Welcome back! I know, I know. ANOTHER post? So soon? Is the world ending or what?

Not that I’m aware. Why? What have you heard?

Okay, enough fooling around. Real quick, some house keeping.

YO! SPAM COMMENTERS! I’m gonna delete your garbage before anyone sees it, and I have NO regular fans, so what are you even doing? Go plaster your ads in someone else’s comments section, this is hostile and unfruitful territory, ya knobs! I won’t approve them, and I won’t be buying your crap either.

Alright, now that that’s out of the way, how’ve ya been? Still feel like the world is ending? Same, some days. But then I take a look around, and realize, yeah, what the actual fuck is happening? And then I log off the internet, cause it’s usually because I spent too much time on social media that I’m feeling that way.

We’re not meant to absorb world events on a 24-hour loop, but the media platforms seem to think that’s a need, and boy are they eager to fill it, if it means they can serve it with a side of those tasty, tasty ads. Mmmmm, Tide Pods, or whatever the algorithm serves up these days, am I right?

Lately, I’ve been connecting with my son. He’s a grown man now, and I feel like I’ve got a pretty big responsibility to show him what that means. And I should probably figure that out, cause, damn, my role models were shit.

Anyway. I recently dropped a couple grand into fixing up my SUV. I got the ol’ tax return, and while I originally was planning to pay off a credit card with the money (ran that bad boy up trying to find SOMETHING my very indecisive son would love for Christmas; why do they get harder to shop for as they get older?), the car started making a noise almost immediately before that direct deposit hit.

A very EXPENSIVE sounding noise.

I don’t have great luck with cars, but that’s because I’ve almost always been poor and struggling. I’m not exactly a rich dude, now, but I’m not struggling as hard. My bank account regularly doesn’t dip down to where I’m counting pennies to avoid fees anymore. Filthy rich, like that. So, when my car makes a noise I can’t identify as harmless, I try to get that puppy into the shop ASAP. And knowing the tax return was dropping, figured it was a good time to take care of a few things on the old battle tank that had been needing attention (without effecting it’s ability to roll down the road safely). You know, weird errors that come up on these cars since the 2000s computerized them to the hilt.

So, the noise? Loose heat shield. Still dropped nearly 5 grand though. But it bought me new tires, tire pressure sensors, airbag sensor (a full grand, all by itself!), complete brakes–discs AND rotors–drive belt, thermostat, coolant system flush, water pump (that one I actually requested because the car’s getting up there in miles and my last car was taken out by a defective water pump, and it took over TEN YEARS to get another car, so call me paranoid but I had it replaced preemptively, worth it for peace of mind), etc.

I did all this because I wanted to instill something of a sense of pride in maintaining the things you own, as a lesson for my son. He’s watched me help take care of my mom’s house for the last couple years, but what about what we own? Well, we own the car. So, we take care of the car. In return, the car takes car of us.

And I hope to have the car earn that five grand this summer by making memories, as I’m taking the boy on a road trip. I love to drive, I love seeing new and interesting places, and my son’s never really had a chance to go anywhere all that interesting if it wasn’t happening where we lived. Again, this all harkens back to that struggle era I mentioned. We weren’t taking a lot of vacations on the pennies I had left at the end of each month, ya know?

And we’re crossing some BIG milestones, lately. Like I said, he’s 18 now, just became a man. As a disabled person, he has another milestone, the guardianship court date, literally right after the Easter holiday. So, what better way to celebrate than to do something exciting and different? Something memorable, and as big as the moments call for.

I know, maybe “road trip?” isn’t the first thing that would come to mind for a lot of you, but we live in a small town. Pretty much anything was gonna involve a road trip anyway. And we both don’t mind long car rides. He loves listening to, and singing along with the radio. I love to drive. We’ve been taking a daily cruise after he gets out of school almost every afternoon since we bought this car. He rode along when I drove down to visit my friend last winter, and it didn’t phase him really.

So, road trip it is. First stop, gonna visit my friend and podcast co-host again. Ain’t seen her in a hot minute, and she’s declared it well past time we got together again for some shenanigans, and I agree. But after that? Where to?

I’m not sure yet. I don’t intend to be away for long, but I do want to show the young man something cool. Something he’ll remember for a long, long time. And remember that we had a great trip to see it.

Of course, it’s exactly the journey that’ll prove ultimately important and memorable, but a worthy destination has yet to be decided on. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments.

If it wasn’t happening so soon, I’d take him to Modern Rogue HQ down in Texas for the Founders Day Picnic and Eclipse Viewing, but I think tickets sold out, and I’ve gotta wait til the boy finishes school for the year before we go anywhere. But it had crossed my mind.

There will be pictures, probably.