The Sacrifices of a Stay at Home Mom

I probably should have written this one on Mother's Day, but I didn't. I wrote it today...

I'd always heard that stay-at-home moms made sacrifices, and I always assumed that what people meant by saying that they made sacrifices was that they had to leave an intellectually stimulating career and spend time--lots of monotonous time--with infants and toddlers who wanted them to read for the 233rd time that day the same picture book about the squirrel and the nut. "I have a master's degree," my wife would lament when I called her from work to check on her, "and I'm sitting here building blocks with a two year old!" I used to think THAT was the sacrifice people talked about.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Let me back up for a moment...

My wife (and I REALLY believe what I'm about to say. This isn't just me saying this

because she's my wife) is the greatest high school teacher I've ever met. When I was a teacher with her at Lloyd High School (and to this day) I was in awe of her teaching ability. Dictionaries might as well put a photo of her beside the definition of teacher. I've never met another educator who could a) entertain students, b) keep them disciplined, c) teach material so that every child achieved, and d) love children. REALLY love children. I think every child that is taught by my wife is CERTAIN that he/she is my wife's favorite, and that he/she is getting special attention from my wife. And I'm not sure that it's not true, as weird as that may sound.

I've met teachers who had one or two of these traits. The really good teachers I know have three of these traits. My wife is the only teacher I've ever seen with all four (myself included--I think I did "a," "b," and "c" reasonably well, but I wasn't so good at "d." I think the students knew I liked them, but they also were aware that I was keeping them at a distance).

In any event, in 1996 my wife was a better teacher than I was, with more education, making more money, and honestly impacting the lives and learning of students more than I was. But then she became pregnant with our first child. And we didn't know how we were going to handle that. We'd both been raised by stay at home mothers, but we didn't have a lot of money saved and we also knew that the 1990's was a different age from when we'd been raised. We talked about several options, the last of which I suggested was this: She had enough sick time once the baby was born to take her through the middle of the second semester of the school year, and we had enough money saved to get us through the end of the year. I'd teach summer school, and we'd save, and we'd find a way to get us through until the start of the next school year. By then the baby would be almost one year old, and maybe I could take parental leave for a year and Lisa could work, and after that the baby would be two years old and old enough to let us know if there were problems at daycare.

It sounded like a plan, but the word "daycare" had the same grating sound in my ear that a piano makes when someone is one note off on a chord. I looked at Lisa and said, "I don't know. I just don't want my child to be raised by a stranger in daycare."

"Me, either," Lisa said with a relieved sigh. And then she said, "I'll stay home with the baby for as long as I can." The decision was made less than 30 minutes after her pregnancy had been confirmed. Lisa would be a stay at home mom.

We knew there would be sacrifices, but as I said above, I foolishly thought that the biggest sacrifices we were making were happening on the front end: the lack of income, the modest homes we lived in, the lack of intellectual engagement on Lisa's part. But I see now that those were the small stuff. The real price is being paid now, and it's not just us that's paying it.

Lisa put her career on hold to raise our kids. I kept working, and now, almost 15 years later, I've moved out of the classroom and become an administrator, and I have power and influence in my school district. Lisa is a substitute teacher looking for a half time job.

But she's still the greatest teacher that I've ever known. At this point in her life, she SHOULD have her doctorate in education and she SHOULD be an administrator somewhere, either a principal or a curriculum coordinator. Her beliefs, theories, and philosophy of education are perfectly in line with the accepted ideas of the day. She was practicing "Response to Intervention"* before there was such a term, and individualized instruction back when teachers operated under the "I taught it and he didn't get it, so it's his fault" idea. I think her time spent as a classroom teacher coupled with her time spent as a director of a Sylvan Learning Center, PLUS her lifelong enthusiasm for teaching (Lisa says all the time that since she was a little, little girl it was all she wanted to do for a career) have all made her the excellent teacher she is. She SHOULD be a leader in a school district--if not the in the state or in the nation--rather than someone babysitting students so that Mrs. So and So can accompany her class to the art museum. She, and society as a whole, are paying the price now for the time that she spent at home.

Don't get me wrong. I don't have any regrets that Lisa stayed home. I've written post after post after post after post after post on this blog about how academically wonderful my children are, and I know a lot of it is because--in addition to the great education they're receiving from public schooling--they had the benefit of a teacher for a stay at home parent when they were young (basically professional schooling with a 2:1 student/teacher ratio) and a teacher to help them with their homework now. I wouldn't trade that for anything, and I know Lisa wouldn't, either.

Like I said, maybe I should have written this on Mother's Day. Why am I writing it now? Mostly because Lisa has been out of town most of this week with our younger daughter, and I've been thinking a lot about how wonderful she is, how much I appreciate her, and the little things she does around the house. Sure, I knew that she did the laundry and the house cleaning (lest you get the impression that I'm some barbaric man who doesn't share in the work around the house, I'll let you know that I do the grocery shopping and 95% of the cooking in the house), but that isn't what's gotten to me--it's all of the organization and planning it takes to be a parent of teenagers. Without my wife here I've had to keep straight when my older daughter is coming home, what activities she has at night, and I've had to help her with her homework. I've also had to prowl through all of the emails that teachers send to know what's going on in classes, when the next practices are, what things we're supposed to bring to school, and more.

And I only had to deal with ONE child. Lisa is having to shuffle two, and she does so and then also balances my schedule and keeps me informed only about the things that I need to know: "There's a band concert Tuesday," she'll tell me. "6 o'clock. Put it on your calendar." I write it down and go to the concert and feel like I'm involved, but Lisa has shielded me from these 14 other emails and the fact that my younger daughter needs a poster board for next Tuesday and my older daughter is supposed to bring lemonade or other non-diet drink to field day on Wednesday and exams are Friday and on and on.

I guess the point of this is that sometimes, if I'm not careful, I can take my wife for granted. She's a fantastic woman, and I'm glad to be married to her. And I'm grateful for the sacrifices that she has made so that my children can be the smart, mature, funny, well-adjusted children that they are.

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*By the way, this link is to one of the WORSE articles on RTI I've ever read, and it points out pretty clearly what's wrong with Wikipedia. The article is disorganized, biased, and filled with misinformation.

It's the Suitcases of Cash that Give It Away

Yesterday I wrote (just in passing) about The Brady Bunch, so I figured it only fitting today to write about Gilligan's Island. After all, I've been meaning to write what's below for months and months.

Except that I didn't write this at all. Instead, I FOUND this on the Internet when I did a quick search. I was checking for this exact contingency--the event that someone else had already written what I was going to write. I was unprepared, though, for what I found. What follows is an anonymous piece from almost ten years ago, and it absolutely concurs with my theory about the TV show. I was shocked that someone else happened upon EXACTLY the same theory that I had for the show. The only difference is that I had never imagined the planned attempt to dump Mary Ann's body at sea.

Anyway, rather than writing it all over again, I thought I'd just share this writing. Saves me the trouble of having to write it down.

How lazy is THAT?

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Gilligan's Island: The Dramatic Failure

-Author Unknown

The clues are so obvious a child can see them--and, in fact, many children have; they just haven't recognized what they were seeing as clues.

Take the millionaire, Thurston Howell III. We know he's a spoiled, selfish aristocrat, with nothing but disdain for his social inferiors, and an innate belief that his fortune entitles him to everything. He maintains this stance even while stranded on an uncharted desert isle without a single luxury. One of the glaring questions that's bothered us for a quarter of a century is: Since the snobbish Howell can presumably afford to buy his own yachts, why would he be interested in a "three-hour tour" aboard a dinky little charter vessel owned by two ex-navy men? And why would he take along a briefcase filled with thousand dollar bills, when one of the perks associated with great wealth is unlimited credit?

Up until now, we responded to such questions by saying that the show was just plain stupid. But let's assume that creator Sherwood Schwartz knew what he was doing, and that there's a reasonably believable explanation for Howell's insane behavior. Hold that thought, while we move on to the next seeming inconsistency.

What was this supposed to be a three hour tour of? Certainly not the local reefs, since there's no scuba equipment aboard. And certainly not the local shoreline, since when the weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was not only unable to make it to port, but was blown outside Hawaiian territory. It must have been an unusual distance from shore to begin with. And still, no normal tourist site, let alone one miles from shore, can possibly explain the amount of money Howell brought with him. Especially since there aren't any aquatic shopping malls anywhere near Honolulu. But three hours provides just enough time for a boat the Minnow's size, travelling at top speed, to travel a discreet distance from shore, rendezvous with another ship, collect a highly valuable cargo in return for a large amount of cash, and return as if nothing unusual had happened.

The inevitable conclusion: Howell chartered the Minnow to make a multi-million-dollar drug buy. He'd paid off Gilligan, and the Skipper too. He'd brought along the necessary cash. He even brought along an extensive wardrobe, just in case the coast guard show up and he had to leave U.S. territory in a hurry. And just to make sure he wasn't ripped off, he brought along a expert to evaluate the merchandise he was getting.

Who was that expert? Well, look at things from Howell's point of view. Where could he find a man with the capabilities he needed? Obviously, the criminal community. Somebody known to be involved in illegal drug trafficking. Somebody who might have already had a criminal record. Somebody whose obvious intelligence and highfalutin vocabulary would have stood out like a sore thumb in prison. Somebody who would have been given the kind of nickname such convicts are usually given in prison. The Professor.

There's plenty of other evidence to support this theory. Fans of Gilligan's Island trivia known that the enigmatic and vaguely sinister Professor (A.K.A. Roy Hinkley) was aboard the boat to research a new book called Fun With Ferns. But ferns don't exist at sea. The Professor also claimed to have held doctorates in several disciplines, though anybody even marginally literate in science can recognize several of his learned pronouncements as the nonsense they are. It's easy to see that he must have been lying about who he was and why he was aboard. Moreover, he not only brought along a surprising number of test tubes and beakers for somebody researching ferns, but he also after the shipwreck turned out to be incredibly adept at synthesizing valuable chemicals from the local flora.

There's more. At least one of the passengers aboard the Minnow must have been an innocent bystander with no connection to Howell's planned drug deal. We know this because Howell and the Professor stuck by their cover stories, in the face of all available evidence, for years after the Minnow was shipwrecked. But who?

It couldn't have been Mrs. Howell, since she, like her husband, came with enough clothes for an emergency flight to South America. She had to have known everything that was going on. Indeed, if we discount her "dumb rich bitch" act as the pose it was, we're forced to recognize her as a conniving dragon lady in the tradition of Imelda Marcos.

And it couldn't have been Ginger Grant either, since she also brought her entire wardrobe, and, as a big-time movie star, seemed to have no other convincing reasons for being aboard. Besides, her Hollywood drug connections, a natural gold mine for Howell, provides strong evidence for her membership with the conspiracy.

And we already know it couldn't have bee either Gilligan or the Skipper. Because they were running the boat, they had to know what Howell was planning.

Therefore, by process of elimination, the innocent party must have been Mary Anne, a Kansas farm girl who had won a Hawaiian vacation in a contest. Howell and his cronies must have let her on board because failing to do so would have raised undue suspicion among harbor authorities; they probably intended to dump her body at sea. But (and this is where the story line's real brilliance begins) they failed to see that she wasn't who she was pretending to be either! She couldn't have been! Vacations given away in contests are for two people, not one and Mary Anne, who claimed to have a fiance back home, had no real reason to be travelling alone. Therefore, she must have been maintaining a false identity as well--and since everybody else on the Minnow was frantically putting on a show for her benefit, she must have been putting on a show for theirs.

The conclusion is inescapable. Mary Anne was a Fed. If the series was a movie made in the 1980s, she would have been played by Debra Winger. But it wasn't, and her very presence on the boat, presumably wearing a wire, tells us that Howell's scheme was doomed to failure before it even began. The government already knew what he was planning. It had managed to place an agent right next to him. And she wouldn't have been there unless her superiors were within surveillance range, poised to bail her out the second she'd gathered all the evidence they needed.

The intrigue continued with the shipwreck itself. Everybody knows that the island was visited way too often, by too many people from too many walks of life to be truly uncharted. And vital supplies washed up on the beach just about every week--which, as everybody also knows is way too often to be a coincidence. And people capable of building huts and bicycles out of bamboo should certainly be capable of fixing a three-foot tear in a boat. Once again, everybody responds to such inconsistencies by saying the show was just plain stupid. But since we now know that this is not the case, there has to be an alternate explanation. And there is.

Assume that the shipwreck, as depicted, was real--an actual complication screwing up Howell's plans. also assume the radio transmitter did work. Assume that Howell and his cronies found out from one of his agents on shore what we already know--that the federal government was after them for conspiracy to commit a felony. How would they react? Simple. They'd talk it over when Mary Anne was not around and agree to wait out the statute of limitations on the island--pretending to be stranded, for her benefit. They'd surreptitiously radio away for any supplies they really needed, arranging for it to "wash up on shore" during the night. And they'd work hard to ruin any genuine opportunity for "rescue." Any visitor who couldn't be bribed into silence by Howell would be subtly maneuvered into situations where he would prefer to leave the castaways alone. And any escape routes that seemed inevitable would be sabotaged by any means possible, by the castaways themselves, even if that meant they had to act like a bunch of ninnies. And since Howell must have handsomely rewarded any conspirator who successfully foiled an inevitable "rescue," we're forced to conclude that the brilliant, cunning, criminal genius of them was--yes--Gilligan himself.

Meanwhile, poor Mary Anne's life would depend upon successfully hiding her own secret from the den of thieves surrounding her. For years on end, she'd have to stay in character, baking literally hundred of coconut cream pies as she pretended to be fooled by the desperate playacting of six ruthless drug smugglers.

Watch the show with knowledge in mind, and you'll recognize it for what it actually is: the single subtlest mystery and suspense series in the history of television. But unfortunately, no last episode, where Mary Anne would succeed in arranging a "rescue" despite all of the mastermind Howell's attempts to stop her, was ever filmed, so the show keeps it undeserved reputation for being just plain stupid. And lovers of great television mourn.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia

Tonight my older daughter had what (I think) was her last band concert of the school year. She's had about 5 concerts in the last 3 weeks, though, so it's hard to keep up. In addition to being in the regular old middle school band, she's also in jazz band and the percussion ensemble (Yeah, I know--how does a clarinet player end up in a percussion ensemble? I don't know, either. But she played a xylophone at one concert and the bongos at another).

But I'm not here to talk about my older daughter. What I am here to talk about is hair. The concert tonight was more than an hour and a half long, and I guess that's just too darned long for me to listen to music, because my mind started to drift off during the performance of the high school symphonic band. At one point while they were playing I started noticing everyone's hair styles. And I noticed, first of all, that straight, straight hair is all the rage right now. Not quite early 1970's, Marcia Brady straight, back when girls used to iron their hair, but not far off from that, either.

The other thing I noticed was that several of the older girls--maybe juniors or seniors--had their hair professionally highlighted. You know it's fake highlights because the streaks of blond are too perfect to be natural. I don't know when highlighting became a fashion trend (As a man, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to this kind of stuff normally--not sure what my problem was tonight), but I'm assuming that the original intent was to give older females something LIKE what younger girls got naturally from being active and out in the sunlight a lot. So I found it ironic that these teenage girls were highlighting their hair so that they could look like the older women who were highlighting their hair so that they could look like teenagers.

And THAT is probably the only post I will ever make about women's hair...

________________________________

But before I leave, I DO want to come back to talk about my daughter and band. Actually BOTH of my daughters. It's bragging time again. I'm usually pretty consistent about getting on here and bragging about my children, but I missed these two nuggets: 1) At the high school band banquet a couple of weeks ago my older daughter received a plaque for "Best Woodwind Player" in the middle school band. And Tuesday at the elementary band concert my younger daughter received a certificate for "Best Brass Player" in her class. I'm proud of them both.

Odyssey of the Mind

This morning Lisa and our younger daughter set off for East Lansing, Michigan. They were headed to Michigan State University, site of this year's World Finals for the Odyssey of the Mind competition. This is my daughter's second trip in a row to the world finals, and her team's third trip in a row.

As I mentioned last year, the World Finals of Odyssey of the Mind is a HUGE deal. It takes place over several days. This year I'm also excited to say that my younger daughter gets to participate in the parade of states/nations at the Opening Ceremonies (which are patterned after the Olympics). She and a few others will represent Kentucky in the parade.

The ceremony is being recorded online starting at 7:30 PM tonight. If you're interested, you can watch it here: http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/wf2010/broadcast.php .

3/4 of the Way There!

You may (or may not) have noticed that I've posted a little bit less this month than usual. That's because at work I am 75% of the way through what I've been calling "The Month from Hell."

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing terrible happening at work. It's just been busy, mostly because the entire state of Kentucky is transitioning to a new email system. I'm sincerely excited about the new system, which has some really nifty collaborative tools in it that teachers could use to make some significant changes to the way they teach and the way students learn. But it's caused a lot of work for me (though one week of hell had nothing to do with the new email system).

Here was my itinerary for the Week of Hell:

Week One (May 3-7): I was late getting home on three separate days due to training for the new email system (I held a training at each school in the district, half of them during this week).

Week Two (May 10-14): Due to no one person's fault, I had an out of district meeting EVERY DAY of the work week. And for three of the nights that week I was out of my house staying at a hotel in Lexington. Each of the things I was doing out of district was important, but it meant a lot of time away from family and a lot of time out of office (at one point I had over 100 emails in my inbox).

Week Three (May 17-21): Again, I was late three nights training teachers for the new email system. In addition, Friday was the actual day of migration to the new system, and I didn't leave work until almost two hours past my normal quitting time. I even came into work today (Saturday) from 9:30 until 2 to finish up some activities related to the migration, all in hopes that staff members can come in to work next week, hop on the new email system, and immediately start working.

Week Four (May 24-28): Of course, that is NOT going to happen for everyone. I do really believe that most people will be able to jump right on the new system, but I know that there will be some people who did not attend the trainings and did not read my emails, and I anticipate a busy week next week as a slew of people will need help.

Oh well. Such is life. I'm not writing this to make you feel sorry for me, just to explain why my posts have been less frequent and not as long. I will say this, though: thank goodness next weekend is Memorial Day weekend, a three day weekend. I plan to do some solid relaxing during that time.

Honor's Day

If the following post sounds like I'm boasting on my daughter, it's because I am!...

Today was Honor's Day for 7th-9th graders at my daughters' high school, and--as usual--my older daughter kicked butt! She received a plaque, certificate, or recognition for everything academic that she could possibly have received something for. She's a genius! Takes after her mother!

The only thing that she could possibly have gotten recognition for that she DIDN'T was for the President's Physical Fitness Award. Maybe next year.

Of all of the awards she received, the one I was proudest of was her recognition for being a Duke TIP finalist. Every year Duke sponsors a program where talented 7th graders take the ACT (Yes, the same ACT that high school juniors and seniors take), and the top scorers are recognized at a state ceremony. My daughter is one of those to be recognized at the state level (She scored a 25 composite on her ACT!).

Many of the awards today--like Honor Roll--had dozens and dozens of kids who received recognition. In fact, for Honor Roll, I think it might have been easier to just call the names of the kids who DIDN'T receive Honor Roll. But there were only two students in the entire 7th grade who were Duke TIP Finalists, my daughter and another girl (She and this girl have been finishing one-two in academic feats since kindergarten), and THAT'S why I was so proud of her. It was a TRULY exemplary accomplishment.

Anyway, as most of you reading this know, my older daughter is not really keen on having her picture taken, so instead of putting her photo on this blog post, I instead put a photo of her certificates and plaques up instead.

Glory Days

Whether we like to admit it or not, we all are influenced by "bandwagon" thinking. When I look at the absolutely dreadful music that is currently popular, I'd like to THINK that I'd be a discerning listener and reject most the crud. But I know that's not the case. If I were a teenager today, I'd be a big fan of Lady Gaga, Kesha, and Taylor Swift.

But I didn't grow up today. I am a child of the 1980's. and there are four artists in my mind that hover above the 1980's like four pillars of a Roman temple: Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson, and Bruce Springsteen. And of the four, Bruce Springsteen was definitely my favorite.

Which strikes me as funny now. On the way home from Lexington last Thursday, for the first time in a long time, I listened to Born in the U.S.A., which was the album (sorry, when it comes to pre-1990's music, I still consider them "albums," not "CD's" or even "records") that really launched Springsteen's popularity into the stratosphere. When I was a junior and senior in high school, I listened to that album over and over and over and over. I probably played it AT LEAST once a month. It's one of the few albums that I played so much that I wore out the LP. I then purchased ANOTHER copy of the LP, and when records went the way of the 8 track, I re-purchased it on CD. I absolutely LOVED that record.

But here's why I say that liking the record so much when I was in high school was "funny": because the record ISN'T about an adolescent mindset. Bruce Springsteen was 35 years old when the album was released, and the songs reflect that maturity. The second side of the album (yes, I still think of these albums as having "sides," too) especially isn't about adolescent good times. Instead, song after song on the second side of Born in the U.S.A. is about someone looking BACK on good times and realizing how transient they were. "No Surrender," "Bobbie Jean," "Glory Days," and "My Hometown" were ALL songs about people looking at the idealism of youth and comparing that to the reality of the present and understanding that something had been lost along the way. Sure, the songs sometimes masqueraded as upbeat rockers (see the video below), but the message at the heart of all of these songs was one of sadness.

I was listening to these songs at the time of my life when I should have been LIVING the idealism that the characters in the songs were looking back on so fondly. But the effect of listening to these songs over and over again was that I understood--maybe in a way that I shouldn't have--that these days were all "glory days" that would eventually "pass me by." I remember sitting at a party after my prom my senior year and watching everyone else there celebrating and having a good time and thinking to myself, "This is the end. This is the end of this life as I know it, and in a few weeks I'll stand in a graduation gown with these people and throw my mortarboard in the air, and then I'll never see most them again." And I haven't.

So what? So nothing really. I just thought of these things while I listened to these songs. I was old enough at 17 and 18 to understand them. Now I'm old enough to understand them AND feel them.

(I can't see the video)

These Guys Played a Lot of Mousetrap When They Were Young!

My younger daughter showed me this video. When I saw it, I was sure that there was no way it was real, but after doing research I found that it IS real, a single shot. Pretty amazing!

(I can't see the video.)

Bye, Bye Facebook!

Okay, that's an inflammatory heading to this post. I'm not actually leaving Facebook.

But I'm VERY tempted to do so!

I've been pretty ticked off at Facebook lately, mostly over three things:

1) During its last update, without my permission, Facebook reset many of my privacy settings. My photos had all changed from being viewable by "Just Friends" to "Friends of Friends." That might not seem like such a big change, but that means that total strangers could be looking at my photos of my children, who are sometimes named in the captions.

2) A few days ago I got a notification that someone had suggested a link for me. When I clicked on the link, I was taken to a bad site, one that I KNOW that person would never have sent me. I was the victim of, for lack of a better title, an Internet Evil Doer! I quickly closed the web page, though, and that computer does not seem to be having any adverse effects.

3) A different computer (my main home computer), though, recently got some spyware on it. My wife and children promised me that they'd been to no bad sites. When I asked them if they'd ever opened messages from people on Facebook, maybe suggestions to watch a video or to join a group or something like that, and then had something weird happen on the computer, they shook their heads vigorously and said, "Oh yeah! All the time!"

And that was it in my mind. I was going to get off of Facebook entirely. If the site can't tighten its security enough to keep bad guys out AND it's going to change my privacy settings every now and then without telling me, I'd be a fool to stay on the site! That's what I said at the time.

Call me a fool.

I decided that--when all is said and done--I ENJOY Facebook too much to get rid of it. But I DID make the following changes:
1) I went into my privacy settings and set everything back to "Just Friends."
2) I deleted the names of my children in every place that I could find them on my Facebook page (Photo tags, photo comments, notes imported from my blog).
3) Speaking of photo tags, I removed the tags from EVERY photo in my photo albums, with the exceptions of the tags of myself. If my family and friends tag THEMSELVES in my photo albums that's fine with me--I'll leave the tags alone. But I'm through tagging other people. If Facebook resets my privacy settings, I don't want those people's pictures and names being put together by strangers because of me.
4) I removed almost every bit of personal information about me on the "Info" tab of my profile. I used to have a list of a 1,000 things I was interested in, a bunch of long quotations, my entire work history and my entire educational history. No more. I have the high school I graduated from and my year so that classmates can find me, where I work now, and that's it. If someone does get into my personal information, there's not going to be much there for them to get.

So I'm going to continue using Facebook, but I'm going to be very careful about how I use it. I'm starting to have REAL doubts about this site.

Girls on the Run

This morning my younger daughter (and I as her "Running Buddy") participated in the annual Girls on the Run 5K race in downtown Cincinnati. I had told Lisa that it would probably take us about 40 minutes to run the race. I was basing this on the two "practice" runs that my daughter and I had run in the weeks leading up to the event. I told her, if we were lucky, our adrenaline would kick in and we might run it in about 35 minutes.

At the start we were about 3/4 of the way back in a pack of 1,500 runners, and my daughter was very frustrated that we couldn't just jump out of the gate sprinting. "We're practically WALKING!" she said to me. I took her hand and we darted in and out of the crowd and after a mile or so we were in the clear. And then she took off! I think the pace may have been too much for her because she actually asked me to slow down and walk some of the last mile, but she regained her strength at the end and sprinted to the finish. In the photo above, we were in the process of turning the corner and heading to the finish. She has her eyes on the "FINISH" sign, and she took off just a moment later.

The photo below is AFTER the race. In both photos, you might notice an orange smudge above my right eye. The Girls on the Run event includes lots of stations where the girls can do activities before the run, and one of them was a hair spraying station. My daughter had sprayed her hair orange right before the race, and I guess at some point I leaned over and gave her a kiss. Oh well. I WANTED to wear the foam tiaras that some of the younger girls were wearing, but my daughter said she wouldn't let me be her running buddy if I did.

Her final time: 26 minutes. Not bad for her first race, and much, much faster than I thought she could run it. I was VERY proud of her. Afterwards, though, she said she didn't want to do anything like this again. She wants to run track next year, but she wants to be a sprinter, not a distance runner.

Like father, like daughter.

Sweasy.net, I've been cheating on you

Dear Sweasy.net,

I guess it's time I finally came clean. You know how much you mean to me. But I have to be honest with you...

...I've been spending time with another blog.

Don't look at me that way. You think this is easy for me? I'm dying over here!

And don't act so innocent! You're a part of this, too. You knew all along, didn't you? Deep inside? You knew that I was with another! There were signs: my posts getting less and less frequent, and shorter and shorter. And the posts I did make, they always seemed rushed. And wtih spelling erors. And I came over sometimes and there were indentations on my fingers--I'd been typing on a strange keyboard. You knew!

I don't know what happened. Maybe I'll never know. And in the end it doesn't matter. Let's just say that we grew apart.

And this doesn't have to be the end. We don't have to stop seeing each other. You'll always hold a special place in my heart. It's just that--well--I don't think we should be exclusive anymore.

Oh God, don't cry that way. You know I can't take it when you cry!

What? You say you want to see this other blog? I'm not so sure that's a good idea. I don't know where that's going to do anything but make you upset, put a mental image of me sitting at a keyboard typing words into that blog while you were--uh--uh--wherever you are the rest of the time. Sitting on a hard drive on a server at Google.

All right. If you insist, I WILL let you see. But don't say I didn't warn you:

Here she is.

Life Without Screens, part four

I've mentioned in the last couple of posts, Lisa and I decided to have a second weekend without screens at our house. This time, though, we decided to go all out. During the first weekend we basically denied ourselves the Internet and TV, but we left all other forms of communication open. This past weekend, though, we actually powered off our computer and left it off, turned off the ringers on the telephones, and turned off our cell phones (except for Friday night, when our older daughter was at a sleep over).

We got pretty militant. My younger daughter was going to an event at Lazer Kraze on Sunday evening, and we knew that the details about the event were coming via an email. Rather than make an exception to our no screens policy, which is what we would have done last time, we did make an exception, but not to the screens--Lisa turned on the telephone long enough to call this person and find out what was in the email.

Another example: The girls' toilet was dripping water slowly from the place where the water line comes into the toilet. Normally I would have gone to the Internet, googled "how to fix a leaky toilet" and done some research. This time I had to just monkey with the thing until I figured out the problem (And it turned out it wasn't actually leaking. It was so humid in our house from all of the rain we had this weekend that moisture was condensing on the OUTSIDE of the toilet and dripping down).

All of that is nice, but I have to say this: I found the whole exercise MUCH more difficult this time around. Last time we did it--I think--in an attempt to "reboot" our daily activities. We were spending more time in front of screens than we were with each other. But this time, I don't know, I just didn't have much enthusiasm for the whole idea. Pretty much the only way I made it through much of the weekend was by every now and then shouting out, "I'm only doing this for a few more minutes, and then I'm through!" I also took three naps over the weekend just to pass the time.

I guess it didn't help that it rained all weekend and we didn't have anything to do. The family sat in rooms and talked and read together, but we often just got on each other's nerves. We played a family game of Monopoly, but everyone else got angry with me for wheeling and dealing with the others and driving everyone into bankruptcy (That's the POINT of the game, isn't it?). No one really seemed to be in the mood for family bonding.

Maybe it WAS the weather that had something to do with how we all felt. We certainly are all happier this week and getting along better. Finally, Sunday afternoon, I couldn't take it any more. I told everyone, "At 5 o'clock it will be 48 hours without any input from the world. Let's call it a success then. At 5 o'clock I'm watching SOMETHING on TV!" And we did.

One GOOD thing did come out of all of the time without screens, though: On Friday evening, with my older daughter off to her sleepover, Lisa, my younger daughter, and I all went to Home Depot and bought gardening supplies and plants. We planted nine tomato plants, a couple of cucumber plants, watermelon, green peppers, and strawberries. We're all pretty much novices (my younger daughter took care of a lone hot pepper plant last year, and Lisa and I grew tomatoes one year more than a decade ago), so I have no idea if it'll amount to anything, but it definitely would NOT have happened if it weren't not for the "no screens" rule as Friday I was pretty tired and ready to just come home and collapse on the couch.

So I guess, if for no other reason, I'd call this experiment a success.

Just don't expect me to repeat it any time soon!