Some Things Never Change

A lovely weekend with son #1 home.  I managed to be mostly off on Friday and off all day today - made great, awesome progress on budget stuff yesterday so felt like I could 'splurge' and be off today, too.  Especially knowing that J. and B. will be up early tomorrow to get to the airport so I will get up early too and spend another productive day in my office.

We enjoyed a dinner out last night for H.'s birthday - and attempted to get to brunch today.  The little local restaurant we planned to go have breakfast at (the only place within a few miles of our house) was closed for the weekend.  Bummer!  So we headed across town to Black Bear Diner only to find the wait 30 minutes.  Headed to Hometown Buffet and had 'dinner' 'cuz they start serving Sunday dinner at 11AM.  So no breakfast foods but we ate their anyway.  It was good.

At both meals out, we enjoyed a military discount courtesy of B.!  At IHOP (where H. chose to go for his birthday dinner), they said if he'd been in uniform, we would have all received 50% off!  We were extremely excited to receive 15% off our entire check - and we wouldn't have known except our waiter was a guy B. had classes with at Las Positas so as they were chatting, B. mentioned that he'd joined the Army and was just here for the weekend.  Score!  Military discount!  Now we know to ask and also enjoyed a military discount at Hometown.

B. has been home - but when he's home, he's hanging out in his bedroom enjoying ready access to a laptop for the first time in five months.  Understand the novelty....and his room is an absolute mess, thus proving that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  He may be living on his own and in the Army but he still is a wreck of a housekeeper when he's not in Basic training.

His new 'home' is basically an apartment - private bedroom with a shared living room and kitchen - and by shared, it's just one more guy.  B. is sort of lucky because his roommate is shipping out in a few weeks so B. will have the place to himself.  He is enjoying having a kitchen and space.  He's thinking of taking his laptop back with him and he'll have to figure out how to get Internet access.

It's been fun having him home and he's looking forward to being here a few weeks in July.  He's planning to arrive when we are in Cancun and then he'll be here a week or so after we're home, too.  His friend is leaving for Europe on the 11th (the day we come home) and B. wants to be able to spend time with him before he leaves.

B. has been hugging me frequently which is wonderful....and it's been great having him home.

H. is officially two decades old.  He is hoping he will be assigned somewhere to actually work this week - it's been weird that the temp agency hired him (paperwork done; drug testing done; job placement testing done) but no assignment yet.  He's going a little stir crazy and he needs the money.  There are only so many jobs and only so much money we can keep having him earn here.

This afternoon, I finally located the banner on a light pole downtown that has B.'s name on it.  All service men and women from Tracy have their names on banners on the flagpoles and we'd been notified that B.'s was going up - finally found it!  Near the fire administration and Red Cross building.  Honored to see it - and it was cool to find it approaching Memorial Day.

I am glad J. is driving him to the airport tomorrow - I don't think my heart can take it.  Goodbyes are always the hardest part.

In the word's of Shel Silverstein:

“There are no happy endings.
Endings are the saddest part, 
So just give me a happy middle
And a very happy start.”