Tag: parenting

January 17, 2024 – Like Father, Like Son

January 17, 2024 /

My dear, dear son. We are so much alike and yet it seems like there are chasms between us. Our interest and capabilities are similar, our experience and feelings are similar and yet for some reason one is haunted while the other is content in our beings. He made this cleaver below. I went to put the dishes away and it was in the knife drawer with the note Happy Birthday on it. He even presented in a way that I would. In secret, without any fanfare.

Last week was a difficult week for us. I was busy trying to keep the household together while he was doubting his place and role in it. My birthday was a week ago but it really came and went. I made a Korean inspired dinner so that I could taste my kim chi. I have to say that it wasn’t quite as soft as I wanted but in many ways it was better than I hoped. I definitely preferred this one to many that I have tasted before.

I was worried about the heating system and that everyone had their physical needs met before we were iced in for a couple of days while he was iced in already. Since we really didn’t do much on my birthday, my wife suggested that we have a small dinner on Friday, ahead of the weather. I was focused on the best choice and getting the word out while he was already planning how he could avoid it all together.

I am not there, but I think that I had a very similar high school experience. My best friends were older than I was. And so, my senior year was a solitary one. I ate lunch by myself. I was a little lonely, but only from the perspective that I didn’t understand why I jived with people that were no longer around more so than my peers. It is not so much of a mystery really but it is hard to convey in words. I think that my propensity to get along with older people has served me well. My first boss being a World War II vet liked me very much and invested in my first seven professional years.

I don’t know how better to describe high school but trite. My era had people wearing baseball caps twisted with the tags hanging down and overalls clipped on one side. Talk about stupid. They were emulating the videos they saw on M-TV. It is no wonder I started listening to country music at that point. But at a deeper level, I can certainly understand not identifying with those people.

When you are not quite your own person and not self sufficient it is hard to squeeze into the crack of figuring out who and how you want to be. Even out of college, I struggled to become my own person. My parents didn’t do it intentionally (I don’t think) but in my head I was under their thumb and so therefore my decisions were clouded with how they would judge my decisions.

Now, it seems silly, but at the time it was real. I can’t get a job in college because my parents are paying for it. I can’t let them know that I am going to a bar. I can’t take that class, it is not serious enough. I can’t skip this class to do something I need to do. And on it goes. I get my son and we discuss gaps such as that. I do my best to empower him, but I can only go so far, It is up to him to take what is given.

I used to seek permission on many things, even at work. One day, I realized that if it is not illegal, immoral, against policy or something like that it was time to stop. Nobody needs to enable me to go above and beyond or improve something. That was a liberating moment even to the point that I am challenging the status quo on the other things as well now. Why is this policy in place that doesn’t make sense or I don’t agree with that stance because of X, Y , Z data.

You have to be careful with that way of doing business but it is part of becoming your own person. I think once that happens, then you become confident in who you are. And when you become confident, you become happier. When you become happier, you realize the proper perspective of all those other things were not worth the worry. That is where we need to take this conversation.

End Your Programming Routine: Of course, none of us are perfect. I am not and neither is my son. He ground and honed that edge, which took a lot of time and looks pretty good. The handle is a little more crude and made with pine, probably the wrong material for longevity and durability. It is just like our lives. Some things are worked and refined while other parts are dubious or inappropriate. We just need to keep practicing those elements that need work. Find another material, method, use another design or shape until we find something that works for us. The only way to do that is to keep trying.

August 30, 2023 – Gradually, Then Suddenly

August 30, 2023 /

I love this quote from Ernst Hemmingway. It describes major events so succinctly. I promise that this will be the last time that I wax emotionally about my summer of exchange. But first I have to use this quote the way it has impacted my life.

Sunday morning, my wife and I were eating breakfast. We were at the darkest hour of this whole program. My youngest son had just landed in Taiwan in the middle of the night. My older son was on the airplane on his way back home. We had to leave back to the airport in three hours to pick him up.

I think that I dealt with my emotions last week. That is what translated into the last couple of posts. I am now starting to see the bright side of things, not what has changed. Something I rarely do, I was talking about the things that were in the near future to my wife. “I am planning on going to the range on Friday. I want to go on a weeknight ahead of hunting season. The range is bound to be crawling with people on the weekend.”

Usually I wait to see if there is something on the calendar and strike at the last minute. “There is nothing going on tomorrow (or this afternoon), I think I will go to the range.” On top of that, I said that I was planning on going to central Oregon for a weekend of hunting. I might even make it a three day weekend. I am not going to have more than a day or two of PTO now that I have started this new job.

My wife said, “It’s funny. You never talk like this. You never express something that you want to do ahead of time.” She theorized that we haven’t had the luxury of only looking at our own schedule in a long, long time. It’s true. My older son is not nearly as involved in activities and he has his own vehicle if he does choose to do something. I am not saying that we wouldn’t support or watch, but we don’t have to transport and hang around until it is over nor is it in overwhelming quantities.

I turned the oven on to keep the bacon warm. It also tends to really crisp up things as well. I pulled my vegetarian’s skillet out as I do multiple times a week and I realized I do not have to handle this hundreds of times in the next year. I told my wife, I am going to put this skillet away for the next year. All of the sudden our life just became simpler and better.

I support my son’s decisions, including being a vegetarian. But, I didn’t realize the commitment and impact that one decision has on others. It effects how I prep, how I handle ingredients, how I cook and how I store leftovers. It effects what I choose to make for dinner as well as quantities.

For the last five years, every meal has had multiple dimensions. What is my son going to eat? How am I going to make this appeal to both camps? How do I portion this so that it doesn’t contact meat and dirty utensils and serve everything at the same time? To add insult to the situation, many times I take all that care and he schedules something over the top of that. Consequently, all that care I took doesn’t get eaten later in the evening and some vegetarian product is made instead causing more dishes that I wake up to in the morning.

As a parent, I want nothing more than enabling my son to grow up into a empowered adult. I want them to be confident about the decisions that they make; I want them to be able to justify their decisions as thoughtful and considering the upside and downsides of the situation. I think that I am missing something however. I am missing the conscientious part of the equation. How does my decision effect others.

Everyone in the house is acutely aware that he has made a decision to be vegetarian. We all make some sort of accommodations in order to support that decision, some more than others. But, does the vegetarian appreciate the compromises that we have all made to support the decision? Does he know how many times I have to move the skillet out of the oven in a year? Does he know that we check with the event host to let them know that there needs to be a cheese pizza not just one that has the meat picked off?

I started this off with gradually, then suddenly. Supporting a household vegetarian is the same way. All of the sudden it has become an entire way of how I cook and to a larger extent how I live. I want him to play chess and music and participate in sports and Boy Scouts if that is what makes him happy. I didn’t really get that effort was in exchange for my own life force.

End Your Programming Routine: I am not saying that things won’t go back to the way they were before the exchange when he comes back. Again, I support my children. But, it will be under the guise that I understand that I am making a conscious decision to do so. I do hope that this is a growth experience for him and maybe I will share this at some point in the future. For now, we are on a bit of vacation for some of this. At least this is how it feels right now.

May 25, 2023 – Senioritis?

May 25, 2023 /

Thirty years ago at this time, the word had a different meaning. I was in my last weeks of high school and looking forward to new adventures. I was ready to get my life started which meant starting college after summer break. It was time to move on.

I remember running track and counting the days of school left. Everything seemed so pointless to keep marking the days until graduation. Everybody knew that the brakes were off at school. I had no illusions of placing at districts and track wasn’t going anywhere. I had nothing left to prove just wait my time.

I never really had any close bonds in my graduating class. Consequently, with my aversion to social media I never really kept up with anybody. I just realized that this is my thirty year reunion. I didn’t give ten or twenty years a thought, probably wont with this either since my position is still the same and it falls on my wife’s birthday. But it does say something, time is marching on.

Today, Senioritis might have a different meaning. I have a son that will be a senior next school year. My younger son is going to be gone all year on exchange to Taiwan. When he comes back, he will also be a senior. To be honest, I am looking forward to the their transition’s into adulthood.

It would be no secret to those that know me that my wife and I have different ideas about parenting. These high school years have been very hard on those differences. There has been conflict between us like never before and it is all because I feel strongly one way and she does the other. I won’t delve deep into the psychology or details of it but I will say that I am ready for the calm.

This isn’t about right or wrong. I can definitely see her side of things but it doesn’t mean that I am going to agree with it. To be clear, I am not saying that I want them to fly the coop and never to be seen again. No, but I am tired of cleaning up after them, yelling about the same things day after day, trying to reason with attitude and be the peacemaker between them. It is time to grow up.

I am treading a little bit dangerous here because I don’t want to go too deep into our relationship. But, I think it is safe to say that my wife wants to hold on as long as possible. I on the other hand am ready for them to experience real life lessons in the safest possible fashion. Money doesn’t grow on trees so when you break your phone or need to pay for car insurance plus rent plus food plus hundreds of dollars in ‘school clothes’ that doesn’t come easily or without sacrifice.

I am already funding two open ended airplane tickets abroad this summer, plus my wife is going on a three week trip to Europe as well. Now one of my son’s is asking to go on a one week trip to a high school trip across the country. What ever happened to pooling gas money together to get a ride to the next town? We have the money for all of that but I do remember those days of bribing rides by paying extra gas money. I think that was a rite of passage and character building. You didn’t take experiences for granted.

My new definition of Senioritis is moving into the post child rearing years. I do not really want to get old, but it beats the alternative. My kids will find their own balance. I don’t think that it will be what they currently think it is. And that is OK, it is part of the process. We will still be there to support them, we just won’t be or feel responsible for them.

I would love to say that I can see retirement on the radar. When I was graduating High School, there were people in their early 50s that were retiring. For me, that is only two to seven years. I can say this, that isn’t going to happen. It is more likely that I will work until I cant then to have a bunch of years in the retirement zone. Knowing that, it is imperative to get the most out of remaining years while health is still intact and everything seems so far away to improbable.

Recently, I find myself looking at small RVs and boats so that we can get out to fish on the weekend and get back to work during the week. That is likely going to be the flavor of my coming golden years. We are already talking about and looking at houses to move. Part of it is downsizing and part of it is to get out of here. I am feeling closed in in this town and state. My wife wants to move for different reasons but for both of us, they hinge on the kids becoming adults and making steps toward their own lives.

End Your Programming Routine: It bears repeating that I love this time of year. I love the hope that graduation represents. Many people like the winter holidays but I would argue that it is school ending is where everybody is happy and summer is just starting. Not only is there accomplishment from the year that was completed but there is a seemingly endless break before starting the next thing. It is exciting. It may seem like I was complaining but really I was expressing the factors that are pushing me to be ready for a change. I am ready to start my life (again) and I want to do it before I am too old to enjoy it.

August 26, 2021 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

August 26, 2021 /

Finally, there is something to report on and there are two stories on both ends of the spectrum. I will report on them probably in two different instances because there are some life lessons coming.

Last Friday, I took my dad to the range. He inherited a rifle from his uncle who was his lifelong sportsman’s partner. They hunted an fished together my dad’s whole life. And when I was a kid, I was there too. My great uncle Art didn’t have any children of his own so he kind of adopted my dad as a surrogate son.

Last year when I took my dad to the range, we started to take a look his newly inherited Winchester Model 100 .308. The first problem was that my dad had taken the scope off for some reason, I think he said to clean everything thoroughly. He took a couple of shots and it was no where near the target, so we tabled it for later as he needed a bore sight to get started.

Fast forward to this trip. The goal was to get that rifle sighted in and also to try some newly loaded 30-06 in a different rifle and make sure that rifle was sighted in as well. Last year, we had kind of left it in a ‘I think it is OK state’. We were going to see about getting it on the 50 yard target first and then move to the 100 yard target.

The first thing that happened was that when he pulled the trigger, nothing happened. Come to find out, there was no cartridge in the chamber. After some fiddling around, he got one in the chamber and fired. I saw no trace of it around the target or the ground. He fired again, I saw it hit the top of the 100 yard berm. I asked ‘Are you Sure you are aiming the the 50 yard target?’ He said yes. I had no way of knowing for sure, but I estimated that he was 12-24″ high (as you shoot over the 50 to hit the 100). A couple more shots and I saw one hole on the paper at the 100 yard target.

We did more adjusting and shooting, probably after 10 shots my dad suggested that I should try it as we were still nowhere close to getting on the target. I looked down the barrel and it was clearly pointed at the 100 yard target, not the 50. So we gave up, the rifle would need to be bore sighted and we would have to try another day.

Then we took out his other rifle, it was a more than 50 year old Remington 722 30-06. My dad had loaded some new rounds over the winter. After the first shot, the bolt got stuck and the cartridge casing got stuck in the rifle. Again more fiddling, and we got the case out. Long story long here but about every other shot we had a stuck cartridge case. I suggested that maybe we needed to table it and that I wasn’t confident that rifle should be used to for hunting until the sticking case situation could be understood better.

This isn’t a story to disparage my dad. But, between the hobbling out to get the targets or the bolt manipulation or the confusion at what target he was aiming at what I saw was that my dad was becoming elderly. I knew in my head that he is getting into his upper seventies now. But I really hadn’t seen the signs of the transition until this trip.

Hopefully, it happens to us all. But, it also means that I need to pay more attention to what is going on. I definitely get some of my stubbornness from him, hopefully we will be able to work together to make this the best possible life phase transition.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess you can say that I am fortunate to have my dad around at this point. And I know from my wife’s side of the family that dealing with aging parents can have some challenges. Sometimes decisions or lack of action can have consequences. The silver lining is that I am planning another range trip with my dad to get these things ironed out before hunting season.

August 12, 2021 – Teens and Grief

August 12, 2021 /

Today I am going to be an expert on something that I have no business claiming. To make things doubly worse, this is the area that my wife excels in and she is in Texas. Just like most things in my life, we are here now so lets see what we can do.

It was 4AM, when my wife called. As you would expect, I was asleep. It took me a couple of seconds to process that Frank had died. You would hope that in these situations, the person on the phone would provide some level of comfort and assurance (that would be me giving it). Again, another thing that I am not good at. In my defense, I was half asleep and shocked as well as being not my strong suit.

Being the ‘do everything now’ person that she is, she wanted to me to wake up the boys and give them the message immediately. Which I did. The hour between 4-5AM was kind of a blur. There was silence, then praying, then my kids went in two different directions. One claimed that Grandpa would want a party and so we should celebrate and the other shut down and started crying.

Olivia called again around 5AM and we all talked together for a couple of minutes. After the call, I suggested to the boys that I make breakfast since we were all up. My thought was trying to keep us all together so no one gets too low. Surprisingly, they both wanted to go back to bed. I kind of wandered around trying to figure out what my next steps should be.

While they were sleeping, I hatched a plan that we were going to get out of the house together. Unfortunately because we are in quarantine our options are extremely limited but we could drive and we could be outside. My goals were to keep us together and provide an opportunity to grieve and share and open up away from electronic distractions

My first thought was to go to the beach since it was going to be over 100 degrees here. When I posed the idea to my son, he said that we should go to Bend (east and not west to the beach). I started thinking and I also wanted to go that direction. I had yet to see what the results of the wildfires last year.

Post Labor day weekend last year, millions of Oregonians experienced the wildfires. For several thousand (in this area of the state), their lives were shattered. Kind of like ours were yesterday. We saw a town that used to exist and 75% was roads, slabs and foundations. On the positive side clean-up was ongoing and new buildings were in various stages of completion.

I think that this is a good story to make a corollary. Grieving is a process. The acute event is bad but we have to know that the damage is slowly repaired over time by taking deliberate steps. I can’t just take one day off and everyone will feel better and be OK. I was around 20 when my Grandfather died. I still thought about him for years afterward. He never saw me graduate college or get married or see his great grandchild for whom he was named.

We ended the day in Central Oregon, explored some caves and made a list of new things that we wanted to do when we came back. We stopped and looked at things I always wanted to do but never seemed to have the time. We listened to music that we thought represented Frank or that we knew he liked. By the time it was dark, everything was a little bit better.

End Your Programming Routine: This was a win for me. I started the day not knowing how to relate to each child in the way that was best for them. By the time that it was over, I think that we all felt that we took a step in the right direction. We all feel remorse that we didn’t have a chance to say goodbye or one last thing. God willing, he hears us now.

July 21, 2021 – Trying For the Second Time

July 21, 2021 /

I am not way into this, it is just that I am interested in exploring. What does that mean? It means that I am trying out Linux again. The first time I tried it was probably four years ago and I thought that it was OK, I just didn’t put much effort into it.

Why would you try Linux you ask? Well there are a couple of reasons but first I will start series of seemingly unrelated stories. My son has a penchant for collecting junk. He is a bit of a rube when it comes to not being able to see through people’s motivations. I will give a couple of examples.

About four years ago, my son and a friend decided to build a go-cart. Unbeknownst to me, their tactic was to go around the neighborhood and ask for free parts to create said go cart. One smart neighbor (I wish that I knew who it was) gave him a free tire for the project. Not four and not a wheel, but a tire. Needless to say, I paid the eight dollars to dispose of it two years later

Now the second tire story. My son was building a costume for Halloween. He went to the local tire store to obtain some tires with the premise that he was going to cut them into pieces and assemble some sort of tire suit. Now, I don’t know if you have ever tried to cut a tire, but it is pretty difficult. Again, the store gladly gave him two tires (of which they had already collected the disposal fee) and then they got paid again when I got rid of them for the second time.

And the third story which is getting closer to where I want to go. Just two weeks ago my son and the same friend found a ‘free’ TV on the side of the road. He was convinced that not only was this a better TV than the one that we already had, but that this was somehow the score of the year. Once he found out that it doesn’t work I now have another disposal issue.

I think that I made my case for when a relative gave my son a free laptop, I was not very happy about it. One reason it was free was that the operating system was locked due to a forgotten password. It was also Vista vintage hardware and I didn’t have the OEM software to re-install the operating system and address the lockout. This was my first foray into Linux.

I installed Unbuntu and to be honest, it worked alright. We used it to display karaoke on the TV s couple of times. The operating system was definitely foreign to me and I didn’t spend much time using it, only to do what I wanted to do which was access the internet and display lyrics on the TV. That computer ended up getting recycled with a large techno junk effort that I made about a year and a half ago because we didn’t need it. We had other, better laptops to replace it.

So, why do I want to fool around with Linux again? Well, I have an old XP computer that was in the recycle pile earlier this year. For some reason, it wasn’t booting and I didn’t know if it was the hard drive or a RAM fault or what. A few months ago, I thought that I would try to copy the data so that I could dispose of it and I found that it was working. I put the computer back together and low and behold XP was alive again.

The reason it is still around is that my wife is convinced that there are pictures and other data that we would want to access again. I have copied the entire hard drive so I am confident that I have everything. But nevertheless, it is sometimes nice to have an old device that has a functioning serial port or LPT port. My point to this is that I am not convinced that I want to blow away my existing hard drive to install Linux since there is not enough no partition the existing drive.

About two months ago, I spent $5 on a TV tuner card. The driver was not supported in Windows 10 and I no longer have a Windows 7 computer. I downloaded and installed the XP driver and the hardware works. However the card only handles analog signals so I don’t have a way to validate that it works.

Unbuntu is supposed to be bootable from a USB drive. I think that I tried that before, but it is not working for me at the moment. The last tech note I read was that I need to redo the USB conversion to eliminate the problem so that is my next step.

I haven’t fully decided whether I want to buy another hard drive or just to try it again. While XP does run and it seems to be fine, it is limited and not recommended to be on internet. I downloaded the last version of Firefox which is about a year out of date now. If you haven’t tried it, technology eventually stops working because the software is no longer supported. Or said another way, old technology stops communicating with new technology. It is a fine word processor or jukebox though.

End Your Programming Routine: You could say what I am trying to do is be cheap or a junk collector myself. I prefer to think of it as a thought experiment about determining whether there is life left in an old computer. I do also believe that the tactic of running Linux is a valid strategy to access data on a machine that is locked out or otherwise inaccessible. I will report more on this experiment as I get some time to get it actually working.

June 29, 2021 – The Morning After and the Calm Before the Next Storm

June 29, 2021 /

Over the course of the last week, several events have been top priority, the weather, family events and my anniversary. Much of that comes to conclusion today. One of the most bizarre weather phenomenon happened yesterday, a return to normal.

At 1pm yesterday, I went to go get flowers and it was hot. Both the thermometer and the weather app said 108. By 2pm the thermometer said 111 and by 2:30pm it was reading 115. It was supposed to be cooler and the forecast said it was coming, but when?

It turns out that was the peak, because by 6pm the temperature was down to 85 and by 8pm it was down to 72. In the course of six hours our temperature dropped over 40 degrees.

When I say normal, I mean that it is normal to be highly scheduled because Fourth of July is this weekend. The Boy Scouts have a bunch of activities planned Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The annual children’s play performances will occur Thursday, Friday and Saturday (my son is in the lead). There are other family activities still to come like my mother-in-laws birthday party today. At least the temperature will be in the eighties.

Yes, they were already working on the hotel at 6:30am this morning. But that was the view of the serenity from our room. So you could see the serenity of the location. In a few short days there will be fireworks going off and throngs of crowds (to the left of the picture).

I think that we as parents want to give our kids the best experiences that we can. That includes enabling participation in all of the extra curricular activities. Especially after last year. Even though I went out of the home to go grocery shopping and miscellaneous errands, I think that my kids were homebound from mid-March through late April until we went to the airport to drop off our exchange student.

Most of the traditional activities were cancelled like summer camp, youth groups etc. Maybe I just notice it more because it was so quiet for so long and now it is return to normal with activities. Or maybe they are more involved because they are at the age where they can be. I am not totally sure.

End Your Programming Routine: I know at some point my wife and I won’t necessary have to escape to a hotel to spend time together. It doesn’t make the fact that we have very busy schedules easier, but it does mean that we took the time despite all that was going on to be together. Fantastic evening.

August 21, 2020 – A True Education in Entrepreneurship

August 21, 2020 /

After spending spring and summer remodeling, stuff starts to pile up. With the Covid restrictions in place, places such as Habitat for Humanity and Goodwill were not accepting donations for months. Even the dump was restricted to two days a week.

I made a deal with my kids, if they did the work then they could have the profits of a garage sale. The way we structured things, items that were their’s they kept the whole profit. Items that were mine (or mom’s or household) were split evenly between them.

The part that I like the best is after the sale is over, everything that remains is getting packed up and will be donated or disposed of. But even more than that, my boys are learning some real lessons in business. For instance

  • Marketing – They made and hung the signs that were distributed throughout the town. They also leveraged social media to advertise the event.
  • Sales – Engaged customers, answered questions about items, made suggestions for alternatives, negotiated prices with customers
  • Inventory – Items were cleaned, organized in logical categories, evaluated and priced accordingly. Some things were deemed free and others unfortunately were worn out and didn’t make the garage sale cut.
  • Accounting – Sales were categorized and documented to make sure the profits went into the right categories and to the right person.

School will be starting in a little over two weeks. There has been quite a bit of side talk about the quality of education with our district opting to go online. Some parents are sending their kids to private school, others have withdrawn to do homeschooling. I myself think that opportunities like this garage sale is chance to learn about the hustle of entrepreneurship and have a real world experience while making some nice pocket change.