Cool Miners

Mal and two of his homeschool friends have an online "club" called Cool Miners.

Cool Miners cerca 2023

Caleb moved to the Pacific Northwest last year, and Kona lives close enough that we can almost see her house from our house except for one hill and a bunch of trees.

Today, I had an errand to run and Mal was going to go with me, but he ended up being on a call with his fellow Cool Miners, so he elected to stay home.

He just got off of the call, which lasted about three hours. 

It reminded me of when I was about Mal's age and my dad was the president (or some "cabinet" position)  of the local Chamber of Commerce. This was before we could afford call waiting, so my sister and I had a 15 minute limit on phone calls, in case urgent business from the CoC needed to come through. 

I'm glad Mal has made a few groups of close friends here in the homeschool community. We moved when D was about his age, and that middle school time is a difficult one to break into a whole new social scene.

I mentioned our "field trip" yesterday where Mal got to hang out with his one-day-a-week school friends, including a friend he made who no longer goes to the school on Wednesdays, so Mal rarely gets to see them anymore. 

And Mal has his post-church friend who's been meeting him almost every Sunday for the past maybe 3 years. 

It's fun to see my younger kid coming into his own, and figure out who he is outside of us. 

Quick Photography Lesson

Mal and I went to Zilker Botanical Gardens today to tour their annual Woodland Faerie Gardens.

While we were there, I took a picture of him among some of the blooming flowers. It was cute, but I didn't think it did justice to what my eyes were seeing. This is that picture.

It's fine. He's a cutie! But also, it didn't reflect how we were absolutely swallowed by greenery everywhere were walked.

Then I remembered a photo trick I read about last year and used quite a bit on our California trip: Move back and zoom in.

I stepped back about 7 paces and zoomed in. Mal didn't move. Nothing else changed. Just moving back and zooming in, which brings the background closer in the frame.

Here's the second picture.

Oh yes, indeedy, you'd better believe it. 

What's one little drive train among friends, really?

Remember how we had our dishwasher unclogged right before we went to Louisiana? It's clogged again and making the absolute worst metallic-sounding noise. The same guy is coming out to look at it this evening. Maybe. I'm getting "ghost" vibes from them, so we'll see.

Furthermore, one of our cars has been running rough... I guess; I don't drive it, but going by D's description, the mechanic said, "It sounds like it could be the drive train." Perfect. They have the car so I get to take D to work the next few mornings. I'm up, anyway, but I don't usually have to drive in morning traffic so that will be a fun time.

You know how they say that youth is wasted on the young? Well, I guess you could say that money is wasted on the old, but you won't have to worry about that with us! We're spending our retirement savings on near-constant break-downs. 

Everybody's Working... (except for James)

As I mentioned in the last post, it's not officially been a year since James got laid off. (And now it's been a year since I had parathyroid and thyroid surgery!)

Actually, right this moment, everyone else in the house is working at least a little bit!

D's been working retail coming up on 2 years. They work D A LOT for a "part time" employee, and I have all sorts of opinions about that (like that D deserves full benefits, a raise, and hours lumped together instead of 4 hours every day of the week) but it's not my job or my business. I'm just proud of D for sticking it out at as long as they have! I don't think I ever stayed at a job for 2 years until I started working for Terra West as a divorced lady.

I've been doing mystery shops, some in-person research stuff, and online surveys. We couldn't live on it, but it's something to do for "fun" money every now and then.

Even Mal is chipping in! He did one online survey video call thing about a year ago, he did a mystery shop with me a few months ago, and he just got off of a call here he commented on some educational products that are under development. 

I don't think I posted this before, but here's what I got out of the mystery shop he helped me do:

He got $20 and I got a free photo that people pay a minimum of $200 for! Win/win.

In the meantime, the money James earned and saved is getting us through this. I hope he feels a little of the pressure off of him from our input. 

Now I have to go transfer some money into Mal's account to pay for the discussion he just completed!

What can I say? Nothing much...

The "school year" is almost over, which affects us as homeschoolers more than I would have thought before I started doing it. 

Mal's one-day-a-week school and homeschool open gym both break for the summer. I'm looking into other things to keep him busy... but hopefully low-cost/free things because it's now been a whole freaking year since James got laid off, and he doesn't seem much closer to finding a job than he did a year ago. Difference now is we've obviously blown through the severance package, and his unemployment ran out quite some time ago.

I'm doing some mystery shopping again, and that's been kind of fun. This weekend, James got to go to this fancy barber shop and have a bunch of cool treatments. 

If you're wondering, "Hey, is that paraffin wax on his hands?" Yes. Yes, it is.

Mal and I did a trampoline shop a couple of weeks ago, I ate at a nostalgic restaurant with D last weekend, and I've done some visits to places like day cares and dog kennels that have paid pretty well. It's not a lot of money, but it's more than nothing.

Today is Mal's annual well checkup, so we're getting ready to go see if he's still on the growth arc he's consistently followed since his first checkup. Allegedly, he's on course to be 6 feet tall!

Speaking of Mal growing up... He posted his first animated video the other day! I'm not embedding it here (you have to click this link) because if you see it, we want it to "count" as a view, and it only does that on YouTube. I think it's pretty great!