Guess Who’s Back

I broke my daily writing streak this week, which I know was shattering to roughly no one out there. Kind of an explosion of activity and things at work, and I just got behind. We had some massive family developments this week. And by that I mean that Lauren finally took an L in the Battle of the Towels. I would love to tell you that I orchestrated this in a stroke of sheer brilliance. Instead, Lauren defeated herself.

Friday morning, we crossed paths in the restroom as we were getting ready for work, and Lauren confessed, “I did it to myself.”

“What’s that?” I said.

“I didn’t wash my towel.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I meant to. I put all the towels in the basket except mine, took my shower, and then hung my towel back up. Didn’t remember it at all when I took the laundry down. So yeah, I did it to myself.”

Maybe the ghost of Greenhill Manor took my side for a change and cast a memory charm. Or is that Harry Potter? Am I mixing magical worlds? Whatever. The real lesson here is that your towel isn’t dirty if you’ve been drying your clean body with it, right?

In other news, Brayden had an escalating conflict with one of his roommates that resulted in staying in a hotel over a weekend. A quick recap—Brayden has two other roommates, and there have been escalating disputes between Brayden and one of the others. Curiously, all these disputes seemed to escalate when the third roommate would report to Brayden what the other had said or conversely he would report to the other what Brayden had said.

Lucia texted this week: Guess what. It turns out XXX was the problem the whole time. He convinced XXX that Brayden was trying to ruin his military career while convincing Brayden that XXX wanted to fight him and kick him out.

This, of course, felt revelatory, but I have told the kids my whole life my Dad’s maxim: I have two enemies: the person who speaks ill of me and the best friend who tells me what was said. So at least for me, I was hardly surprised. XXX and Brayden hugged it out, and things are less tense.

In Lindsay’s world, she has apparently suffered some sort of knee injury. It happened in one of her matches at the regional tournament, and she didn’t realize it until she woke up the next day with swelling. She finally got an MRI and is supposed to get a read of those this week. I’m gambling on a fat load of jack squat.

Speaking of trouble with roommates, Lindsay arrived home Sunday, and we brought her best frenemy to pick her up at the airport, as you can see. Dobby was thrilled to see her, then promptly abandoned her to come back up to the front seat to me. I got after her about this, and she said, “I’m trying a new tack in the hopes that he will like me more. I’m trying to allow him to do what he wants.” Her new resolve lasted exactly fifteen minutes. After we picked up some Kane’s Donuts (the fruit in the apple fritter is definitely part of my healthy diet), Lindsay got in the car again and demanded Dobby come back to her, saying, “You lost your freedom when you rejected me.” Obviously great advice for anyone in a relationship or trying to get into a relationship. Guys, Lindsay is taken in case you were wanting to date her.

Our airport run meant that we didn’t go to Church, which left Graham thrilled because Liverpool Football Club is in the thick of the Premier League title chase and had a titanic tilt against Manchester City. Graham spent the match standing in the middle of the front room. I left him there while I took Dobby for a hike, came back an hour later to find him in the same spot, but now he had huge sweat stains under his arms from stress sweating. LFC went down early 1-0 but leveled with a goal in the second half, then held on through a white-knuckle finish to get the tie.

The real winner of the experience, though, was Dobby, who found a nasty-ass turkey feather and brought it home as a trophy. But that shouldn’t be surprising—Dobby always wins.

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