I've recently finished up a visit from my parents. I adore them and enjoyed having them around, but... there's a reason that grown men don't still live with their mothers and fathers. I'm very glad they drove down (1500 miles one way), especially so they could see their only grandkids. I'm just a little relieved they're gone, I guess.
They packed a lot of boxes for me, stuff left at their place from high school and college years. I have no idea what I'm going to be doing with most of this: I already had boxes of stuff sitting around taking up space. Some of the toys will stick around for the boys, but I need to chuck most of this (or eBay it if feasible) soon.
I took some leave while they were here and wound up back in at work today. I felt like I was rushing around putting out fires all day (even though that's the usual purview of the other side of the training for my company <-- in-joke/obscure reference). I had to field a lot of Color Guard BS and crap names out for details that I hadn't really thought about. I'll continue to shoulder too much personal responsibility for these events and inconvenience my children... *sigh* I'd rather just hang out with them and play video games and watch movies.
We have training tomorrow and I will be paying one of my co-workers' offspring to watch my kids for me. We were supposed to go to SeaWorld but I wasn't paying attention at work (or keeping on top of information that I wasn't provided, whichever), so that will have to wait for another day.
I did accomplish some things at work today, though. We've made a lot of efforts to get our current class of students out the door, fuly trained, two weeks "early." (Not entirely early as they should be leaving one week before the schedule says they should, but we pushed it a little harder to meet other scheduling requirements.) This is going to be good all around: the Army force will get some of them up to 10 days early and many of them will have some good leave time before they report into their regular units (some of which will likely deploy before the end of the year).
I had to check with my supervisor about the Field Training Exercise that the students will be participating in, and the train-up leading into it. That was one of the sticking points for the whole "early grad" bit, whether we could get them through the training. It looks quite possible and we'll keep working at it. I also ended the work day on a high note; I seemed to impress the Drill Sergeant in charge of my class's train-up by my eager willingness to be involved in their training. The fact that I stopped by his office to clarify the schedule for training seemed to raise his estimation of me (probably low before that, as I'm an instructor and a non-firefighter), which is kind of cool.
Other than that, it was nice being able to talk to adults that I'm not related to. I get this weird kind of lonely... not entirely sure how to deal with it. Which makes it even worse that I didn't get to talk long on the phone tonight! Two of my favorite people called me up, but I only spent a quarter hour chatting before I had to say goodbye to put the boys to bed. Still great to catch up just that little, though.