Staying Thankful Through the Good and Bad

Are your kids the same as ours? We never really know which ones we’re going to wake up to in the morning. Yesterday, we woke up to angels.

Meagan focused on a school project all day. When she asked for anything, she did it quietly and respectfully. After a string of spills all over the house Julie and I had to initiate a draconian “no drinks out of the kitchen” rule. Meg was aware of the rule and respectfully asked if she could have a cup of hot tea downstairs in her room while she continued working on her project. She actually said, “I know this is a long shot, but may I respectfully ask to drink a cup of tea in my room.”

How could we say no to such a sweet request? Of course we let her have the tea!

Jordan spent much of his time yesterday playing games in his room and talking with his friends online. Likewise, he was quiet and respectful all day. He and Meg are often the equivalent of oil and water, they just don’t mix, but yesterday was a wonderful exception. They were polite and perfect children straight out of a storybook.

For the first time in a long time, Julie and I were completely at ease come bedtime. We had no problem falling asleep and enjoyed a terrific full night of rest to wake up refreshed to a new day this morning.

Then, everything went back to normal as the devils rose from slumber. Jordan was the first one up and wasn’t particularly bad, but was just wound up. Babbling nonsense, making noises and humming a tuneless rhythm while either ignoring us or taking forever to finish doing things. We maintained our patience until Meg woke up.

We asked both of them to join us with every intention of raining praise on them for their great behavior yesterday. We didn’t get a chance to. Jordan was screaming because we were distracting him from his leftover pizza. Meg was swaying back and forth acting like she was falling back to sleep on her feet.

This continued through most of the day. Screaming. Animosity. Fighting. No fun.

Two good things:

  • Kat came home, washed the dogs, and cleaned the bathroom without being asked to do it.
  • Julie made potato soup and it was delicious.

But you know, I should add one more big #3.

  • We enjoyed a wonderful Saturday afternoon together.

When life gets a little stressful we need to remember to be thankful for the little things. Furthermore, Jordan and Meagan reminded us yesterday how great they can be.

Stargate Atlantis

The acting is terrible, the plot is predictable, and with the exception of a few cameo appearances I have never seen the actors anywhere else before I began watching Stargate Atlantis.
And now I can’t stop watching it.
Julie was perusing Netflix several weeks ago searching for new TV shows to watch when she dialed up the Stargate. After a glimpse of the show I was reluctant to watch; just listening while the show played as I sat on the couch stumbling around the Internet on my MacBook.
My brain is always running on overtime while I try to learn from everything around me. That makes me a bit of a snob when it comes to how I use my time, but it’s OK to turn down the knobs on my brain, relax, and just enjoy a good show. Now I can admit that Stargate Atlantis is just fun to watch.

Stephen Fry on Grammar Nazis

If you’re a sesquipedalian such as myself, I believe you will agree this is delightful:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY&fs=1&hl=en_US]
Stephen Fry on Grammar Nazis:

You do seek out opportunities to point out the grammatical errors of other people? If so, Stephen Fry holds you in contempt. He argues that (1) the subjective and changing nature of language prevents definitive grammatical forms and (2) you’re a pretentious pedant.

(Via Paul Caolo)

Halloween Preparations

Today we shopped for halloween costumes and it confirmed my belief that commercial halloween costumes suck. They’re overpriced and made of that weird polyester material that will barely hold up through one night. The best costumes are original and made at home.
At least shopping gave us an excuse to visit one of our favorite restaurants, Fresh 2 Order (@f2o on Twitter). The gourmet meals are cooked to order from fresh ingredients and the price is right. Julie always gets the bourbon steak with garlic mashed potatoes and I usually follow suit, but I stick to the default side order of a grit cake (don’t knock it until you try it, they are to die for). Today; however, I tried the almond chicken skewers with sweet mashed potatoes. Perfection! I even enjoyed the purple cabbage salad that came with the meal.
After a tour of duty that included Halloween Express, Party City, and Target, we ended up with a Scream costume for Jordan. Then we hit Publix for some groceries and Julie spared further torture for me and Jordan. She dropped us off at the house and took the girls to Wal-Mart to continue the quest. I think she is going to buy material to replicate a “candy corn witch” costume Kat saw online. Then, we’re going to swallow our pride and buy a different kind of witch costume for Meagan online.
Hey, the girls picked them out. We didn’t ask them to be witches!

Howling at the Moon

Sometimes kids can melt your heart and make you feel like master of the world. Other times, not so much.
This morning, Jordan was wearing Meagan’s jeans and howling to make her mad. Meg was screaming at him to take them off and singing the same four notes of a song she likes these days. Kat was in the middle trying to be the sane one, asking them to please stop over and over like politely whispering into a hurricane to please just go away.
Jordan and Meagan, at ages 11 and 12, are good kids at heart, but their sweet core is surrounded by psychotic, hormonal middle school madness that makes life, shall we say, challenging at times. Katheryn has finally past that wild-eyed stage of youth into her later teenage years.
Julie and I will just have to keep praying for patience. If their behavior pattern is anything like Kat’s, then we know that this too shall pass. I just wish it would pass a little faster, then slow down so we can enjoy each other’s company with less howling, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

Writing for Different Audiences

Julie is in the bedroom working on a research paper that will bring her a step closer to her master’s degree* and I’m enjoying some relatively mindless writing in the office. My blog—this blog—has cobwebs in the corners. That may be appropriate for the upcoming halloween season, but I’m not happy with it.
I’ve always said I wanted to be a writer. I got paid to write for years and still do to a great extent, but I don’t feel like a writer at all. Not in my heart. I don’t feel like a writer because I don’t write. I’m (still) working to change that.
Here is a quick bit from one of my favorite writers on the Internet these days, Merlin Mann , from an article about personal productivity published by The Guardian:

“Joining a Facebook group about personal productivity is like buying a chair about jogging,” says Mann, who had a personal epiphany when he realised [sic] that his work had become “less about finishing the tasks that mean a lot to me and more about an almost talmudic debate about how to think about those tasks”. He switched focus to emphasise [sic] the need to “make and do” as well as talk when it comes to productivity, arguing that tools matter but only once you have developed the expertise; before you get the expertise they can be nothing more than a distraction.
As he puts it: “Will an iPhone productivity app make you more productive? It will make you more productive if you’re in a position to become more productive. But better running shoes are not going to make you a faster runner if you’ve never run before – they are just going to make you a fat man with running shoes.”

* – I’m incredibly proud of my wife for her hard work juggling her job, being a great mom, and finishing school.

Happy and Broke

After a period of imaginary wealth, our loan money has run out and our fall projects are complete. It was nice while it lasted and some of our purchases will be with us for a long time.
Big Green Egg loaded with two chickens and pork roast. Julie and I made the table. #fbDuring the past month, we got a new roof, which was at the top of the list. We bought a Big Green Egg to replace the second in a short lineage of dying gas grills and the lumber to build a table to hold the new grill, which tested our carpentry skills (We passed). We also got a new HDTV outfitted with a 2nd generation Apple TV to replace the aging CRT in our master bedroom.
I even managed to pay off a credit card.
One freebie that found us last week is a 19-inch monitor that was stored in my mother-in-law’s attic. When we were looking for something to replace the TV in the bedroom we thought it might work, but it was too small and the resolution was a little hinky when we connected the Apple TV. Even though it didn’t serve its intended purpose, she told me to go ahead and keep it; that it would just get stuck back in the attic if we returned it.
With the addition of the monitor, I’m trying to figure out how to set up my desk. Right now the monitor is in front of me with the MacBook scooted off to the right and the bluetooth keyboard in front of me. I’m considering closing the MacBook altogether. I enjoy having two displays, but this setup is a little weird. The sizes are too different. It could be because all of the connectors are on the left side of the MacBook. Maybe if I move it to the left of the LCD monitor I can get the screen closer together and it will make some sort of sense.
[pause to shuffle electric components around my desk]
Meh, after some scooting around it’s a little better. I guess it is an improvement. I just know that the monitor is much easier on my eyes. With a little more rearranging, I think I will like it. This arrangement displaced my physical inbox, which sucks a bit, so there is still some work to do.

Bad Day for Vacation

Today was my first day off work for fall break. We get Friday and Monday—a four-day weekend—and I’ve got doctors appointments scheduled on Monday. I planned to spend today getting a few things in order that I’ve let slide. My desk in the office is spilling over with junk mail, bills, stuff to read, and other items to process.
campbells-cream-of-potato-soup-condensed-50-oz-can-12-cs.jpgMy stomach felt a little crazy last night before bed, but I managed to get to sleep…until about 1:30 a.m. That’s when I started doing laps between the bed and the bathroom. A stomach bug! Great. I continued doing laps until about 10 a.m. when the sluices finally eased off a bit, but sleep was still out of the question. I dozed fitfully until sunrise and into the morning and afternoon before I finally sat up in bad and grabbed a computer to try to get my mind off the pain in my gut.
Then, the headache set in (did I mention we’re having our roof replaced? kapow! kapow! kapow!) followed by alternating chills and sweats. I have been able to eat about five saltines and half a bowl of Campbell’s potato soup before I started making laps again. So yeah, it’s been a pretty rotten vacation day.