Sunday, February 20, 2022

Controlled Chaos

Inspirational song: My Old School (Steely Dan)

In the immortal words of Stan Marsh: I learned a valuable lesson today. Or rather, I spent the whole day absorbing information and hoping it would all stick.

My intention was to clean house and start filtering through piles of papers to find old copies of continuing education certificates. I need to find the two from right before I was diagnosed with the first cancer, to go with all the more recent ones. I have to upload them all to the state regulatory site within two weeks for a "random audit," after renewing my real estate license. I'm fairly certain I can find them, but obviously the last three years have been a lot, so I need to start my search early.

Rather than do what I intended, I was called out to play with the girls. My daughter needed to do a little grocery shopping, but she didn't have the energy to walk to Safeway like she usually does for exercise. "Hey, mom, can I have a ride," became, "Hey, I'm hungry, wanna get brunch before we go to King Soopers?" The line at Le Peep (where I know I can get GF pancakes) was out the door, so instead we went to Modern Market, where we were one of only two groups of diners. It is almost never crowded there. That's a pity on some levels, because the food there is wonderful. I hope they get enough business to stay open. We each shared prime items from our salads with the baby, all things we know she likes. She had a fantastic time, but the thing I learned is how much happier she is if you give her plenty of run-around-the-store time. When my girls were small, I struggled with them not staying put. I didn't even know the basics when I first had kids. I finally get how much better things go when there is controlled chaos time. The same goes with letting Val wiggle around in the basket of the shopping cart, rather than sitting strapped in to the seat by the handle. She is much calmer and compliant when she has a modicum of freedom.

I closed the evening at the University of YouTube. I watched more videos on how to negotiate car deals before going down a rabbit hole of how electric vehicles are rated and charged. I feel more prepared for my upcoming purchase, whenever it finally happens. I have my car-buying expert buddy on my side, and I have my eye on a particular unit that is due to arrive at a south Denver dealer on Pi Day. I wonder whether I will be able to snag it.

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