Categories
Family

How Kids Think

“The TV goes off at 9,” the Wife informed the lass this morning.  The lass is still hobbled by her ankle.  She’s more afraid to walk on it than anything now, but the bottom line is she’s still pretty limited.  With the day off for Veteran’s Day, she’s taking full-advantage of the extra morning time and the lack of mobility by watching extra cartoons.

“What time is it now?” the lass asked.

“Quarter-to-nine,” the Wife answered.

“So there’s 25 minutes until 9 o’clock, because a quarter is 25 cents?” the lass tried to clarify.

I find stuff like that fascinating.  She hasn’t learned about fractions yet, or division, so she filled a gap in her understanding with a not-unreasonable guess.  At least, it is reasonable based on her current understanding of the world.

The Wife went on to explain what “a quarter” meant in this context and how it means dividing-by-four.  It is above her pay grade for now though, since she doesn’t understand division or fractions. 

Still, her world got a bit bigger this morning.

Categories
Football

Manziel for Heisman

I’m late to the party here, but I got to witness Johnny Manziel play for the first time yesterday and I’ve got to say, I’m a fan now. Sure he had 3 interceptions to go with his 5 touchdowns and all those passing yards. More than anything though, he was just fun to watch.

My personal favorite was a second half play where he dropped back to pass, made a pass rusher miss and started running to his left. A second rusher came up to contain Manziel, who head faked back to the right, then spun completely around and continued running right. The poor pass rusher fell flat on his face trying to keep up. Manziel then continued towards the sideline and threw a 20-yard completion down the field.

That wasn’t the only fun play he made either. Overall, I got the impression that Manziel plays with a reckless abandon that is rare anymore. If he keeps going like this for the season, it’s hard to imagine there’s anyone else clearly better than he is for the Heisman trophy.

Categories
Family

Injured Reserve

The lass twisted her ankle at hockey today. I missed the incident, but she didn’t end up coming off the ice for another 5 minutes or so. In fact, if it hadn’t been for one of the coaches coming and alerting me that something might be wrong, she may well have tried to tough it out through the whole practice.

She was weepy when she came over to the boards, as the coach had said she was. After taking her skate off, I could see some swelling starting which eliminated the possibility that it was one of those pseudo-injuries kids often experience. They land on something wrong, or they twist something a little too much and they start screaming bloody murder. Thirty seconds later and a quick check and they are out there running around like nothing ever happened. In this case through, she hadn’t just harmlessly tweaked her ankle, she’d sprained it.

So the rest, ice, compress elevate regimen was put into action.

For most of the afternoon, she was OK. She couldn’t walk on it and simply hopped around when she needed to get somewhere. I tried to get her to move her ankle around a bit to keep it from getting stiff, but she was leery of moving her foot much. Aside from that, it seemed like she was doing well.

Then, a little after dinner time she started getting weepy. She’d fidget a bit and settle down, then she’d get weepy again. She said it felt like “my skates are still on” which I realized meant that she was experiencing the swelling in her ankle. After that, things started going down hill.

It was a bit after her bedtime by this point so I took her upstairs so she could get ready for bed. I’d originally intended to let her stay up, but that seemed imprudent now. She needed to get some sleep and heal a bit. I wrapped her ankle up in an Ace bandage, helped her get in bed. She whined a little the entire time, and I stayed with her for a bit to help her settle down.

I went to check on her 15 minutes later and she was asleep, which I figured would be the last of it. But a few minutes after the boy finally went to bed, he called down to say that she was crying.

When she finally settled down, she revealed she’d fallen on her ankle trying to go the bathroom. She was crying hard now and her ankle was really bothering her. I could also see some of the puffiness seeping down into her toes below the Ace wrap. Her crying seemed to be escalating, which was I figured was due to a combination of the pain and, now, fatigue. The boy fled his room to go sleep on a couch downstairs.

Finally, she complained about her foot being elevated. I told I had it propped up to help it heal overnight. Unfortunately, she’s a moving sleeper and can’t stay still enough to be able to keep her foot on the pillows. She said it felt better when her foot was down on the bed, so I removed the pillows and she did her best to curl up and go to sleep. I’ve since checked her and she’s managed to calm down. Hopefully, she sleeps the rest of the night.

Having been involved in sports my whole life, I knew what she was going through. I also knew there was little to nothing I could do to comfort her. It wasn’t easy watching her hug and cry into her stuffed animals. The emotional side of me was trying to think of something to help give her a little relief. There was also a rational side of me saying I needed to let her work through this, that she wasn’t going to die from a sprained ankle and the best thing I could do for her was to remain calm and teach her a little bit about treating herself.

The worst part of the evening was when she muttered through the tears “I don’t want to play hockey anymore.” I’d knew what she meant, but decided to play dumb a bit, “You won’t be playing hockey tomorrow kiddo.” She wasn’t having any of it, “No, I mean I don’t want to play again. I don’t want to hurt like this.”

The rest of the season has the potential to be interesting.

Categories
DIY

Backsplash Tile Job

It turns out installing tile is a lot like every other project I do. Tons of prep work followed by 5 minutes of payoff work. My Dad and I spent the day installing some mosaic tile for our kitchen backsplash to replace the previously painted drywall.

The hard part was deciding on how to deal with the pattern. It’s hard to explain without seeing the actual tile sheets, but each sheet covers a square foot, just not in a square. Because of the mosaic pattern within the tile sheets, the edges are designed to interlace with successive sheets so that it’s virtually impossible to tell where one sheet ends and the next begins. The edge forms a pattern that repeats every 6 courses of tile within the sheet and in order to maximize tile usage, we took some time to figure out how to work with that.

Once we figured that out, we started cutting. Since it’s a kitchen, there are light switches and outlets all along the wall. All hail the electrical code! Actually, it’s nice when you’re using the kitchen, but cutting tile around all those outlets and switches is a PIA. We had to pull the individual tiles off the sheet to cut them. We managed not to screw up a single cutout for the outlets, certainly that defies some law of probability.

So after all the layout stuff was finished, we’d butter the wall and place the tile which, as I noted earlier, is the payoff part and took less time than any other step in the project.

So, with all that said, here’s the before and after results:

Now, they get to sit for a bit while the mastic sets. Then, the grout job begins, probably on Sunday.

Categories
Misc

Of Hobbits and Things

I’m sitting here watching the final 30 minutes of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and trying to figure out if I like the Azok story line. In a nut, it’s a subplot within the movie, and I suspect the next 2, where an old enemy of Thorin son of Thrain’s tries to settle old scores. It’s also entirely the creation of Jackson, as far as I’m aware.

I suppose something like this was made necessary when the decision was made to create 3 movies, instead of 1. The Hobbit as told by Tolkien is a short book and pretty fast paced as I recall. There just isn’t 3 movies worth of material there.

But I suppose there is the framework for that much if enough “seasoning” is added to the plot, and the Azok storyline certainly fits that bill. I might even be tempted to say it fits it well. The final confrontation in this movie is certainly riveting.

It’s certainly a less offensive modification than Jackson’s epic blunder in The Lord of the Rings where he completely hosed the Ents. I can’t speak for the rest of the LOTR fans out there, but the Ents were one of my favorite characters from the source material and seeing Jackson completely screw them up was a pretty shocking offense considering all the other things Jackson did so well.

How did Jackson screw them up? For starters, he made them seem stupid and they were anything but in the book. Treebeard’s line to Pippin in the movie when Pippin tricks him into going by Isengard with “The closer we are to danger, the farther we are from harm” is “That makes no sense, but then you are very small.”

Say what? A being that has lived for centuries is tricked like that?

Also, for a keeper of the trees, how does Treebeard not know that Saruman has been strip mining that area? Worst of all, in the books Treebeard and the other Ents recognize that the war is there business and that if Sauron is allowed to return to power there will be no where safe for them either.

Jackson uses a cheap emotional trick to get them to fight and repeatedly makes the Ents seem oafish and foolish. How long did it take to call the Entmoot in the movie? Then, Treebeard sees the desctruction Saruman has wrought, screams, and just like that Ents are crawling out of the forest? Where’s the consistency?

There are other modifications that I thought unfortunate as well. He changed Aragorn’s character from a confident “My time has come” king-to-be to a hesitant and troubled man whom almost seems afraid to act. The book’s version of the character was clearly superior, in my opinion. The love story modification also soiled the Elves, I felt. Elrond isn’t the sort to play the “you can’t marry that guy ’cause I don’t like it” card. It’s behavior that doesn’t fit the character. And the scene in The Two Towers where Frodo is almost turned into a snack for a Nazgul? What the heck was that about?

I suppose that, overall, it says a lot about the source material that in spite of these transgressions, and there are others, the story is still awesome to behold. The scene with the Balrog in The Fellowship of the Ring is absolutely perfect, right down to “Fly! You fools!” I didn’t mind some of the made up confrontation between Saruman and Gandalf prior to Gandalf’s becoming “The White” either.

Perhaps all this means is that, somewhere down the road, we’ll get a remake where they fix some of these poetic license decisions. While I’ve enjoyed all 4 movies immensely, they aren’t perfect.

Categories
Bread Family

The Kids Are Baking

For whatever reason, the kids came home today and decided they were going to make bread. Not my bread, mind you. Their own bread. They were just going to use the same ingredients I use: water, flour, yeast, salt, butter.

For the next 45 minutes or so, they kept walking over to me with bowls full of dough asking my if they were done yet. The first couple of times, the “dough” was more like flour soup. They started adding flour to it and eventually got the proportion of flour to water into a workable area.

Then they wanted to know if they were done mixing it. Their arms were hurting from all the mixing. They kept bringing me lumpy looking bowls full of proto-dough that weren’t anywhere near ready. They started getting mad at me because I kept sending them back for more work.

Finally, I told them that it was good enough. The lass added some kind of chip to hers, possibly a butterscotch chip, possibly a peanut butter chip. I’m still not sure what. The boy wanted to add chocolate chips. I didn’t want to deal with chocolate chip bread, so I told him that probably wasn’t a good idea. Thankfully, he let it go.

They were both pleased as punch when I told them they could let their dough rise. They were both concerned it “wouldn’t work.” But I assured them if they used the yeast and didn’t use too much, it would turn out OK. By the time their would be ready to shape and cook, they’d be in bed so I promised them I’d take care of that part. They both wanted me to shape it into a ball, but the dough was mush to loose to hold that kind of shape. Instead, they got the disc shaped loaves you see above.

No idea how it tastes at this point. That will be for them to find out.

Categories
Family

Parenting and Doubt

The boy came home with homework. The work comes with good and bad. The good is that he sat down and worked at it tonight, rather than leave it until tomorrow. If it had been me, I’d have left it for tomorrow. Wait, that has been me and I have left it for tomorrow. The bad is having to sit and listen to him get discouraged about it.

Tonight, it was over money combinations. Given pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters; how many different combinations could he think of to total 30 cents?

He came up with a bunch on his own, then asked me if he’d missed any. He told me all the different ways he’d come up with and wanted to know if he’d missed any. I thought about it and there were a couple. He then started to get upset because he started realizing there were some combination he hadn’t thought of, mainly involving pennies. He sat there for a bit and finally stated, “There are too many and I don’t want to think of them all.”

I tried convincing him to make a game of it; but, he wasn’t having any of it. He flat out didn’t want to spend the effort to think about it anymore. He’d decided the combinations he’d come up with were enough.

My preference was to try to convince him to put more effort into it. I know it’s just a silly homework assignment, but it’s the “good enough” attitude that gets me. What’s wrong with sitting there and persevering through it to come up with more combinations? Wouldn’t it be better if he developed the mind set to always do his best? Not to give up and just let “good enough” win the day?

But then, he’s 9 and this is 1 homework assignment out of many. It isn’t even particularly challenging homework- more like novelty work. I once was worried about his reading, but now he’s a spectacular reader. He completed The Lord of the Rings way earlier than I ever did. Even his reading comprehension has improved remarkably. So maybe I just have to let things ride. After all, there’s still tons of maturing to go.

But then, what if this is one of those bad habits that we could have nipped in the bud? Maybe he needs the kick in the butt at this moment just to help him down the road? What if this is one of those teachable moments that pays dividends for years to come? Obviously not this one moment, but the accumulation of many moments like this.

Should I? Shouldn’t I? What’s important and what’s the stuff that parents just have to let slide?

Where’s the instruction manual when you need it?

Categories
Family Notweet

Hockey Season Again

The hockey schedule this year has a “good news and bad news” dynamic to it. The good news is we don’t have to be up at the crack of dawn to make sure the kids are at the rink for practice. The bad news is that our weekend days are going to be messed up severely for the next few months because the practices are later in the morning. In fact, we didn’t get back from the boy’s practice until almost 2 o’clock both yesterday and today. Tough to schedule things to be done around that.

One of the fun things about the practices is the social aspect. Not for the kids, rather for the parents. It would seem nothing brings a community together more than trucking their kids to a hockey rink on cold Fall and Winter mornings. We buy each other coffee and donuts and share stories of frustration, amusement and everything else involving the kids and other aspects of our lives.

When the kids aren’t on the ice, they’re running around with their pals. In some ways, it’s like a giant day care center for a couple of hours with the coaches playing the part of the staff.

That comparison doesn’t do the coaches justice, though. It’s an all-volunteer staff that gives up a large part of their weekends to teach the kids how to play hockey. Many of them clearly love being out there. It’s hard not to appreciate their generosity considering the amount of effort they give.

It’s just the first weekend though and, by comparison to what I know is coming, it was a mild one. Some of the ice was melting yesterday and, even though it was much cooler today, it really wasn’t too bad out there. Plus, the kids are still enthusiastic about it. The mornings are coming where they’ll “hate hockey” and don’t want to play. Heck, there will be days coming where I won’t really want to take them.

So it goes with hockey season.

Categories
Family

Bathroom Conversations

The Wife beat me to the bathroom this morning.  She was all showered and made presentable like by the time I made my way up there.  I consider myself to be in a state of perpetual-presentableness, but I do need to brush my teeth. Also, a quick shower isn’t bad for getting rid of the sleep cobwebs that coffee does not.  The Wife would disagree on the presentable thing.

As I prepped my toothbrush, the Wife turned to me, looked me in the eye and said “Today, the whip is getting whipped.”

I stared back at her.  Something didn’t seem quite right about that.  Whips getting whipped?  After a moments reflection I replied “You mean ‘the whip is getting cracked’.”

She was looking in the mirror doing that primping thing ladies do with their hair,  trying to make it look made up without it being too made up.  A fine art if ever there was one.  I usually drag a comb through my hair a few times and I’m done.  Still primping she responds “Oh, really?”

“Yeah,” I said with a mouthful of toothbrush.  “You know, like the saying ‘Time to crack the whip’?”

She put her hands on her hips and shifted her weight to one side,  looked at me and said “I know the saying but that sounds funny though, don’t you think?”

Truthfully no, it did not.  Not to me anyway.  Was I prepared to go to the mat over an ambiguous use of a colloquialism?

Yep.

Toothbrush still in my mouth I told her “Well, whips don’t get ‘whipped.’  That’s what the whip does to something else.  The whip itself ‘cracks’ which implies something got ‘whipped.'”

Pause.  For no shower and being in the middle of brushing my teeth, I thought that was pretty good.  A rather devastating opening-salvo-use-of-logic i thought, if ever there was one.

The Wife looked at me.  It was obvious she was considering the same question I had moments earlier:  am I really going to argue about this?

Decision made, she turned to leave. Waving her hand dismissively at me, she said “Whipped, cracked, whatever.  Stuff is getting done today.”  She left me there with my toothbrush.

Dang.  Denied certain victory on a technicality.

Categories
Misc

Driving Pet Peeves

A trip to the grocery store can be a lot more eventful than expected thanks to the fools on the road. Not all of these occurred on the way, but one of them did and I figured I’d make a list of it:

  1. Don’t drive in the left lane of an interstate, freeway and so forth at 15mph slower than everyone wants to go. I know there’s a left exit coming up and you’re just trying to get there. But it’s still several miles away and there’s no reason for you to be in the left lane. Stay to the right.

  2. When on an onramp for an interstate, freeway, highway or whatever, don’t merge with traffic at 35mph. There’s nothing dumber than trying to join 70mph traffic at half the speed everyone else is doing. The ramps are there for a reason, to get up to speed to make the merge easier. It’s not time for a leisurely roll down the road and expect everyone to make way when you finally arrive. The accelerator is the pedal on the floor on the right, use it.

  3. Don’t tailgate. I can’t stand tailgaters. Word to the wise, I slow down when I see you back there. As much as it takes until you get the message and back off.

  4. Don’t do people “favors” by waving them to make a left turn from a stop so you can make your left. I know, you are just trying to be courteous but waving someone trying to turn onto the road you are turning off of is a bad idea. They aren’t expecting you to wave them on, they are waiting for you to make your left, probably so they can then make theirs. If you stop and wave them on, the timing is thrown off. Now, they have to look behind you to make sure they can safely accomplish the left turn. Is that guy behind you slowing down to stop behind you? Or is he slowing down to go around you? And what’s the guy behind him doing? Also, better recheck the traffic coming from the left. Everything is ambiguous and the left just got more difficult. Thanks for the assist.

  5. When making a left turn from a stop onto a busy road, don’t pull out and block traffic while waiting for an opening in the far lanes. If the traffic is that heavy, make a right, then a left a little further down and finally another right. It’s safer and I won’t have scream at you.

Categories
Family

The Wife’s New Phone

About a year ago, I picked up a couple of new phones for the Wife and I. At the time, we wanted access to our email accounts as well as better texting, so I looked into and got a couple of feature phones. At the time, I thought I’d gotten her the better of the two phones. Mine was a flip-style phone with a hardware keyboard while the one I selected for her was a sleeker looking touchscreen based model. It wasn’t a smartphone, but it seemed like a more capable feature phone.

I’ve been regretting that decision ever since.

The Wife came to refer to the phone as the “ultimate stupid phone.” She openly mocked it in front of friends. She sneered at it anytime she went out, wondering how it would piss her off “this time.” The touch keyboard barely worked. She couldn’t reliably check email with it. It had a Facebook application that would connect, but then was miserable to use. Towards the end I’m pretty sure she only brought it with her in the hopes that some catastrophe would befall it, like accidentally falling under the wheels of a bus or something.

She called and found out that she could get a manager’s exception or something that would allow her to upgrade the phone more quickly than normal. She finally placed the order earlier this week and her phone arrived earlier today. She was so happy I think she considered not taking the lass out trick-or-treating with her friends. Luckily, her better sense prevailed.

Hopefully, her new phone brings her all the joy her old one did not.

Categories
Misc

Wild Kingdom

Took the dogs outside for their final outing of the night and they almost bolted on me.  My voice interrupted them enough to stop them, but then they were busily sniffing under the car.  As I caught up to them, I heard some rustling under a bush.

My first thought was that the cat was there.  I went over to the bush and heard more rustling and, for some reason I cannot quite explain, I realized that it wasn’t a cat.  Probably because the cat would not have continued moving and risking getting the dog’s further attention.

I looked under the bush, but whatever critter it was had scurried off.  Curiosity had taken over now so I went in the house and grabbed a flashlight.  I figured a quick look around the porch and under the other bushes would be worth the effort.

On the end if the porch, hiding down behind a holly I found the little rascal:

image

Not exactly its best side.  Here’s a better one:

image

It’s a juvenile, probably only 8 inches or so long.  Must of caught him at a bad time when I let the dogs out.  Wonder if his Mom is looking for him.

Categories
Computers

All Hail the Smartphone!

I have a very simple website I’ve setup for use with my Cub Scout Pack. It’s for the parents and I’m able to accomplish things like news items and, most importantly, sign-up forms for various Pack activities. It’s a huge help this time of year because each Fall we have a big popcorn fund raiser.

One of the big activities we do to help boost sales for the boys and the Pack generally is hold “Show-n-Sells.” Various businesses allow Scouts to hang out in front of their store all day and try to sell popcorn to their customers. The generosity of people towards the boys never ceases to amaze me.

The main piece to any Show-n-Sell, aside from the popcorn to sell, is a couple of Scouts each hour to work their magic, as well as a parent to make sure they do work their magic. I’ve found that an online sign-up sheet is the most effective way to get participation. I create a simple page listing the hours and positions available along with a simple form so a parent can choose what slot they want to fill and by the time the day arrives, all the slots are filled and we’re good to go.

With our final Show-n-Sell coming up next week on Election Day, I made the necessary modifications to the online sign-up page this morning and then sent out an email to let everyone know it was good to go and they could begin signing up. I, confident that all was well with the world, headed out to golf my martial arts class.

A couple hours later, after the class, I was cooling down and on a whim decided to check my mail with my phone.

PANIC! I had 6 emails from various parents telling me they could not sign-up, that they’d tried but nothing was working.

So first, I told them it was clearly a heavy traffic issue…

Alright, I didn’t. What I did do was utilize a slick SSH program on my phone called JuiceSSH to get access to the website and figure out what the problem was. It took me about 15 minutes of debugging on the somewhat limited user interface, but I was able to fix the site and have it working again without first having to get home. Once I’d verified it was up, I then used the email app on my phone to notify everyone that things were good to go, just like a good site administrator should.

It’s likely that the fix would have waited just fine until I’d gotten home. But it was pretty cool that when I needed a way, my phone was able to provide a means for me fix a problem. Chalk one up for the smartphone.

Categories
Family

Teaching Programming

Tonight was looking to be a rare quiet Tuesday night. The lass had Brownies right after school and the boy had his karate class. That may seem like the makings of a busy night, but the schedule was such that the Wife and I easily had things covered. I was tempted to attend an extra karate class myself that was scheduled after the boy’s classes were completed. Dinner was all set and both kids had a good jump on their homework.

Then the boy asked “Dad, could you help me write my first program?”

He’s been steadily interested in programming for awhile now. It started with questions about computers and what “code” is and the like. I wrote awhile back about installing Scratch on one of the computers, which is a sort of visual programming language. He’d worked with that, but lost interest in it after a week or so. Since he’s continued probing about programming trying to understand it better. He’s even taken to asking for a computer of his own so he can learn programming using that.

Tonight was the first time where he straight-up asked me to work with him. I realized I wouldn’t be going to a karate class tonight.

It wasn’t until I actually started thinking about how to teach him that I realized there were some unfortunate hurdles that are necessary for the act of programming, but have little to do with learning to program. Understanding files and executables and how to work an editor are a few.

So for tonight, I worked on my little laptop with him. I took care of the non-programming-but-necessary stuff and let him do the typing and actual coding. At least, as much as I could. We started with the classic Hello World program and went from there. A little anyway. After he played with the print statement in python for a bit, I started showing him the for loop. After printing out a series of numbers, I then showed him how to use nested loops to print multiplication tables. He played with that but wanted more.

The “more” is where I’ll need to do some work. The vast majority of my programming has been relegated to the command line. The choice has been somewhat deliberate- graphical stuff is pretty demanding and more finicky when it comes to design. It’s one thing to read and process files, quite another to define a graphical interface and process user input.

Naturally, the boy wants to learn how to manipulate graphics, which I’d say is equivalent to learning to run before learning to walk. That said, there are code samples available that should suffice as an example, so perhaps he and I will do some learning together. For tonight, however, I was saved by bed time.

Categories
Family

Homework Torture

One thing the Wife and I consistently when correcting the kids’ homework is we tell them something is wrong, but not what exactly it is. This tactic is most effective with math, but certain other homework that involves multiple choice or simple question and answer formats are fair game.

Of the two, the boy is the more easily provoked when we do this. Unfortunately for himself, he doesn’t have anyone else to blame but himself. He’ll take the homework back and quickly gloss over all of his answers and declare “There’s nothing wrong.” He’ll then start a game of trying to tease some detail out of us. He’ll want a hint or he’ll just feign that he doesn’t care and say he’s turning it in. He’s never followed through on that, which is bad for bluffing.

Often times, he’ll go to the other parent for confirmation that he does, in fact, have some errors. Mostly, he’s hoping the other parent will spill the beans.

The great irony of all the effort he goes through is that all the time he wastes trying to get us to tell him could be spent searching it out. In fact, most times he could figure it out in little more time than it took him to complete that portion of homework himself. We typically point this out to him, and receive annoyed grunts in return.

The lass, too, will get frustrated. But she doesn’t typically go through all the shenanigans attempting to get us to tell her exactly what is wrong. Her homework assignments are short enough that she doesn’t feel the need yet I guess.

Categories
Football

I’m Turning in My Cowboys Fan Card

Dear Jerry Jones-

I can’t be a Cowboys fan anymore.

I do not make this decision lightly. Oh hell, yes I do.

Look, I’ve been a fan of the Cowboys for many a year now. Way back to when Dwight Clark and Joe Montana teamed up to kill Cowboys fans with The Catch. I was a fan when they were 1-15 and the one win came against a bad Redskins team. I was a fan after the Aikman-Irvin-Smith dynasty finally crumbled into oblivion. I was a fan when Barry Switzer was coach, Wade Phillips was coach, Chan Gailey and a couple other forgettable coaches. I was a fan this season.

Right up until today.

Today is exactly the type of stuff this version of the Cowboys is known for. I can’t count the number of times I’ve watched this team lose games in the final quarter. Or, fashion a great comeback and only to squander it on a final drive. For all the promise this team seems to have, they just never live up to it. They’ve been to the playoffs a hand full of times (none recently) and won 1 game. They’ve lost the others and looked terrible doing so.

The worst thing is, on paper, this team seems like it should be good. They have some great talent at many of the key positions, certainly on offense. But defensively as well, there is some solid personnel with guys like Ware, Lee.

Yet time and again, this team finds a way to lose games. I won’t say they should win against teams like Detroit. The point is they could have won today. They were in position to win today. Rather than finish, they inexplicably found a way to lose. I don’t even care that Calvin Johnson torched the secondary for 300+ yards receiving. I disagree that Dez Bryant’s comments served as motivation- the media blew that way out of proportion. The point is, today’s game was winnable and they ‘Boys lost.

If this were the first time, I could swallow this bitter pill. Just as I’ve swallowed many bitter pills in the past. But this isn’t the first time. It isn’t even the second time. I can’t count how many times this has happened. Which makes it almost certain that it won’t be the last either. Personally, I think its time to blow this team up and start again. Find a new offensive team of the future. Perhaps then I’ll return to being a fan.

But for now, I just can’t. It’s too painful.

Categories
Family

Art Lessons

We did our annual town Trick-or-Treat night thing with the kids this evening. A neighboring town has all the businesses in the downtown area setup candy so kids can walk the street and get some candy. It works well for us since we don’t have a ready neighborhood to traipse around. The kids get to dress up, get some candy and satisfy their sweet tooth for a bit.

There were a couple of differences between this year’s rendition and past years. The first is that it was cold. Not bone-chilling but with temps in the low 40’s and the Sun basically hidden in the downtown area, it was a bit uncomfortable. In the past couple of years, the cold hadn’t really settled in until close to Thanksgiving.

The other difference is that when it was all done, the lass and the Wife met up with some friends to take an art class at one of the shops. The Wife had set it up awhile back. This art shop supplies all the materials, instruction and food! They went through all the steps for how to paint a cat and a pumpkin. The Wife explained how they started with a pumpkin shape, then added the cat’s head above it. The instruction continued in this way and included mixing colors as well as adding in shading and texture. By the end of the night, the lass and the Wife both had paintings that were recognizable as a cat with a pumpkin.

Which got me to thinking- the Wife voluntarily spent money to get an art lesson with the lass. So there’s some kind of market for that service. What if schools had to slim down and chose to axe the art department in an effort to focus on more core material? Does this serve as an indicator that art could continue to flourish? What if the school system is taking money away from people like this because most parents assume their kids get their fill of art at school? Sure, the Wife found this opportunity and took advantage of it but how many others don’t bother?

I doubt I’ll ever be around to see something like that given an opportunity, but it does serve as food for thought about what other disciplines this could apply to. How about gym classes? Parents could sign their kids up for gymnastics or karate or dance to satisfy a physical activity need.

Broadening our scope significantly, what if “school” was less formal and more a matter of what parents chose to educate their kids in? Perhaps governments could establish rules related to kids needing to get certain educational needs, but it would be up to the parents to figure out how to supply them? Thus, a whole industry could be born whereby knowledgeable people supply instruction in various disciplines. Ideally, in this situation, taxes could be reduced since there is no longer a physical school to maintain. Then, parents would have the spare income to spend on their kids.

The cynic in my realizes that therein lies the rub. Without taxes, the opportunity for graft is greatly reduced. Thus, this sort of arrangement would be widely panned. Still, I kind of like it.

UPDATE: Here are the two paintings. The picture has been cropped to protect the innocent…

image

Categories
Family

Patience

I’ve been working with the boy on his multiplication and division techniques the past few days. I’ve generally been less than impressed with the pace of the math program here. I’ve also been flabbergasted as to some of the techniques they are teaching kids which, in my view, add unnecessary extra steps that make arriving at the correct answer error prone.

Tonight I was working with him on division. My approach was to show him how to do it while explaining each step. Then, started involving him more and more on subsequent problems. Finally, I started giving him the problems to work on his own.

He struggled with it. He’d forget a step, or get confused by a step, or make a calculation error. Then he’d start to get frustrated with himself.

And that’s where I realized that I was the one who had to exercise patience. Here, the math is easy for me, while he’s the one trying to learn it. Just because I can do division easily doesn’t mean he’ll figure it out in a few minutes. It takes time for him to master the steps involved and it isn’t going to happen in a single night with 30 minutes of instruction.

Another mistake I find myself making trying to think back to what I might have been doing at his particular age. But it’s irrelevant what I was doing because he’s not me. It seems such an obvious point, but I’ve found it’s an easy one for me to miss.

So for all the times I’ve told the kids to be patient, it turns out that I must practice what I preach. Just because I’m grown up doesn’t mean I can’t benefit from the same lessons the kids do.

Categories
Football

This is NOT Bullying

A Texas high school football teams wins 91-0, and then the coach is accused of bullying. Reading the article and being rational about it, it’s hard to see this as having merit.

To begin, the coach pulled his starters after the 1st quarter. Then, the article isn’t specific about timing, he eventually worked all his 3rd stringers in to finish the game. The game was played with a continuously running clock after the half. I’m not going to fault him for letting his 3rd stringers play the game rather than having them take a knee on every offensive possession. (Frankly, as a competitor I think that would have been insulting- there’s nothing more humiliating in sports than knowing you’re being toyed with.) It’s obvious that this coach did everything he could to keep things from getting completely out of hand. Given all that, I think it’s more accurate to say those two teams don’t belong on the same field together.

Bullying is an individual form of terrorism. It’s all about an individual, or a group, exerting power over another individual for the enjoyment of it. Bullying is about cruelty for it’s own sake. Sticking two totally mismatched teams on the field of play and watching the logical conclusion doesn’t come close to that mental dynamic.

I don’t know what the complaining parent is hoping to achieve. His son’s team just got beat by far superior competition. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be upset about getting beat like that, but there’s no shame in admitting to you got beat by a superior opponent.

Categories
Family

It’s Not You

We had a Halloween themed Pack meeting for our Cubbies today. It was a very active meeting. After the opening flags, we got right into a series of games consisting of bobbing for apples, pumpkin bowling and a candy corn relay race. The numbers and timing were such that when the relay race completed, we rotated the kids around to the next activity. From there, I handed out awards to the boys and then we finished the meeting with pumpkin carving. The meeting ran late and, for all the activity and stimulation, all the kids hung in well and behaved. They even helped clean up when it was over.

During the meeting, one of the Mom’s was given some grief by her daughter. To me, it was a familiar act since I’ve watched the lass run the same game on the Wife and I many a time. The daughter was trying to lay a guilt trip on her Mother for spending more time with brother, who’s a Bear Scout, during the meeting. The Mom was, in fact, there with 3 kids and did an admirable job of managing all three through the evening. It was during the pumpkin carving that the little tiff presented itself. At one point, the Mom looked up at me with an expression like “You see what I have to put up with?”

Later, during the cleanup, this Mom was stating that she was embarrassed by the way her daughter behaved. She thought she was the only one with those problems. Clearly, she doesn’t read this blog enough. I told her there was nothing her kids were doing that any other parent hadn’t had their kid do to them. Another Mom piped in with her own horror story of embarrassing child misbehavior. The original Mom seemed to be genuinely surprised that other people had these issues.

Of all the things I’ve learned during my time as a parent, this was easily the most surprising and also the biggest help: we are not the only ones. Any given parent is not the only one who has had their child throw temper tantrums in public. That parent is not the only one that has experienced their child answering back to them. That parent is not the only one that has had a meal ruined by their kids bickering and arguing. Even parents of children with special needs aren’t alone, I’d wager. Within that community I’m sure that there are many common parenting experiences and frustrations as well.

I’d say an overwhelming majority of parents try to do right by their kids. We don’t want to have to yell and scream at them. We don’t want to fight with them. We don’t want to be treated as the enemy. We’re trying to help them grow up. I think the natural tendency is to blame ourselves when our kids misbehave or “embarrass” us.

But kids have their own minds and keep their own counsel. They are immature and selfish. They want what they want, when they want in a way of their choosing. That they exhibit these traits doesn’t make us bad parents. It doesn’t even make them bad kids- it just make them normal kids and it’s up to the parents to push back, to deny, to fight, and even to scream to teach them and guide them as to what is appropriate behavior.

Realizing this removes a huge burden from parents because, suddenly, it’s not something that we are doing to our kids. It’s something- a phase, a part of growing up, whatever- that every kids has to go through. Viewed in this way, the problem to worry about isn’t “what we did,” it’s “what we do.” Parenting with the realization that you have not screwed your child up is a lot less stressful.