Month: October 2023

Do you go to counseling? Would you ever consider it? I have been going to a counselor, and it has been helpful. Recently, there was a subtle suggestion that Taylor and I have been thinking on. It goes a little something like this.

When the kids start screaming, I can’t handle it. When there is an argument or a disagreement, my mind gets focused on it. Processing the issue slowly and objectively is skipped.

It was suggested that this is anxiety. I always considered myself to be the opposite of anxious; fairly laid back. The counselor put it this way: when the “alarm bells” go off in your brain that there is an issue of some kind, it needs to be addressed. This is normal and healthy. However, there can be times when the “alarm bells” are going off too often, or in a disproportionate manner. This is what might be my reality.

How and why does this happen? Sometimes, earlier in life, the body can “learn” this in the wrong way. Divorce, arguments with my brothers, and other things happening in my life as a child might have been the cause to learn how to navigate stress the wrong way.

I don’t know, and I am not fully convinced how far to run with this label; but it seemed to sound as though it is accurate to some degree in my life. Maybe it is impacting some friendships and relationships, I am not certain. That is my vulnerable moment for the week. Moving on…

Home Again.

Taylor went on a work trip this week. She doesn’t travel often for work, but she was gone the week before. And two weeks before that. Somehow, all the trips piled on in the month of October. In addition, some unexpected things came up and Tay had to spend a few nights away outside of her trips with work.

While she was gone, the kids were fed and taken care of, to some degree. We got a good chunk of our healthy food for the day from smoothies in the mornings, as seen above.

The mornings had some spare time, so Mercy and I did scooter time before she went to daycare. As a video, it is a little funnier. Mercy fell, but dont

Kids were picked up after school. When Tay is gone, the dog gets put outside so often as we come and go from the house, I decided to take her along with us this time for something different. Everyone enjoyed seeing Stormy in the car.

We even at a few healthy dinners. Also, we had mcDonalds one night when I forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer. So, it all evens out, right?

We ate healthy dinners, in front of the tv.

At the end of the day, we even did bedtime stories. Mercy is getting really good these days (at memorizing the story she asked for 6 dozen times)

Before she came home, I took the afternoon off of work. What would I do with such free time? During the daylight hours, only 2 things:

1. Take a nap. It was glorious.
2. Clean up after the crazy hailstorm we had last week by spending 2-3 hours getting leaves in the yard:

When momma came back, both her and I were whipped. What is harder, 13 hour workdays on a trip, or single parenting for many days out of a month for kids this age?

The fun things of fall still await. We went to the pumpkin patch, and the fall harvest festival at our church. The travels are over for the foreseeable future.

Last week was Taylor’s 20 year high school reunion; this week was mine. Friday night we got together, both page and grimsley (our rival), at a place called “Terminal Tap”, a bar opened within the past year by one of our alumni, Ty Tysinger. It was a fun crowd.

The goal was to go to the football game after meeting up at the bar, but:

Saturday we got to walk the halls of the high school; For some reason I was only expecting 4 people to show up, but the crowd was great. The halls were well lit, it didn’t smell like urine, and it seemed less depressing than I remember in my years walking through those halls. Talking with a few people during the weekend, one of the overall feelings of walking those halls was fear; there were some crazy fights, and other things where keeping your head down was the best thing to do.

This is where we ate lunch. I remember seeing a chair get thrown out of the window on the right side of this image.

The gym still had that unique smell of teenage sweat.

It wa a fun crowd that walked through the halls. Then, off to Kau;

Ok, pause here. Why was this reunion so exciting for me? Here are a few things that came to mind:

1. I don’t use Facebook as much anymore. I have no idea what is going on in people’s lives.
2. I am a much better person now than I was in high school. Back then, there was a lot going on in life; I wasn’t involved in many things, but these are some great people I went to high school with.
3. I married up. Taylor is awesome, and I am glad to have her meet the part of my life she wasn’t too familiar with.

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This was the whole group at Kau; Man, it was fun. So many people had fun/entertaining/bizarre stories to share.

First off, THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED PLAN THIS EVENING! It was a blast.

One alumni was on drunk history. One person ride a motorcycle to Alaska last year. One person works locally with people with HIV. One person became a millionaire.

Corey Higgins and I did middle school and high school together. He hated me. It was so much fun to reconnect. His view was “Luke was always in his own bubble over here, and everyone else was over here”. Maybe not much has changed?

All the way back to elementary school, and haven’t seen Taylor Lineberry since graduation.

The Page reunion ended around 10 pm; Taylor could only make it for about an hour due to some child care issues, but I soaked the night in and went across the street to the Grimsley reunion.

Josh Aunspaugh went to App State with us, and was a great friend Freshman year. I don’t know what happened, but we didn’t see him much afterwards. Also, Haley Parrish was fun to see all weekend. Also a dear friend since high school.

Other Page high school kids showed up, and I ended up in a free Grimsley Whirlies shirt. Here are the ladies formerly known as Katie Jones and Abbey wood (their maiden names).

What a great time.

This week is also special: Taylor had her 20 year high school reunion, from Northwest High School here in Guilford County.

It was a fun night- way more fun for her to catch up with some old friends. Around 60 people showed up, at a local bar called Oden. It was really laid back.

There were a few fun conversations. Many of the people I got a chance to connect with are still living in the same general area as their parents did, and raising families in the same way.

One of the biggest changes since our class graduated (Taylor and I graduated the same year), was that a new high school opened two years after us, and really changed the districting maps for the county. Northern High School is the newest and best in the county.

Since the kids were out for the night at Taylor’s moms house, we even went to the after party downtown. Be proud of us- we stayed out past 11pm!

Anniversary

Uncle Steve and Aunt Chris celebrated their 40th year wedding anniversary this weekend. Though my cousin Brenna reached out about the event in Greenville, I wasn’t unable to attend.

HUGE congrats to them. As an adult, this pair has just become more and more fun. Aunt Chris, you always make me laugh. Uncle Steve, as a kid I thought you were intimidating. As an adult, I think you are an amazing person. Your wit from years as an English Teacher serves you well. Love you guys, and wish that the years didn’t see us apart as much as they do now. Though there aren’t a ton of pics I can readily find, this is a solid one from around 1991:

The Children’s Museum

Rosie, Hunter, Mercy and I took the 26 minute drive to the High Point Children’s museum this past rainy Saturday. But I am a nerd, and what was really cool was learning afterwards that there is a feature on iPhones to automatically create a mashup video of a bunch of images/video clips, and I was real excited about how it turned out:

Many of you might already be familiar with how to do that. If not, here is a quick clip explaining it:

Its fall. Taylor is on a work trip to Philadelphia for work, and I can’t sleep, so adding another blog post is the obvious best thing to do.

In our neighborhood, one thing we look forward to is the “scary house” that goes all-in for halloween decorations. They are a few blocks away so we haven’t had a chance to trick-or-treat at their house, but the setup is pretty extreme. Have you ever seen anything like this?

The new teacher fake-out

On Wednesday of last week, we got an email/voicemail/letter home from school informing us that Rosie’s teacher would be leaving. This was really sad. She really likes Mr. Robertson, her third grade teacher. He is new to the school, and has made a very big impact.

When I got home from running a few errands, this was how Rosie greeted me:

It was devastating for a third grader to lose her favorite teacher!
Why was he leaving? He was leaving because of a state law that stipulates how many teachers are needed for each class/grade. The letter/voicemail sent to us said that due to a miscalculation on student enrollment for the year, there were too many teachers for the third grade, and Mr. Robertson (the newest) would be re-assigned to another school.

The letter stated that the following day, Rosie would spend 1/2 a day with her current teacher, and then transition to 1/2 a day with her new teacher. Effective Friday, she would be with her new teacher.

This was not ok. Rosie was sobbing about this. Who made the decision to trade teachers 1/2 way through October, and in what universe is this in the student’s best interest?

After Rosie had a minute to calm herself, she said “I have to go make Mr. Robertson a card.” Rosie is a gem; what a sweet kid to have that be her first instinct:

I wrote emails. I was hot; I don’t usually write emails about these kinds of issues, but because of the impact it had on Rosie, I wanted the people in charge to know the fallout from their decisions. In the big picture, I know Rosie would be ok; she has plenty of friends, and her home life is stable. But someone, somewhere had to see the ring video that I captured of this sweet little third grader just devastated to know that her teacher was leaving.

The teacher, principal, School board representative, and the superintendent were copied on this rather hot email. What did the email say? In short, we are with you through all the things that are beyond your control (and I listed a few things like Covid, a lockdown, etc), but this is not beyond your control. And whoever made this decision should see the impact that it has on THIRD GRADERS. For older students, this would not be a big deal. For eight year old kids, this is a bond that is being broken from a new teacher that they have grown to trust; and it disrupts the learning process for her class, and all of the other classes that they are dispersed into.

The other parents were pissed too. With only 1/2 day warning, there wasn’t much time, but the parents of Rosie’s class got an email thread going of 37 people providing the names of who to contact at every level of the school system, and I am left to believe that there was a very high percentage of people that took it upon themselves to reach out to voice their concerns.

That’s when we learned that it would be on the radio. It turns out one of the parents from Rosies class is also a morning anchor on a local radio station. She brought this issue up and it must have received near 20 minutes of airtime about how bonkers this decision is. The school board must have been pretty pissed about this exposure. Here is the bit, as a link to watch it on Facebook:

https://fb.watch/nDnf3K52ql/

When Rosie got back from school the next day, I asked her how her day was. She said “all we did was cry all morning. One kid cried so hard she had to go see the nurse.” Again, this adds fuel to my fire. Who makes these kinds of decisions for third graders?

On Friday at noon, a day-and-a-half after we received the first notice of the teacher leaving, we got a an automated call at around noon saying that, “after carefully reviewing enrollment numbers, it has been determined that they WILL KEEP all third grade teachers.” The voicemail was tone-deaf to say the least.

So, next week I will be attending my first school board meeting to address this issue.

UNC Dominates Syracuse on the gridiron

On Monday, I got a call from my buddy Charlie Hiser asking if I could make it to the football game that weekend. Charlie has been my buddy since sixth grade, and though it is probably for the best that I cannot find any solid pictures from the early years, here is a good early, appropriate picture of Charlie and Taylor from 2007:

Yes, I could make the game! Just like old times, going with Charlie and his set-dad Jerry, we made the 1 hr drive to Chapel Hill, capitalized on Jerry’s long-time donor status with great parking, and were at the game. UNC basically dominated, but Charlie and I got some great laughs in. It was great to catch up with him. He lives in Chapel Hill now, and though it is close, we haven’t gotten to see each other too often. Maybe more games in the future is the best answer? Anyways, here are some pics:

We saw the basketball team coming in before the game:

Here is a completely unrelated video I wanted to share: Rosie reading to her sister the day before her birthday. Nevermind Rosie’s face: it had facepaint from the Greek festival we attended earlier that day:

And Mercy crushing it on her scooter on a Saturday morning: