(1914-2013)

It’s been a long while since I last posted, and today it’s a bit of a different post.  My last post was towards the end of February, and righ about that time things changed in my life, in a way that I knew was coming, but was probably unprepared for.  Today’s post is dedicated to my grandfather who passed away last month at the age of 98.

There was something about the loss of him that changed me in a way I have yet to fully understand, or grasp.  He was a very private, and unique individual.  I can count on one hand the times he hugged me, or told me he loved me, but I never questioned that he did.  Yet I don’t think there are enough hands or fingers in the universe to ever calculate the lessons he taught me, or even the feelings of safety and warmth he brought me throughout the 40 years of my life I was honored to have him as a part of.

My youngest son is named after his father, and when my mother passed away, in many ways it was him that helped me find a way to process those emotions, because we shared that experience, he lost his mother at age 17, and me at age 20, so though he was not one to delve into discussion about feelings, he could relate, and have a discussion about something that seemed totally unrelated but in reality was pointedly related to how to process that confusion and move forward.

He was always so easy to talk to, and someone I felt I could share my frustrations with, and never feel judged.  It was him in 1998 that encouraged me to pack myself up and leave New York, for a new life in Virginia, which was one of the smartest decisions I have ever made.

I looked forward to my weekend calls with him, even as they became less frequent in length as his hearing faded, and his naps became more frequent.  After he mourned the loss of his wife of 75 years in 2010, I learned even more to appreciate his resiliency, and appreciation for life, and love of his family.  He often told me that he hoped to love to 100, as long as he was able to stay healthy and take care of himself.  It was remarkable to watch.

Yet within a few days of may last post his health began to deteriorate rapidly, and he began to need almost full time care, something he did not want.  He died peacefully on March 12, 2013 at age 98.

He raised two wonderful sons, and also passed so many lessons on to his grandchildren.  Lessons that have made me a better parent, and a better person.

He taught me:

•  Sometimes saying nothing is better than saying anything at all.
• That being wrong can be a gift, because it can teach you more than being right.
• That sitting with my children, and watching them play, or sleep, or just being with them is one of the greatest gifts I will ever receive.
• Just sitting an looking at the world around you will make you appreciate it more.
• Just be happy, having everything doesn’t make you happy, but if your truly happy then you have everything.
• That I still have a lot of growing to do.

An even his passing has taught me more, lessons I have yet to fully understand.

So today’s post is dedicated to him.

Thanks Grandpa!

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Do you Remember the “Original Wreck-it-Ralph?” His name was Ralph Hinkley, Hanley, uh..Mr. “H”. He wasn’t always happy about it either.

March 1981, My my dad, and our old Sanyo TV, you know the one with the Dial.  I was the remote.  Well this particular night was special.  Not only was I staying up past my bed time, but I was getting to watch a very special premiere with my parents, for a show I had seen commercials for and begged and egged to watch, all about the guy with super powers, this guy called “The Greatest American Hero“.

So for those of you that are unfamiliar let me introduce you to “The Greatest American Hero”

So here is the premise.  Ralph Hinkley is a teacher.  Honest altruistic, and believes in the good of all man.  He teaches Special Education at Whitney High School in California, and is a single father to Kevin (Season 1, and 2, then Kevin mysteriously dissapears).  As a side note after the attempted assassination of president Reagan during season one Ralph’s last name of Hinkley is changed to Hanley, and in many episodes merely dubbed over to “Mr. H”.  It returns to Hinkley at the end of the 2nd season.

Bill Maxwell is a 30 year veteran of the FBI. Crass, edgy and sarcastic he hides a caring heart and deep sense of right and wrong under his gruff exterior.

One night in the desert Bill and Ralph are forced together by mysterious circumstances and approached by a spaceship.  The “Little Green Guys” give them a “suit” with “unearthly powers” that will only work on Ralph.  They are tasks to use the suit for good, and save the world for humanity.

Sounds easy right?  It would have been, but Ralph looses the instructions, making the series not only about saving the world, but also about learning to use the “little red jammies”. The unfortunate side effect was he tended to wreck as many things as he fixed.  Bill often asked Ralph “not to wreck the place”.

And the best part of all?  It was my time with my dad, every week. It was our thing.

Time seemed simpler then, less busy, more time to enjoy these small things.  So take some time today, and watch a show, build a model, play a game.  Have some “you time”.

With that I’ll leave you with the running gag from the show, Ralph and his effort to master flying.

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For all parents life can be a balancing act.  We have to balance work, family activities, finances, and the needs and wants of our children, while trying to maintain sanity in out own lives.  Sometimes the scales can tip in one direction or another that can throw off the balance, and the hard part is to make sure that the parenting and the most important job we have as parents doesn’t suffer.

Sometimes we as parents have to stop and asses where we are, and what we are doing both in our mental state, as well at other aspects of our lives.  Our primary role as a parent is that we need to provide for the needs of our children before we provide for the wants of ourselves.  Sometimes though if we stop listenting to ourselves for too long, and label everything in our lives a ‘”want” we realize that we have moved down a path, and that something should have been a need.

There are several aspects of my life, being career, and finances that I have been putting off to the side as wants. I made sure that I was always raedy to put on my cape and make sure that my kids were OK, and that their needs were being met.

The problem was I never stopped to truly be honest about some of my “wants”, and explore them enough to determine if they were needs.  My kids need me to be home, and to come home after work to be with them happy and “there”.  Without a career change, and a change in income, I come home none of those things.  So not only was I not really being honest in that I wasn’t correclty labeling my “wants” as “needs”, I really am not meeting their needs either.

So a parenting lesson I learned…..

Sometimes I I put something I need on the front burner it actually helps my kids in the long run…

“Note…I actually love the company I work for, I am just very much in need of a new challenge as I have been prmoted as far as I can go, unless someone else leaves or retires, and after 10+ years I need to move my mind and career forward”

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I can still remember the day our youngest child was born.  If you haven’t yet read my about page, then what you don’t know is that is was an opportunity I didn’t have when our oldest two sons were born.  To hold them as they first entered the world and began their journey, one that will never end.  There were so many emotions I expected to feel, pride, happiness, peace, love, and even a little bit of fear.  But I also experienced one I never expected, a little bit of panic.

That night as his mother slept and I held him in the hopsital room, I made several promises to him.

1. I promised him that I would love him and his brothers no matter what for the rest of my life.
2. I promised to do my very best to protect them, and keep them safe.
3. I promised to prepare them as best I could for a world that will be so vastly different from the one I grew up in, it was going to be a huge challenge.
4. I promised to make the time to do the fun things, and make sure that they got to have fun in life.

At that momemnt I suddenly felt like Atlas, the greek god who was given the role to hold the weight of the heavens and earth on his shoulders, but in my case not as a punishment, but as a reward, for being blessed to have a family, and three children that would learn and gain hopefully some type of wisdom from me.

However my name is not Atlas.  Over the last few years, the economy has not been kind to us personally, and though expesneses that have been nessecary, salaray freezes, and rising prices, money is consistantly tight.  So many of the “ideas” I had in my head of how things should be did not come forward the way they should be, and well some of the fun just seems to be harder.

That weight has seemed a lot more emmense latley, and the heavier that weight becomes, the more sometimes I feel almost overhwelmed.  So I have decided to spend some time over the next week or so writing posts about how to lessen that burnden, and how the exploration of self can make the reason for the weight seem a little more clear.

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One area my wife and I can often not see eye to eye on is in the area of discipline.  She is much more often the “softy” than I.  I have a buddy with two girls, who says that in his house it’s just the opposite.  Yet in ours, a house of three boys, and me having graduated from “boyhood” I often know many of the tricks and the trades of how to play the game.

Don’t want to unload the dishwasher?  Put everything in the wrong place, and eventually Mom will just do it herself.

Don’t want to wipe down you own bathroom counters?  Do a really piss poor job, and someone else will do it.

The biggest trick, don’t let Dad catch you, because he knows that trick. My High School Senior has figured that part out. but our middle teenager is struggling with that lesson.  He can be as stubborn as I am, which can be kind of like throwing a lit match on the fire, especially when he and I are not in agreement, and he misunderstands that he has an equal vote.

He has become an Xbox junkie lately. Now I am not overly concerned, as my oldest is also a gamer, but he also maintains grades, duties around the house etc.  A balance.  An when he and I disagree he will pretty quickly back off, which in turn cools me down which prevents any unnecessary escalation.

Middle Teen, pushes, needles, taunts.  Then usually it explodes, and he suddenly is over grounded, and I ended up in a discussion with my wife about going to far.  So I have been learning to walk the fine line.

So I digress, our middle boy has become the Xbox junkie, playing a certain game both online and off, almost now to the expense of everything else. Is Chores are not getting done, and it is now coming to expenses school work.

Of course last night when I brought this to his attention, it quickly started to become a war. So I was proud of myself rather than lose control I walked away from the situation and decided to think it through. My first instinct would be to take my xbox TV freedom friends everything until I saw the grades in the attitude around the house improvement, but I realized this might be going too far.

So in the end he will be offline for awhile, will have limited use of his xbox, and his social activities will be curtailed a bit until the grades improve.

How do you walk the line?

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Packed and Ready for his Trip

It finally happened.  The right of passage that I think many little ones have as they grow old, and when they don’t always get their way.  My 4 year old informed me the other night that he was leaving, running away, and going to live with new parents, forever, a couple days, just until tomorrow.

Four has got to be a painful age, probably one of the kind reasons we are not subjected to the pain that we are going to be forced to remember it in vivid detail,  it’s full of excitment and wonder, but also struggle, and annoyance, and frustration as that poor little brain struggles to find a way to absorb all of the new knowledge and information that’s being pumped into it.  Especially for my little “Autobot”.  He’s too smart.

it started over a desire not to go to bed, at the designated time, and get up and play.  This of course caused a bit of a power play between us, and resulted in the final Dad directive, “If you don’t get back in bed now, then there is no Xbox tomorrow.”  I know, he’s only 4, and we’re talking Xbox, but that’s a topic for a different post.

With that he decided that he no longer wanted to live with us, and that he needed new parents, and a new family, and that he was leaving right now.  So he asked for a suitcase, but settled on his Transformers backpack.  Now I was faced with a Dad dilemma. Do I stop this now, or let it play out for a little while.  To me allowing my kids to think out their own logic is important so I decided to let it play out, though my wife questioned my logic.

“What are you packing?”, I asked

“These clothes, and all of my Scensty Buddies“, he answered as he tried to get too many things into his small backpack.

From there he went to see both of his brothers and gave them each a hug, told them of his plan to leave immediately, ( to which they both mumbled something to the effect of “see ya” but he did get a hug from the 14 year old) and came downstairs with his bag, and told his mother he would miss her.

“Where are you going to find your new family?”

“In Florida“, (We would like to relocate there eventually)

“How are you going to get there?”

“I’ll take a taxi.”

“Do you have money for the taxi?”

“No, you can lend it to me.”

If I don’t see you again how are you going to pay me back?

He thought about this for a minute, and then asked, “Can I come back in a couple days?“.  I asked him if he really wanted to go, and wouldn’t he miss his brothers and his mother and I a lot?

He went upstairs to says his goodbyes again, (now my wife was thinking I was going a bit far), and then came down tears coming down his face, “Dad, can I come back tomorrow, I’m just going to really miss you.”

So I set him on my lap, and told him how much I would miss him too, and that running away because he was upset wouldn’t make it better, it was just making him feel bad.  He hugged me close, and said he didn’t want to leave.

My Response?

“I love you too, and don’t ever want you to leave either.”

At least maybe not for another 16 years.

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Safe Haven (2013)

From IMDB:

A young woman with a mysterious past lands in Southport, North Carolina where her bond with a widower forces her to confront the dark secret that haunts her

Save Haven©2013 Relativity Media

I took my wife to see “Safe Haven” over the weekend.  It may not be getting the rave reviews, but one of the reseaons is of course it’s a Nicholas Sparks novel turned moive, so it’s being compared to “The Notebook”.  If you don;t walk in to the movie comparing it, then you’ll be surprised at the movie.

It does have several plot twists that you don’t see coming at the beginning of the movie, but you will see, if you are a shrewed as my wife anyway, as the movie progresses.  The movie’s plot was well written, and the acting quality was well done by both Josh Duhamel, and Julianne Hough.

I know my wife wasn’t going to complain watching Josh Duhamel on screen, and for all the husbands out there, Julianne Hough is not unpleasant to look at, and her acting was surprisingly good for someone failry new to the feature film game.

The setting of Southport, NC adds to the films feel, and also lends to the sympathetic nature of the charaters, as it makes several of the plot elements plausable, that migh not be would the setting have been a big city.

Husband Advice:

Good choice for a date night Movie!

Trailer:

More information:

Safe Haven (2013)

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I was able to get most of the site update completed “Ahead of Schedule”, as far as the layout, and most of the theme changes.  I’m not 100% satisifed, but then again, I never am.  So, Welcom to the all new “Another Day of Life”. 

I still have a bit of work to do as far a content streams, and work on the home page, etc, and I really want to incorporate some galleries, and more robust content.  I also plan to work on a better header, but need to do a bit of custom coding, and that actually got held up as the computer I had some of the custom files on went and got a virus, which ened up resulting in a hard drive nuke.  This meant bye bye files….

I did get the Facebook fan page updated so please take a look over to the right and give us a like, and share with your friends.  It’s always nice to be liked.

I will also be doing some update on the ad networks, how ads work on the site, and the overall speed as far as loading and other areas.  But since the site was up to a good point I didin’t want to just let it sit.

So welcome back, or just welcome,

See you back soon!

photo credit: Flying Jenny via photopin cc

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Remember that tomorrow is Another Day of Life

I am just about ready to pull the plug and begin the process of defining the future for this site, and is some ways myself.  Defining the future for the site may actually prove easier than defining my own future, but in some ways I am very excited about it. There are a lot of things that have to change in both my life and the site, and is some areas one may be easier than the other.  So here are some basics for both.

My Life

1. Gain financial security and pay off debt.
2. Gain Control over Spending.
3. Increase my household imcome.
4. Establish an Emergency Fund.
5. Prepare my childrens education funds.
6. Purchase two reliable vehicles.
7. Put away money to relocate at some point and purchase a home.

And  for Another Day of Life

1. Implement a fuunctional and effective design.
2. Implement a more rubust and valuable posting schedule.
3. Attract, and utilize contributing Authors.
4. Monitize, and pay out commisions (should the site become profitable)
5. Develop a long term strategy to maintain or sell.

# 5 is on the list only in the event that I just get to a point that I realize I just can’t maintain anymore.  One time will tell those anwers.  Blogging as a whole has evolved signifigantly, and so has montizing a blog.  It used to be you could pretty much slap up any old page, and voila, you had sales, but Google caught on so the simplicity isn’t quite there any more.  So it’s going to take some deepere thought.

As a follow up, I owe a few people some emails, and please bear with me, they are coming.  I’ll give this post a few days to settle, then you’ll see the under construction page.  My guess will be by Monday February the 11th.

Until then, remember that tomorrow is, Another Dat of Life.

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