A month or two ago, Abby and Berta had tickets to some musical, so I decided to get monster truck tickets for Riley and I so that we could have a "guy's day out". That didn't work out so well. They warn you that the trucks are going to be loud, and we had earplugs, but they weren't working. Riley was rightfully scared of the noise, and so I bought him a set of the wheel-shaped earmuffs that they sell at the concession stands.

I put it on his head and he started yelling about how he didn't want to wear them. They hurt his head. Granted, they were tight - they'd have to be to stay on. But if you left them on for a little bit, you'd get comfortable with them and they'd block the noise well. He wasn't having it. There was no convincing him to keep them on, thus there was no convincing him to stay. More than $300 in tickets (I had to buy three for the two of us, and they were really good seats because that's all they had left by the time I found out the girls weren't going to be home and decided to do this) down the drain.

Today, the girls are out again at another show. In spite of the last time, I do like having alone time with Riley to bond. I clearly don't have enough, because we've had another failure. And this time, it wasn't something as scary as monster truck noises.

Every year, the neighborhood plans an Easter egg hunt around the landscaped cul de sac that ends our street. There are plenty of kids, and each parent brings 12 plastic, candy-filled eggs to hide for each child that comes to hunt. With the girls away, it's just up to me and Riley to go do the hunting.

So we assembled the eggs and went up to "the circle", as the kids call it. Riley and I stood around with the other kids and parents, waiting to begin. Now, the kids must all go someplace to hide themselves so that the parent can hide their eggs in secret. All of the other kids left running toward our neighbor's yard, and Riley just stood there.

"Go hang out with the other kids while I hide the eggs," I told him. But he wouldn't go. I tried explaining the whole process of the hunt again, in case he didn't quite understand. "Just go hang out with Gracie and George (our neighbor kids from across the street) until we're done hiding the eggs." He wouldn't go.

Steve, Gracie and George's dad, helped try to persuade Riley to go with them. Riley said he didn't want to be alone. "Alone? All of the other kids are there! And I'll be right out here when we're done hiding the eggs." He wouldn't go. "Ok, I'm going to count to three, and if you don't go over to the garage with the other kids, we're just going to go home. One... Two... Three." Didn't even move.

So we went home without hunting for eggs.

I feel bad for Riley. I don't know how you get like this as a kid, being so timid. Abby is this way too, a bit. They won't approach anything new, and they don't want to be left alone. It's really aggravating, not just because I know it's not good for their personalities in the future, but also because it's making me miss out opportunities to be with the neighbors instead of sitting at home alone. Ironic, that. I wish I knew better whether Riley and Abby are truly socializing at school; making real friends.

This is clearly all my fault, but I haven't the slightest idea how to correct it. More play dates? Therapy? I need therapy, at least.

It's been a week, I can tell you that much.

Independence Day is my favorite holiday, hands-down. This year, a bit of a wash due to the rain and some other circumstances. I think I'm becoming a hermit.

The neighbors are great. Very friendly, all of them. I just don't feel like I relate to them. Being with them all at once is hard, since they all know each other well enough that I'm still a bit of an outsider. I've never really been good at winning people over in groups first, although I think I can hold my own one-on-one. But I've never had the chance to do that with these folks, and I don't know how I would.

Plus there's a weird atmosphere in the group. There's the certain dichotomy of genders in the neighborhood group. The wives and husbands converse in separate groups, and I get the impression that there is no intermingling. While leaning over Berta's shoulders while she was sitting with the other women, I got a distinct unwelcoming feeling. Since I'm such a geek, I don't really find myself able to talk about sports with the other husbands. I'm waiting for that magic moment when I find an interest that we all share and I can contribute to the conversation.

So, I've been feeling a bit "out" of the local festivities. I hope that will improve by next year. I'll make that a personal goal. Help me do it, ok?

Anyway, the rest of the week has been odd with work. Nothing specific, but just an interesting week. The new phone (did I mention that?) has been very helpful in that regard. I'll have to elaborate in a separate post.

I took the attached picture last night or the night before from the back porch while we were eating quesadillas that Berta made on the grill. That's our swingset.

The thing about this that I should stress is that this balloon thing happens all the time. We're in a pretty good open area for it. They could very well be taking off from the field on the other side of the hill.

Don't believe me?

So I occasionally envy the lives of the people I know in the city, being able to get together easily to hang out, having such a pool of like-minded people to choose from for any specific social need. I'd like to think that if I lived in the city that I would have more friendship opportunities. But, there are no balloons in the city that I know of. At least, not like there are here. The view from here just might work out yet.

A couple of weeks ago, I headed out of the house for a lunch meeting. It was 12:30 on a Friday, and both kids were at school. Being that it was a just a lunch, I didn't think much of how it would affect the rest of my day.

The lunch ran a bit long. I didn't leave until somewhere around 3:45, and I figured I would pick up a couple of things on the way home, including the weekend fish feeders that we needed for during our upcoming trip. Being that it was just lunch, it never even occurred to me that it was so late in the afternoon that Abby would be done school and waiting for me at home.

While driving home, I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. Our neighbor across the street and a few doors down had heard Abby sobbing on our front porch. She took her up the street to stay with another of our neighbors, and that is who called me. How thoroughly mortifying.

It took me until 4:20 to get home, cursing traffic the whole way. I drove straight to my neighbor's house, where I found Abby playing cheerfully. I was very glad that we have great neighbors that would help out like this, but thoroughly shamed that this escaped me.

People are entitled to mistakes, but this is my kid. I am not a neglectful father. I don't know how to convey my utter humiliation at this happening, and in the eyes of my neighbors I am sure that I am a terrible person for doing this to poor Abby. Perhaps I deserve to feel bad, but it was truly an honest mistake.

Oh, how am I sure, you ask? Nana was watching Riley on the following Monday, and in the afternoon, she told me all about what I had done. She had heard it from one of the other neighbors. Not the neighbor that was watching Abby, nor the one who had found her, but yet another neighbor. Humiliating.

Last night, when we had given them instructions to play only in our front yard and explicitly not to cross the street, the kids decided to cross the street and play in the culvert near the road. We didn't realize they had done this, thinking them to be safe in the front yard. But apparently, they were playing in a ditch where they could easily fall and get really hurt, not to mention any amount of other troubles they could get into.

And of course, when we finally noticed them missing (I'm not sure for how long they were actually gone from where we thought them to be), there were the neighbors, talking to them about not playing in the dangerous culvert.

It's only a matter of time until protective services comes to the house because our neighbors are concerned about our kids' well-being. We're good to our kids. Perhaps we're a bit more loose on the leash than we should be, but we're not abusive and we do keep our kids safe. I feel really bad that they ever got out of our sight long enough to get themselves in this much trouble, but this is going to happen. Kids are going to misbehave, and like a moth to a flame, they seem drawn to danger. It's just a shame when they do it so publicly, and so on the heels of the last incident.

This last misbehavior is just another in a list of incidents where they've explicitly disobeyed us. For their own good, they're not going outside to get themselves into trouble for a while.