Two House Blues

Travelling with me on the journey to my new destination is my new house but also tagging along is my old house.  It’s up for sale and people keep telling me the real estate market is improving but the lack of a “Sold” sign tells me otherwise.

This probably isn’t breaking news but having two houses is a pain.  Let’s put aside the fact that I am making payments on one house where nothing but air and dust currently live.  I mean I’m glad to give the air and dust a place to call their own but I’d rather they made the payments themselves.  The other pain is maintenance.  You’d think there wouldn’t be much since no one is living in the house but guess what?  Grass still grows even though no one is there.  Leaves fall, too, and plants die out because seasons still change even though you aren’t living there.

So who has to go over there and take care of the yard?  Me.

(…well, my ex wife does too, but she’s not writing this blog, I am so let’s put the focus on my woes.)

Last week I went over there and did, in the terms of my realtor, “some fall clean-up.”  I took a few hours each day to rake out the beds, trim back some shrubs that had overgrown and had begun to die out, and blow as many leaves as I could into the woods behind and next to the house.  Unfortunately, the lawn tractor we still have there has a rag tangled up in the mower blades and the only way I’m going to be able to get it off is to take the mower deck off the tractor and remove the blades.  I’ve tried cutting it off but it’s taking forever and since I had a limited amount of time, I put my energies into other things like leaf removal.  Luckily, I had my leaf blower so I put on my iPod and started blowing leaves. 

I started with a large bed in the front of the house.  This bed is a raised one with a grouping of trees that managed to stick around after the house was finished being built.  My old house sits at the top of a hill so those trees helped break up the slope but to help even more, a few years ago, I built a stacked stone retaining wall and back filled it with dirt.  I loved that wall.  It took a while for me to finish it but when I was finished, I thought it looked good and it certainly wasn’t going to go anywhere since I put cement along the rear of the wall to help keep it in place.  

Each stone in that wall was picked up, dug up or dragged over by me.  I got the rocks from my property and the surrounding lots.  It was a lot of work but it was worth it because that wall was going to be there long after I was gone.  I just didn’t expect to be gone from it so soon.

I worked my way up the hill and noticed the grass really needed to be mowed.  I was disappointed the tractor was temporarily out of commission because I loved to mow that lawn on the tractor.  Again, I would have my ear buds in and would work my way in circles around the lawn.  I tried to change it up each time I mowed because I read somewhere that was better for the overall growth of the lawn.   Back when my youngest was ….um… younger, she would sit on my lap and mow with me.  I wouldn’t go up or down the big hill when she did that, just did the lower part of the front yard and the side.  She loved it and I loved having her there.  One time she fell asleep while I was mowing which amazed me because the mower is so loud. 

I eventually worked a good portion of the leaves to other side of the driveway where we have yet another hill that was too steep to mow.  We called that hill the “Place where nothing grows.”  Since we couldn’t mow it, we tried planting ivy, shrubs, some type of cactus plant and flowers.  Nothing took for very long.  Finally my ex planted mint and that seem to do the trick.  Too bad we didn’t think of that shortly after we moved in, it may have fully taken over the hill (and probably a good portion of the woods the way mint grows).  It did well but we probably won’t see the full effects…well, at least I hope we won’t see the full effects because that would mean its spring and I still have that house.

I completed my session of leaf blowing by pushing them past the swing set and into the back woods. The swing set was starting to show its age.  My ex-wife and I built that together in a span of about four days.  The girls were so excited to have it (you can see their reaction on this video I made and posted way back when:

 

My youngest had just turned one and I joked that one or both of them would have to get married in it.  Guess that’s not going to happen now…unless we keep in touch with whoever buys the house.  Maybe I can work that into the contract.

I finished up the bit of yard work I was going to do for the day and put the blower and cord back in the garage.  I stood there for a minute and looked around.  While the memories I have are good ones, I really didn't like having to revisit them just yet.  Being reminded of the good times I had at the house and the knowledge that those times are somewhat tainted with what has happened in the past year doesn't help.  My destination was somewhere else so why did I have to keep coming back to a place that should be in my past? 

I guess that’s just the way things go.  I'm moving forward down my new road and there are sites up ahead that I'm looking forward to but I still have to back up from time to time to settle things that  remain from the place I just left.

I guess it’s kind of like raking leaves.  You gather them all up and either bag them or blow them away but soon more fall and you have to go back and rake some more.  Maybe instead of just blowing them away, I should just pile them up and jump in the middle of them.  Perhaps that would provide a better perspective.

...or at least it would be a little bit more fun!

Questions on Questions

Dictionary.com defines “question” as:

Noun:

A sentence in an interrogative form, addressed to someone in order to get information in reply. 

 

So, we ask questions in order to get information, right?  When did we start screwing that up so much? 

In my job, I attend a lot of meetings either in person or over the phone and I’ve noticed that people can’t just ask a simple question any more.  They ask a question but then follow it up with a half a dozen  options barely giving the person being asked the question a chance to answer.  What should be this:

“How are you doing?”

Turns into this:

“How are you doing?  I mean, are you sad or happy or angry or maybe tired because you’ve been up a long time?  I ask because of my interest in how people feel when they are going through the day so I wanted to know if you were feeling good or bad or maybe even indifferent because sometimes we don’t feel anything, we are just there, you know what I mean?  I just think sometimes we don’t have to be in a particular mood, it’s just that we live in the moment. Not to say we’re all robots.  People have emotion and that is what begs us to ask others how they are doing so that’s why I was wondering.”

Usually the person, who is being asked a question in the above form, has to interrupt the asker in order to answer the question. There’s something not right about that.

Let me be up front and say I am not excluded from doing this.  There have been times where I have done the same thing but I have recently tried to curb that behavior…I’m just trying to figure out what causes that behavior.  I’ve narrowed it down to a couple of choices:

·  Show Off – I think some will ask a question with several answers to the question mainly just to show off their knowledge.  As if the person being asked the question is going to applaud them on figuring out the answer before they do.  When I am the “askee” in this type of a situation, I am generally on the side of “If you knew the answer, why did you ask?”

·  Insecurity – Another reason we may do this is simple insecurity.  We aren’t sure if the question we are asking is a good one so we try to justify or fortify the question by backing it up with several statements, facts or follow-up questions.  In truth, this doesn’t make us look more secure.  It actually has the opposite effect.

·  Thinking Out Loud – The third reason I came up with is the person asking the question is really just thinking out loud.  They are essentially asking the question to themselves but audibly and then proceeds to weave their way through the possible answers until they come up with one that satisfies them.  At this point, it doesn’t matter how the person being asked the question replies, the asker will probably be more satisfied with his own answer.

 

The truth is the “follow-up” question asker is really just annoying and a lot of times frustrating.  All they are doing is making what is probably an all ready long meeting even longer.  If you want to know why a company needs to have their forms in a particular order, just ask that.  Don’t go into your theories on how forms are regulated by the government and must be arranged in a particular manner in order to meet some mandate or perhaps this is the way one employee started doing in years ago and it has just stuck so there in fact is no real reason for it.  Just ask why and leave it at that. 

So this is my challenge to you:  The next time you are in a meeting or on a phone call and you need to ask a question, I challenge you to ask the question and then shut up and listen.  If the person doesn’t understand your question, then let them ask for clarification.  At that point, you can go into all the options you were going to go into before I laid down this challenge.

I actually think you will find it rewarding, but it's not easy.  I started doing this and literally had to bite my tongue to stop talking right after I asked a question.  I don’t know why it’s such an instinct to expound on the question, but I think it is. 

Just ask and then listen.    

Don’t you think that’s a good idea?

….

(See?  I just asked and then was just listening right there.  Felt good)

 

 

The Meet

Ha!  Bet you thought this was about me meeting someone, didn’t you?  Nah.  It’s the noun form of “meet” as in gymnastics meet.

Last Sunday was the first official meet that my oldest daughter has participated in.  She’s been doing gymnastics for about two years now, I think.  She transitioned from dance to this.  I’ll admit to being a little bit sad when she danced her last recital.  She was so good and having so much fun, I was going to miss seeing them (my youngest is still in dance so there will still be recitals to see but she is also in gymnastics.  I imagine my time at recitals is limited).

My oldest has really taken to gymnastics. For the most part, she cartwheels more than she walks these days.  The recent shift in my destination made that a little difficult though.  She used to practice all the time in the house we used to live in but now when she tries it in my new living room, she ends up hitting the chair or the coach or her little sister.  Just not as much room unfortunately, but that’s what basements are for, right?

After a few years of just learning gymnastics and then moving up through the different class levels, she finally got to “team” and Sunday was her first official meet.    I had the girls last weekend and since the meet was two hours away, I decided to take them down the night before and we would stay at a hotel.  This alone would have been enough.  My girls love to stay at hotels.  Unfortunately, we got on the road later than I wanted so by the time we got there it was almost 7:30 and instead of maybe seeing a movie or going for a swim in the hotel pool, it was a choice between going out to eat or having room service.  That really wasn’t a question.  The girls screamed “Room service!” and thus I had one the worst meal of my life.   Well, the stuff I ordered was terrible.  The girls’ chicken tenders were delicious, though. 

We managed to get up, get breakfast and to the meet in time although we did cut it close.  My ex took the gymnast from the truck to get her hair done while her sister and I went to find a place to park.  We went to the go into the meet only to find that it cost $10.00 and I had no cash.  For some reason, the teen-ager manning the entrance with a lockable cash box and a hand stamp for the “ticket” didn’t take credit cards.  Imagine.  A quick dash to a nearby ATM (thankfully located in the strip mall we were in) and we made our way to the seats held by my ex (she had already been there for at least 20 minutes). 

The competition began and my heart swelled.  I believe there are few things in life more rewarding than seeing your own flesh and blood do something they love doing.   Of course, it took a while to actually see her do her thing.  These meets, as I now understand, are four events:  the beam, the floor, the bar and the vault.  The teams (there were two other gymnastic groups competing) split up into smaller groups and all four events went on at the same time, the groups rotating as they finished.  It wasn’t until my daughter started her first routine, the beam, that I noticed they were keeping individual scores.

I actually wish I hadn’t seen that.

You see, up until this point, all of my daughter’s gymnastic exhibitions and practice has all been for fun;   to see her do it; to watch her challenge herself to do a back walkover (not really sure exactly what that looks like but I remember the term).   Now she’s being judged on what she’s doing and I guess I should have realized that would happen at some point, I wasn’t ready for it.  Personally, I didn’t want to know her scores and I didn’t want to compare them to the others performing but I did.  You can’t help it.  Seeing how you stack up against others is at the core of competition, right?   

Midway through the competition, after my daughter did the routine she was in rotation for, I noticed the award cart off to the side.  It was loaded with medals and trophies.  I leaned over to my ex and asked “Is this one of those deals where no one is a loser and everyone gets a trophy?”  She smirked and said, “No. This isn’t like soccer.”  You see, when my girls did soccer, everyone got a trophy even though the team they played on came in last place in the standings.

I have never been a fan of the “everyone is a winner” mentality that seems to permeate over child sports these days.  Can’t let anyone know they failed, so give them a “participation award.”  I’ve never thought that was really healthy for the child as they then think they get rewarded all the time in life when that will rarely happen once they get older.

As the meet went on, I noticed that my daughter’s scores weren’t as high as the other girls and in some cases, toward the bottom.  It wasn’t that my daughter couldn’t do the things she was doing.  She can and she’s very good but she has a bit of a concentration problem.  She gets distracted easily and tends to mess up when she does...unless it's walking from event to event.  If they gave medals for proper composure as you move from one event to the other, she would have an armful of them.  Head up, arms back, tip-toeing as she walked with legs straight.  Is that an Olympic event yet?  I mean, they have ping pong, why not this? 

On the routines, though, she wasn’t as good as the others but this is her first event and she was having more fun than she was being serious about nailing the scores.  This was fine with me.  I would prefer her to have fun rather than stress out over getting a perfect score.  I’m sure that will come in time but for now, let her be a kid. 

Then the competition was over….

…and they started calling out the winners…

First of all, my ex and I realized we may have been wrong about this not being like soccer…especially when they brought out the stands for the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place winners…and then the 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, 8^th, 9^th and 10^th place spots.  It was funny because the #1 spot was the highest stand and then they had descending levels for each one after, the smallest being 6^th place.  The rest were just markers on the floor.  I commented to my ex that I was surprised they didn’t go beneath the floor for the other levels. 

It was looking like more kids were going to get awards than we originally thought but as they started announcing and my daughter wasn’t up there on the stands, I started to get worried.  I was so proud of how she would cheer her teammates when they were called but I was worried how she was going to feel if she didn’t get something.  My ex and I would handle it as we should but to be frank, I didn’t want to face it.  I didn’t want my child to be upset because she didn’t get a medal and there were some girls who were getting 5 or 6. 

Finally, in the floor routine awards, she got a medal.  Sure it was for 10^th place but she was so happy and I was so happy for her.  You’d think she just got gold at the Summer Olympics she was beaming so much.  She really did have something to be proud of as I have since learned that the medals are based on a percentage of top scores.  Coming in 10th isn't so bad when you consider she was in the largest group. 

She also received a small trophy for participating like everyone else did but again; it was like she won it because of her perfect score in all four categories.  And to make things even better, her group won overall in the competition so a big trophy was awarded to them.

Ultimately what came out of this was the “parent” moment where at first I wanted my child to earn what she won and if she lost, she lost but then I quickly switched to “Oh, give her something.  She’s going to feel so sad if you don’t” mode.  Turned out she got both: one for her performance and one for participation so I didn’t have to worry about it but I did. 

We like to think we’re strong parents and will always do what is fair and right for our children but when faced with the possibility that your child may be sad or upset about something, all that goes out the window.  The trophy for us as parents is to see your kid smile and when you see it happen, it’s like you’re standing on the number 1 platform because you’re the winner. 

And let’s face it, if you’re children are happy, you ARE the winner.

Izzie Socks

I got a cat and yes, the title of this post reflects his name. 

I believe if you are going to have an animal, you should be creative with the name.  His full name is actually Izzie Cutie Froggy Socks.  I can’t take credit for the full name (and probably don’t want to).  My daughters, 5 and 7, came up with pieces of the name.  My dad came up with Socks because the cat has white paws that contrast with his gray fur.  The girls came up with Cutie and Froggy for …whatever reasons.  Actually, my 7 year old came up with Cutie and makes sense since the cat is a cutie.  My 5 year old came up with Froggy and maybe that makes sense because she’s 5 years old.

For Izzie, I’m not sure if I misheard them but ultimately, I think I came up with Izzie and then strung them together.  So we have the full name, but I’ll probably just stick to the first name mostly and first/last when the mood strikes me. The full name will be reserved for when he is in trouble for pooping on the floor.  “Izzie Cutie Froggy Socks, you better get in here RIGHT NOW!”  

When I was growing up, we always had pets and mostly cats.  We had one dog, Sam the Basset – “Dog of the Desert, Keen of Eye, Swift of Foot” as my dad used to describe him (is it any wonder where I get my pet name fetish?),  and plenty of cats; too many to name and names to embarrassing to repeat here.  When I was on my own, I never had any pets mainly because I lived in apartments that didn’t allow them and I couldn’t afford them (which was more the reason than the bylaws of the apartments I lived in).  When I was married to my first wife, we ended up with two cats and somehow I got custody of them after we divorced  I didn’t mind, though.  When I was dating the woman who would become my second wife, I had to give the cats back to the first wife because the soon-to-be-second wife was very allergic to them.  It was hard but I was in love and the house was much cleaner after the cats were gone. 

So fast forward almost a decade and I am now a cat owner once again.  I considered a dog and would actually love to have one.  With my job, however, I travel and I can’t afford to put him in a kennel every time I have to hit the road.  Outside of that getting real expensive, it just wouldn’t be fair to the dog.  With a cat, however, I could be gone a week and as long as I had a continuous feeder and water, the cat would be fine.

When I first brought the cat home, I couldn’t help shaking the notion that he was a child.  I would tip toe around him while he was sleeping and if I had to go out, I would hurry back to make sure he was okay.  Much like the times I did that with my children, the cat was fine too. (That’s a joke, folks…I never left my kids alone unless it was an emergency trip to the beer store and when I did that, I gave them a broken bottle to protect themselves with). 

People may think I got the cat for my girls, but that’s not necessarily true. Sure, they wanted one and knew they could get one now that they had two houses to go to and one of them didn’t have a highly allergic adult living in it.  Still, I got the cat for me.  Pets are great companions regardless of what type of animal they are…although I suppose living with a grizzly bear might be tricky…especially getting it to go in a litter box but I guess for bears you would have to have indoor woods because you know what they say about bears and woods.  Huh?  Huh?  Get it?  See what I did there?  Heh…anyway…

Now I have little Izzie Socks to join me on my journey to the next destination in life and I’m glad he’s here.  I can now talk to him and it not be as weird as when I was just talking to nobody (but maybe only by a little bit).  Not that it’s all fun and games.  The darn cat barely lets me get any typing done as he likes to crawl up my leg, onto my lap and then onto my desk.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to retype this because he ran across the keyboard.  At one point, my spell checker told me I should have gotten a bird. 

Maybe he wouldn’t need so much attention if he had another cat to play with.  Maybe I’ll get six more. Nah, if I did that, my destination would surely be known:  Alone.  Forever. 

Except for the seven cats and probably never seeing the top of my desk again.

Paths

I’ve always believed that you should never have any regrets in life.  Where you are right now was from the path you walked on to get there.  There are times when we want to say I wish I never did this or didn’t do that, but that’s wasted energy.   You can’t help where you are now but you can, to a certain extent, control where you are going.

Another aspect to this is the belief (or disbelief) that your destiny is predetermined either by God or the Universe or a giant cat that lives in the mountains somewhere.  I’m not entirely sure if I believe this but there is some amount of comfort in thinking it’s true.  Why?  I think it comes out of moments of despair or when life takes you down a road of broken glass and rotting vegetables.  You think, “Why did this happen to me?” and you are told “It’s God’s plan” or “Life is like that” or the ever popular “Shit happens.” 

Shit does happen but we can sit there and smell it or we can move on.  I think it’s entirely too easy to give up or get depressed about your current state of life but the truth is if whatever problems you faced left you alive, then you’re probably going to be okay.  If you stop and dwell on what happened, you’ll get stuck like tires spinning in the mud.  Put that thing in four wheel drive and move out of the muck, man.  There’s a lot more road ahead.

Why am I starting my new blog with this?  Mainly because as of right now, 2012 will go down as probably the worst year in my life.  There are still two and half months to make up for the previous nine and half but I doubt a total comeback is possible.  I’m down 48 to 10 in my game with 2012 and I need more than a few Hail Mary’s to even the score. 

It’s funny because when things were better, I used to comment about some of the turns I took while growing up and what would have happened if I took a left instead of a right.  What if I had stayed in Arizona instead of moving to Texas in the mid 80’s?  What if instead I stayed in California instead of moving BACK to Texas when I did that in the late 80’s?  What if I had more confidence when I was younger when dating and pursued harder the woman who was then the woman of my dreams?  What if I never grew that porn-star moustache I had for most of the 90’s?  What if I never married my first wife? 

These questions were all put aside by simply saying, “Well if I had done that, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”   Those decisions led me to where I was as if it was all planned out.  When life is good, that’s a great feeling to have but when life is less than good, you tend to go back and wonder if you made the right choices. 

And therein lies the problem.  You can’t go back.  You can’t undo the decisions you made so no need to start wondering what would have happened if you made different ones.  Life is life and whether our ultimate destination is known or unknown, it really doesn’t matter because YOU don’t know what is going to happen.  Instead waiting for the sign to change from “Don’t Walk” to “Walk,” just go ahead and walk.

God, the Universe nor that giant cat up in the mountains won’t care if you’re jaywalking.