Two Big News Stories (in the life of the Joneses)

So picking up on my last bombshell, Mary will attend Basic for 9th grade.

She was fine with homeschool until she started to miss her friends. She also made an impassioned plea to go to public school for the academics, which annoyed and offended me since we had a rigorous curriculum that she sometimes threw a fit about. She said that I was "too nice" and she knew that she could get out of things. And here I thought that I was accommodating her special needs . . . BUT. I'm over that. Bryce and I told her that we would prefer for her to homeschool but that if she prayed about the decision and felt good about it then we would support her. She did, and so I registered her.

We are drawing up a contract that Mary will sign stating that she needs to have certain grades and can only be tardy/miss school a certain amount of days. We will give this a trial run of one semester and if she succeeds, then awesome. If there is trouble, then she will come home and do k12.com (so she has continuity). I think she will find that getting up early, jumping through hoops, and dealing with crowds and idiots are going to be harder than she remembered. But, time will tell. We hope she does well.

In case you're wondering she hasn't been homeschooling this summer. I haven't been able to keep all the balls in the air with everyone home.

Getting fitted for contacts before the new school year.

The other thing is that I GOT THE JOB. Holla! I'm the newest part-time Clinique consultant at Macy's. I have worked three shifts and it is hard work. Not physically (though my first day I almost died because of my pinchy shoes), but emotionally since I'm not used to the stress of the working world in general. I feel like I'm on Undercover Boss, where a corporate big wig poses as a regular guy in the company and usually stinks at doing the bread-and-butter jobs. I'm no boss but I'm not exactly street-smart either--things like opening/closing a register take me 10 times longer than the average person to master. This job isn't aimed at an academically-minded big-picture person. I knew that going in and although it sounds like I'm complaining, I actually like the challenge. I like to be uncomfortable, to stretch myself, do do something I've never done before. And it helps that my co-workers have been awesomely nice and helpful to me.

Pre-work selfie. 

So I'm mostly working nights and Saturdays, which is fine. I saw the counter managers get ready for inventory and that looked like the most hideous task ever. I'm glad to be a part-timer.

And that concludes our BIG NEWS.