'Tis The Season I've Been Dreading

Oh. Joy. The Holidays are upon us. Deck the halls with fear and trepidation.

Ever since the separation and divorce, I have targeted the holiday season as being a particularly bad one. Not only was I concerned with being alone at times but also that my daughters’ holidays would be ruined with the breakup of their family. I feared eating alone on Thanksgiving since the girls would be with their mother. I worried about feeling guilty about taking my daughters away from their mother on Christmas since they were scheduled to be with me. I despised the notion of decorating my new house because, really, what was the point? And wouldn’t that just make me feel worse?

I envisioned late November and all of December to be decorated with doom and gloom, not boughs of holly. I saw myself sitting lonely in my house longing for the times when I was with my wife and girls, decorating the Christmas tree and singing Christmas carols. In fact, I thought it would be so bad for me that I only took a very small amount of Christmas decorations when I moved out. I thought it would be better for the girls to have them all so they would have the decorations they are used to and I would probably not decorate anyway.

Thanksgiving was either going to be spent down at my parents in Texas or by myself. I thought back to when I was single and was alone for one Thanksgiving due mostly to not having the money to travel anywhere and all my friends having prior plans. I made a turkey dinner for myself. It was sad and pathetic and I assumed that's what I was in store for this year.

Then it occurred to me that none of the above HAD to happen. The type of holiday I was going to have was to be determined by me and how I approached it. If I approached it with the above thoughts, then yes, it would suck. I would be depressed and would be starting 2013 in the worst light possible. I had control over this and I decided I was going to do my best to prevent depression and disaster.

The first thing I did was see if I could spend Thanksgiving with the girls. This, of course, meant having dinner over at my ex-wife’s house. This was something we had discussed early on but I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it back then. However, both my ex and I are very mindful of our girls’ feelings about the divorce so we wanted the holidays to be as normal as they could be which meant both of their parents needed to be in the picture. So I am going to have dinner with my ex, my daughters and the people who used to be in my family. Will it be awkward? I suppose it could and probably still will be at least initially but again, the amount of awkwardness is controlled by me. If I want to be standoffish and not talk to anyone and bemoan to myself on how it used to be, then the awkward rate will be high. If I choose to have fun, enjoy the company and most importantly, be with my girls, then it doesn’t have to awkward at all.

And if it started to get that way, well, I’m bringing the wine. 

For Christmas, I am scheduled to have the girls the entire week of Christmas and since Christmas falls on a Tuesday this year that meant I could have them from the weekend before to the weekend after. My plans were to take the girls down to see their grandparents (my parents) and their aunts, uncle, and cousins. I knew my ex wouldn’t be happy about it but it was my right and I couldn’t be concerned with how she felt.

That didn’t last long.

Regardless of how I may have been distant during the last year or so of our marriage, I am generally a thoughtful guy. I try to take other people’s feelings into consideration and I began to do that not only with my ex-wife but with my girls. Separating them from their mom on the first Christmas after they no longer have two full time parents didn’t seem right. I discussed it with my ex and we decided that the girls would spend Christmas Eve with her and that I would come over early on Christmas morning, hopefully before the girls woke up, so both of us could enjoy watching the girls open their presents. Then, the girls and I would head for Texas.

As far as decorating my house, I am planning on doing something. Even if I wasn’t doing it for myself, I needed to do it for the girls. They are over here often and not having any decorations up for them would be unfair. It won’t be as extravagant as years prior, but they (and I) will know it’s the holiday season. I can’t put up a big tree as the only place where one would fit is in the basement or in the dining room. Neither of those spots is very visible so I am putting thought into what I will do. I do know that the outside decorations won’t be as big as before. I won’t be lining my entire roofline with lights but I will put some up. The bottom line is that I need to start building my own set of holiday decorations and new traditions for me and the girls as we move on to our next destination.

I'm sure next year will be different.  An entire year will have passed and who knows where I or my ex wife will be on our journeys but I suspect it won't be as easy to make sure we are all together.  I am totally expecting that and it will be a bridge we will cross when we get there.  For this year, however, focus must be on removing the sadness from the holidays.

It’s funny how I have done an almost complete 180 on my viewpoint for the holiday season and I’m glad I’m forcing myself to make this turnaround. It’s a known fact that the holidays cause depression rates to go up and I firmly believe that is something we can control…or at least I will be making the attempt. Do I think I’ll sail through this time of year without any sadness or feelings of forlornness? No, I’m sure I’ll have my moments, but if I don’t want to forever stain future holidays by letting the 2012 one suck beyond all manner of suckiness, I have to rely on myself to make it right. I think too often people in my situation let their depression get the better of them when it doesn't really have to. It’s not easy and I may find myself writing a blog about how my whole plan failed miserably. I hope that doesn’t happen and if I keep the right attitude, it won’t.

I write this post not only for myself but for others who may be in the same situation. Just because our lives may not be where we thought they would be this time of year doesn’t change the fact that the holidays are a special time. It’s a time for charity, happiness and seeing the world through the eyes of children. To miss out on that because you are basically feeling sorry for yourself is doing a disservice not only to you but to those around you. Forget about the heartache you’ve suffered and go look at Christmas lights. Abandon the thoughts of loneliness and go volunteer at a soup kitchen. I think you’ll find there are others in a lot worse shape than you. If your children aren’t around, “adopt” one at church or a local charity. Buy them presents and know you’ll be making their lives brighter. It’s not in what we do for ourselves that makes the holiday special, it’s what we do for others. I’m choosing to focus on my girls and not on me and I think that will make the season a merry one indeed.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a Christmas tree I can display in my smallish living room.

 

Hall Of Fame

When a professional sports player retires and if he or she is of significant caliber, there is always discussion amongst those that follow sports on if the player should be inducted into their chosen sports Hall of Fame. Players at the upper echelon in their sport, your Michael Jordans, Emmitt Smiths, and Joe Montanas are no-brainers. They are going in first ballot, no questions asked. But when you have someone who may have good stats, but not great stats, the discussion intensifies.

The one really good rule of thumb I’ve heard over the years was “If you have to think about it, he doesn’t go in.” There may be debates back and forth on it but when two parties can’t decide, it’s clear that there’s too many questions on that players eligibility and until those are settled, generally by length of time since retirement, that player is out.

I bring this up because recently a good friend said that they had a friend who was also divorced and wondered if I would be interested in having a blind date. They even provided a picture so it wasn’t even a true blind date. With this information this really should have been a simple yes or no, but I stopped to think about it. Was I interested?

Then I thought about a question put forth to me by another good friend who I had the pleasure of having dinner with the other evening. I was talking about my limited adventures in online dating. Mainly just swapping emails with a scammer in Nigeria who tried to get money out of me and “window shopping” to see who was out there (see Scam and Eggs ). At one point she asked me, “Are you ready to date? I mean, do you want to?” I didn’t have an answer and I wondered about it over the next couple days. If I wasn’t ready to date, why did I have online profiles and checked the emails that were sent with various winks, flirts, and “scientific” matches?

Now I had the opportunity to go on a date with someone who wasn’t from an online gallery. A real person known by someone I knew. The opportunity I was actually hoping would happen one day…only maybe not today. Or should it be today? Should I take to this like ripping a Band-Aid off all at once or be concerned that perhaps the wound underneath wasn’t completely healed?

And if I went on this date, what kind of date would I be? The dinner I had the other night with the aforementioned friend was mainly a reuniting with someone I hadn’t seen in over 15 years but she was someone I used to have feelings for, so there was still a real date aspect to it (for me, at least). The next morning, however, I was in a bit of a funk because all I could think about was my recently failed marriage. It struck me that going on a date (or the prospect of going on a date) emphasizes, at least right now, more on what I lost and not on what I could potentially gain from a date. The scales are tipped too far over on that lost side for me to feel comfortable with myself and if I’m not comfortable with myself, we go back to the question that opened up this paragraph: What kind of date would I be? I would surmise a terrible one and let’s forget about me for a second, is that fair to the person I’m going on a date with? Doubtful.

At the end of all this, I looked back on the Hall of Fame question: If you have to think about it, he probably shouldn’t go in. To put it in my situation, if I have to think about it, I probably shouldn’t date. Continuing the comparison, the player who may not be first ballot Hall of Fame generally gets in somewhere in the future so I apply the same to myself and dating, but the question is: when? Is it something I will just know or will have to have at least one date to know for sure? I think about the lyrics the great Don Henley sang in the song, “New York Minute:”

     What the head makes cloudy
     The heart makes very clear
     The days were so much brighter
     In the time when she was here
     But I know there's somebody somewhere
     Make these dark clouds disappear
     Until that day, I have to believe
     I believe, I believe

     In a New York minute
     Everything can change

So I assume my feelings on dating could change at any minute and I’m good with that. For now, though, when faced with a dating possibility, if I spend a fair amount of time thinking about it, I probably should let the opportunity pass and hope that I will get put on the ballot sometime in the future. 

 

Scam and Eggs

In my previous blog series, Went From Being Married To Single , I talked about how I signed up for a couple of dating sites mainly just to see what it was like and what kind of singles were out there (detailed in Single White Male - Part 3). I didn’t sign up because I wanted to start dating right away and, for the most part, I’m still in that phase, but I did go and beef up my profile on a few sites so I could see what would happen.  And by “beef up,”  I mainly mean adding a picture or two.  I figured if no one knew what I looked like, they probably weren’t spending too much time, if any, on my profile.  I mean I skipped over people who didn’t have pictures, so why wouldn't everyone else?  As I said in the aforementioned blog, the most important thing in the profile is the picture.  Let’s face it, we’re window shopping on these on-line sites so put your best foot forward (which is advice many, many, many people do NOT take.  Woof!). 

Anyhoo, I did put up a couple pictures, answered more questions and added a little more content to my profile.  I mean, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs and while I wasn’t hungry enough for an omelet yet I thought I should put the eggs on the counter just in case.  I was also bored one night, so there’s that, and lo and behold, I did start getting more activity. 

Mainly the activity was getting notifications that women viewed my profile and some sent me “winks” or “flirts” or whatever they call the button next to an online profile that says, “Your profile intrigued me, but not enough to actually write to you.  Thankfully, this site provided a button to show my limited interest.” 

Then, however, I got THE email.  It was short but to the point:  “How is a good looking guy like you still single?”  Hey, not bad.  I checked her profile and she was actually good looking.  Not super-model hot but pretty.  She was also somewhat nearby … an hour to hour and a half away which worked for me as distance makes the process a little easier for some reason…just cracking the eggs, as it were.  So, I wrote back with pretty much the first thing that came to mind: “Hey, I was just asking myself that same question this morning!”  Charming, no? 

And thus began a series of emails back and forth.  The first few were just some background stuff on herself, what she was looking for in a man, her business which had her traveling a lot both nationally and internationally…all done with the poorest grammar and punctuation I have ever seen.  I shared some of the same but admittedly not as detailed as she did.  In the third email, I think, she sent a series of questions meant to get to know me better.  I actually thought this was a good idea so I answered, again, without too many specifics.  In one of the questions, “What do you think about me?” part of my response was that she had really terrible grammar but I put the ever important smiley face emoticon after it so she knew I was just being playful (although I wasn’t…really, her writing style, or lack-thereof, was atrocious). 

When she replied and answered the questions herself, I thought it was interesting that she didn’t reference any of my answers in her response, including the one about her grammar.  She did talk about her current trip in Nigeria and that she was waiting for her shipment of fabrics to get through customs (she was an importer/exporter of textiles and fabrics…or something to that effect).  Apparently, it’s difficult to get items out of customs in Africa.  In fact, there seemed to be a lot of emphasis on this trip as in each email she talked about it.  I began to get suspicious so I thought I would test the waters to see if she (or whoever was on the other end) was actually reading my responses or if they were, cared about what I was saying.  In my next email, I wrote the following (please excuse some of the rather crude comments made, I was looking to get a shock out of her…if she was real):

Hi Sarah!  

Sorry to hear about your troubles.   Working with foreign companies and governments must be hard.  Flash those big brown eyes at them.  I'm sure that will work.  If not, offer him a hand or blow job.  That will get things moving!  ;)

I am having problems of my own.  The hurricane winds brought a couple trees down and one went through my garage and on top of my car!  It's going to be a while before someone can come fix it.  I don't think the rain is going to be bad but I need to move some if the stuff to the basement. I'll be thinking about you as I work and hoping I can meet you someday.  

Again, that was written to ignite some response.  If she was real and not just some automatic reply, surely something would be said.  If nothing, else, agreement on what I suggested or condolences on the damages to my house, right?  Nope.  Here’s the first sentence of her reply.  Her emails were always long so I’m not going to post all of it.  The rest just went more into her problems with customs.

i will still like to meet you first and spend some time with you oh i dont judge a book by it's cover i learn to open one chapter after the other, thanks for your email,i liked it,looking forward to meeting you soon,so i want you to know that im for real and although i dont just want this to be all words.

A couple things I started to notice as I read this email and went back to her previous ones:  There was a lot of talk about “trust” and “not judging a book by its cover” (although she used the contraction of “it is” instead of the possessive “its” which drives me crazy).  She’s building up this notion that everyone should be given a chance and people should be trusted right off the bat instead of judging them perhaps negatively.  Basically this email confirmed that I was being scammed. There’s no way you can get an email where the subject of “hand jobs” comes up and you don’t make some mention of it.  And no concern over a hurricane hitting my house?  At this point, I decided to have some fun and see how far I could push my responses.  Here was my next reply:

So great to hear from you again!  I depreciate and decree everything you said!  

Busy day for me yesterday.  I told you about the hurricane bringing down a tree onto my garage and car?  Well, it got worse.  The garage sustained such damage that a wind gust caused the rest of it to come down, including a portion of the second floor of my house.  I now have no place to live and I'm writing this to you from a local Starbucks. I can't wait for you to get back so we can move in together.  I know it's crazy but it feels so right and now that I have nowhere to go, it's perfect.  Tell me where you live and I'll start walking towards that airport.  It may take me a while but since you're still in Lagos, the timing may work out perfectly. 

It’s like one door closing and another opening! 

The start of her reply to the above:

thanks soo much,you dont know how much sunshine you bring into my day when i hear from you,i love it babe !,thank God you are here by my side to see me through, dear i just got back in from the sea port ,a little tired and stressed,my ship didnt come in and i had to go to my clients place to explain once more,i must say im really getting worried now and i just dont know what id do,hmm,your soo nice,thanks for giving me a listening hear,your special

Again, nothing about the fact that I was homeless and wanting to move in together, which is funny because she really turns up the heat in this particular email:

i dont know how to say this without sounding crazy,but This feeling of love (i think thats what it is ,couldnt be anyting else,its soo sweet,makes me feel soo good inside,reading from you gives me a sense of clam and of arrival,i feel like im home..how do u feel?.please tell me im not havng these feelings alone!!)that I hold within my heart for you runs deeper than any ocean or sea; I just wish you could see how much you mean to me. If only you could hold me, then maybe you would feel my love for you that burns with a flame high enough to last. If only you could hear my heart beat, then maybe you would understand the language of love with which it speaks

Wow!  After four emails, she was in love with me and that was without even reading the emails I sent!  So now I was just waiting for her to ask me for money which was surely where all of this was heading.  My next email:

Hey Sarah.  Great to hear from you!

I'm still on the road.  I think you live in New Jersey so that's where I'm headed. I decided to try taking a bus because all this walking was hurting my feet...well, foot.  I told you about my peg leg, right?  Anyway, I got kicked off the bus because I crapped in my pants and the smell was too much.  What could I do, though? I can't go on a bus bathroom.  I'd be too embarrassed.  So I'm hitch hiking now and caught a ride with a bunch of clowns.  We're in a small car and there's like twelve of them but I was able to squeeze into the trunk.  Not too bad and luckily there was wi-fi.  

I can't wait to see you so we can start our life together...although I may need to do some laundry first, if you know what I mean!  Wink-wink, nudge-nudge!

Her reply:

Hi Babe,so sorry for the late email,but i havent been able to write because i have encountered a problem here with my goods Dearie ! ,i have been busy seeing how i can get this solved,but i havent found a way ,i just got to the room and have been sitting at the computer for nearly an hour thinking what i should do,dont want to ruin your day but i just want to run this by you and see if theres anyway you can give your support here

She went on to say she needed to pay an “Instant Security Port Clearance” to get her items out of customs. She had a three day deadline and (this will probably come as a shock) she didn’t have the money.  She wanted me to send her $2000.  There were no instructions on how I was supposed to get it to her but I suspect if I replied, I would get an email with instructions on sending it through Western Union.  However, I did not reply.  I wanted to see if I would get a follow up email on it but I didn’t.  She said she had a three day deadline, so I assumed I would get something pleading for the money but I didn’t which leads me to more firmly believe this is an automated response.   It’s interesting to me how the scammer gave up so easily.

So, what have we learned here?  For starters, isn’t it sad that these things exist and that there are those who fall for them?  I did some research and found the exact same emails I received that someone else received so this is a known scam (if you're interested in reading all of them, you can here).  In fact, Nigerian scams are fairly popular, not just with women attracting guys but the other way around.  I read where some have chatted online with these people and I really find it hard to believe it goes that far.  I probably should have been leery based solely on the way the emails were written but in truth, that actually led me to believe it was real at first since a lot of people just simply don’t know how to write.  But people did fall for this stuff.  Some are out thousands of dollars all by sending money to someone they have never met in person.  It was incredible to read, but, as I said, sad that some people are so desperate.

The second lesson learned may be obvious but you have to tread carefully in the online dating waters.  Not only do you have to be careful in general for potential heartbreak or stalker-type folks, but also for scammers looking to get money out of you.   I’ve learned a couple things to watch out for based on this experience:

·       Grammar – If it’s this bad, there may be a reason:  English may not be the writer’s first language which could potentially be a flag (i.e. emails coming from Nigeria or Russia or somewhere like that) or they are trying too hard to make it sound real.

·        Pictures – After I realized this was a scam, I went back and looked at the pictures on her profile.  In them she is with her “friends” but she is wearing the same outfit in all of them.  Comparing that to other profiles where pictures are obviously taken at different times based on outfits, hair styles, etc. seeing a series of photos all from the same time is probably a red flag.

·         Semi-immediate words of love – C’mon.  No one falls in love within the course of a week and only by email.  That just doesn’t happen or at least it shouldn’t.  You may get excited about who you are talking to but love?  Let’s get real.

·        Immediate words on trusting someone at first sight – I think this is where they trap a lot of people.  They get you to think that people should be trustworthy because they are.  Don’t fall for that.  In the world of online dating, it’s probably better to be guarded and a bit untrusting instead of the opposite.

·        Requests for money – Do I really have to say anything about this?

So, I managed to escape a potential scam without any egg on my face.  I actually had fun with my replies but this is certainly a reminder that things are not always as they seem. 

I am still not quite ready to do a first date with someone I meet online, but if/when I do, I’ll make sure to be leery about getting into a meal of scam and eggs.

 

Daylight Robbery

We did the big “Fall Back” last weekend and now somewhere between 5 and 5:30, my world is plunged into total darkness.  It always takes me a few days, maybe weeks, to get used to this time change but I think it will be especially difficult this time around. 

You see, I used to associate the time when it got darker earlier to the holiday season.  Late October or now early November, the days got shorter and here come the holidays!  We just had Halloween; Thanksgiving was coming up and then Christmas and New Year’s!  Nighttime seemed to enhance these holidays...well, maybe not Thanksgiving.  This year though, it will probably take some adjustment as I’m not really sure how I will react to the holidays this year, but I’ll whine about that some other time.  For now, let’s talk about this so called Daylight Savings Time deal.

I always forget which time of the year is Standard Time and which is Daylight Savings Time, but I never forget about Google and Google is all knowing.  We are currently in Standard Time.  We just finished Daylight Savings Time.  Doesn’t that seem odd?  Doesn’t the definition of “savings” mean to “put away,” “store,” or “preserve?”  We’re not doing that in the summer. We’re wasting all that daylight and making ourselves be in it longer.  If anything, it should be switched.  November through March should be Daylight Savings Time because we experience the darkness more and then make the time between March and November, Standard Time.  Doesn’t that make more sense?  I feel like George Carlin.  Perhaps he or some other comedian has ranted on this same subject.  I’m sure I’m not the first.

Although, here’s the kicker:  I’m going on about Daylight Savings Time like I hate it but the truth is, I hate Standard Time.  I don’t like it when it is dark at 5:00 but that’s the way it’s SUPPOSED to be; however hating Standard Time just seems wrong.  Daylight Savings Time is something invented by the government to give farmers more daylight to plow their crops.  Standard Time is just how it is.  You shouldn’t complain about something that just is and yet here I am doing just that. 

The only time we’re justified in complaining about Daylight Savings Time is when we have to “Spring Forward” in March.  We all moan and groan about losing that extra hour of sleep but in reality, we’re all glad the days get “longer.”  We want more sunlight in the early evenings but sure enough come March, I’ll be seeing numerous Facebook statuses on how they dread losing that hour of sleep just like I saw (and wrote) about the days getting shorter in November.  Truth is, all this talk about gaining or losing an hour sleep is kind of silly.  We all like the “extra hour” of sleep but it’s an illusion.  If you don't want to lose it, go to bed an hour earlier when the time changes. For me, the switch to Standard Time actually did more than just give me that extra hour.  Lately I’ve been staying up late and thus, getting up late and I generally like to get up early.  Now with the time change I’m ready to go to bed at 11 instead of midnight and I get up at 6-6:30 instead of 7-7:30 (or 8…8:30). 

Of course I’ll lose that when we have to Spring Forward even though I want the longer days.  MAN!  This whole thing is a mixed bag of good and bad feelings.  Just look:

Change to Standard Time:

·         Gets dark too early:  BAD

·         Get an extra hour of sleep:  GOOD

Change to Daylight Savings Time:

·         Stays light later:  GOOD

·         Lose an hour of sleep:  BAD

This whole topic is emotionally and logically frustrating to me and I’m not even sure the reason why we started the whole thing is still valid.  Don’t farmers generally get up before the sun comes up anyway and are generally working after sundown?  The days naturally get longer in the summer so why do we need to shift the time?  Of course, all I’m doing here is voting for getting rid of Daylight Savings Time and then I’ll be living in the dark at 5:00 every day of the year. 

Sigh.  How do Arizonians* handle this? 

* In case you didn't know, Arizona does not observe Daylight Savings Time.

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.