Clancy59

Interesting start. I’m looking forward to the discussion.

Steven is proving himself to be a terrific brother to Puppy. It’s just what he needs to acclimate to his new life. Such happenings! Susan becomes Mum, Dave becomes his boyfriend, he gets to start school soon! Wow! If he had been on the old meds, I wonder if he would have been able to enjoy all this without getting overwhelmed and going off the deep end. Now Greenstone. Something stinks there and it seems to be getting worse. Legally, I don’t have a problem with Watson adopting Cindy. It’s happened in real life where caretakers/teachers have wound up adopting kids. I have a friend who did this! But, why the secrecy? Watson knows how close the 2 kids are. Why would he prevent them from contacting each other, especially if Cindy is happy about all this? Does she think Puppy has abandoned her? Watson should bring her up-to-date about that. There seems to be more going on than we know at this time.

A lovely visit to see how the Duke and his family are settling into a peaceful life filled with love. This is a lovely way to start a Saturday morning. Thank you. I’m sure others will agree that we would love to see more visits with the family as they have settled in. Maybe at a Grand Reception after the renovations are complete. Maybe with the Royal Princes visiting. We don’t mean to be greedy, but happiness is always welcome.

I am also very suspicious of Greenstone and what has happened to Cindy. I am quite concerned about and for her. I’m glad Listern is gone, but does this mean he is pulling the same garbage somewhere else? I said before that Puppy has won the family lottery. First Susan, and then Max, don’t even flinch an eye when it is revealed that Puppy is gay. Steven doesn’t count, because most kids in his generation respond the way he did. I am quite annoyed at that surgeon. “Oh, no! You don’t need crutches. Just pretend you haven’t injured your foot or you can hop around on one leg!” I’m glad the nurse is going to reprimand him, politely. She seems to more of a Physician’s Assistant than an RN, actually. She seems to have enough authority to give medical orders without getting approval from a supervising MD.

Somehow I missed this chapter and I am now making up for lost time! I can see that Remis has a new nickname, at least here in the Comments—McAlpha! Love it! I am also concerned with how Steurm is going to take the news that he lost MPCP. It’s a good thing there are so many mages involved to help protect both the Pack and Vinny and Mason. Is he aware of this? I will love seeing his reaction, if not. If he is involved with Stefan, there is a lot of trouble coming down the pike.

Puppy has certainly hit the jackpot in the parent lottery. He had dreamed of having a family, and his bio father showed up giving him everything he ever wanted. Then his new mother shows herself to be a true gem, not only taking care of him at home, but recognizing his distress upon entering the mall. She did exactly the right thing by giving him time to get control, then offering him the chance to leave, if he wanted. She recognized the panic in the store and poo-pooed the idea that he had hurt her when he grabbed her. If she winds up with bruises from it, she’ll be wearing long sleeves for a few days so he doesn’t realize it. He would feel horrible and it could set off an attack for him. She’s very quick to recognize, and act upon, his needs, even not knowing much about his condition. She also gave him free reign to buy the clothes that he wanted, thereby recognizing him as a young adult capable of making decisions for himself. She is exactly the mother he needs and deserves. And she took him to McDonald’s! Even Steven seems to be coming around a bit. There is still some way to go there, but the first steps have been taken. Now we just need some help for Cindy.

Well, it seems like Adam has matured in his ideas about the girls and providing them with an education equal to that that the boys are receiving (we’ll see when classes are actually organized), but now it seems that some of the Board members need a little schooling! They are now looking at the Academy as a marketplace for spouses for their boys! Sheesh! This old world attitude really needs to go the way of the dodo, quickly! They may serve on the governing Board of these institutions, but these people don’t really have an inkling of what the schools mean to the kids who attend them. That’s obvious by their shock with the number of applications to a girl’s Academy that is still in the planning stages and the applications for future children who haven’t even been conceived! They are starting to get the idea, hopefully!

Wow, @Mawgrim, I would never have come up with all that, although I did wonder about the lack of contact with the outside world. I wondered whether they were keeping their charges more secreted than would normally be done, as in a public facility. They seem to be hyper vigilant about it if the kids don’t even get to go to Mac’s or the movies. (I hope this all makes sense!). I mean, if these kids are kept with private funds, where are those funds coming from and why? They supposedly have no families available, so who is footing the bills, especially for kids like Puppy, who have special needs. It looks like Susan will be good for Puppy. He desperately needs a Mom, and she is ready to be that person! Too bad Steven is suffering from sibling rivalry at 16 years of age for a brother of the same age. One would think he would be excited for the possibilities. Puppy is. Steven is just too used to having everything for/by himself for too long. I laughed when Puppy mentioned Time Team. I have been watching the show on Amazon Prime! I find it very interesting. In the last episode I saw, they did an archeological dig in someone’s house, tearing up their living room and hallway! I couldn’t help but wonder how much cleaning up and restoration they do, because they made a mess of that house and yard!

I wasn’t surprised by Gerry’s comment. I remember my college dining hall and the meals we had on a daily basis. When the family came for my graduation, I remember them commenting on how good the food was. I told them the dining staff were ‘putting on the whole hog’ because the parents were on campus that day. I had them listen to the students who were walking around commenting how great the lunch was that day, “Yeah! Way better than usual!” Some of them figured out it was because parents were there and they wished they were there more often! (We had stopped there for lunch because the graduation timing got messed up due to weather and it had to be split it in two for indoor, morning and afternoon. Guess who’s ceremony was in the afternoon!)

I reread the story description, and this is exactly what is described. Patrick goes down a ‘dark path’ and finds he is capable of inconceivable things. If this is an example of Patrick’s depravity, I don’t know how long I will be sticking around.

That’s all we are asking for. However, the way it was communicated was that the girls were to be taught to be educators (which is a noble pursuit in itself), not possible leaders or partners for leaders. It also came across like the girl’s Academy was going to be there for the boys and their families to pick and choose wives from a select group of girls like they would go into a marketplace. That may not have been the original intent, in fact, I fully believe it was not. However, that was the way it came across. The way @drsawzall writes in the comments, I am obviously not the only person to have this impression.

I started reading this with sympathy for Patrick as the victimized spouse. However, when he resorts to tricks like eye drops in his husband’s smoothie in order to ‘take care of him,’ he is losing my respect. He needs to think before he does more harm than he already has, especially with his psychology background. He is beginning to display signs of narcissism and Meunchausin (sp?) Syndrome, where someone makes another ill to the point of hospitalization so that they can ‘take care of’ their loved one. It’s usually seen in mothers with their children, but there is no reason it couldn’t manifest in a spouse. Patrick admits knowing it is wrong, but does it anyway. He needs help.

We understand the idea that Adam wants the boys to meet and marry girls who are worthy of the them, but the idea that he is providing the Academy to provide those wives is still misogynistic. The girls have the right to have exactly the same education as the boys. If the boys and the girls should ‘find’ each other while attending the Academies, and later the College, fine. I think we are assuming the girls will attend the college with the boys, and not a separate campus. I can somewhat understand having separate facilities for K-12. Studies have actually shown that students CAN do better when they are not trying to preen and show-off for the opposite gender, but the college students should be beyond that at that point. In the meantime, Adam needs to concentrate on training PARTNERS for the boys, not mates. The girls could be equal partners in running/ruling the domains, even if it not officially recognized. But he needs to get out of this Holly Homemaker attitude.

No, getting pumped full of drugs is not good for him, but because of his history of bipolar, I can totally understand the doctor doing it. Puppy was so far gone into the episode that he needed more than simply talking him out of it. This is a highly emotional time he is dealing with, and despite the control he has had, it is not surprising that he was unable to keep the panic and mania under control after receiving the news he had waited for for so long. He tried, but luckily Cindy recognized what was happening and got him help. Thankfully, he trusts her and will do what she tells him, knowing she won’t telll him to do anything that would hurt him.

Good chapter, but I have to point out that Adam’s assumption/designation that the girls will concentrate on the so-called ‘feminine’ professions like education, because they would not be in leadership roles but would be more like the support for the boys who are, is quite misogynistic. Why would he assume they would not be in other leadership roles? There are plenty of strong women who are leaders in business and politics to prove this. We don’t even have to look further than our own WH where we have elected our first female VP to office. It’s a short step to the Presidency from there. Adam’s comment was limiting and shortsighted, and simply insulting, for the girls. I really expected better from him. I think if Marie had heard his comments, she would have let him have it with both barrels. With his attitude, she would have been an RN, not an MD! Someone has to point this out to him and quickly! And don’t give me the excuse that educators had been men for centuries until a couple hundred years ago. We are talking about today’s attitudes now. There is NOTHING wrong with being an educator. I was one for 35 years. But it’s a calling and takes a certain level of skill, patience, and simply, inborn talent to truly survive in today’s school environment. If someone wants/feels/needs to be a teacher, go for it. But don’t assume it simply based upon gender. Once again, sorry for the lecture, but sometimes, things just need to be said.

It’s about time!

I am looking forward to reading this. I hope you are not having any more attacks. They seem to be in the past for me, thankfully, especially after I was put on anxiety med and am now retired (from teaching!). I hope you have your own Cindy who can help you through the worst of them.

Yay! You’re back! I can hardly wait to see where this story takes us. Will we be seeing Gunner and Mike? What about Thomas and the Chicago crew? Speculations abound!

Unfortunately, there are always people like that in any profession, but it is more despicable when it is a person who works with children who don’t/can’t know how to defend themselves. I seriously wonder if she had left another school system (with an under the table agreement ☹️) that would allow her to obtain a position elsewhere. That’s what this sounds like to me. Kudos to Cindy for standing up to her for Puppy and the other kids who had been victimized. Puppy’s panic attack was no small thing. I have had them and it truly feels like you are about to die from a heart attack or asthma attack as you cannot catch a full breath. It can take a while to calm down, and then you are so totally exhausted from it, you can hardly move. In a side note, was this story published previously? I seem to remember reading it quite some time ago, but never finishing it.

That’s what schools do do. The ‘program’ you mention has been a miserable failure based on a bad premise that students fail because they have bad teachers. It never took into account the circumstances of the outside influences that affect those students abilities to concentrate on their education. Things like poverty, language, lack of family support, abuse, etc. Teachers said this when the program was announced. We saw the flaws in it. There was absolutely no way for schools to succeed. It had failure built-in, because if your school did not show improvement each year, it would be designated a failing school. It didn’t matter if you historically had 90% or better with graduation and college attendance, if you didn’t improve that score, you failed. It was built into the program that, eventually, every school would fail. A lot of people didn’t understand that. Many teachers saw it as an initial step to privatizing the public schools and expanding charter schools. You have to admit that those proliferated during the program and have proven to have no better results than the public schools. Sorry, not sorry. You hit a sore point with this issue.

Adam has earned a reputation and it is spreading among ‘his’ boys and beyond. Nobody is going to take advantage of them thinking they are too young or inexperienced as long as he is around! The boys will be able to gain the strength and experience they will need to become the true leaders their various positions will call for, simply because they will have this uninterrupted period of acclimation. It’s almost like an apprenticeship/journeyman program from a hundred plus years ago. The apprentice portion is the education they receive at the Academy and College, and the journeyman portion is when they are out taking their place in the real world and learning the details of their new life positions.

Wow! That must have been some statement that the PRIEST pulled the lever! Wow! 😳 I’m still shocked Adam ordered a second execution, no matter how depraved the individual was. I will admit to a certain satisfaction that I wish we could deal with issues as easily as this in the real world, but still… This should indicate how anxious I was about Adam’s response. I usually wait until the evening and then read 2 chapters. This morning, I had to immediately open this one! I couldn’t wait! I even stopped watching the Olympic Opening Ceremonies for this (at 7:30 am)!

Wow! That’s a head spinner! I don’t know if Adam has the chutzpah to actually order someone’s execution, even in his role as Regent. Is Gerry aware of what is going on? It will be interesting to see what the Council says about the other conspirators.

I don’t think it’s totally unheard of that a royalty would take another name upon ascending to the throne. Where did ‘Gerry’ come from?

That was an extremely satisfying conclusion to an extremely intricate story. Thank you! I also look forward to the short stories and am speculating their content. Rashan and Aoi, definitely. Probably Kaveh and Neith. I can also see Neith and Firuz having a storyline. Others would include Yin and Yija, Andi, Adan…. There are so many possibilities! I can hardly wait!