Spring break officially began yesterday afternoon at 12:15 p.m. when the children came running in from school with happy, goofy smiles on their faces and volume-controls set to HIGH. They are FREE! No more homework, no more books, no more Teacher's exasperated looks. For at least the next week.
And it was perfect weather outside. Too perfect to sit inside and watch movies, which was our first impulse (it's genetic). So we headed outside to ... the school playground. "Hey, didn't we just come from there?" "Well, yeah, but you guys need some exercise," - and Dad's spare tire is needing a serious reduction plan, so off we go.
We played Tag. The neighborhood kids, who happened to be hanging out, joined in. Dad ran until he was out of breath. Took all of five minutes. Then we played soccer. Dad was goalie (requires less running). Then we played baseball. Dad got to be coach (only requires yelling a lot, and occasional pitching or batting).
Then it was time to go home, to grab a quick dinner before our regular evening activities began, and look forward to sleeping in for a few days.
Ah, Spring!
Friday, March 31, 2006
Saturday, March 18, 2006
A Man's Home is ... ?
It has been said that “A man’s home is his castle”. What does this phrase mean? And is it true? And, if so, what does that imply in trying to understand the psychology of man?
The phrase, by itself, implies at first glance that a man is the absolute ruler of his own home. It acquires this coloration due to its instinctive association with the politically-incorrect, patriarchal culture of days gone by wherein the man was ranked as dictator, bully, tyrant, Lord and Master, with wife and children to serve his every whim. This was certainly never the actual case for every family within society at large, but there was enough truth to the characterization to sustain the caricature for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. In reality, a man had no more and no less authority in his own home than he was able to earn by his leadership, strength, devotion and charisma; indeed, no man in the past or present age could live in a vacuum, and the pressure of family, neighbors and cultural institutions was generally sufficient to remind the man of the limitations of his assignedment.
A man’s role was to work to provide food, clothing and shelter for his family, to defend them at the risk of his own life, and to pass on the skills and knowledge necessary to ensure the survival of the following generations. It was neither more nor less important than the woman’s role; it merely complemented it.
Owing to the nature of the work generally assigned to a man, there is inherent risk in his everyday activities. There is the risk that he will lose status due to mistake or accident, thereby degrading his earning potential. There is the risk that he will fail at his attendant duties to provide for his family, bringing shame and degradation – if not desolation – to his family. There is the risk that he will die before his offspring have achieved maturity, thus placing his legacy in jeopardy.
Every action of the man outside his home incurs a risk, and every risk that a man takes incurs stress. Stress can serve to drive a man to further achievement, it is true; but it may also serve to poison a man’s mind and body to the point where he can no longer function. Stress is a normal part of life, but it must be ladled out in measured doses to avoid permanent damage.
When a man goes forth from his home to begin his workday, he prepares himself for the stress, both mentally and physically. Internal to his psyche, there is a predetermined limit to the amount of stress he can tolerate with good grace, and, generally, he accepts that he can endure it to within a certain range of that limit for the period of time he expects to be out and about in the world. Should the level rise above his expectations in the course of one day, he may comfort himself with the knowledge that this day must, after all, come to an end, and there will come an hour when he will be free to leave the source of the stress and retire to his ‘castle’. Certainly the cause of the stress may not be removed, but there will be a time during which he will not be in direct contact with that cause, and may have opportunity to recharge his internal batteries.
When a man retires at the end of the workday to enter his ‘castle’ home, he has certain expectations of his homecoming based on the events of the day, and the aggregate level of stress which has built up in his mind during the day. First and foremost, he expects that there should be no more additional stress encountered when he walks through the door. Were this to be the case, there would be no reason to come home, unless the man were a masochist. Second, he expects that those who greet him upon his arrival are genuinely glad that he has come home, or, at the very least, they do not express open displeasure. Were he to be met with an indication that his presence is less than desirable, again, there would be no logical reason to come home. Finally, he expects that other members of the family have been toiling as himself in their assigned duties to improve generally the situation such that the overall status of the family and its possessions is at least no worse than the day before.. In short, he expects that the house is still standing, the electricity is still flowing, the water is not leaking from the pipes, the debris from the day’s activities has been cleared (mostly) from the floor, and he will be able to enjoy a small moment of peace and tranquility in the company of his dearest loved ones.
Notice that the man does not immediately begin to issue orders for his family, or demand that they bow and scrape and obey his every whim. He does not expect to plop into the recliner and prop his feet upon the ottoman and read the paper while the rest of the family cooks and cleans and fetches his slippers. Indeed, he does not desire the role of a spectator when in the company of his dearest loved ones, but rather to be an integral player in the ongoing drama. He understands that there are certain skills that are beyond him, and he does not attempt to usurp anyone else’s gifts, but instead seeks to help out with the daily tasks as best he can. He helps the children pick up toys, he answers difficult scholastic questions (or confirms the wise mother’s answers, if asked), he helps focus little minds on the important jobs to which they have been assigned, and above all he tries to engage his wife in conversation of the type and caliber to which she may not have heard for many an hour. His goal is to re-connect into the life of the family, to re-establish the mental and emotional bonds which have been strained by physical absence through the course of the day, to fall back into the comforting and comfortable flow that defines the organism to which he belongs, in which he is loved and accepted.
This is the ideal. This is what the man strives for every day, though he may not recognize it. It is what he longs for, though he may misinterpret the feeling at times. When the actual does not correspond with the ideal, problems will arise.
Take the simplest example: he arrives at home after a stressful day, and his wife is angry with the children for one reason or another. Perhaps they are unwilling to work on their assigned chores, or simply too hyperactive to take instruction. She is frustrated but cannot express her feelings with them because they are too immature to understand, so as soon as he husband arrives, she vents her frustration in his direction. She is not meaning to deride him for anything he has done (other than siring difficult children!), but she must take advantage of the opportunity of explaining her feelings to the first person with the ability to understand and sympathize. He is taken aback, thinking that he was going to escape stress by coming home, and instead is now forced to add just a little bit more to his already-full cup. If she is the type of person who is unable to signify by her words or expression that she is not, in fact, yelling at him, but is merely expressing her anger at the one person most likely to understand, he might misinterpret her expression and begin to think himself unwelcome in his own house. His immediate impulse is either to lash back at her in defense, or jump back in the car and leave as fast as possible, neither of which is particularly helpful, and both of which may result in serious damage to the relationship. Alternatively, he may even assume that she wishes him to punish the children immediately, which most certainly will cast a dark pallor over the entire evening’s activities.
The man wishes for nothing more than peace and tranquility (which is not the same thing as ‘quiet’), especially during the one moment of the day where he is granted the gift of sitting down at a table with his beloved family and sharing a meal. He has fought the good fight all day long, and now desires to replenish his physical and emotional stores in order to be ready the following morning to repeat the process. He wants to sit down at a table surrounded by his loving family and share a good meal and some good conversation (and possibly even some inane jokes). He wants to let his family know that he has fought for them this day, that he has endured the pressures of the workplace for their benefit, so that they might have a place to live and eat and grow, and that there is nothing more important to him on this earth than his family. And he expects that somehow, they might recognize that this is an important time that he wants to share with them, and would hope that for this one little moment in the day, they can all cast aside the concerns of their own day, and just concentrate on the joy of being with one another.
But – the children don’t like what was cooked for dinner. They complain about how it looks or how it tastes (generally, without tasting it). Or they won’t sit still. Or they didn’t want to help set the table. Or they forgot to wash their hands. Or they are bickering with each other. And suddenly dinnertime turns into another battleground, not unlike the one he just left, and now the evening is ruined and the stress level has gotten even higher, and he’s wondering if it’s going to be like this every night. He has a sudden urge to just stand up and walk away. He doesn’t need this conflict, this anger; he’s already been there, done that.
The castle walls have been breached. There are barbarians inside the gates.
Here’s another example: he gets up in the morning, before the sun rises, to help the kids get breakfast, to make lunches, to get the coffee for his lovely wife, to feed the cats, to do all those things that need to be done to prepare the family for the new day, and he goes about his tasks with simple-minded purpose and joy in his heart to be able to serve them this way. A moment later, he is on his knees attempting to scrape cat-vomit off the carpet – again! – and furiously planning the demise of those wicked, house-wrecking animals. What has turned The Joy of the Morning into Dante’s Inferno? After all, it’s just an accident. Cats do that sort of thing every day, especially cats who don’t go outside. What’s the big deal?
Is the man overreacting? Perhaps, if it were just a place, just a building, just a (ruined) carpet. But it is not just a place – it is his castle, his Fortress of Solitude, his Secret Garden, his Shangri-La, and the cat is treating it as nothing better than a field of anonymous grass and dirt, a place as worthless as to be vomited upon. And keep in mind also that this same cat thinks nothing of leaving its fur and dander in generous quantities throughout the house – on the floor, on the furniture, on the beds. After a time, the man feels that the cat’s sole purpose in life is to destroy all that he has worked so hard to build, and then to (in effect) spit upon the remains.
Yes, yes, it’s just a cat, and cats do that sort of thing. It’s a fact. We accept it. But it is not the biological reality that matters here; rather, it is the perception of the event in the mind of the man. The man’s castle has been defiled. Trashed. Spoiled. What was once a (relatively) pristine environment has been turned into a waste-heap. And while we can accept the ‘normal’ rate of decay of natural objects because we understand the concept of entropy, we cannot accept the fact that we have allowed entities (other than our own offspring) behind its walls whose sole purpose seems to be its slow, painful destruction - entities whose presence within our ‘castle’ is purely optional.
The castle walls are crumbling.
Is it any wonder, then, that the man may oftentimes express a strong sentiment in opposition to these effects? Is it a complete surprise when his anger boils over at a seemingly innocuous, accidental event?
Let’s look at one more example.
The garage is generally accepted as the man’s ultimate personal space, his final refuge from life’s turmoil. When things get tough, the tough get going ... to the garage. His tools are there, his cars are there, his power toys are there. Unfortunately, sometimes he must share this little world. In some cases, he shares it with large appliances (washer, dryer, freezer), or lawn maintenance supplies, or exercise equipment, or piles of boxes with all those items which were never unpacked from the last move. In more drastic cases, he must share it with cat litter boxes. (Well, you don’t really want them in the house proper, do you?) That’s not too bad, though. It’s one of the reasons we tolerate cats at all, because we don’t have to take them for long walks in order for them to relieve themselves. It is possible to co-exist with them in one house and not suffer the scatalogical consequences.
Unless ...
Say you have two cats, a male and a female. And as a responsible cat owner, you read up on the literature about cats. Now, according to cat psychologists, female cats don’t care where they ‘go’; they’ll use whatever facilities you place at their disposal. Male cats, however, are a bit more picky. They don’t share litter boxes, and they are extremely sensitive to your ability to keep the litter box clean. Should you fail in your duties by not providing them a litter box of their own, or by not taking the time to clean up the one they have, they will utilize a distinctive messaging mechanism whose purpose is to alert you to your mistake. They will ‘go’ somewhere else. Could be the garage, could be the living room carpet, could be the kitchen floor. Just so long as you get the point. And if you don’t, they’ll repeat it until you do.
But you, as a responsible cat owner, have done your homework. You are prepared. You have installed not one, but two litter boxes, one for each animal. And you are diligent about keeping them clean.
So the man walks out into his garage in the morning to climb into his car and drive off to do battle with the big, bad barbarian hordes at work. Then he stops because there is an impediment in his path. Right next to the door of his car, in fact. A present from the male cat. A pile of cat dung.
The man is angry, and he is angry not because the cat has chosen to do this vile thing, but rather that he does not understand why it has happened at all. Has he not provided adequate facilities already? Was his research flawed? Has the cat gone blind? Does the cat wish to lodge a complaint about the cleaning schedule of its ‘facilities’? The man walks back to the litter boxes. They are both relatively clean. So why has the cat done this? The man is puzzled, confused, mystified. The chain of logic has broken down somewhere. This is not the way it should be. A man should always understand why things happen in his own house.
In the mind of the man, the cat has spoken. “Puny man,” he says, “you may think that you own this castle, that you control the things which are under you’re roof, but you are sadly mistaken. You cannot control me. You cannot understand me. I laugh at your ridiculous efforts! I can pollute this place and there is nothing you can do about it. It is not you who are master of this dwelling, but I – and I hereby violate this place just to spite you!”
No, the man’s home is not his castle. The man’s home is a Zoo, full of interesting, strong-willed, stubborn, uncontrollable creatures who derive great pleasure from destroying what little peace and quiet might exist within its walls. Some of them he loves dearly, others he merely tolerates – but all of them drive him toward the only true refuge left in the world.
The bathroom.
The phrase, by itself, implies at first glance that a man is the absolute ruler of his own home. It acquires this coloration due to its instinctive association with the politically-incorrect, patriarchal culture of days gone by wherein the man was ranked as dictator, bully, tyrant, Lord and Master, with wife and children to serve his every whim. This was certainly never the actual case for every family within society at large, but there was enough truth to the characterization to sustain the caricature for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. In reality, a man had no more and no less authority in his own home than he was able to earn by his leadership, strength, devotion and charisma; indeed, no man in the past or present age could live in a vacuum, and the pressure of family, neighbors and cultural institutions was generally sufficient to remind the man of the limitations of his assignedment.
A man’s role was to work to provide food, clothing and shelter for his family, to defend them at the risk of his own life, and to pass on the skills and knowledge necessary to ensure the survival of the following generations. It was neither more nor less important than the woman’s role; it merely complemented it.
Owing to the nature of the work generally assigned to a man, there is inherent risk in his everyday activities. There is the risk that he will lose status due to mistake or accident, thereby degrading his earning potential. There is the risk that he will fail at his attendant duties to provide for his family, bringing shame and degradation – if not desolation – to his family. There is the risk that he will die before his offspring have achieved maturity, thus placing his legacy in jeopardy.
Every action of the man outside his home incurs a risk, and every risk that a man takes incurs stress. Stress can serve to drive a man to further achievement, it is true; but it may also serve to poison a man’s mind and body to the point where he can no longer function. Stress is a normal part of life, but it must be ladled out in measured doses to avoid permanent damage.
When a man goes forth from his home to begin his workday, he prepares himself for the stress, both mentally and physically. Internal to his psyche, there is a predetermined limit to the amount of stress he can tolerate with good grace, and, generally, he accepts that he can endure it to within a certain range of that limit for the period of time he expects to be out and about in the world. Should the level rise above his expectations in the course of one day, he may comfort himself with the knowledge that this day must, after all, come to an end, and there will come an hour when he will be free to leave the source of the stress and retire to his ‘castle’. Certainly the cause of the stress may not be removed, but there will be a time during which he will not be in direct contact with that cause, and may have opportunity to recharge his internal batteries.
When a man retires at the end of the workday to enter his ‘castle’ home, he has certain expectations of his homecoming based on the events of the day, and the aggregate level of stress which has built up in his mind during the day. First and foremost, he expects that there should be no more additional stress encountered when he walks through the door. Were this to be the case, there would be no reason to come home, unless the man were a masochist. Second, he expects that those who greet him upon his arrival are genuinely glad that he has come home, or, at the very least, they do not express open displeasure. Were he to be met with an indication that his presence is less than desirable, again, there would be no logical reason to come home. Finally, he expects that other members of the family have been toiling as himself in their assigned duties to improve generally the situation such that the overall status of the family and its possessions is at least no worse than the day before.. In short, he expects that the house is still standing, the electricity is still flowing, the water is not leaking from the pipes, the debris from the day’s activities has been cleared (mostly) from the floor, and he will be able to enjoy a small moment of peace and tranquility in the company of his dearest loved ones.
Notice that the man does not immediately begin to issue orders for his family, or demand that they bow and scrape and obey his every whim. He does not expect to plop into the recliner and prop his feet upon the ottoman and read the paper while the rest of the family cooks and cleans and fetches his slippers. Indeed, he does not desire the role of a spectator when in the company of his dearest loved ones, but rather to be an integral player in the ongoing drama. He understands that there are certain skills that are beyond him, and he does not attempt to usurp anyone else’s gifts, but instead seeks to help out with the daily tasks as best he can. He helps the children pick up toys, he answers difficult scholastic questions (or confirms the wise mother’s answers, if asked), he helps focus little minds on the important jobs to which they have been assigned, and above all he tries to engage his wife in conversation of the type and caliber to which she may not have heard for many an hour. His goal is to re-connect into the life of the family, to re-establish the mental and emotional bonds which have been strained by physical absence through the course of the day, to fall back into the comforting and comfortable flow that defines the organism to which he belongs, in which he is loved and accepted.
This is the ideal. This is what the man strives for every day, though he may not recognize it. It is what he longs for, though he may misinterpret the feeling at times. When the actual does not correspond with the ideal, problems will arise.
Take the simplest example: he arrives at home after a stressful day, and his wife is angry with the children for one reason or another. Perhaps they are unwilling to work on their assigned chores, or simply too hyperactive to take instruction. She is frustrated but cannot express her feelings with them because they are too immature to understand, so as soon as he husband arrives, she vents her frustration in his direction. She is not meaning to deride him for anything he has done (other than siring difficult children!), but she must take advantage of the opportunity of explaining her feelings to the first person with the ability to understand and sympathize. He is taken aback, thinking that he was going to escape stress by coming home, and instead is now forced to add just a little bit more to his already-full cup. If she is the type of person who is unable to signify by her words or expression that she is not, in fact, yelling at him, but is merely expressing her anger at the one person most likely to understand, he might misinterpret her expression and begin to think himself unwelcome in his own house. His immediate impulse is either to lash back at her in defense, or jump back in the car and leave as fast as possible, neither of which is particularly helpful, and both of which may result in serious damage to the relationship. Alternatively, he may even assume that she wishes him to punish the children immediately, which most certainly will cast a dark pallor over the entire evening’s activities.
The man wishes for nothing more than peace and tranquility (which is not the same thing as ‘quiet’), especially during the one moment of the day where he is granted the gift of sitting down at a table with his beloved family and sharing a meal. He has fought the good fight all day long, and now desires to replenish his physical and emotional stores in order to be ready the following morning to repeat the process. He wants to sit down at a table surrounded by his loving family and share a good meal and some good conversation (and possibly even some inane jokes). He wants to let his family know that he has fought for them this day, that he has endured the pressures of the workplace for their benefit, so that they might have a place to live and eat and grow, and that there is nothing more important to him on this earth than his family. And he expects that somehow, they might recognize that this is an important time that he wants to share with them, and would hope that for this one little moment in the day, they can all cast aside the concerns of their own day, and just concentrate on the joy of being with one another.
But – the children don’t like what was cooked for dinner. They complain about how it looks or how it tastes (generally, without tasting it). Or they won’t sit still. Or they didn’t want to help set the table. Or they forgot to wash their hands. Or they are bickering with each other. And suddenly dinnertime turns into another battleground, not unlike the one he just left, and now the evening is ruined and the stress level has gotten even higher, and he’s wondering if it’s going to be like this every night. He has a sudden urge to just stand up and walk away. He doesn’t need this conflict, this anger; he’s already been there, done that.
The castle walls have been breached. There are barbarians inside the gates.
Here’s another example: he gets up in the morning, before the sun rises, to help the kids get breakfast, to make lunches, to get the coffee for his lovely wife, to feed the cats, to do all those things that need to be done to prepare the family for the new day, and he goes about his tasks with simple-minded purpose and joy in his heart to be able to serve them this way. A moment later, he is on his knees attempting to scrape cat-vomit off the carpet – again! – and furiously planning the demise of those wicked, house-wrecking animals. What has turned The Joy of the Morning into Dante’s Inferno? After all, it’s just an accident. Cats do that sort of thing every day, especially cats who don’t go outside. What’s the big deal?
Is the man overreacting? Perhaps, if it were just a place, just a building, just a (ruined) carpet. But it is not just a place – it is his castle, his Fortress of Solitude, his Secret Garden, his Shangri-La, and the cat is treating it as nothing better than a field of anonymous grass and dirt, a place as worthless as to be vomited upon. And keep in mind also that this same cat thinks nothing of leaving its fur and dander in generous quantities throughout the house – on the floor, on the furniture, on the beds. After a time, the man feels that the cat’s sole purpose in life is to destroy all that he has worked so hard to build, and then to (in effect) spit upon the remains.
Yes, yes, it’s just a cat, and cats do that sort of thing. It’s a fact. We accept it. But it is not the biological reality that matters here; rather, it is the perception of the event in the mind of the man. The man’s castle has been defiled. Trashed. Spoiled. What was once a (relatively) pristine environment has been turned into a waste-heap. And while we can accept the ‘normal’ rate of decay of natural objects because we understand the concept of entropy, we cannot accept the fact that we have allowed entities (other than our own offspring) behind its walls whose sole purpose seems to be its slow, painful destruction - entities whose presence within our ‘castle’ is purely optional.
The castle walls are crumbling.
Is it any wonder, then, that the man may oftentimes express a strong sentiment in opposition to these effects? Is it a complete surprise when his anger boils over at a seemingly innocuous, accidental event?
Let’s look at one more example.
The garage is generally accepted as the man’s ultimate personal space, his final refuge from life’s turmoil. When things get tough, the tough get going ... to the garage. His tools are there, his cars are there, his power toys are there. Unfortunately, sometimes he must share this little world. In some cases, he shares it with large appliances (washer, dryer, freezer), or lawn maintenance supplies, or exercise equipment, or piles of boxes with all those items which were never unpacked from the last move. In more drastic cases, he must share it with cat litter boxes. (Well, you don’t really want them in the house proper, do you?) That’s not too bad, though. It’s one of the reasons we tolerate cats at all, because we don’t have to take them for long walks in order for them to relieve themselves. It is possible to co-exist with them in one house and not suffer the scatalogical consequences.
Unless ...
Say you have two cats, a male and a female. And as a responsible cat owner, you read up on the literature about cats. Now, according to cat psychologists, female cats don’t care where they ‘go’; they’ll use whatever facilities you place at their disposal. Male cats, however, are a bit more picky. They don’t share litter boxes, and they are extremely sensitive to your ability to keep the litter box clean. Should you fail in your duties by not providing them a litter box of their own, or by not taking the time to clean up the one they have, they will utilize a distinctive messaging mechanism whose purpose is to alert you to your mistake. They will ‘go’ somewhere else. Could be the garage, could be the living room carpet, could be the kitchen floor. Just so long as you get the point. And if you don’t, they’ll repeat it until you do.
But you, as a responsible cat owner, have done your homework. You are prepared. You have installed not one, but two litter boxes, one for each animal. And you are diligent about keeping them clean.
So the man walks out into his garage in the morning to climb into his car and drive off to do battle with the big, bad barbarian hordes at work. Then he stops because there is an impediment in his path. Right next to the door of his car, in fact. A present from the male cat. A pile of cat dung.
The man is angry, and he is angry not because the cat has chosen to do this vile thing, but rather that he does not understand why it has happened at all. Has he not provided adequate facilities already? Was his research flawed? Has the cat gone blind? Does the cat wish to lodge a complaint about the cleaning schedule of its ‘facilities’? The man walks back to the litter boxes. They are both relatively clean. So why has the cat done this? The man is puzzled, confused, mystified. The chain of logic has broken down somewhere. This is not the way it should be. A man should always understand why things happen in his own house.
In the mind of the man, the cat has spoken. “Puny man,” he says, “you may think that you own this castle, that you control the things which are under you’re roof, but you are sadly mistaken. You cannot control me. You cannot understand me. I laugh at your ridiculous efforts! I can pollute this place and there is nothing you can do about it. It is not you who are master of this dwelling, but I – and I hereby violate this place just to spite you!”
No, the man’s home is not his castle. The man’s home is a Zoo, full of interesting, strong-willed, stubborn, uncontrollable creatures who derive great pleasure from destroying what little peace and quiet might exist within its walls. Some of them he loves dearly, others he merely tolerates – but all of them drive him toward the only true refuge left in the world.
The bathroom.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
This is not a typical Saturday
It should've been a good day. There was nothing else on the Calendar, nothing else in the way of absolutely scheduled events, the kind of thing that happens in the middle of the afternoon, which effectively kills of the entire day because just when you get into the rhythm of the particular thing you're doing (and enjoying), that thing you've been wanting to find the time to do for many, many, many months, you have to stop and put it all away and shower and dress and do something completely different, knowing that you will not be getting back to that activity again for another few months.
Oh, it might've been a good day.
But then James ate all the bacon. Mary had asked for it, we'd cooked it up, and then James and Adam ate up all the bacon because their sisters had run upstairs to get dressed (and get distracted by their dolls), and in the meantime, the boys ate all the bacon by themselves. Oh, they claimed that they didn't know anyone else wanted any, but we knew better. They know that Mary asks for bacon practically every morning -- it's her current favorite breakfast food. They knew they had done wrong, but James has a devilish streak in him and Adam just doesn't think sometimes (as was evidenced again later in the day). I was so totally mad.
We puttered around the house in the mid-morning, after some chores had been done, the kids doing artwork and Dad doing work on the basement and Cheryl doing her own thing; and then it was time to run off to the Musem to see the Special Exhibit which Cheryl had been wanting to see since the kids had a day off on Wednesday (but we discovered that Saturday was a better day to go because there was a kid's hands-on event on Saturday), so after lunch we got the kids ready and sent them into the garage to get in the car and then we were in the kitchen finalizing the Packing of Snacks, when --
Screaming. Lots of screaming. Cheryl ran out to the car to see what was going on. Deborah was screaming. James was tattling. Adam was pale. Cheryl was livid. Hoo-boy, there goes the afternoon.
So there were enough mistakes all around for everyone. The girls weren't sitting in their seats with their seatblets on, as they had been told to do. Deborah was taunting her brother. Adam (who is not known for temper control) poked her with a mechanical pencil.
In the eye.
Score!
All the kids came back out of the car. Marched out, as it were. To their rooms. Deb lay on her bed, and Mom and Dad checked the eye. Ooh, ick. Red. Pencil mark in the upper right quadrant of the cornea. Dark. Bloody. Circular.
You can bet that Adam got a good look at his handiwork.
We taped a gauze patch over the eye, and Dad rushed her over to the Clinic while Mom pondered the probability that the others would live to see another day.
At the clinic, the wait was minimal, and the doc said it was a scratch that would heal overnight, but we had to get some antibiotic drops from the pharmacy to keep it from getting infected. So we stopped by Walgreens. And, since she was feeling better by then, we stopped by Lowes as well, to get some things that Dad was needing. Hey, I'll take my shopping excuses when I can get them.
Back home, it was rest time for Deb, which lasted all of fifteen minutes or so. She was feeling fine -- like her sister, she has a rather high tolerance for pain -- and by late in the afternoon, we were all over at the school playground trying to work off the excess energy so obviously in abundance. After making chalk drawings on the driveway and running around the backyard. Deb was wearing sunglasses to avoid getting the wind in her eyes (and there was quite a bit of wind).
Once home again, it was dinner time, and we had to fight the Good Fight again. Man, that is so old. Somedays I wish -- but never mind. From Adam we had no complaints. From the others, it was World War 3. Tempers flared, threats were made, but to no avail. Another fine dinner, unappreciated by the groundlings. Well, if they can't appreciate it, they can just starve. Off to the showers for the lot of 'em!
After showers, it was Reading Time. Mom entertained them with another rousing chapter of Harry Potter. Then it was Prayer Time and Sleep Time and then Dad Get's Back to His Work on the Basement Time (after a quick trip to Radio Shack for some desparately-needed PC cables).
Another Saturday like this and I'm going to retire to the Hermit Hut.
Oh, it might've been a good day.
But then James ate all the bacon. Mary had asked for it, we'd cooked it up, and then James and Adam ate up all the bacon because their sisters had run upstairs to get dressed (and get distracted by their dolls), and in the meantime, the boys ate all the bacon by themselves. Oh, they claimed that they didn't know anyone else wanted any, but we knew better. They know that Mary asks for bacon practically every morning -- it's her current favorite breakfast food. They knew they had done wrong, but James has a devilish streak in him and Adam just doesn't think sometimes (as was evidenced again later in the day). I was so totally mad.
We puttered around the house in the mid-morning, after some chores had been done, the kids doing artwork and Dad doing work on the basement and Cheryl doing her own thing; and then it was time to run off to the Musem to see the Special Exhibit which Cheryl had been wanting to see since the kids had a day off on Wednesday (but we discovered that Saturday was a better day to go because there was a kid's hands-on event on Saturday), so after lunch we got the kids ready and sent them into the garage to get in the car and then we were in the kitchen finalizing the Packing of Snacks, when --
Screaming. Lots of screaming. Cheryl ran out to the car to see what was going on. Deborah was screaming. James was tattling. Adam was pale. Cheryl was livid. Hoo-boy, there goes the afternoon.
So there were enough mistakes all around for everyone. The girls weren't sitting in their seats with their seatblets on, as they had been told to do. Deborah was taunting her brother. Adam (who is not known for temper control) poked her with a mechanical pencil.
In the eye.
Score!
All the kids came back out of the car. Marched out, as it were. To their rooms. Deb lay on her bed, and Mom and Dad checked the eye. Ooh, ick. Red. Pencil mark in the upper right quadrant of the cornea. Dark. Bloody. Circular.
You can bet that Adam got a good look at his handiwork.
We taped a gauze patch over the eye, and Dad rushed her over to the Clinic while Mom pondered the probability that the others would live to see another day.
At the clinic, the wait was minimal, and the doc said it was a scratch that would heal overnight, but we had to get some antibiotic drops from the pharmacy to keep it from getting infected. So we stopped by Walgreens. And, since she was feeling better by then, we stopped by Lowes as well, to get some things that Dad was needing. Hey, I'll take my shopping excuses when I can get them.
Back home, it was rest time for Deb, which lasted all of fifteen minutes or so. She was feeling fine -- like her sister, she has a rather high tolerance for pain -- and by late in the afternoon, we were all over at the school playground trying to work off the excess energy so obviously in abundance. After making chalk drawings on the driveway and running around the backyard. Deb was wearing sunglasses to avoid getting the wind in her eyes (and there was quite a bit of wind).
Once home again, it was dinner time, and we had to fight the Good Fight again. Man, that is so old. Somedays I wish -- but never mind. From Adam we had no complaints. From the others, it was World War 3. Tempers flared, threats were made, but to no avail. Another fine dinner, unappreciated by the groundlings. Well, if they can't appreciate it, they can just starve. Off to the showers for the lot of 'em!
After showers, it was Reading Time. Mom entertained them with another rousing chapter of Harry Potter. Then it was Prayer Time and Sleep Time and then Dad Get's Back to His Work on the Basement Time (after a quick trip to Radio Shack for some desparately-needed PC cables).
Another Saturday like this and I'm going to retire to the Hermit Hut.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Watching Monty Python
The local PBS station has been showing the "Personal Best" excerpts for the Monty Python troupe. Last week it was John Cleese and Terry Gilliam, this week it's Michael Palin and Terry Jones. Naturally I'm taping it. Gotta get the kids oriented, doncha know!
(Of course, if we pledge $500, we get not only the Personal Best DVDs, but the complete MP DVD set. As if. I'm just going to drop in on Craig and watch his copies.)
Michael's includes the Cheese Shop, but for some odd reason, the Parrot Sketch is absent. Probably waiting for Volume 2.
Now where's Eric Idle and Graham Chapman's?
Meanwhile Terry Jones is being forced to sit on a very uncomfortable stool and plug these items while begging for PBS. It's so humiliating! Of course, he's already admitted that if the BBC hadn't sold the show to PBS in the early Seventies, all the tapes would've been erased, and there would have been no Monty Python. How close was the Apocalypse averted!
I'd write more, but I want to watch ...
(Of course, if we pledge $500, we get not only the Personal Best DVDs, but the complete MP DVD set. As if. I'm just going to drop in on Craig and watch his copies.)
Michael's includes the Cheese Shop, but for some odd reason, the Parrot Sketch is absent. Probably waiting for Volume 2.
Now where's Eric Idle and Graham Chapman's?
Meanwhile Terry Jones is being forced to sit on a very uncomfortable stool and plug these items while begging for PBS. It's so humiliating! Of course, he's already admitted that if the BBC hadn't sold the show to PBS in the early Seventies, all the tapes would've been erased, and there would have been no Monty Python. How close was the Apocalypse averted!
I'd write more, but I want to watch ...
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Running out of Steam
It's been a busy day, and unfortunately there wasn' t much in the way of accomplishment to make it memorable or remarkable -- if accomplishment is the only measure of a day.
Cheryl and the girls went out for the evening to enjoy the company of other women, eating desserts and watching movies and chatting.
We boys stayed home and watched Fantastic Four, which was a surprisingly good movie. Surprising, in that the feedback from the masses was a massive yawn. As boys, we enjoyed the explosions and the special effects. The story was good, too, although I can't comment on how well it tracked with the comic book origins story. It's been too many years since my teen-aged Comic Book phase.
But we had popcorn and Twinkies and other assorted junk food, which boys are supposed to have when the women are away, so we will all feel completely miserable in the morning as our bodies stage a protest about our mistreatment of the digestive system. We'll have to counter it with a healthy helping of bacon and eggs and toast and juice and cereal and all the other essential parts of a nutritious breakfast, just like it shows on the back of the box. I'm thinking there's something on there about substituting Pop Tarts, but haven't found it yet. Maybe it was donuts.
**
James had a wonderful time on his field trip yesterday. We went to the Science Museum and the History Museum and the Capitol building and then the University, and we learned all sorts of neat things, like how to make slime and how what kinds of cool toys they have in the Gift Shop, and how small the lunch room is, and how old the capitol building is, and how much more fun it is to eat at a university cafeteria with an all-you-can-eat buffet than at home, where you don't get any choice other than what Mom makes, and you darn well better eat it or you will not get to eat anything at all. And we learned that most boys and girls of James' age have eyes much bigger than their tummies, because the majority of them left most of their food on their plates not because they didn't like it, but because they put too much on their plates!
Pizza, pizza and more pizza, soda pop or chocolate milk, followed by generous helpings of soft-serve ice cream, topped with chocolate syrup and sprinkles. Yum-yum!
Dad, being ancient and way old, went for the mushroom chicken and garlic bread and cottage cheese and fresh salad, followed by finishing up the generous helpings of soft-serve ice cream topped with chocolate syrup and sprinkles that the boys were unable to finish themselves, owing to the unbalanced eye/tummy thing. Ugh. Then Dad wished he'd brought the Tums.
We got home around eight or so, just in time to get everybody ready for bed while watching March of the Penguins. Here I must state for the record that this is not a movie I care to watch twice. Knowing that "Nature is cruel" does not justify making a movie where the audience must watch penguins being eaten by seals or dying of cold. The fact that it happens all the time does not soothe my aching heart when I watch the mother whose baby died, wandering mournfully through the crowd of other penguins and trying to find someone else's baby to raise. It physically hurts to watch that kind of sorrow. I worry too much about losing my own children to derive any pleasure in watching others lose theirs, even penguins.
Cheryl and the girls went out for the evening to enjoy the company of other women, eating desserts and watching movies and chatting.
We boys stayed home and watched Fantastic Four, which was a surprisingly good movie. Surprising, in that the feedback from the masses was a massive yawn. As boys, we enjoyed the explosions and the special effects. The story was good, too, although I can't comment on how well it tracked with the comic book origins story. It's been too many years since my teen-aged Comic Book phase.
But we had popcorn and Twinkies and other assorted junk food, which boys are supposed to have when the women are away, so we will all feel completely miserable in the morning as our bodies stage a protest about our mistreatment of the digestive system. We'll have to counter it with a healthy helping of bacon and eggs and toast and juice and cereal and all the other essential parts of a nutritious breakfast, just like it shows on the back of the box. I'm thinking there's something on there about substituting Pop Tarts, but haven't found it yet. Maybe it was donuts.
**
James had a wonderful time on his field trip yesterday. We went to the Science Museum and the History Museum and the Capitol building and then the University, and we learned all sorts of neat things, like how to make slime and how what kinds of cool toys they have in the Gift Shop, and how small the lunch room is, and how old the capitol building is, and how much more fun it is to eat at a university cafeteria with an all-you-can-eat buffet than at home, where you don't get any choice other than what Mom makes, and you darn well better eat it or you will not get to eat anything at all. And we learned that most boys and girls of James' age have eyes much bigger than their tummies, because the majority of them left most of their food on their plates not because they didn't like it, but because they put too much on their plates!
Pizza, pizza and more pizza, soda pop or chocolate milk, followed by generous helpings of soft-serve ice cream, topped with chocolate syrup and sprinkles. Yum-yum!
Dad, being ancient and way old, went for the mushroom chicken and garlic bread and cottage cheese and fresh salad, followed by finishing up the generous helpings of soft-serve ice cream topped with chocolate syrup and sprinkles that the boys were unable to finish themselves, owing to the unbalanced eye/tummy thing. Ugh. Then Dad wished he'd brought the Tums.
We got home around eight or so, just in time to get everybody ready for bed while watching March of the Penguins. Here I must state for the record that this is not a movie I care to watch twice. Knowing that "Nature is cruel" does not justify making a movie where the audience must watch penguins being eaten by seals or dying of cold. The fact that it happens all the time does not soothe my aching heart when I watch the mother whose baby died, wandering mournfully through the crowd of other penguins and trying to find someone else's baby to raise. It physically hurts to watch that kind of sorrow. I worry too much about losing my own children to derive any pleasure in watching others lose theirs, even penguins.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
The Absolute Unreality of the Work Environment
It just keeps getting more and more unreal every day.
We had a meeting today, a late meeting scheduled to begin at 4 o'clock (which is normally the time to head home), and all of us, the entire group, gathered into the big conference room to discuss our plans, our strategy for accomplishing the impossible.
Our next software release is due in six weeks, and we have a 'skeleton' staff of nine people to handle the entire process, which includes writing code, reviewing code, updating documents, revising test plans, running tests, and verifying that it all works as designed.
We don't even have all the hardware we need yet!
Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon occurrence in the software industry. In fact, it's the rule rather than the exception. Many of the projects I've worked on have gone through a period like this. But this is the first time to my knowledge that it has happened so long after the product was supposed to be complete.
With regard to budget and schedule, we're running on fumes two hundred miles past the last gas station, and we still have a hundred miles or so to go before we get to where we're going. This is what I mean by unreal. There's no way this task can be performed in the time allotted with the staff on hand, but we just keep going on and on, making our little plans and committing ourselves to the next task on the list, coming to work day after day, and I'm not sure whether we're all doing it because we're expecting a miracle to occur, or because we're all so conditioned to the idea of showing up at work every day, afraid of not having something to do, someplace to go.
Of course, the original budget and schedule were so completely out of sync with reality that there was no way they could happen as planned. They were trying to guess how long it would take to write a complete avionics package when the hardware was still a gleam in some engineer's eye, and they had these big plans of making the hardware so generic that it could be applied to just about any airframe in existance. And they figured it would be simple to create a generic board and slap a generic operating system on it, and then write a generic I/O layer on top of that, and then write a few airplane-specific applications that would handle all the user interfaces.
Hoo-boy, were they off the mark.
It's like trying to guess when your laundry is going to be done even though you haven't even gathered up the dirty clothes yet (so you don't know how many there are), and you don't have any laundry soap in the house so you'll have to go out and buy some; and, oh, by the way, you don't even have a washing machine or dryer, so you'll have to go out and buy them, too, and learn how to use them.
(To make it even more relevant, you have to install the washer and dryer yourself AND plumb and wire the house AND write the manuals AND do all this while the kids keep running through the house scattering the laundry and dropping more of it in out-of-the-way places.)
Oh - and you have guests coming over for dinner tonight!
We engineers just love a challenge. Personally, my idea of a good challenge is seeing if I can get to bed before midnight so that getting up in the morning doesn't feel like a reprise of Dawn of the Dead. Right now, it looks like I need another Planning Meeting...
We had a meeting today, a late meeting scheduled to begin at 4 o'clock (which is normally the time to head home), and all of us, the entire group, gathered into the big conference room to discuss our plans, our strategy for accomplishing the impossible.
Our next software release is due in six weeks, and we have a 'skeleton' staff of nine people to handle the entire process, which includes writing code, reviewing code, updating documents, revising test plans, running tests, and verifying that it all works as designed.
We don't even have all the hardware we need yet!
Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon occurrence in the software industry. In fact, it's the rule rather than the exception. Many of the projects I've worked on have gone through a period like this. But this is the first time to my knowledge that it has happened so long after the product was supposed to be complete.
With regard to budget and schedule, we're running on fumes two hundred miles past the last gas station, and we still have a hundred miles or so to go before we get to where we're going. This is what I mean by unreal. There's no way this task can be performed in the time allotted with the staff on hand, but we just keep going on and on, making our little plans and committing ourselves to the next task on the list, coming to work day after day, and I'm not sure whether we're all doing it because we're expecting a miracle to occur, or because we're all so conditioned to the idea of showing up at work every day, afraid of not having something to do, someplace to go.
Of course, the original budget and schedule were so completely out of sync with reality that there was no way they could happen as planned. They were trying to guess how long it would take to write a complete avionics package when the hardware was still a gleam in some engineer's eye, and they had these big plans of making the hardware so generic that it could be applied to just about any airframe in existance. And they figured it would be simple to create a generic board and slap a generic operating system on it, and then write a generic I/O layer on top of that, and then write a few airplane-specific applications that would handle all the user interfaces.
Hoo-boy, were they off the mark.
It's like trying to guess when your laundry is going to be done even though you haven't even gathered up the dirty clothes yet (so you don't know how many there are), and you don't have any laundry soap in the house so you'll have to go out and buy some; and, oh, by the way, you don't even have a washing machine or dryer, so you'll have to go out and buy them, too, and learn how to use them.
(To make it even more relevant, you have to install the washer and dryer yourself AND plumb and wire the house AND write the manuals AND do all this while the kids keep running through the house scattering the laundry and dropping more of it in out-of-the-way places.)
Oh - and you have guests coming over for dinner tonight!
We engineers just love a challenge. Personally, my idea of a good challenge is seeing if I can get to bed before midnight so that getting up in the morning doesn't feel like a reprise of Dawn of the Dead. Right now, it looks like I need another Planning Meeting...
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