Thursday - evening

 The daily rain events just keep coming. We had hours worth of down pour yesterday and last night.  Tomorrow it's supposed to rain in the afternoon, Friday an 89% chance of rain and then perhaps this weekend it will dry out .  Low chance of rain, but I've been seeing that be wrong a lot lately.  You'll see an 8% chance of rain and then - I guess we were in the 8% zone cause it rained.  I can't mow the grass is the problem and it's getting really tall now. Like, I need to spend an entire day out there cutting down grass the entire 7 acres.  

The riding mower will hack down the vast majority of it quickly but then you have the weedeater you have to use which eats up a lot of time and some push mower activity.  Anyway, I'll get to it as soon as the grass is dry enough to cut.  

The kids have been grounded -from pretty much everything -for almost a week now.  Not my doings but I would certainly deserved, definitely on the part of the younger one.  He is a complete train wreck.  The bs from him is never ending. Today? Some kid at school was mocking him and making faces and hand gestures and the like so what did this kid do? He kicked him and kicked him hard. Hard enough that the boy had to go to the nurse and the principal is demanding mom to go to school tomorrow for a meeting.

What else are they supposed to do? This kid has been through a real psychiatrist, endless counseling, church, parents trying all kinds of punishments AND appeasements - treats, privileges etc - and NOTHING is working.  Oh, don't forget the pills, of which they recently changed upped the dosage and has had absolutely no effect.  I fear for his future if he doesn't overcome all of this defiance and anger.  Especially the anger - this kid gets angry and at his age, easy enough to deal with but what happens when he's a teenager and much bigger?  Throw him against the wall? 

They kick kids out of school who behave like that and this boy is definitely heading that way.  It won't take a lot of that kind of behavior before they decide he can move on to somewhere else, anywhere else.  

Jesus is the answer? Yes, but how to implement that?  He's had a lot of church exposure and they are definitely teaching those kids about the Gospel. NOTHING seems to penetrate his internal shields.  I would almost call this situation demonic but I won't  go quite that far with it - yet.  I don't envy mom having to sit in front of a principal tomorrow morning. She won't try to defend his behavior, not at all. She will explain everything they have been doing to try and get him past this.  It's not  like they are bad parents or lazy or slacking off. 

I dunno, but the older kid doesn't really get into that much trouble, but he's grounded for extended period as well.  In fact, they can only earn one thing back per week. So far, the younger one appears like he'll never get anything. We're talking tv, bicycle, games, all of it.  He can play with his toys and that's it.  

The kid left - he graduated and he took the tractor, of course. It's his, or his family's anyway, I didn't expect him to leave it but I really need a tractor ON the property, not something I have to rent and set a whole day aside every time I need to do it. I am very tempted to get into payments on one. This isn't a desire, a luxury or I can get along with out it type of deal. I have the driveway which needs dragged, I have fields that need bush hogged and I have dirt that needs moved. This is all tractor work.  

I do not want more payments but how do I get by without the use of one?  I'm not rushing into one right yet, I will give it time and think about the ramifications of yet another $400 per month payment going on for at least 5 years. I'm getting up there in years, how much more time do I have left to work? Will my health hold out? If it fails, do I lose everything?  How do I mitigate that potential?  Some kind of insurance maybe?  I don't know.  

I will say that I have qualified for a loan for a Mahindra, but after looking at their reviews, I decided against that.  United (John Deere) has also approved me for a loan, but they are higher priced.  I am looking at monthly payments that I can afford, I dunno about them. The thing is, they are the only tractor dealer in town.  You have to go to surrounding towns for different brands of tractors.  

Editing: I completely screwed this post up with the previous post that I just posted, thinking it was this post and not combining the stuff together, lol.