What Happens All Day
Newsletter 2026-06-18
My children have been unsupervised all day, every day that we haven’t been on a trip this summer. What have they been up to? It’s better not to know. At least I wish that’s how it worked. Alas, these are my monkeys, and this is my circus. Ignorance won’t shield me from lawsuits and medical bills. So far, none of us have been hurt or sued. I’d like to say that’s due to my superior absentee parenting, but, really, the kids are just good at raising themselves. If they could buy their own groceries, they wouldn’t need me at all. For now, they require my van and my credit card. Once Betsy can drive, they’ll only need my card. I’ll be obsolete in no time. I’m looking forward to it.
You’d think I’d know more about my kids’ activities when I’m at work. I’ve set up quite the surveillance state around them. They all have phones which track their location. I can call them at any time and get them to answer within a few rings. That’s the goal, anyway. I’m somewhat annoyed that a few of my children sometimes leave their phones in other rooms while they do things in real life. I thought I’d raised them better than that. I also have cameras around the outside of the house. I use them to keep track of visitors, packages, and the pigs when we’re away on trips. It creates an effective perimeter on every side of the house with a door. If the kids were ambitious, they could crawl out a window on the one doorless side and leave their phones behind. Then they’d be truly off the grid. They haven’t gotten to that point yet. Like the pigs, they’ve shown no desire to escape. They know all the food is at home.
Betsy has been the busiest of the kids so far. Her activities never stop. Her highest priority is to finish her supervised hours with her driver’s ed instructor. Ironically, she has to ride her bike to those sessions since neither Lola nor I is nearby to take her. I heard that some kids today are reluctant to get their driver’s licenses. I suspect that, in those families, at least one parent works from home or doesn’t work at all. Nobody will be more motivated than Betsy, who is tired of suffering from a lack of nearby motorized transportation. Using your own leg power to get around is for suckers. We’re not the Flintstones. We’re already signing her up for tasks outside of bike range in anticipation of her getting her license on July 1st. She needs to go to the doctor in the middle of next month. For the first time, neither Lola nor I will take off work to get her there. It’ll be a proud moment, assuming she passes her driving test at the end of the class. If she doesn’t, she’ll finally know what it looks like when I cry. I should find out ahead of time if driver’s ed instructors take bribes.
Driving isn’t the only item on Betsy’s schedule. She has cross country practice multiple days a week. She rides her bike there. You might think she’d run there, but then she’d be too tired for the actual workout. She needs to keep her pre-exercise exercise to a minimum. She’s also doing some college prep work through a service, which includes preparing for the SAT. Nothing makes for a fun summer like physical fitness and tests. She’s logging volunteer hours, too, which will either make it easier for her to get into college or give her advanced training at working for free. It’s never too early to be exploited in the workforce. Some days, I think she’s busier than me. Other days, I’m not positive if she wakes up before noon. With cameras on only the outside of the house, I can’t be sure. I should call her in the middle of the work day and find out.
The other girls don’t have as many activities on their schedules, but they’ll spend more nights away from home. Next week, my youngest, Waffle, will go on her first ever camping trip for two nights. That was the part of scouting I liked the least, which was unfortunate since that was the main purpose of the organization. There’s not much to scout out when staying in your own house. Truthfully, I did have fun at summer camp, which offered enough freedom to offset some of the downsides of being outdoors for a week. My middle two girls, Mae and Lucy, enjoy it even more. They’ll spend five nights at summer camp the week after Waffle gets back. It’ll be the third time for Mae and the second for Lucy. Mae signed up to take a horseback riding merit badge, which seems like a cheat code for an awesome summer. We don’t have horse money, but we can afford the horse merit badge, which is covered by the basic cost of admission. When I was a kid, my scout camp didn’t have horses. We were lucky we had tents. If we were bad, the counselors took them away and made us sleep with the raccoons. Lucy, meanwhile, is working on a reptile care merit badge. After summer camp, she’s going to take care of a friend’s gecko for a few weeks. That’s against my strict animal reduction policy. The number of pets we have in the house is supposed to go down, not up. I don’t know why she can’t just play with a 2,000 lbs. animal at summer camp like her sister. That’s way less trouble than bringing a 10 oz. animal home.
Those camps only account for a sliver of the summer. The rest of the time, those three girls are living their best, unstructured lives. Based on their behavior on the few days I’ve worked from home over summer break, they’re hard-pressed to be up and dressed before lunch. Most of them wake up earlier but hide in their beds or in the playroom. Even the youngest of them is in full-blown teenager mode. They have a multitude of distractions. I bought new phones for half of the family. It’s a shame most modern devices are designed to self-destruct. Their new phones have increased battery life, allowing for more gameplay and longer video calls with friends. We just have to make sure they only do those video calls when they’re not still in their pajamas. We’ve set the bar incredibly low. They’ve taken it as a personal challenge to limbo under it. They have impressively flexible spines.
When the kids do come downstairs, they have a king’s ransom of other entertainment options. Mae has picked up my love for board games. She stays away from games with too many rules or too much strategy (a.k.a, anything fun), but she likes the ones that let her shout. If my board game collection is in disarray, it’s usually because she’s been rifling through it. It’s the one time I can’t be mad about a mess. It warms my heart that I’m leading her toward the Dark Side. Playing games encourages her to interact with her sisters, which offsets the loneliness of being trapped inside. Other than Betsy, who can travel for errands and sports, the girls have to stay inside when Lola and I aren’t home. Luckily for Mae, Lola and I gave her three playmates. I just have to make sure they never play Monopoly. Otherwise, she’ll have three enemies.
Ultimately, technology is a bigger crowd pleaser than cardboard.
