Tuesday, August 4, 2026

On Tuesday morning, all on his own with no reminder, Chase told Nanaw he would take out the recycling and the trash. Nanaw was very impressed, and she told Mama what the boy had done, and Mama said she was so impressed. For lunch, Chase requested the chicken nugget frozen TV dinner so that’s what Nanaw fixed for him. Mama forwarded another email from Gibault, this one from the principal. Among the things it said were: Students will wear their full uniforms to orientation next Thursday and Friday. They can pick up their school schedules this week on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. Chase wants to go pick his up on Thursday after his 12:30 haircut appointment with Brittany. They’re having a New Family Pot Luck next Friday evening, August 14, and Nanaw asked Mama if she could go with them. Mama said she had to ask Chase; Nanaw did, and he said, yes, she could go. In the afternoon, Nanaw asked Chase if he could help her get the suitcases and boxes up on the shelves downstairs, and he did. He also helped her move some tables around. He’s very strong because of the workouts, and Nanaw was grateful for his help and for his strength. When Nanaw took Chase home, Mama talked about ice cream before school starts, and she thinks they can go next Wednesday, August 12, the night before Chase’s first orientation day. The last picture is a basket of cat toys from the little house that Nanaw is giving to Tyler. 

Monday, August 3, 2026

On Monday, Chase had his usual healthy breakfast and snack, with a lot of protein and calcium – including cashews, almonds and sunflower and pumpkin seeds. His Lunchable wasn’t quite as healthy. He had his workout in the afternoon, from 2 to 3. It wasn’t as hot outside as it’s been but he came out very sweaty. On the way home, Chase and Nanaw had a really nice chat/conversation about Gibault and what high school is going to be like. It isn’t often that nice talks happen so Nanaw was very happy about it. They talked about how much bigger ICS is than Gibault. Nanaw looked up the numbers online and found that ICS has an enrollment of between 345 and 393 students, depending on the year, which makes sense because it covers 11 years, from preschool to 8th grade. Gibault has an enrollment of 170 to 192 students, depending on the year. Gibault has a teacher to student ratio of of 12 to 1. Nanaw will share those numbers with Chase. He talked about the day last school year when he shadowed Dante at Gibault, one of the students he knew from ICS. He said he thought the class length was shorter at Gibault than at ICS. He was very firm about not wanting to be in band anymore. He enrolled in a drawing class instead. He also was happy to be done with ICS and was looking forward to Gibault. Mr. G. sent out an email with information about the coming school year that Nanaw posted in the laundry room and gave a copy to Chase to read. They have early dismissal on the first Thursday of every month at 2:20 p.m. to make time for faculty meetings so Nanaw will have to make a lot of reminders so she picks Chase up on time. Nanaw printed out a lunch menu, and Chase looked at and said he thought the food sounded better than ICS. When Nanaw took Chase home, Mama wasn’t there because she was having a birthday dinner with Auntie LaLa. The picture of Chase at the laptop is him playing a golf game that’s on Roblox. The second to last picture is a little bowl that Mama used to eat out of when she was a little girl that Nanaw found downstairs. Mama said she wanted it if Nanaw didn’t want to keep it so Nanaw said she would give it to Mama. 

Saturday, August 1, and Sunday, August 2, 2026

Chase told Mama and she told Nanaw that Amelie never responded to Chase’s text. Mama said, oh, well, at least he tried. On Saturday morning, Daddy and Chase were going to go play golf at their regular place but it got flooded so it needs to dry out. They had to go to another golf course – Mama thinks it’s called the Bridges, and it’s off Mule Road, so it’s not too far. Of course, they had a good time. Mama said they said they had fun, even though they got rained on a little. They had Burger King for dinner. Chase is getting more and more interested in golf. It’s a shame that he can’t fit Gibault golf into his schedule this year because of hockey and baseball. On Saturday night, Nanaw went to a concert at her church and took the picture below. It was great and next time, she’ll take Mama and Chase. On Sunday morning, Daddy and Chase went to church. Then in the afternoon, Daddy, Mama and Chase went to a BBQ with the parents and kids from Chase’s new Columbia hockey team. The team is sponsored by Columbia High School but is open to anyone who lives in Columbia. They met the coaches and a lot of the parents. Chase knows a couple of the boys from years ago when they all played on the Khoury League baseball teams. After the BBQ, Mama and Chase brought Tyler over to Nanaw’s house for his sleepover while the new floor gets installed at the house. Nanaw was happy to see him – he’s such a sweet kitty. The last picture is Chase's first semester high school schedule.

Friday, July 31, 2026

Mama and Chase didn’t take the comforters and blankets to Helping Strays on Friday morning because it was pouring down rain. They’ll take them another time. Around noon, it had stopped raining so Mama and Chase picked up Nanaw to go to Bread Company for lunch. Mama and Chase had French onion soup, and Chase got a cookie with M&Ms on it. Nanaw had a half Caesar salad, a cinnamon crunch bagel and an orange scone. She tried to pay for her extravagant lunch but Mama wouldn’t let her. Next, they went to Target to buy high school supplies for Chase. He insisted that they call them high school supplies, not just school supplies. A while ago, Mama set up a debit card for Chase; she now deposits his $10 a week allowance in the debit card account. He stores the actual debit card behind his phone in the phone case. Chase picked out two kinds of plastic golf tees and paid for them with his debit card. It was the first time he’d actually used the debit card so he asked Nanaw to come along with him. He handled everything well, considering what went wrong. First, one of the packages of tees didn’t have a UPC barcode so Chase had to find a Target employee to help him. She was able to look up the tees and type in the barcode number. Then when Chase used the debit card, it asked for a pin number, which he didn’t think he had. The Target employee came over again and showed him what key to press to get the machine to bypass its request for a pin number. Nanaw was very proud that Chase handled all the problems so well. .On the drive home, Mama and Nanaw asked Chase if he’d ever heard anything from Amelie, and he said she texted him that she got a new phone and she sent him her new phone number. They asked if he answered her, and he said he texted okay. Then they told him he should text her something, and he sent a hello text but at first it didn’t go through so he did it again but Mama didn’t know if it went through or if she texted back, and Mama didn’t ask. Mama and Nanaw tried to explain to Chase that he had to talk to girls and people but they don’t think he understood what they were talking about: the importance of communication.

Thursday, July 30, 2026

Nanaw weighed and measured Chase on Thursday, and he weighed 122.5 pounds and was still 5 foot 6 inches tall. He’s gained 3.5 pounds since last month, and Mama said it was muscle weight from all those workouts he’s doing. Uncle Mike came over today and helped Nanaw with her solar fireworks lights that weren’t working. She had put them all on the porch where there’s no sunlight. She didn’t realize that because they’re solar lights, they need to be out in the bright sunlight to get charged. Uncle Mike put them in a circle in the part of the front yard that gets lots of sunlight. And tonight they were shining brightly. Nanaw sent Uncle Mike a picture of them so he could see that the non-shining problem was solved. Chase had a workout at 2 p.m. today, and Uncle Mike was still there when they got back home. He had finished cutting the grass and trimming the grapevines. He found four cucumbers that Nanaw had no idea were there. They were on the back side of the plants where Nanaw never looks so from now on, she’ll have to look there also. When Nanaw took Chase home, Mama told her about what they were doing on Saturday. They’re going to Gibault to help with work around the campus – something to do with dirt. The students who come to help will get three hours of community service credit. Each student has to do ten hours of community service work each year so this will count for that. Mama has the day off tomorrow, and in the morning she and Chase are going to Helping Strays to donate a big pile of blankets and comforters for the dogs. Then they’re going to pick up Nanaw and they’ll all go to Bread Company for lunch. Yum!

Wednesday, July 29, 2026

On Wednesday morning, Chase texted Nanaw asking if she could come pick him up at 9 instead of 10 from the sleepover. He wanted her to bring him back to her house before they went to Gibault for the technical session so that’s what Nanaw did. Nanaw got to see Drew and Brady when she picked Chase up.  Cole had left earlier and Nanaw’s not sure whether Joey was still there or not. Chase said he’d fallen asleep about 2 a.m., which is earlier than usual at a sleepover. He said he wanted to get enough sleep for the technical session. It turned out that Nanaw didn’t have to sit with Chase during the session, so she sat in a room next to where the students were working on their laptops and talked with one of the parents waiting for his son. Joey was there and so was Nick, Evie and Cam. Those were the only ones Nanaw recognized. Chase was one of the first students to get his laptop set up, so Chase and Nanaw got to leave early. While Chase was working on his laptop, Mr. Gregson came by, and Nanaw had a nice chat with him about his granddaughter and his son who’s in the Marines in Japan. Mama and Nanaw are happy that they get to see Mr. Gregson again. It turns out that Mama didn’t realize the school was providing Word so she bought a license for Chase’s computer, and he now has two copies. They don’t know what they’re going to do about it. In the afternoon, Chase fell asleep for a little while, still tired from the sleepover.

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Today was cleaning lady day so after Nanaw finished straightening up the house, she and Chase went over to his house. While Nanaw watched her soap opera and played with Tyler the kitty, Chase watched TV in his room and played on his phone. Nanaw had asked him to do his Python lesson this morning but he forgot to do it. Once again, for his lunch Chase heated up his pizza and bread sticks in the microwave, putting a cup of water in with them to make them soft. Nanaw needs to make a correction as to where the pizza and breadsticks came from. Nanaw thought Mama brought them home from her driveway adventure at Uncle Mike’s. But Chase said that was wrong. It came from Papa John’s and was left over from dinner the other night. When Chase and Nanaw came back home, they worked with Chase’s new laptop in preparation for tomorrow’s tech session at Gibault. Chase is meeting with a tech person to get his laptop set up with the school requirements. Chase and his friends have a sleepover at Drew’s house tonight. Then Nanaw is going to pick him up tomorrow morning at Drew’s to take him to Gibault for the tech session. Chase said Truman was going to sleep with Mama tonight while he was at his sleepover.