yesterday i mentioned eric thomas, a speaker i've been enjoying recently. he's the voice on the how bad do you want it videos i posted a few weeks back. here is another talk he did earlier this year for a company in vegas. it starts a little slow but after the ten minute mark, there's a lot of meat on the bone. great message(s) with a strong style.
it this doesn't get you taking steps towards any goals you've been sitting on, it just may not happen
For the heart, life is simple: it beats for as long as it can. Then it stops. Sooner or later, one day, this pounding action will cease of its own accord, and the blood will begin to run toward the body's lowest point, where it will collect in a small pool, visible from outside as a dark, soft patch of ever whitening skin, as the temperature sinks, the limbs stiffen and the intestines drain. These changes in the first hours occur so slowly and take place with such inexorability that there is something almost ritualistic about them, as though life capitulates according to specific rules, a kind of gentleman's agreement to which the representatives of death also adhere, inasmuch as they always wait until life has retreated before they launch their invasion of the new landscape. By which point, however, the invasion is irrevocable. The enormous hordes of bacteria that begin to infiltrate the body's innards cannot be halted. Had they but tried a few hours earlier, they would have met with immediate resistance; however everything around them is quiet now, as they delve deeper and deeper into the moist darkness.
opening passage from karl ove knausgaard's My Struggle (book 1)
during the year i collect bits and pieces of information that i think might be helpful to share with my kids when the school year fires up. marty's insistence on a no-exceptions family dinner table makes for a perfect platform for me to subject enlighten my children with my sage counsel. a few examples.
we have been long told two things. one, that we have a certain potential fo...
it is said with numbing frequency that when you have kids you get to (1) relive your childhood and (2) experience a childhood you didn't get to have.
there is a very valid reason that sentiment is said with such frequency. to this day i don't know who loved those wooden thomas tracks (or many of the gifts and trips) more, me or my kids. ...
at the dinner table, during a lull in conversation alex, age nine, announced that he knew what the f-word was. this proclamation paused any chewing noises or silverware clatter that may have been happening. a few people then asked questions. one question was where did you learn it? at school. another was, you know you're never to use it? he knew. then came the smartest question. what is the f-word alex? to protect anthony's still virginish ears alex said he would have to whisper it in our ears. so one by one, alex rounded the table and in the cupped ear of marty, then bella, and then myself alex whispered the f-word — funk.
it's good to see marty leading a full-flavored life again
because of the way the daily school schedule cycles, once every seven days marty can eat lunch with two of her past colleagues (and friends) who still work at the school. they've known each other for about fifteen years and have remained in touch outside of work while marty was away. they are both guys and they are both bald. one of the guys recently brought a new, younger teacher to their lunch ritual. caught off-guard marty and the other fella paused at seeing the outsider. the new blood sensing the awkward silence said, "oh, what, i'm not cool enough to eat with two bald guys and a crazy woman?"
without missing a beat marty replied to the circle of four, "wait. what? there's a crazy woman? which one is she?"
the first time i swam 2,000 yards without stopping, it took me 55 minutes.
that day, i set a goal of swimming that distance in under 30 minutes.
it took four months to knock five minutes off my time to be under 50 minutes.
the next five mintues took me a bit longer, like a full twelve months longer. BUT as of last friday i can claim an under-45 minute pool mile.
and, in answer to your next question, yes, of course i have the blow by blow for you to enjoy. click through to see every swim i've swum over the last twenty months.
the big swings you see in the times of the last few swims are due to me trying different stroke styles out that i've dabbled in over the summer. keep in mind i've never taken a class or received a lesson. even though virtually everyone has told me to do so, i prefer finding a method that feels comfortable and natural for me. thus, i have a high-cadence fast stroke, a long, methodical stroke, and a few in between. usually in a swim i alternate between styles, trying to improve my technique for each. for my first few indoor swims this year, i stuck with one stroke through the whole swim to see if i could see a discernible time difference, and as you see, i did. so the plan is to focus on the technique that earned me this time drop and see if i can perfect it even further so the next time i'm talking about this with you, i'm clocking times in the 3X:XX range. as the subject line reads: giddy, giddy, giddy.
apologies for my absence. i had a project unveiling at work on tuesday and slipped into my obsessive persona to make sure everything looked fit and fancy for the first sets of eyes.
the showing went swimmingly.
then yesterday, wednesday, i had my first dad lunch with bella as a junior high student. the slight bummer is she only gets thirty minutes for lunch. and her school isn't near any eateries. in thinking things through i remembered a city park i used to play tennis at just over the hill from her school. it had some rolling grassy hills and lots of trees. so as time neared, i got a lunch together and headed to the school. after i got her dismissed from class we made the two minute drive to the park.
the day was crazy bee-you-ta-ful, especially on our bench in the shade. after getting settled i pulled from my cooler a snarf's ham and cheese (a favorite for bella and i), a bag of chips and a large ice water. we talked about a number of things: how this was different from elementary, how we were lucky this park was so close by, how we played ogre on the playground several years ago, bella wondered what we would do in the winter (i admitted that was a good question because we were surely not going to get weather this nice all year), and we might have even talked about boys for a minute or two. then as she was finishing up her sandwich i dove into my small cooler and readied the next treat i brought. bella leaned over trying to see what i was doing but i blocked her prying view with my shoulder. then, when i lifted the bowl of chery cobbler from the weekend out with two scoops of still firm ice cream on top, my girl's face lit up like the blue-sky day.
later that night, marty asked bella how our first dad lunch of the school year went. bella told her of the cobbler and ice cream. she then said that "dad did good".
it's funny how a room of adults praising a piece of my professional work that i've spent more than six months on felt good but didn't come close to the reward i felt in getting my daughter's "dad did good" seal after a thirty minute lunch.
here's my new favorite orator, up and coming eric thomas, in a treatment that expertly mixes video and music with one of his better know presentations.
last week our home received two paychecks for the first time in nine years. you'll never hear this household complaining about a teacher's salary being meager because it has catapulted us into a new and royal lifestyle. and it couldn't have come a moment too soon as in the last decade home repairs, car issues, and too-good-to-not-go travel opportunities have chipped our savings down from tens of thousands of dollars to tens of hundreds of dollars. fact is we've survived the last few weeks on money bella earned this summer dog-sitting. one of her early summer clients paid her in a pink envelope. bella would add money from subsequent clients to the envelope until it's glued seams were bursting with over four hundred dollars in small bills. if pinched for cash, and after asking her if we could borrow, say thirty dollars, from her envelope to, say buy the family dinner, we'd write on the pink envelope 'DAD - $30 - DINNER' and pull the bills. this is another reason it's good the double payday arrived as it was becoming challenging to find a spot to legibly add a line on the outside of this now tattered envelope.
additionally, my personal slush account (marty has one too) where i keep money i've made on my own was hurting as well. on my way to bella's dad day of horseback riding, i remembered the stables only took cash. i stopped at an ATM and withdrew $120 for our wrangler. what i didn't know until i tried to buy lunch a week later was that the withdraw left precisely one cent in my account.
there were many times during this one income decade that i told marty these would be our family's hardest financial years and it wouldn't always be like this. she always accepted this news reluctantly. in turn, she would tell me we couldn't shoulder this pace forever and the money would not last. i reluctantly took her opinion in. it turned out we were both right.
so here's to wise prognostication, two-paychecks, and the good dose of luck that allowed us to weather our one-income decade. we promise to never take our new-found fortune for granted or use it frivolously, well, right after i get the vespa scooter marty promised me before going back to work, but i'm sure we can all agree something that fun can't possibly be frivolous.
i've been routinely astonished at how my children, and wife, can transform our seemingly boring and boxy home into cavernous forts and sprawling cave networks. some of the more lavish constructions have used just about every blanket, comforter and pillow our home possesses. at the conclusion of these elaborate constructions a deep and serious reading fest often takes place. great stuff that i'm su ...
the night of the first day of school, our dinner table hopped with lively sharing of stories and adventures. one of my favorite blips that happened that day took place at the very start of bella's latin class. after the bell rang and the sixth graders settled down and looked front at a man they didn't know leaning on the edge of the desk. he said ...
as the school year approached i visited with each of the kids separately getting their pulse about things. both bella and anthony were starting at new schools (junior high and kindergarten). obviously they both had a good bit of nerves. when i approached alex, his presence drooped and he became somber. when i asked what was worrying him. he connected it to getting a new teacher and expressed sentiments about his last teacher, mrs. mcwilliams.
ALEX
i just can't wait until i see mrs mcwilliams again.
TROY
yeah, have you you been missing her?
ALEX
yeah.
TROY
did you hear that she moved to kindergarten and that's who anthony is going to have?
the day began with a game of "see if i can bite your finger". marty and her siblings played this when young. in it, one player has their mouth open wide and eyes closed tight. the other player then sticks their finger into the open mouth and tries to get it out before the closed eye person bites it. towards the end of their saturday cuddle marty and anthony started playing this. a surprising amount of laughter ensued. after a bit of play anthony peered into marty's gaping mouth and began charting what he saw. "i can see your teeth mom. oh, i can see your tongue mom. oh, i can see your vulva mom."
childbirth, she do take a toll.
and, i got cash money that says anthony's speech therapist has never been told to work on the enunciation nuances between uvula and vulva before.
bella likes the show the voice. i tolerate the voice to spend minutes with my daughter. early on, i found the judges to not be judgmental enough which on a show about judging is a reasonably damning trait. i did like the blind facet of the competition though. as the competition wound on and the delta in performance and talent got tighter, i felt for the judges who were forced to decide between two closely matched singers.
then one night bella and i watched two of the battles before bed. in each of the cases the pairings were quite close but in each case there seemed to be a clear winner. and in each case the person who seemed to outdo the other was voted off and sent packing. after this happened the second time i replayed what happened in my head and saw a pattern. in each case the person who gave the stronger performance was, in working up to the performance, also the more difficult to work with. they acted privileged and pouted when a decision was not to their liking (e.g. didn't like the song selected). the judges who had to make the call had to consider their smaller teams in the later rounds. they needed people who could work outside of their comfort zone, if need be, and were able to continue to give effort and more importantly positive energy to a situation that might be less than ideal. this is how these two people beat the more skilled competitors, by being versatile and continuing to work even when the cards didn't fall their way.
i shared my theory with bella. i rewound the show and pointed out the behavior i felt cost them the win. this is the sort of concept one can explain to a child, but without their own experiences and personal examples to lean on, i imagine it's hard for a young mind to fully embrace the significance of such a thing. thus, what a gift we had in this show, a show my bella is ravenously interested in. she saw vivid examples of people acting childish and then later suffering for their stubbornness downstream. cool way to discuss a nuance of attitude. i have new respect for the voice, and in particular for adam levine and chistina aguilara, for having the insight to not reward these prima-donna antics.
this unexpected moment also reminded me of an old, pre-republican, dennis miller bit. in it he said his father took him to a rated R movie at a very young age. in the movie one of the characters was killed which caused a young dennis to lean into his father and asked why that man got hurt. his father replied, "because he was a slack-jawed asshole and one day all slack-jawed assholes have to suck the pipe." i'm sure i'm botching the quote slightly but it is in the ball-park of what went down. i'm glad a found a more age-appropriate vehicle to share this message with my daughter.
Family Scrapbook: today, the rockies - tomorrow, the himalayas. (2012)
a surprising number of our family hikes have been spearheaded by the youngest member of our troop. when you combine his near indefatigable stamina with the ambitious end-visions he gets in his head (e.g. i want to hike to the tippy top of a mountain), the boy is the driving force of many of our family adventures. he is also the motivating factor that oftentimes gets us to the end as there isn't a ...
yeah, i guess it's possible first impressions are over-rated
one day the week before school started, ninth graders could visit the school and walk their schedule to get the lay of the land. in this they'd meet each of their teachers for ten minutes. during one session, a student interrupted marty midway through her spiel asking to go to the restroom. she eyed the student suspiciously and then, thinking he was gaming her, said she thought he was old enough to hold it for five minutes. the student put his head on his desk. two minutes later he lifted his head and marty saw he was four gulps of air from puking all over her brand new lab table. she immediately motioned to the door, saying the restroom was down the hall on the left. the boy fled.
later in the day another science teacher asked if anyone else saw the student running down the hall dry-heaving. marty shook her head no (which wasn't a lie as technically she didn't see his mad dash down the hallway). after telling me this story i told marty i've recently been worried that now that the kids were older and less mayhem-producing i'd be light on stories to write about. given how lively her re-entry to work-life has been i'm now thinking i might need to start a second site to shoulder the additional material.
you're welcome to try to find a young human with a better natural disposition than our aleo but i'd recommend looking for a less futile exercise to occupy your time. ...
today i will walk my isabella to the bus stop so she may attend her first day of junior high. i'd tell you to send her some positive thoughts but i fear i may need them more. whatever happened to my baby girl.
and, like last year, we just snuck her dad day in before the end of summer. this year's day of decadence involved:
1. horseback riding
2. porterhouse lunch
3. bookstore hour
4. movie afternoon (step up revolution)
5. ted drewes custard
it was, hopefully, a day she'll remember. i know i will as i can't remember being that wiped out after a day.
and of all of that, i think she may have been most surprised and excited about seeing the step up revolution movie. at the end of the film she started an applause that the other patrons merrily joined in on. that may have been my favorite part of the day.
today i will walk my isabella to the bus stop so she may attend her first day of junior high. i'd tell you to send her some positive thoughts but i fear i may need them more. whatever happened to my baby girl.