Ignore what you can’t control

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Autofil Magazine sets out to test the range of the Tesla Model S in cold conditions with a cargo area full of Ikea furniture, skis, a mountain bike and have some lead footed fun along the way.  Before starting out, on the 270km journey the driver places a piece of tape over the range display in the car so he won’t have any anxiety about how much remains.  The Tesla is rated for a range of 400km,  but he thinks 300km might be more accurate given the conditions.  This limitation doesn’t worry him though and he has no need to be constantly checking the range remaining.  Someone is following him, he needs to make a point about the range for the review, if he gets stranded all is not lost and so there is no need to worry.

What do we worry about that we can’t control?  What limits should we acknowledge and then put a piece of tape over to ignore?

Normal is your creation

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 ”After a while, it just became completely normal. It didn’t feel like I was doing anything eccentric.”

That’s according to Ken Ilgunas when he was sharing his time living in a van in the Duke University parking lot while going to school there.  The entire Yahoo Article is worth reading but it was the quote above that struck me the most because that’s been my experiences in giving up and getting things in life.  My normal is now eating healthy, waking early, taking care of our children, mowing a huge yard, walking two dogs, and drinking coffee.  My normal is no cable tv, very little alcohol, occasional restaurant visits, no new clothes or books.

Normal is what you make it.

Ken’s book is Walden on Wheels: On The Open Road from Debt to Freedom.

Writing Tools (book review)

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Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by @RoyPeterClark.  Recommended by a Facebook friend this book outlines tools to use as a writer.   As I write word though not always ordered right, this book was very instructional.  My writing education began and ended with a 7th grade English class when we listened to Alanis Morissette sing Ironic over and over as well as some discussion of simile which was like talking about the difference of between soft rock and adult contemporary.  I was more interested in girls and science fiction two things which you normally don’t think would go together – and you’d be right.

My lack of writing education continued throughout college where I managed to mangle papers into some readable form and then into graduate school where I got a teaching assistant position grading papers.  If ever there was a job I felt under qualified for, this was it.  The other TA was a scholar, literally having been awarded an opportunity to teach in Germany prior to sharing an office with me.  Through a lot of reading and a bit of envy to try and catch up to my officemate, I slowly became better at writing.

Writing Tools then is the first type of manual I’ve used to write better.  Though I’ve also read Stephen King’s On Writing this felt more geared toward writing fiction and non-fiction for any level writer.  The book lists 50 tools a writer can use and each one made me think how to use it more in my writing but each one was also malleable.  One tool for instance, to be creative in analogies.  In the first paragraph Morissette would be both soft rock and adult contemporary and I used the description of simile to make a simile.  Each tool has a few examples of the use, and at first these appeared as complex as a set of blueprints for a skyscraper but as Clark broke things down they slowly changed from the complex to the simple.

This book is challenging my attempt to not buy books this year (1st 100 days) but to also have only the things in my life that I need.  My resolution to not buy books and clothes rose out of the concept of appreciating the things I had and not having excess, this book is not excess.  This book will help me be a better writer, of that I have no doubt.

Don’t water down your lemonade or your parenting

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There are many food and beverages I make well, I can even light a drink on fire.  For whatever reason though, I don’t make lemonade well.  It always turns out too watered down.  I can empty the entire bag of sugar and it still tastes like bitter creek water.

At the playground last week I saw a grandmother go from threatening to begging to pleading with a child to come down from a tower so they could go to the store.  This girl went from being in big trouble to being showered with promises of candy and toys in a matter of minutes.   She was the master negotiator.

This grandmother was watering down here parenting. This may have been a small, inaccurate moment in her otherwise fantastic parenting but it set a pattern that her granddaughter can follow.  Don’t listen, get a toy, repeat.

While drinking from my pious pitcher of lemonade I can speak to the same faults.  My wife and I even have a running joke about it.  Sometimes the other parent will be losing their perception and control on the situation and say something like,  if you don’t brush your teeth then you’ll never have ice cream again!  After these bold words the other spouse will softly sing empty threats, nothing but empty threats.  (Even though we both do this, neither shows the right empathy in the moment of teeth brushing battle and there are plenty of dirty looks exchanged).  The only truth contained in these threats is that we are liars and it sucks to be a liar.  Kids learn that if we don’t mean what we say then what we say doesn’t matter.

Last summer we were having dinner with my in-laws and some of their friends and one of our children was not behaving.   In an act of shortsightedness I declared that if some behavior didn’t stop we would be going home and going to bed.  As the words passed my lips and flew to their ears I wish I could have caught them and brought them back.  Like a collision you see in the making, my words foreshadowed an ugly departure.  I knew it was going to happen too.  The kids were being especially active and bothersome to each other.  Five minutes later the banned behavior returned and we – not quietly – got our things and left.

I hated doing it but I’m glad I did it. It was important for me to stand by what I said and show our daughters that their behavior wasn’t acceptable.  I’m learning the things to say or not say, do or not do.  I ask what is the best way to teach them something that I’m willing to follow up on?  Ice cream will never be banned and threats will never be empty but our actual lemonade isn’t tasting any better.

In the deep end you have to keep moving (quote)

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While a quote about faith I found it better applied to life.  Your job, family, self.

It’s easy to spend time in the shallow end of faith. It’s not a real commitment. You can just hop in, stand around in tight circles, and people-watch. You can examine your nails, read, reread, and catch up on all the gossip. You can talk and talk and talk and come to a great many conclusions and decisions and still maintain your hairstyle and even avoid smudging your makeup.

I think the reason we don’t hear from people in the deep end as often is because they’re actually swimming. In the deep end, you have to keep moving. It’s hard to look cool. It’s tiring and scary even, since it’s just you and your head and your heart in the silence of the depths. There’s not much chatting or safety in numbers in the deep end. You have to spend most of your time there alone. And it’s impossible to get any solid footing. You just have to trust that the water will hold you, and you have no their choice but to flail about and gasp for air and get soaking wet, head to toe.


Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed, page 204.

Let the water and other little things slide

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Poolside in 2013Last week our daughters were sitting at Grandma’s pool, dangling their yet to be tanned legs in the yet to be warmed pool.  The water temperature was sixty-some degrees but they didn’t care. They were just happy the cover was open and they could splash water wherever they wanted. And did they splash.  They splashed each other and the bricks, the pool fence, the pool toys, the pool skimmer, the pool sides.  Anything in a fifteen foot radius of where they sat got wet. They were like trained seals performing a show.  Then they would move to a new spot and do it all again.

I thought about stopping them. In the past, when I was a fairly poor father compared to the nearly average father I am now, I would have said some rubbish like Grandma has to pay for that water, pay to put it in, pay to heat it, pay to blah blah blah. But that night I let them splash because it was a drop in the pool.  Sometimes as parents we get so caught up in having kids do the right thing all the time  that we forget that we as adults don’t do that.  We don’t eat right all the time, we don’t work at work all the time, we don’t exercise or file our taxes or finish some project the right way. If the number of times I’m using Zip-ties is an indicator I don’t do projects the right way half the time.  And it’s OK.

That same day I was talking to a neighbor about why her daughter’s butt was black. I had let our daughter use markers to decorate their backyard slide and the markers had smeared onto the seat of their pants each trip down.  This neighbor replied it was no big deal because she is very wise.  She has many children and learned long ago about letting the little things slide and focusing on the big things in life.

When you become a parent everything seems like a big thing because at first, everything is.  When a baby is born you only think about keeping them alive and happy.  As they get older you worry about them being alive, happy, and growing.  After that it’s alive, happy, growing, and learning.  We can try to tweak each action to maximize their happiness/growth/learning but the list never becomes exhaustive and you’ll be exhausted.

Somewhere in there, between the nearly infinite options for best things and making everything a best thing is the median we all need to find.  We need to think about where our median is and reflect on how  to navigate it.

I try to end each day with a moment of mindful meditation.  I sit and think about something I’m grateful for and something I did that day which could be improved. This isn’t a critical time but a coaching one.  After this evening at the pool I’ve thought more about the big things in life I want our kids to know. To love and care for others, to not criticize or harm, to give and receive help.  Part of focusing on those big things means letting the little things slide, like splashing water at the pool.

Food Waste May

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We don’t waste a lot of food I thought one day as some product on the TeeVee was trying to sell plastic bags or preservatives or some other nonsense.  We eat everything, I thought, as I resumed cleaning the living room.  But there was  nagging feeling of doubt in my mind about how much food we really do throw away.  Do we throw away pounds of food? Do we throw away what might add up to an entire meal?  For May I decided to find out.

How much food does a family of four throw away in one month?

May 5: 1 Cup of broccoli.  My kids love broccoli and we are very fortunate to have kids that welcome a green vegetable onto their plate but my wife and I don’t care very much for it.  What happened was that I made more than the kids would eat for dinner and then forgot to serve it to them before it developed that broccoli smell.

In this gap of ten days I took to heart this challenge and ate everything that was close to getting bad. One night my dinner was half a peanut butter sandwich, a small bowl of chips and salsa, rice with cheese.

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May 15. Part of one bowl of fruit loops, half a cheese roll-up from Taco Bell, and half a Taco Bell quesadilla.  This was the Sunday morning of our trip to Cincinnati and I couldn’t eat anymore.  I was eating any leftovers the kids didn’t want but at this point I was full and I knew we were about to go to King’s Island amusement park with an unknown amount of spinning rides that would do their best to separate my breakfast from my stomach.

May 17: One and a half piece of bread.  Burned in the toaster.

May 20: Half a carton of egg whites, seven cucumber shooters.  My wife opened the eggs whites sometime earlier in the month (year?) and they never were cooked.  This is too bad because I had been making some mean omelets with leftovers throughout the month and could have easily used the eggs.   The cucumber shooters were leftovers from a Mother’s Day brunch we hosted.  They weren’t very flavorful and that’s probably why they never got eaten.  This were both good examples of being away of things in the refrigerator.  I put an opening date on heavy cream when I use it and will start to do the same with eggs.

May 22: 1 Cup of Salmon Dip, Tablespoon of Sauteed Onions.  The salmon dip suffered the same fate as the cucumber shooters – it wasn’t very good and no one wanted to eat more of it.  The sauteed onions were pitched because they began to stink after some indeterminate amount of time pushed toward the back of the refrigerator.  They must have been hanging out with the carton of egg whites.

May 25: 3 Cups of Potato Insides.  This was another Mother’s Day casualty – really bad meal planning on my part.  I made these wonderful sausage stuffed potatoes and I’ll usually fry up or mash the parts I scoop out but didn’t do either and they too began to stink.

May 26: 4 Sausage Patties, 2 cartons of milk, 3 egg omelet.  We stayed at a very nice Marriott in Pittsburgh while visiting family and these were the castoffs that no one ate after two mornings of  breakfast buffets.  While we didn’t pay for each of these items the cost of food is included in the room price but it was wasteful to throw it out.  I should have take a picture for accountability purposes but was too embarrassed.

May 28: 1 Peanut butter and banana sandwich. Leftover – and under the car seat – from the Pittsburgh road trip.  It had to have really smelled bad for me to throw it away.

May 30: Threw out leftovers from plates when we had guests over for dinner. Half a cup of macaroni and cheese, half a cup of couscous, some hummus, some spanakopita.

What lessons did I learn about wasting food?

  1. Serve the kids less. One week into May I realized that we were serving the kids too much food.  Once I cut back on their serving sizes there was a lot less of their leftovers to store or eat. 
  2. Bring a cooler.  During our trip to Cincinnati we were cooler-less but didn’t have anything that might need refrigerated   During our trip to Pittsburgh we did.  Had I thrown a smaller cooler into the car it would have allowed us to save all the food.
  3. Think about eating the oldest thing you have.  There were a few times I wanted one thing for lunch but ate another.
  4. Keep the food organized.  I’m trying to have shelves in our refrigerator devoted to certain things and I know that leftovers are always in containers with red lids.
  5. Rice and eggs can have just about anything added to them. Leftover chicken can become a taco with rice and salsa and nearly anything can become an omelet.
  6. Make myself less food.  I mind eating the kids’ leftovers a lot less than throwing out food. If I make 3/4 of what I want to eat and then nibble at the kids’s plates that usually fills me up. Plus, I serve myself too much to begin with.
  7. If I think about things I can be more creative with leftovers.  After spaghetti nights we almost always have Mark Bittman’s egg and spaghetti frittata in the next few days.  Ditto for roasts and sandwiches and any sliced vegetable and omelets.

What if the world’s greatest swingset was in your backyard?

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Having it all in a swingset
We need monkey bars she said to me as we pushed the kids on the swings in our backyard one evening.  The sun was slowly accelerating as it headed to the horizon and we were in that magic time of day when things cool down and the day feels full.  Like the sensation after eating just the right amount of a delicious meal.

Yeah daddy, we need monkey bars the two little monkeys echoed as they swung rhythmically back and forth on the bars like pendulums on a clock.  Monkey bars! Monkey bars!

I’ve learned that once my wife and daughters get an idea opened there is no way for me put it back in the box. Like capping an opened fire hydrant or repacking a tent – the contents refuse to be contained.  This monkey bar idea was not going to be defused that evening but what if we had monkey bars?

My kids would love the monkey bars, we all enjoy new things.  My wife and I lived for years in some of the most beautiful parts of southeast Ohio but rarely ventured out into them. Parts of the state that they put on postcards and people say wow, that’s beautiful.  We did go hiking through the rolling hills and caves when we first moved there but went more in the first summer and fall than the rest of six years there.  Even though the trees weren’t any less beautiful – in fact they were more-so because they had grown and become more magnificent – we spent less time in their beauty.  Our kids do this too.  They have countless dolls and other stuffed toys to play with, but certain toys rarely get used.  However, similar toys elsewhere become something that can’t be ignored.

It would be the same with monkey bars. If we had this it would be something the kids would love and use but their appreciation for it would soon falter because that’s what happens to people, even those pretending to be monkeys.

Once we begin enjoying the fancier things in life it becomes harder to enjoy the simple things.  Our backyard playset is more than simple. It’s actually quite grand and monkey bars are not the answer.  There is an easy addition though. Something much greater than monkey bars that will give longer lasting memories – me. You. Mom and Dad running around with them.  Playing tag and chase and being a monster under the bridge.  When people say it’s the simple things in life, that’s what they’re talking about – you and your little monkeys.

What does a stay at home dad do all day?

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Tired kids

People ask me all the time how it feels to be a stay at home dad. Great I tell them. Then I add some comment about seeing your kids grow up but having my hair turn grey/patience tested/ looking for a new job/ version of trouble. Mostly people smile and say things like that’s great or good for you. Behind their eyes though, I think I see more. Thoughts like, that must be nice/ ESPN whenever I wanted/ I should do that too. When I first started this gig I thought those same things. I didn’t really consider my kids from age 2-13, instead choosing to think how wonderful babies are and then how cool teenagers might be. This isn’t exactly how it works.

My wife loves to ask what we did each day and the girls share and narrate with the excitement of someone who’s just back from the moon. Even the most mundane (chores!) are presented like a badge of honor. Now I’ll open the doors, peel back the curtain, and show what really happens to the man behind the curtain.

What does a stay at home dad do all day?

June 3rd, 2013

600. I get up to take the dog out, make coffee, and do whatever writing or reading I hope to get done during the day. Now that the school year is over I don’t have any grading to do so I get to write on this blog. This usually lasts until 730.

730-800. I make my wife’s breakfast and lunch if she needs one. I also tidy up the kitchen somewhat and eat breakfast if I’m hungry. (Just assume in each item there was ‘tidying up’.)

800-1000. In the summer this is the window when the kids wake. On this day they woke closer to 10 and almost always want food right away. Breakfast was homemade parfaits of yogurt, Kashii cereal, and sliced strawberries. I’ll continue to write, read, pickup the house, pay bills, submit Amazon.com orders and other miscellaneous things until they rise.

1000-1030. I send them down to their rooms to get dressed for the day and brush their teeth. For a five and three year old I think they do well with this, by 1030 at least one of them is mostly dressed and one may even be brushing her teeth. Mostly I think they go and plot in someone’s room. I clean the kitchen. (I noticed while taking notes on the day that I do a lot of cleaning and tidying which in reflection seem like separate things. Assume in each entry there was cleaning and tidying going on).

1030-1100. We read on the couch. I think we read 7 books, all from the public library. I really like our library and that it saves us oodles of money. I don’t count the children’s books in that figure but we go about once a week and get 10-20 books each trip.

1100-1145. We play outside on our swing set and make plans for the day. They want to have a picnic somewhere and I want to go to the library to pick up some books. I also use this time to talk about our day and think of the things I need to do like make phone calls or pay bills. The hardest part is finding the time. I’ve noticed since having kids that I work really well when not being interrupted but the only time that really happens is in that 600-730 time slot. The phone calls and bills will be sneaked in later.

1145-1215. We go to the library, return our books, get new ones and find Mary Poppins on DVD. This is a great find because we want to begin watching more live action movies instead of animated princess ones. Normally we’d be at the library twice as long but there were no other kids there and the idea of a picnic at the park was calling.

1215-215. Picnic in the park. We ate in a shelter house and played on everything the park had to offer. While we were there a few different groups of kids came and went and we played with all of them. I love seeing our kids play well with others except – which they did this day – when they hide from the boys. I’ve become overly sensitive to gender roles since having kids and nothing gets me on a soapbox in front of them like when they say things like blue is a boy color. No, forget that bullshit, you get to pick whatever color you want. In my mind there is more profanity, in my speech less.

215- 300. We run. Using a double jogging stroller I run 4 miles while they listen to Disney Princess audiobooks and songs.

300- 515. We drive home and play more outside. I sneak in my phone calls to a sawmill, the insurance company, and pay a bill online from my phone. I don’t play with the kids the entire time they are outside. I pull weeds and clean out the garage. I move the ladder around the house and clean the gutters or take this down or put that up. I fix things that are broken so that our weekends aren’t consumed with housework. During this time I also fix a simple dinner of rice and beans with broccoli. I have a can of tuna over salad.

515-600. We begin to play inside. I’ve noticed that since we started playing outside more, the kids play nicer inside. I don’t know if it’s the novelty or being tired from time outdoors but they’ve been especially nice to each other. I clean the things from dinner.

600-730. I play with the girls, read some new library books, and take turns spotting them on our swing set bar. I also watch as they do gymnastics on my bed. These gymnastics mostly consist of sliding off the bed like a blob. Even though it’s the same damn thing over and over I’m learning to enjoy watching them. I could have kids who weren’t this fun. My kids could be sick or worse. My kids could be making trouble or watching the FreeVee. I practice negative visualization and enjoy the moment.

730-800. My in-laws bring over a dresser my wife wanted. They look at the previous dresser and convince me they can fix it. I feel bad that I didn’t do this. I often feel like this but I don’t know when I would do it with the kids. Broken dresser parts are significantly lower (along with clean floors, sparkling bathrooms, and other small, broken things) on my priority list.

800- 830. My wife gets home from work and my in-laws leave.

830-915. We turn on Swiss Family Robinson but the kids tire of it and want to go back outside – I happily oblige. My wife and I play with the kids while we talk about our day. I do wish there was more time to talk to my wife and I think there will be once the kids are older but now it seems like they both want us. As problems go, it’s a good one to have.

915-1015. The kids convince us to let them finish watching Snow White. We watch the last 45 minutes, brush our teeth, and go to bed.

1015- 1130. My wife and I eat any snacks we were hoping not to share, laugh at Arrested Development and talk some more.

That’s a random day. There is no ESPN or video games and any time for myself, I make in the mornings by rising early. I’m amazed by those people that work from home and do real jobs that pay real money. How? Aside from the time they’re asleep I’m lucky to stitch together 18 minutes to call and battle the insurance company or add a few ingredients to a pot for dinner. I’ve thought about this many times and just don’t see it without using the FreeVee as a babysitter. I don’t dislike our TV – we use it all the time for movies at night – but I know there are a lot of much better options. Like picnics in the park, swings in the backyard, and playing with the kids. The floors though, I’ll clean the floors tomorrow.

Couscous bowl (meal right, feel right)

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Couscous bowl.

I found that our kids will eat just about any grain I feed them so long as they get some choices about the toppings. Rice and cheese. Spaghetti and sauce. Quinoa and butter. Couscous may be the most flexible of the group. It cooks in five minutes, matches with about any of the other toppings and is darn healthy.

Five kid friendly couscous toppings

  1. Raisins.  Our kid’s favorites.  
  2. Sliced Carrots.  Another favorite
  3. Honey. They would eat the furniture if I let them put honey on it.
  4. Almonds. Sliced or pieces would work best.
  5. Pistachios.  Our kids call these ‘Ogre boogers’ and think it’s the funniest thing in the world.
  6. Green onions. If your kids are adventurous.
  7. Cooked sweet onions. Call them something else and I’m almost certain they would it them.
  8. Sliced spinach.  Spinach can be added to almost anything because of its mild flavor.
  9. Cheeses.
  10. Any pasta sauce.