cheese on a croissant to eat in the car as I did not have any time to eat before leaving.  I had the Acadia and made good time since rush hour was already over.

The drive south went fine.  I got to the Whitestone Bridge without any traffic and without needing directions, which was important as Waze stopped working on my phone completely so I had no GPS option anyway.

Their flight ended up touching down a full half an hour early and Dominica was texting me before I had completely crossed the Whitestone Bridge into Queens!  Much earlier than I had expected.  I rushed to get down there and actually the timing was perfect, they had their luggage and were coming out the doors just as I pulled into the arrivals area.  I was able to see Dominica waving and pulled over right away.  It could not have been easier.  I jumped out of the car and ran to my girls who jumped into my arms.  Well Liesl jumped, Luciana was in the stroller.  Hugs and kisses and then back to the house.

It was around one when we got back home.  We spent the day catching up, it has been so long.  The girls mostly just snuggled with me on the couch all day.  They had so much to tell me about all of the things that they have been doing down in Texas.

Today the Grices and the Millers are all in San Antonio watching Madeline’s band compete in the state championships.  It was a long day for them but they got some adorable pictures of Liesl and Luciana cheering her on.  They had a lot of fun out there today.  It was a very long day of marching bands all day.  Unfortunately Madeline’s band did not make the finals so they headed for Houston on the early side.

Today is my final day at home alone.  Dominica and the girls are getting on a plane from Hobby airport early in the morning and should be touching down at JFK at half past eleven.  I cannot wait to see the girls again!  I have been so lonely.  It has been a really tough few weeks.

Today was my cleaning day, all day.  I spent nearly the entire day working on cleaning up the house which has been nearly untouched since Dominica and the girls left.  Toys are still all over the floor and the house is effectively unusable from the mess.  So today I focused on getting it as clean as I could on my own in one day which included three trips out to the trash area!  The only major things that I did not manage to do were the dishes and the laundry.  Otherwise the house looks pretty decent.  The living room is all cleaned up.

Stayed up watching some movies tonight.  The main one was The Sum of All Fears which I have not seen in a very long time.

Busy day of posting today.  Got up and got right to it this morning.  Kept myself pretty busy all day.  Today I was supposed to get the phone call with the details as to the next steps for everything at work.  Well, no call on Friday and I waited all day and no call today.  This is ridiculous.  This is a one day process, at most.  It’s been like seven weeks of procrastination and stalling.  The waiting and waiting is getting very tough.

Only two more days, after today, without the family.  I can make it.  Only a little longer.

The family all drove out to San Antonio late this morning so that they could get there with a nice, daylight drive and get into their hotel and relax this evening so that they would be prepared for the state marching band competitions tomorrow at the Alamodome.  Everyone is pretty excited.

This evening, rather late after it was dark, I went downtown and got Subway again.  I just ate there tonight.

Once it was late I bought the recent release Sex Tape on Amazon VOD and watched that.  Dominica has been wanting to see it too and it has a good cast so I figured that it was a good purchase.  It’s so hard to know when it is worth buying something and when it is not.  We buy very little these days but rentals are so expensive. Of course, we rent very little too.

Got up this morning and played a little Saints Row 2 before going down to Subway to pick up lunch and grab something for dinner as well so that I would not have to worry about it later.  There is basically nothing left to eat in the house so I am down to eating out to get anything.

This evening I watched some movies.  I have had Australia’s Muriel’s Wedding on my “to watch” list since the late 1990s but just never got around to it.  I always meant to rent it on LD.  Dominica had watched it recently but I was not aware of that.  It is a good film, very well done and obvious why it is a classic.  Not exactly a comedy, as it was touted, but a good film.

I also watched the Irish film The Stag which was excellent.  Funny and poignant.  I really liked it and it has the bad guy from Sherlock starring in it.  I also watched the Korean classic 200 Pounds Beauty, which I think is a mistranslation.  It is the biggest box office hit ever for Korea.  That was quite good, however I think that they were trying to deliver a message and I never figured out what it is.  It kind of just ended up being a commentary on the obsession with beauty and plastic surgery in Korea.  Basically the moral of the movie was “plastic surgery is horrible, but if you are ugly that’s worse, so suck it up and get plastic surgery because beauty matters more than anything.”

I rounded out the night with the Canadian film The Movie Out Here which was pretty good and shot in British Columbia.  More or less a stock low budget comedy but well done for what it was.

I FaceTimed with the girls for a while this evening.  They were very excited to get a chance to talk to me.  Luciana still struggles with having anything to talk about when on FaceTime but she is happy to see me and says “I love you” and “I miss you daddy” over and over again.  Liesl, as always, is full of news and tells me about anything and everything.  Only a few more days until they are home.  They are leaving for San Antonio tomorrow.  Madeline’s marching band competition is no Wednesday.