Day 1,791 - The Final Week Begins

It’s crazy to say but today marked the last week of summer vacation. By this time next week, Ellie and Ethan will have finished their first day of the school year. By that same logic, it means that I will have gone from being a stay-at-home dad to being simply unemployed. Actually, I think I prefer to say “between jobs”. Sure it’s been eight years since I last held a nine-to-five but “between jobs” sounds so much better than “being simply unemployed”.

Actually, the truth is that I’ve continually been asked one question over and over again the past few months. What’s next? Somewhat unfortunately for me, I don’t really know; I’m kind of in the midst of a relatively big shift in my life. That being said, I do sort of have a plan in store for the near future. I know that doesn’t sound very certain but such is the life of a substitute teacher. For the record, this won’t be the first time that I’ve worked as a substitute. It seems like a good option during this time of transition. I can still have summers free and also be available for field trips or if a kid is sick or has a doctor’s appointment.

Of course, it goes without saying that are quite a few hoops one has to jump through when working with kids. There’s the normal stuff like job applications but then there are other things like getting a substitute teaching certification and getting fingerprinted. That last thing is actually what I got to go and take care of this morning with Ellie and Ethan in tow.

Ellie and Ethan have been to a lot of various appointments with me over the years. I can say with the utmost certainty though that they have never been with me to get fingerprinted. Honestly, I thought that they might find the process kind of intriguing. Unfortunately, I was somewhat wrong about that.

When we first arrived at the fingerprinting place, it was fairly obvious that the kids were not in a mood to be patient. They were immediately asking when we were going to be done and proclaiming that they were bored. Now I realize that sitting in a waiting room probably isn’t the most exciting thing for a kid but I figured they’d be fine for a little bit. Especially after the front desk worker gave them fun-sized candy bars.

Real life experience of my kids

Once we got called back for fingerprinting, the kids became more interested in what was going on. They watched fairly intently as I placed my fingers on a scanner time and time again. The most interesting part to them though had to be when I would roll my fingers across the scanner so that it could take images of my entire fingerprint at once. Before that, I really didn’t realize that my fingertips had so many scars but it’s fairly obvious once you see an entire image of your fingerprint at once. For some reason, I had to have a picture taken with my head completely level as part of the processing. For someone that has a natural tilt to their head, I never realized how difficult it could be to keep my face completely level. Of course, it didn’t help that Ethan kept distracting me by trying to get in the picture himself.

Finally, we were done and could leave the fingerprinting office. As the kids happily skipped out to the car, I definitely felt tinges of both relief and sadness. Relief because we were done with the process of me getting fingerprinted and sadness because I realized that there won’t be many more times of me taking the kids to do stuff with me over the summer. Even if it is just something as boring as fingerprinting!

#DaddyWrite