Inklings

Category: observations

  • Time

    Just a few weeks ago my youngest son had a very interesting conversation with my wife. He started by commenting that “the day after yesterday was a great day.”

    To clarify, my wife corrected by asking, “Do you mean the day before yesterday?”

    “No.”

    “Do you mean today?”

    He responded flatly with, “No. I took a time machine back a day.”

    It’s no secret that he and my wife look at time differently. My wife is very punctual. The adage “if you’re on time, you’re late” is very true for her while my son is a bit more relaxed. I realize he can’t tell time just yet, but he really operates on his own time. Some days I can really appreciate his perspective – especially when I’m not on a tight schedule.

  • Baking

    Nothing in the glutenous world beats freshly-baked bread. If you’re yearning for that homemade taste, store-bought frozen bread dough will do in a pinch, but I have to say, nothing beats mom’s homemade bread recipe.

    If you’ve never witnessed the making of homemade bread, it’s quite a process. I remember the long hours mom spent mixing all the ingredients in her large black kettle; how she covered it with a flour sack towel (or heating pad) waiting for it to rise; and the violent punching and kneading that was necessary to work it over before forming it into little loaves and buns. All that work she put into it was well worth it and our reward for being ‘helpful’ was a sampling from the first batch.

    Us kids would wait patiently near the oven for the first loaves to come out. As soon as that oven door opened, the intoxicating smells of yeast filled the entire house. After sternly reminding us to stay safely away from the hot pans, she would take a paper towel, swab it with butter and gently rub the golden brown tops of the piping hot bread. Waiting for the bread to cool was the hardest part so we often risked burning our lips to taste what had been teasing our taste buds for so long.

    It’s not often that we get to enjoy mom’s homemade bread but we can usually count on Thanksgiving to get a taste of those incredible buns. They’ve become so popular that she usually doubles her normal batch (half of which always seem to go home with someone very lucky). Maybe, just maybe, we can hope to have homemade buns for Easter this year.

  • Walking Tall

    Well, it finally happened. Sometime yesterday our oldest son grew up. After weeks of persistent begging, we granted him permission to walk home after school – by himself. Okay, not exactly all by himself (ultimately I think that’s what complicated the decision to allow it).

    He may be a responsible and mature fifth grader, but his little first grade brother is a bit of a… well… he’s a bit of a lallygagger. We live only blocks from the school – a distance the average person can walk comfortably in a matter of minutes, but our littlest one likes to stop and smell the roses – all the roses – along the way. Suddenly that brisk ten minute walk turns into a dawdling twenty minute marathon.

    That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing except that our oldest likes to stay on somewhat of a schedule (much like his mom). When he gets held up, he gets frustrated and when he gets frustrated he corrects whatever causes that frustration – sometimes forcibly. All we could imagine was our eldest son dragging his little brother screaming bloody murder the whole three blocks home.

    Instead, I’m told, it was quite the opposite. Arriving at the front door roughly ten minutes after school let out was a very proud big brother, smiling ear-to-ear with his little brother happily following a half-step behind him.

    The whole ordeal has been somewhat of a bittersweet rite of passage. We’re proud of the young man our son is becoming but sad to see him grow up so fast. Where did the time go?

  • Belief

    I consider myself a very logical person. If I can’t empirically prove something to be true I become skeptical. What I have to remind myself is that if I choose not to believe something because I can’t prove it (by way of scientific observation) does not make it false. That’s where faith comes in. There’s a lot of knowledge out there that I have the luxury of adding to. The fact that our solar system has eight planets (it’s still hard to get used to that) is nothing I had to observe, test and prove myself. I’m taking it on faith that the scientists that made this recent observation and recorded it as truth are not liars. If I choose to look into the matter and study it further on my own doesn’t make me a skeptic. That’s the inquisitive nature of humanity. What’s prideful in my mind is to suspend belief in anything because I can’t fully subscribe to its validity. I believe that if you’re honestly committed to seeking the truth, you will find it.

  • Junk Mail

    Unless you’re expecting something via U.S. Mail, the trip to the mailbox is often a fruitless endeavor. The amount of junk mail that we receive has probably gone down over the past few years, but occasionally we still get that credit card application we never requested or the local coupon package with discounts for products and services we don’t use. Even if you hate getting it, you have to admit that it’s still an effective way for advertisers to get their message out there… before it gets torn in half and thrown away.

  • SUV (Sadly Underutilized Vehicle)

    The cost of petroleum in this country has nearly pushed the once popular full-sized SUV into extinction. My feeble mind never understood the love affair some people had with the huge gas guzzlers (I know my wallet couldn’t). It seemed that the people who would actually need such a vehicle for heavy-duty, off-road hauling of cargo/personnel didn’t own one – but everyone wanted one. Smelling the profits, auto manufacturers began cozying up to the status-seekers who coveted the sleek urbanized versions of their rugged SUV ancestors (remember the Broncos and Blazers of yesteryear?).

    The oil industry and heightened environmental consciousness have brought about the latest evolutionary change in SUV design – the crossover. It’s not exactly the rugged behemoth we associate with the term SUV, but it isn’t the pansy, family mini-van either. It’s the perfect vehicle for pulling out tree stumps while your wife changes the kids’ diapers in the back seat. I have to admit the mini-van part of me just might be interested in this version. Now if I can just convince my wallet.

  • Love Isn’t Cool When You’re a Kid

    You have to appreciate the independence kids develop as they get older. That’s the only way you’ll be able to deal with what seems like heartbreaking rejection. If you’re not there yet, prepare yourself. There will come a day when you drop your ‘baby’ off at school and he/she will all but ignore you. Don’t even think about giving good-bye hugs or kisses or verbal affirmations of such affection – they’d rather be set on fire than to have their friends witness such mushiness.

    Walking into the school to greet your child after school is tolerated but don’t even think about escorting them onto school property in the morning. Bad idea. I’ve found that a drive-by drop-off is preferred. That way they can enter into the no-demonstrative-love-zone of school without too much of their parents’ being exposed. I never understood why kids want to pretend that they were orphans raised in the wild rather than claim two loving parents. I don’t intend to let them off the hook anytime soon. They’ll have to deal with my loving them publicly at the risk of being embarrassed by it.

  • Common Sense

    It’s been said that people will ‘lose their heads’ in a crisis. I can freely confess that this does happen. For whatever reason, panic sometimes overcomes me and things that should be painfully obvious just aren’t. I have to remind myself almost daily not to ‘lose my head’ worrying about the things I have no control over (easier said than done). I often fail, but ironically enough the mistakes I make become one of the greatest teachers of all; preparing me for the next crisis that comes along.

  • Cyberbullies

    The only thing more menacing than a bully is… a cyberbully! The worst part of it is kids can be victimized without ever seeing who’s tormenting them. The relative anonymity of the tormentor has made this a very serious issue. I had no idea how extensive and potentially fatal cyberbullying is, but I can tell you that teaching your kids to make responsible decisions when they are online is a step in the right direction. Some of the cases I’ve read about are downright scary! I thought dealing with bullies when I was a kid was bad enough.

  • Non-convection Convenience

    The microwave is an awkward appliance. It falls into that murky area between necessity and convenience. Sure, I could boil water in seven minutes on the stove, but wouldn’t it be convenient if I could boil it in three?

    I remember when this ubiquitous culinary hardware made it into our household when I was a kid. It rivaled the size of most console television sets and had mechanical dials much like the conventional oven. It also boorishly owned it’s space on the counter-top. When the ‘Nuke-ro-wave’ was in operation, us kids were advised not to go near it. My parents were hoping to protect us from the mystical microwave energy that was sure to penetrate our fragile little bodies, forever altering the genetic makeup that would some day be their grandchildren.

    Appliance salesmen the world over boasted the miraculous wonders of this ‘little’ device. The cookbooks that doubled as an operator’s manual for the ‘must have modern convenience’ convinced mothers everywhere that an entire Thanksgiving meal could be prepared in the microwave (attachments required, of course). If you’ve nuked anything grander than a Swanson TV dinner in the mic you know this is not true. Inside every dish’s scalding hot exterior hides a frozen surprise.

    Our mic gets used a lot by our boys when they get the itch to make experimental snacks – usually consisting of crackers and anything that melts. It’s harmless cooking as far as I’m concerned – as long as they don’t stand right in front of it. Hey, for all I know the genetic altering effects of microwaving may skip a generation. I don’t want my grand-kids to be affected.