A Day Off, More Job Stuff and a Renter

What had looked like what would shape up to be a typical Wednesday routine (long ride, lunch with Elusive Moose Radio, long afternoon nap and general zombie-like state) wound up being a little more noteworthy and family oriented.

I've had a creaking sound in the crank on my bike the last few rides, so I took it into the shop yesterday to take the crank off and clean it up. I wound up spending over five hours in the warehouse building exercise bikes (good ones, not like the one your grandma used to own) and the day wound up being a little busier than I had anticipated, so my bike went untouched. I decided to leave it in the shop to look at tomorrow so that I could sleep in and spend some time with my family this morning.

I still had lunch with the EMR guys and snuck in my nap while Xander watched a movie this afternoon, but have made it a point to be a little more less zombie-like. One goal that I had for today was to start teaching Xander how to ride without his training wheels. I know, I know... It's about time. He's six, but Mr. Caution hasn't shown any interest in the freedom that his bike offers without the constraints of the extra round appendages on the bike. I told him last night that today would be the day we'd start. We didn't make a ton of progress, but progress was made.

Xander is a perfectionist and a by the book kind of kid, so he wanted me to tell him the three steps that he needed to be able to do this thing. I told him that it is something that he's going to have to learn more by feel and he responded, "I was afraid you'd say something like that." We worked at it for 15 minutes or so and were down one training wheel by the time the heat and our unwise choice of black clothing caused us to seek relief and abandon our efforts for the day. I'm going to stay on him about it and hope to have him off the crutches in the next few weeks. We also got some game time in after my nap where I cleaned up in checkers and then got my hat handed to me in the Sponge Bob Book of Games.

We finally reached the point with Maia where the whining and crying at the drop of a hat needs to stop. We have been giving her time outs in her crib when she gets out of control, which has worked to a point, but she doesn't really see it as punishment and, therefore, it has not been effective behavior modification. Today we started taking our foot stool from the kitchen and having her sit in the corner by the bathroom where the diaper genie sits. If that's not punishment, I don't know what is. She had to sit there a few times today and generally did pretty well with it. We'll see how it goes.

I'm still waiting to hear from the church in Nebraska that we're interviewing with about when they want to see us. I'm trying to be patient in giving them time to get in touch with me, but my work schedule is such now that we don't have nearly the flexibility that we did last week before my July schedule was set. In the meantime, we got word back from an Omaha church requesting more info and I applied for another job in Minnesota. I'm still not sure where all of the job stuff is headed, but trust that God will lead.

Probably the biggest news of the day was that we have finally rented our Indiana house after having it vacant for 13 months. It's a brother of a friend, but we've been very reluctant to proceed based on past history and in the hope that the new carpet that we put in the house might expedite its sale. We finally decided we needed to take our chances and see how renting turns out. Amy has been slaving over a lease agreement that "covers our butts with both hands" and gives us the flexibility to keep the house on the market in case we find a buyer. I have been very quiet in this whole process because I have a tendency to try to give a chance to the underdog only to have it come back to bite me. I want to believe that this guy is going to work out well, but recognize that we are taking a bit of a risk. On the plus side, now the utilities will be out of our name and may free up a little cash.

Now if the house would just sell...