Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Who am I? Who I Am.

I am a 2 ton wrestling opponent ready for battle at any given moment
I am a waiter eager to accept my customers latest order
I am a television programmer strategically plotting what the viewing audience will enjoy most
I am a plumber who is called at all hours to figure out what was flushed or why it won't
I am a lover of every purple dinosaur, every imaginary friend, every rabbit brother and sister, every talking dog, penguin, moose, and whatever, every super hero duck, hamster, and turtle, every Spanish explorer, animal rescuer, and maintenance man.
I am a pool boy
I am a Sunday school teacher
I am a tryer, a doer, and sometimes a failure.
I am a reader of rhymes and singer of verse.
I am a chauffeur, taxi cab driver, and a couple of times I've rushed through town as if in an ambulance.
I am a race track designer
I am a Nascar racer who always comes in second place
I am a memory keeper.
I am a provider, a giver, a receiver, and lucky guy
I am a married far abover
I am a I will pull your pants down right here in front of everyone and spank that bottomer
I am a surgeon adept at placing a band aide at just the right angle so as to stop the pain
I am a beautician who can't get promoted past the hair washing station
I am a computer tech
I am a teacher of words, learner of slang, and discourager of terms
I am a craftsman who can perform miracles with elmers glue, a pair of scissors, and a paper sack
I am a go to your roomer
I am a too busy to write a post today blogger
I am a carry of all thing precious, wiggly, and upset
I am a painter of rooms, colorer of pages, and drawer of doodles
I am a do as I sayer not as I doer
I am a dentist always on the look out for easier ways to keep teeth in better shape
I am a finder of things to do while waiting for the doctor to call our name
I am a kisser of booboos, spanker of bottoms, and giver of high fives
I am a getter of way more than I ever deserver
I am a no matter how big the fight we can work it outer
I am a struggler, a survivor, and warrior
I am a architect of towers that never last
I am a husband, a father, a son, a lover, a best friend, a brother, a believer, and hopefully a teller to all those who I am thankful for-er.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

From Playboy To Parenting

Don't ask me why, but lately I've been thinking a lot about magazines. We seem to have them everywhere and refuse to let them go no matter if they've been read or not. You would think that with all the television we watch, all the time spent on the Internet, all the moments during the day listening to talk radio, we'd be some of the most well informed people on this planet. Yet one of my most favorite moments in every week has to be coming home on Friday and seeing who's on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.

As I mentioned magazines have been on my mind. After thinking over all the different types we've subscribed to over the years, I was surprised how you can literally trace my growth as a person based on what found it's way into my mailbox. Lucy and I had our first date on 12/27/97. At the time I lived in a fraternity house and Playboy may as well have been the local currency. It was everywhere. Stacks and stacks piled up in closets, bedrooms, covering coffee tables. It was openly discussed and critiqued on a daily basis.

After Lucy and I moved in together I didn't bring Playboy with me. I was however one of the many that signed up for Maxim the first year it came out. Actually if you look at my credit card statement from that time I signed up for more than just one harmless magazine. There was People, Details, GQ, Men's Health, Premier, Stuff...I can't remember if I had a crush on a magazine sales lady or what, but they just kept offering and I kept subscribing.

As the years went by I found I didn't care how to pick up women in a bar using various forms of grunts and hand gestures even though Maxim assured me would work....and I couldn't afford to dress like anyone in GQ....or buy any Stuff other than what I could get at a yard sale...and I never exercised...so I put away my crush for the magazine lady and stopped getting magazines all together. Until that is Entertainment Weekly offered to fill my Pop Culture needs on a weekly basis for the low low price of 10 cents an issue.

I was baptized close to 5-6 years ago and went through an intellectual phase in which I felt I needed to read as much as possible about every political, social, medical, statistical movement there was....this lead to Harper's. A monthly dose of left wing propaganda mixed with some poetry and a touch of "exclusive" fiction from today's most deep thinking writers. I soon learned that my desire for more knowledge couldn't over come my distaste for pages upon pages of words without pictures.

I wrote for a pet website for a while so friends and family got the chance to laugh at me while I scoured the pages of Cat Fancy looking for juicy fodder. It seemed like with every new assignment came another niche mag. Golf Digest. Log Cabin Monthly. Of course the moment Fred was conceived we signed up for Parenting. Since we had a child who demanded to eat everyday we thought we'd better learn to make something other than spaghetti hence Family Circle. US Weekly gives us the sort of Garbage-Can-Gossip that EW thinks we are too mature for. Plus Fred even gets a couple in hopes that they will someday keep him quiet during church. We even get one devoted completely to foods made by Kraft. All I can figure is at some point we really must have loved mac'n cheese.

Looking back you might think that things have gone down hill after I let Maxim go, but honestly they have several things in common. They are both full of glossy images that I'll never get to touch in real life, they both cause my jaw to drop and a little bit of saliva to run out of the corner of my mouth, and they both are full of plastic things that are never as good as they look in print. Honestly the way I see it Family Circle is better because A) I got a better chance of experiencing some of the things described in the articles and B)Lucy never complains when I oogle over chicken tetrazzini .

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Welcome To Walmart! Now With Less Clothing!

Somebody asked about Fred recently and if he was as hard to handle as their child. The answer to this is of course "He's way worse than your kid", because honestly who doesn't think their child is the biggest handful ever to be brought into this world. The question did spark a string of recent memories that I feel proves Fred (though he may seem out of control at times) is everything an All American Child should be.

Like last week during vacation bible school, right there in middle of the puppet show he decided to stand up and show the crowd how well he can do flips. He did 3 before I was able to stop him.

The next night he ran as hard as he could, caring less of where he was going, and managed to look up just in time to see the support beam hit him dead center between the eyes. It's been a week and he's still got two blackeyes.

Monday night he slept in his Spiderman costume. At 3:30 that morning he woke us up because he'd had an accident and gotten it all wet. It took us half an hour to convince him to change clothes.

One thing we are learning is that spanking may be useful at times, but in the end (no pun intended) it really doesn't have any long lasting effect. I think it's because during the normal course of the day he somehow manages to hurt his own self at least two dozen times, so us adding a couple of licks turns out to be nothing compared to what he's already been inflicted on his poor knees and elbows. To get to Fred you have to out think him. Pull out some logic and blind him. Dazzle him with your common sense and wisdom.....and if that doesn't work distract him with a distant prize that can only be obtained by listening to Mommy and Daddy. And even then he can't help but be who he is......the kid that out of the blue decided yesterday that it would be fun to chant "Let's get naked!!" over and over while we stood in line at Wal-mart.