So Proud Of Him . . .

It’s Monday morning, so of course, I’m here at the store, doubling today.  Drew got up and was out of the apartment at eight to make a car payment and take care of who knows what.  Of course I was thinking about him this morning while I was setting things up and what do you know?  He shows up here!  I said hi, and he went to the office to print out this week’s schedule, as well as to write up a thing about everyone needing to turn in a copy of their driver’s license, the declaration page of their insurance policy, registration, and social security card.

Now, I need to give a bit of background, here.  Drew is a horrible speller who doesn’t much care for things like punctuation or proper grammatical set up in sentences.  He’s the kind of person who would write an E-mail, "Hey how are doing  I am going be off work tommorow should we meet up"  (I admit, that may not be exactly what he’d say, but that’s how he would type it.)

Yeah.  Considering I’m a self-admitted Grammar Nazi, it drives me up the wall.  And then when he’s pissed off, it’s even worse.  His sentence structure just goes completely out the window!  Well, I guess it doesn’t drive me as nuts as it could.  I’m used to it by now, and I can pretty well decipher what he’s trying to say.  Even if I have no idea what the sentence would translate to if someone else were writing it, I get the gist of things.

Anyway, this past . . . Thursday night?  Yeah, Thursday night.  I made dinner for us because I’ve had pork chops in the freezer for a few weeks.  I decided to thaw them and make them and mashed potatoes for us.  We ate together and we were talking and somehow it got around to kilts.  (He does know, despite being adopted, that Scottish is part of his heritage.)  He was gonna look something up online about them, but wasn’t sure he had the spelling correct.  I spelled it for him, he went on his computer, and while we were looking at the list of things that came up, I said to him, "You know, if you wanted, I could help you become a better speller."  He didn’t really have a reaction to that, which I took as promising.  Normally, if I’d made an offer like that, he’d say how he was fine the way he was, he knows he’s a horrible speller, he’s no writer, that’s how he’s been for years, he’s not about to change now.  Like I said, I took his virtual lack of reaction as a good sign.  I didn’t say anything more about it, though.  Just put the idea out there for him.  I’ve learned that’s the best thing with him.  Present the idea to him and then back away slowly, because if you pressure him for an answer, then he’s just going to resist, even if it’s something he should definitely do.

Anyway.  He started typing up that thing, and this is what it says, (completely grammatically correctly, as if I’d typed it,): Attention All Domino’s Employees

I need copies of everyones’ Declaration page of their car insurance, DL, registration, and SS card no later than Friday, 12/11/2009.

This is mandatory for everyone.

Thank you,
Management.

There are still a few mistakes in there.  He put "everyone’s," "there" instead of "their," and "then" instead of "than."  Oh, yeah.  And has an apostrophe in "employees."  All in all, not horrible mistakes.  Someone like me will definitely catch them, but what seriously impressed me was that while he was in the office, starting to type this up, he calls out to me, "How do you spell ‘declaration’?"  I spelled it for him as I walked into the office and then watched as he continued typing, pausing and struggling when he got to ‘registration.’  So I also spelled that one for him.  I’m just so proud of him for that, that he actually asked me.  I mean, I guarantee he’ll never verbally admit it, but he’s trusting me more.  He’s leaning a bit more on me.  Perhaps finally acknowledging to himself that we’re a team.  Of course, him acknowledging it out loud would be nothing short of a miracle, but hey, as I’ve said before, baby steps.

Perfect example of said baby steps:  Saturday, it snowed here.  And I wrote about this in my prior entry.  Him waiting up for me, but conking out in his recliner and him waking up when I got home, us talking for a bit, then him saying, "Okay, now that I know you’re home safe, I’m going to bed."  I love that.  That he stayed in the living room, just so he could know I made it home safely.

Yesterday may have also had an example of that.  You know, one of those situations where his actions prove what he’s determined not to say kind of things?  He came to the store early and ended up falling asleep in the office for about three hours.  (He wasn’t scheduled till five.  Well, actually four, but whatever.  Especially when not a lot’s going on in the store, you know, minimal amount of orders, stuff like that, it’s actually better people don’t clock in, because if they do, labor goes really high and Jane and the owner, Ron, complain about that.)  And at one point, Rob comes up to me and asks why Drew came in early if he was just gonna sleep.  I said I didn’t know.  He kinda shrugged, too, and then said something like, "I guess he just wants to be near you."

I think he’s right.  Drew won’t admit it to me right now, for some reason, but he’s been having nightmares.  Or at least bad/disturbing dreams recently.  Definitely since our last argument on November 3rd.  I’ll hear him in his room, snoring away, and then all of a sudden, he stops snoring and in a tone of voice that either sounds like pleading or whimpering, he’ll say "No . . . no, no . . .  No . . ."  anywhere from twice to five or six times in a row.  And he sounds distressed when he’s saying it.  I hate that.  I wanna talk to him about it, soon, but I don’t know how receptive he’ll be.  When I last asked him if he was having nightmares, he insisted he wasn’t.  But last night, same thing, I hear him stop snoring and start with the "No’s," and . . . I don’t know what to do.  He’s losing sleep because of it, I’m sure.  I mean, we got to sleep close to three in the morning last night and he was already up and out of the apartment at eight this morning to take care of his car payment!  Which means he probably got up closer to seven!  That’s not good, especially considering he really didn’t get sleep on Thursday night, Friday he had to close and then we got up at nine to go to the bank . . .  Luckily Saturday night he was conked out when I got home, but I’m still worried about him.

He’s got a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday.  Going for a physical and whatnot.  Probably gonna get another prescription for his blood pressure meds, which’ll be good.  I’m glad he started taking those again.  He said theymake him tired, but I’d rather him have that side effect while on them than have something really bad happen to him cuz he’s off them.

He came to the store a bit ago, too, pissed off about his phone.  He’s got a Blackberry Curve that has the trackball, and that thing’s been giving him problems almost since Day One.  He had the phone replaced once because something happened to it and it refused to turn back on, and just in the past week or so, he’s taken the phone back to Verizon and had the trackball replaced twice.  Anyway, he’s really pissed off because they keep telling him that he’d have to pay for a new phone (new model, I mean, instead of getting a replacement of the same one of the one he has), they can’t just give him one, yada, yada, yada.  So, he’s got an LG Verizon flip phone that he bought when he was just doing prepay before I added him to my plan.  He asked today if he’d be able to transfer the Blackberry phone number to the LG, and use the LG on the service plan we have.  They said he could, so that’s what he’s gonna do.  Then, in March, when I have the 100 dollar credit towards an upgrade, I’m gonna use that for him and get him a new phone.

On the upside, for how pissed he is about the situation, he did calm down as time passed.  I mean, after he got off with a woman in customer service, he basically threw the phone on the counter, told me he was gonna give me the money to disconnect it, and stormed out of the store.  I followed and we talked at his car for a bit.  He calmed down some as we talked, and I asked what he was gonna do for a phone.  He said he didn’t know, so I presented a bit of logic.  It sucked, but probably the only thing we could do was deal with the Blackberry till March and then I would do the upgrade thing for him.  It was the only way it wouldn’t cost us more money, really.  (He hadn’t thought of the LG yet.)  And I said I knew it was annoying, but I’d rather him have that phone on him so I had some way of contacting him.  Then I asked if I could go and grab it for him.  He said he didn’t care and I said ‘d be right back.  I got the phone and the casing he has for it, came back out, and as I handed it to him, I asked if he wanted to hear the good news.

See, and this is another whole story, on Halloween, Drew had an especially bad day because of some kinda fight with his ex or something with his kids, or both.  So, he’s been drooling over these Highlander swords for awhile.  I decided to buy him one.  But the one I picked out wasn’t the one he wanted to get first, so when I told him I ordered it for him, he was all, "Oh, call up and switch it to this one."  Well, I did that, but instead of just switching it over, I ended up using my mom’s credit card, (after begging her, of course,) and getting him an autographed sword.  Two autographed ones, actually.  And I was told from the beginning, back at the start of November when I talked to the woman on a Thursday, I think it was, that the swords would be signed that following Monday and then sent out.  And the "free gift" sword that wasn’t autographed that I was supposed to receive would be set out that day.

Well, it turns out the "free gift" sword is on back order and we were never informed.  And neither actor had been in the studio where the signings take place for several weeks.  I found out a week ago yesterday that I never should have been told that they’d be signed on such and such a day, because none of them know when the actors will definitely stop by to do it.  Well, I gave them my E-mail, cuz the one I talekd to said that as soon as something happened, I would be E-mailed with a UPS tracking number and when the sword was sent out.  (Yeah, I’m still waiting on the other one.)  Well, about two hours after my E-mail was confirmed with her, I got an E-mail with a tracking number.  Drew called UPS and gave them said tracking number and found out that the one I was given?  It’s going to somewhere in Lincoln, Nebraska!

But last night, I checked my voicemail, because an 866 number had called me, left a message, and it turned out it was UPS, telling me my package that had to be signed for would arrive tomorrow (today, Monday.)  And I just talked to my mom, and it got there!  Happiness!

Didn’t tell Drew that it got there.  Actually, I didn’t know it had gotten there when I came out and asked if he wanted the good news.  The good news I told him is that the sword will be here tomorrow.  And what I’m gonna do is pick it up from my parents’ house tonight, leave a note for my mom that I’m bringing it with me, wrap it up tonight all pretty-like with the paper and silver bow I have, and leave a note for Drew, telling him to wake me up before he goes to work tomorrow.  Then, I’ll give it to him.

Lol, well, that about covers today so far.  I may write more later, but right now, I’m hungry.

All I can really say is . . . I love him.  And I’m so proud of him.