Molly’s First Job

Molly has been looking for ways to earn money by doing extra jobs around the house like scanning or shredding. The sweetest thing is that sometimes she gives back some of the money I want to pay her because she feels that it’s too much. ☺️ Usually I’ll insist she keeps it, of course.

But Molly landed her first non-home job as a “leader in training” at a local summer camp. She liked the work, “helping little kids with crappy art projects” πŸ˜†, and she came home wiped out every day. She made a routine of turning on The Office (her favorite show) and falling asleep.

At the end of the week, she got paid $80 — all in a nice crisp envelop full of $5 bills, or β€œcrisp fives” as Molly put it. 😊

Mornings at Mozart’s

I love school drop-off mornings — when we get to hang out at Mozart’s before school.

Claire and I have about an hour get a drink (an iced mocha and a cold brew, please) after dropping off Molly. We share memes or talk about the universe. The multiverse has been a major topic lately. πŸ€·πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ

Then we usually settle into Claire playing Genshin on her iPhone and me working on my laptop before heading out and starting the day for real.

It’s a fun way to start the day. 😊

Hamburgers and Philosophy

With Claire off at a camp, I had Molly to myself tonight. We stopped by Wataburger at her special request and took it for a picnic on the way home.

At the Whataburger, Molly launched two riddles at me.

The first was “Are there more wheels or doors?” I asked, “Do you mean, like, in the whole world?”. “Yep!” she said.

Looking out at the parking lot and street, I initially said, “It’s got to be wheels.” But Molly pointed out that while every car has four wheels, it has four doors too. And the office building across the streets easily had hundreds of doors. And cabinets. Also, something about legos. πŸ€·πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ

I was convinced. Doors it is!

At the park, Molly asked if water is wet.

Again, my initial instinct was wrong. πŸ˜†. “Of course it’s wet. It’s water.” After some discussion and demonstrations on the picnic table and sidewalk, we decided that water is not wet because “wet” describes a liquid sticking to a solid. Since water is already a liquid, it cannot be wet.

We googled it and found that “Liquid water is not itself wet, but can make other solid materials wet.” 🀯

Finally, I attempted to “get” Molly with the Dichotomy Paradox, which basically says that in theory, you can never walk from one point to another because no matter how far you go, you always still have halfway to go. πŸ€·πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Real-world experiments showed that this is obviously false in the real world but true in math. Hmm. πŸ€”

Anyways, it was fun goofing around talking philosophical πŸ’© with Molly on this beautiful spring evening.

Claire the Babysitter

Claire got her first babysitting gig!

I don’t have pics (obviously) and won’t say a whole lot other than she had to deal with a “challenging” boy and handled it with aplomb. 😊

She earned $80, some of which she saved and some of which she spent on Genshin and Cookie Run Kingdom in-app purchases. πŸ€·πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ

A Houston Christmas

We made it to Houston this year to visit my parents at their retirement home. The whole trip was a bit of a scramble to get out the door, get to Houston just in time for a Harry Potter spinoff play, and finish everyone’s presents in the hotel.

But getting everyone together for a couple of great outdoor picnics (due to Covid) made it all worthwhile.