A Saturday morning

I find myself sitting in the big easy chair, sipping my coffee and killing time until Mary returns from her Saturday morning walk with her sister. We’ll be working on home projects together today, so this is my moment to stop and ponder.

(Ponder, ponder, ponder…)

Okay, enough of that.

With Two home and lots of good projects to finish, not to mention me bro and his wife coming to visit next month, this promises to be a great summer. There will be cookouts and day trips and projects and paddling and much, much chatting.

Odin the Large and Lazy is sprawled out less than six feet from my feet, intent on not having to be intent on anything. The ‘intent’ side of things is well in hand thanks to Zoey the Small and Annoying, at her watch station just outside the back door. The world is safe from pesky crows and marauding squirrels so long as Zoey is on the job. Which of course frees Odin to do what he does best, which is nothing at all.

Last evening, we had dinner with Two and one of her school / Theta friends. It was a great time and with Two going to college on the other side of the continent, we don’t pass up opportunities to meet her good friends. So this was a really special evening.

One continues to expand her opportunities. She’s living the dream even as she makes necessary adjustments. We’re so proud of her!

Life continues to be good.

Some thoughts de Joe

A friend to whom I’m distantly related by a combination of blood and marriage and who I wish I’d met earlier in life because he’s truly a great guy has been blogging as he undergoes treatment for cancer in his tongue, with which some of you are already unfortunately familiar. (Deep breath…)

Joe has been blogging regularly to keep us up to date and this one really touched me. So, entirely without Joe’s permission but trusting that he won’t sue me for infringement of emotion, I thought I’d share this with you. He has displayed both courage and grace and I just thought you might appreciate hearing from him.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Given the Choice. . .

Once again, I want to thank everyone for their kind words, cards, and letters!!  And, yes, there have been those delightful articles of physical mail, delivered by a uniformed government employee.  There's still something special about opening those, no matter how old I am. . .

But, I have to admit that while I certainly appreciate the accolades, I am also humbled by them.  Yes, I think that I'm handling the situation with as much strength and grace as I can muster, but no more than any one of you all would if you had to.  And that's one thing we must all remember, to never sell ourselves short, but that that's a different story for a different day. . .    But as I first remember saying to people ten years ago, when my son David was going through his ordeal with this deadly disease, that we never know how much we can handle until we have to, at which point we are often astonished.  Neither then, nor now, do I recall getting a choice in the matter.  "Gee, Monty. . .  That car is really cool and that trip sounds way cool, but I'm going to go for the potentially fatal disease and its attendant pain and suffering behind door number three. . ." 

I will admit this freely - I am a major weenie and had I been given the choice, I would have definitely opted out. . .  But, since there was none, I will meekly submit and continue to cope to the best of my meager abilities.  And, believe me when I tell you this - I have no doubts that any one of you would step up to whatever vile situation you may find yourselves in.  But. . .  I'm going be way, way happier if I never get the opportunity to prove that I was right about that.  In this case, ignorance IS bliss.

Peace and love to one and all!!!

Joe

Daughters follow up

I’ve just finished a heavy travel rotation (four of six weeks, including three Sundays on the road) and it is so good to be home on a three-day weekend!

Lots of work to do but none of it will be for Work. Two is home for the summer, since her internship at Microsoft will take place only a few miles away. We’ll have plenty of time to visit without the usual vacation flurry of trying frantically to fit everything in. Time to talk without agenda. Time to notice without having to look too hard. Time for its own sake.

One has just started a dinner show, her first paid gig outside Disney and her life continues moving forward. I could do without the fact that said life is playing out three thousand miles away but what the hell.

Working on the house unhurriedly. One particular project we’ve put off the whole twenty years we’ve been here. Just in time to start thinking about moving to our retirement location.

Life continues to be good. I’ll write more soon. Just now, it’s about relaxation, not narrative.

One and also Two

Daughter One is approaching a crossroads and facing up to it admirably. While she continues as a seasonal Disney performer, she has taken an additional paid role in dinner theatre. She’s just moved into a new living arrangement that promises to be infinitely more stable and home-like than some past accommodations. She has purchased her first car in her own name and is thinking seriously about the road ahead.

My longtime buddy Sindy followed a similar (while entirely different, just trust me that this makes sense) path. I remember visiting her several times while on various leaves from the Navy and I caught brief glimpses of a progression of roommates and gigs. Sindy never seemed to lose sight of her end game even as the end goal shifted in response to changing conditions and new experiences.

Things have worked out well for Sindy and she is one of my most beloved and respected life friends. She could serve (and I believe in many ways she already does) as a role model for One and other young women who are facing both the intersection and the divergence between life plans and life experience.

One is doing well and we will continue to watch her life unfold. And I have learned – admittedly somewhat belatedly – that watching is pretty much all a Dad can do at this point. That’s okay; One’s doing well and she’ll be fine.

Daughter Two is finishing her last finals and will be home Thursday night. For the summer. She has an internship within a few miles of us, so she’ll be staying here.

Any parent understands the great good thing that has fallen from our sky. We get to spend relaxed time with our daughter. No ceremonies to attend, no tourist stuff. We’ll have time to just be together and let the conversation go where it will.

Since Two will be graduating this time next year and we can’t predict where life will take her, this could well be the summer we look back on with fondness and longing. And I intend to make good use of it.

How, you might ask?

Mostly, by just sitting back and noticing. Two has lots of friends to connect with and of course, her internship will be a full time job. She’ll be working on applications and senior thesis and all the other capstone stuff that a rising senior needs to get done.

This is likely our last chance – for awhile, anyway – to recalibrate our knowledge of our daughter, to watch her be her and reset our vision of who she is and might become. And I intend to take full advantage of the opportunity.

Most of what parents do is provide a basis for the child to grow into themselves. Beyond providing food and clothing and giving guidance that may or may not be accepted, our major contribution amounts to acting as a launching pad. And Two is pretty much launched.

All we can and should do at this point is watch and learn and enjoy the time with her. And that’s precisely how I hope to shape my summer.

Creature of habit

In response to a flurry of tail wagging, sub-vocalized whoofing and hard staring, I hauled my carcass out of bed this morning and trundled downstairs to feed the canines. After seeing to their needs – and ONLY after seeing to their needs; they can be quite insistent at 7:00am on a Saturday – I started a pot of coffee. With luck, I could get the coffee maker going before the dogs finished inhaling their kibble and ran for the back door, intent on heading outside for their morning exercise in fluid adjustment.

This scene has played out substantially as described above most days for the past however many years. Weekends I’m up an hour or more later than on weekdays. Sometimes Mary beats me to the draw. But for the most part, this is the routine for the first fifteen minutes of my day.

I was struck this morning by the extent to which I am a creature of habit when I happened to glance into my empty coffee cup. It’s one of the ones my daughter gave me and I tend to use it a lot. In the bottom of the cup into which I gazed – gazing into bottoms of coffee cups being entirely consistent with my usual frame of mind and level of consciousness at this point in the process – was a pattern of scratches.

I realized the pattern was made by my spoon as I stirred in the sweetener and fat free milk. Same fixings every day and now I came to realize, the same stirring method. The circle of scratches, concentric with the inner wall of the cup, is defined by the distance between two parallel lines, one tangent to the outer curve of the spoon and the other bisecting the curve of its tip. The scratch circle is surrounded by innumerable increasing radius curves, each beginning as a tangent to the central circle.

Each of the radial scratches proceeds in a counter-clockwise direction. So it would appear that my right-handedness dictates that my coffee stirring habit is as predictable as my dog feeding routine.

If you look at my airline carry-on bag, you’ll always find two ball point pens and a yellow (or occasionally light blue) highlighter in the center sleeves of the front zipper section. The same set of cords, connectors and other accessories is always to be found in the well section, each in its own zip lock baggy to avoid entanglement. I generally carry a small baggy of spice drops for use in combating airplane dry mouth and my Nook is ever in the same pouch.

Before this takes on any more of the all too familiar patina of boring prattle, I’ll move on. Kindly stipulate that for any of the most common everyday activities in which I engage, there are repeating patterns that the discerning observer might record. That is, assuming anyone in their right mind or otherwise would care to observe my daily life patterns at this level of detail.

Today, I am recovering (please, Gawd, I AM recovering) from a nasty cold and so won’t be accomplishing any of the physical tasks I’d planned for the weekend. I’ve some work to get done on a lesson plan and I’ll do some writing later. Some house cleaning if I can overcome inertia and perhaps I’ll sort through…well, you get it. Sick day stuff.

Tomorrow I fly again to Eastern Washington to lead a workshop at one of my favorite non-profits. Then I’ll spend a day working with the folks at another non-profit. This too is part of a life pattern, although in a more macro sense than my morning routine.

Both macro and micro, the patterns of our lives vary in response to outside influences, both predictable and un. But for the most part, it’s the patterns that provide the background and the context of our lives.

I’m working on changing some of those background patterns of late. Less sugar and fat in the food, less food for that matter. More exercise. Less TV and more reading and writing. You know the drill.

I’m working on a project that may well serve as the capstone of my salaried career. I’ve hopes –possibly unreasonable, but oh, well – that the book I’m finally writing will be a capstone in a more personal realm. And of course, in the most personal sense, Daughters One and also Two are the ultimate capstones.

I wonder if the Hawthorne effect will kick in regarding my coffee stirring protocols. If I look at the bottom of my cup in a few months hence, will the scratch pattern be altered? I dunno. And I probably won’t check; at coffee-stirring time of the morning, I’m usually not all that analytical.

I like my habits as they are. They are a framework about which I don’t have to think much and they allow me to comfortably proceed with my intentional life without worrying about too many upsets. When I set up to teach on Tuesday, I can reach for my pointer without looking down. I will be sipping coffee tomorrow morning before I am consciously aware of being awake. And having fed the dogs and swilled my coffee, I will get on with my life.

Which for the moment, I am enjoying immensely.

A little quiz

Question: What do the following items have in common?

·         A 3-wheel electric scooter,

·         A training tool for a soccer player,

·         A skate sail, and

·         A butterfly life cycle experiment.

Answer: They can all be found for sale on page 4.
Page 4 of what, you might ask? And well you might.

I have always wondered about the sales magazines you find in the seat back pockets on airplanes. So last trip, I brought one home. Which is of course precisely what the airline marketing people hoped I would do.

I gotta wonder how they choose the things they sell in these airplane magazines. I mean, is there a really big market among people riding airplanes from Salt lake City to Seattle for lighted zip lines, robotic grill cleaners and cameras designed to let you see what’s behind you when rowing or riding? Bug zappers and golf accessories must also be desirable items for this particular high flying demographic.

For the discerning air shopper, these good folks offer computer mice shaped like race cars (eight models), complete sets of award-winning chef’s knives, and a combined paper towel holder / cell phone charger. Talk about utility! They also offer all sorts of furniture sets, baseballs signed by folks I’ve never heard of, security locks for interior doors and anti-slouching harnesses.

I’m looking very closely at the party cups, the fake fire hydrant (seems like a dandy gift for our dogs) and the Bar exam quiz game. The little gondolier who will troll around my pool singing three different Italian songs seems like a swell buy at $59.99 (swimming pool and 4 AA batteries not included).

I buy ALL my topiary plants via mail order from airline magazines. I’ve heard that everyone in the nursery industry has great respect for the quality of topiaries from Delta Airlines.

Oo-oo-oo-ooh! I hadn’t even seen page 39 but now I’m jonesing for an ultimate micro suede furniture protector. Oh, babay! Gotta get me one! And a garden fountain shaped like a peeing little boy from page 51 (to go with my topiary, doncha know). And to round out garden mine, some fake monkeys and lions might be just the thing.

Kansas City steaks, the massage chair and the new bathing suit will have to wait until next order, I fear. I have to get these things into the house on the down low a small pile at a time, lest Mary clue to my airborne shopping habits before my collection is complete.

Nobody tell, okay?

Oh, WAIT!!! The voice activated R2D2 robot for only $199.95!?!?!?! I hope they don’t sell out before my trip to D.C.!

Think she’ll notice?

Leaving a legacy

Boy, that title sounds foreboding, does it not?

I might have called this one something like “Building for the future” but that tastes even more ‘blech’ than the title I chose. So, mebbe I should just make a start and trust that the theme will work itself out.

I am a matrixed employee, meaning I work for more than one boss and in fairly different areas. One of my bosses is a colleague and friend of approximately my age and with somewhat similar medical misadventures in the not distant past.

She and I have both spent some significant alone time self-examining the fact that while we have some good productive years ahead (so we hope, anyway) the ones behind are by far in the majority. So for each of us, the concept of what we will leave behind looms large.

In his 70s, Ray Bolger did a stage routine in which he talked about this sort of thing and he ended the bit by tossing his hat behind him to sit on the stage in the narrowed circle of the follow spot while Bolger retired off stage right. It was this incredible mute statement of ‘leaving something on the stage’ that had even moi in tears. I guess there’s a bit of this feeling in my own current focus on the coming, finite professional years.

By the bye, this one isn’t going to build to any profound thematic point. I’m just sharing feelings with you today.

Anyway, my boss and I are working together to shape certain teaching / training activities, melding my regional approach to her overall national approach in an effort to make certain that the best possible content is made available in the most remote parts of the country. When, where and as needed.

We’re reviewing and learning from all sorts of media, delivery, lesson planning, channels, topics and sub-topics. We’ll be compiling, chunking and coordinating themes and pieces of themes. Stealing shamelessly from people smarter than us and gently fending off the determined contributions of some others.

It’s a big job and one that I enjoy immensely. In the next three weeks, I’m bringing some of the resulting work product to conference sessions, on-site teaching and training and in-person mentoring and I am scared as hell. If you care about this job, the worst possible outcome is that you fail to bring the participants something of value. They’ve trusted you with their time and attention and if you owe them anything, it’s to bring them something of value. And unless you’re entirely self-impressed, as you begin the teaching swing, it’s impossible not to harbor the occasional thought of “Who the hell am I to think I have something worthwhile to offer these people?”

Wish me luck.

(And stop whining – I told you there would not be a whiz-bang finish!)