Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is my first day completely alone.  The family all let yesterday morning.

Dominica provided the first report on the house today.  It is a true disaster.  So bad that they are sure that they have to tear the house down.  They have a forty foot rolloff dumpster to handle all of the garbage and are afraid that it won’t be enough.  They’ve asked me to go up tomorrow so that I can help because waiting until next weekend will not work, there is just too much to be done.  This is not going to be fun.  They even found a room, completely full of garbage, that after working all day they uncovered a working toilet!! Not even in a bathroom, just a toilet, buried in an abandoned “bedroom” with the toilet just along one wall.  Much like a prison cell without all of the natural light and not nearly so clean.

I got home from work really late and decided to go down to the pub for a pint.  Ended up hanging out with some teachers who had just gotten out from chaperoning the Peekskill High School prom which was tonight.  So I hung out with them, we were about the only people at the bar all night.

So I am going up to Frankfort this weekend.  Not sure yet if tomorrow night or Saturday morning.

This morning our house guests drove into Manhattan for their day.  They are not staying with us tonight but rather going to Washington, D.C. late this afternoon.  And Dominica and the girls are leaving shortly after I do this morning to head up to Frankfort for a week to help out with the “new” house that the Toccos have purchased and to visit with everyone up there since Francesca and the kids are home for the summer.  So when I left for work it was to begin a long stretch of lonely time for me at home.

I went in to work just a little on the late side this morning since I was saying goodbye to everyone.

After work tonight I just came home and had a quiet evening at home, by myself.  Very boring, but my first night after everyone has left me is always my time to just catch up on my “centering” time and get myself ready for the time that I have stretching out in front of me.

We are trying to decide if I should go up to Frankfort this weekend.  We are currently planning that I will be home alone this weekend since we are all going to Frankfort next weekend for the Fourth of July holiday.

Got up early today, showered and got into the office. It is a nice day. This whole week has been great for Paul, Karen and Kelly going into Manhattan. The weather is perfect. Dominica drove them to the Peekskill train station around ten to head down like they did yesterday. Hopefully I will be able to pick them up today.

I am about halfway through reading “The Man Who Loved China”, by Simon Winchester.

I was in the office at eight for what was promising to be another long day.

Tonight, after I was back from work, Kelly watched Liesl and Luciana again and the adults headed back downtown for drinks and dinner.  Dinner proved to be difficult so we gave up on that.  Every kitchen downtown shut down by the time that we got down there.  We tried many places walking around a bit.  In the end we just ended up at the pub having drinks.  We stayed out until nearly closing time.

The girls had lots of fun again and are going to be very sad when everyone leaves them tomorrow.

Luciana spent most of the night sleeping upside down with her feet up by our faces. How she gets like that during the night I have no idea. She starts off sleeping on a pillow like a normal person and migrates all over the bed during the night. Then, when it is time to get up in the morning, she is back with her head on a pillow as if nothing had happened.

The weather was gorgeous today. It will be great for Paul, Karen and Kelly going into Manhattan. Paul and Karen were awake and I saw them just as I was heading out the door. Dominica and the girls were going to drive them to the train station sometime later in the morning.

I got to the office at kind of the normal time, a few minutes after nine. Dominica, this morning, after dropping everyone off to catch the train took the girls to the big playground that the city of Peekskill has right on the Hudson River waterfront. The girls loved it. It is a lot bigger than our playground up at the complex and Liesl was able to climb stuff all over it. She has become quite a good climber. That was a really nice treat for them.

Work was extremely busy for me today and I did not manage to get out until rather late; I didn’t get to leave the office until after eight which meant I wasn’t home until after nine. Very late day. That meant that Dominica and the girls had to drive down to the train station to pick everyone up on their way home from Manhattan too since I could not get out of the office early enough to make it to Peekskill station to get them.
The girls were down in the basement playing with Kelly when I got home. Karen was already in bed, sick from food poisoning – she had had a very rough day. Paul and Dominica were hanging out on the deck. Paul bored some scotch for us and we had scotch and bagels (left over from yesterday morning) but it was a very short evening.

By eleven everyone was heading off to bed. I have to be up at five thirty tomorrow so that I can be in the office by eight. It is going to be another long day.

We did not get up all that early this morning.  When we did, Paul and I went for a drive to pick up authentic New York bagels from Daily Bagel and then to the Kurdish Deli to get breakfast sandwiches and back to the house to feed everyone.  It was a bagel party morning.

It was early afternoon when I drove everyone to the train station in Peekskill to get them off to Manhattan.  I stayed with them on the platform until they got onto the train to make sure that they knew what to do.  I know how stressful and confusing that that can be.

I came home and worked for a little bit but they were back in what seemed like no time so I had to go pick them up at the station.

Once we got to the house we set up Kelly to watch the girls while the adults went downtown to check out a new pub that Dominica had discovered downtown.

The pub turned out to be really awesome.  They have an outside patio that we sat on and had dinner. The venue was great and so was the food.  The beer selection was excellent too.  We all got Spiderbite Stout which we universally really liked.

It was not a super late night for us.  Everyone was decently tired.  Really just dinner, two beers and back to the house.

The girls had a great time hanging out with Kelly while we were gone.  They have very much missed have babysitter time.