Pears grow on trees?

Over the weekend I took Mallory to the nursery with me to pick out some trees and ivy. As we walked around we were talking about an apple tree that I bought. (Granny Smith Apple Tree) She was amazed at what grew on trees; apples, pears, peaches, plums. At first I was a little surprised that she didn’t know that pears grew on trees. It seemed like basic information to me. Mallory is a smart 11 year old so why didn’t she know?

I can think of two reasons why she didn’t know, she never saw it before or she wasn’t paying attention when someone talked about it.

Then I started thinking about parents and kids. I have to confess that there have been times in my life where I was more self-absorbed. In those times I was unaware of what was going on in my kid’s lives. Knowing that Griffin wants to be a Jedi when he grows up isn’t life changing information. Knowing that Mallory had a little trouble talking to a couple girls at a new school won’t affect the world. Knowing that Olivia considers herself a social butterfly but her best friend Spam only talks to a few friends isn’t earthshaking information. But it’s their life and it’s important to them.

This is just like what grows on trees. The only reason that I don’t know information about my kids is that I never saw my kids or I wasn’t paying attention.

If I discount what’s important to them I start a chain reaction of uncaring parenting. How will they treat THEIR children? They will treat them as I have treated them. That scares me. What will they look for in a mate? They will look for a man like me or a woman like their mother. I don’t know about you but I want to set the bar high. I want the man my girl’s marry to be BETTER than me. I want my kids to be better parents than me. We spend time and money teaching our kids how to earn more than us but it’s more important to teach them parenting and mate selection.

Take a little time, turn away for the tv or computer and ask your little ones a few questions about their day. Talk to them. Listen to them. Trust me it’s more important than any report you have to finish.

Now that we've moved into the new house, I'm going to have to change my occupation from basement dweller to something else. My office is out of the gray window less basement to a room with a window and a view. Here's my current view...not too bad.Since I need to plant stuff in our front yard maybe I should change my title to gardener or landscape artist. With 3 acres of land to work with, this could be my title for several years. Or maybe it should be writer since I'm working on my second book, when I not writing articles, Facebook posts, Twitter posts, Blog posts, etc. Or I could call myself a web designer since I supervise a small staff of website builders. Most of the time I just feel like calling myself "distracted". With a constant flow of contractors coming and going, calls from friends, interesting websites, emails that demand attention it's really tough to remain focused.

Our downstairs should be finished in 2 weeks so hopefully the major distractions will stop. There will be no more,
"is this the right texture for the ceiling?",
"What color paint?",
"do you want 2 panel or 4 panel doors?"
"do you want to give me all the money from your wallet now or later?"

On a completely unrelated note, I would LOVE to hire someone to promote my website. I would love to find a model, dress her up in a superhero costume and take her to a comic book convention. Everyone takes pictures of beautiful models at those shows so it would be great exposure for my ComicBookGeeks.com site. I know it's a goofy idea but it would be mega sweet.

Somebody post a comment to help distract me...please.
Ron

The Last 7 days
If you follow me on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/cloer you know that my wife had surgery last Tuesday. Needless to say the last 7 days have been a little crazy. Difficult times really point out who your friends are or who is paying attention to your Facebook page. I would characterize this time in three ways, the good, the bad and the funny.

The Good -
Her surgery was a success. It all went very well, super smooth. The four procedures that they did in her sinus cavities were completed without problems. She has had minimal swelling and absolutely no bruising.

People in our life have really shown their love in the last week with visits, dinner, flowers, chocolate, text messages, and calls. Some people that you expect to be concerned aren't and some people that you don't expect anything from really show they care. It's actually interesting to see it play out.

The Bad -
Because of the extent of her surgery the pain was pretty severe. Even today a week after the initial surgery, she is in enough pain to be crying. It should be noted that my wife is tough, she rarely cries so I know she's hurting. When you're taking two Tylenol with Codeine and you're still hurting enough to cry, it's got to be bad.

Today she has to go back to the doctor's office to get the stints in her nose removed. Based on information from EVERYONE who's had a similar procedure done...this will hurt BAD. I'm nervous about today for her sake.

The Funny -
For the first 4 days my wife was on some heavy duty pain medication which made her a little loopy. We would be talking normally, maybe even better than normal, and she would suddenly go to sleep. She would go from chatty to a sound sleep in about 30 seconds. After a few amusing days of this we found out that she was allergic to the medication and it was causing that behavior, as well as itchy skin.

Life is good,
Ron

Over the weekend me and some friends went to GenCon here in Indianapolis. We had a good time testing out some new and old games. We did some serious people watching. The people (my peeps) who go to comic book conventions and to gaming conventions are so unique. They really don't care what people think of them. (I love that) There is a lot of freedom in your wardrobe if other people's opinion doesn't matter. If you've ever wanted to dress up in a costume on some day other than Halloween you need to go to a convention. Some convention attendees go simple with a weird hat or big boots with straps. The range of costumes is from simple all the way to a full Hollywood quality costume.

The big geek accessory this year was definately the goggle. Not the kind that you had to wear in shop class at school but a seriously ornate brass rimmed, colored lens with leather trim kind of goggle. Here's a picture to the right. Notice all the goggles behind her. The cost? About $100 bucks! They are cool goggles but not that cool.

How about some pictures with commentary? Oh yeah.

The Star Wars Costumes at GenCon 2009The lesser known General geekius, lord Vader and the Imperial Guard

Bobba Fett finally captured the elusive R2-4trash

As Storm Troopers get younger the Republic developed a new strategy...suckers

R2-D2 and R5-D4 trying to pick up the vending machines. "hey baby be back to pick you up later."

Today was the kid's first day back in school. Olivia had to get up at 5:15. That's just too early to be thinking. Last night she was parading her outfits for THE WEEK. Saving her best outfit for the 3rd day of school, since most people wear their best stuff on the first day.

Mallory looked adorable in her new school outfit. She stressed about finding her bookbag, her bus number, her lunch money check and everything else. I call her my little CEO in training. She always seems to be concerned about something. And she always seems to be bossing someone around in the most polite way. She's a little lady in charge.

Griffin did his typically race to get ready in the morning. This was his first day riding a bus and going to Kindergarten. Our neighbor has a little girl the same age and Mom was crying about her leaving for school. The little ones are growing up, they are starting their journey away from Mom and Dad. Independence is a wonderful and scary thing.

Over the weekend we invited 4 different families for dinner or playtime. We were mega social for some reason. Our new house is finally getting to look like people live there and they aren't squatters.

A big thunderstorm at the new house

Today we had some major thunderstorms that ripped through central Indiana and in particular over my house. This is the first big storm that we've seen at this house, so I was curious about how the drainage would work. If you remember the basement at this place flooded while the bank owned it. We haven't really started the downstairs remodeling but it's important that it be water free. My front yard drained well as you can see in this picture.

Just a little extra water in the ditch out front and around the edges of my yard. My neighbor who is on slightly lower land inherited a pond for the day.It's a little difficult to discern but that's my driveway, a patch of grass and then his front yard. He was cutting that 2 days ago. That is his front yard under 6 inches of water.

The Latest -
My article for Men's Health magazine should come out this month. I'm very excited about being interviewed for this magazine. Even though the article isn't a fitness article more about pop culture it's still very cool.

Last night my son and I were watching the movie Superman Returns. This was the first time that Griffin has seen any Superman movie. We started watching in the middle of the show so the first thing he says is....

"This is boring."
"just hold on a minute, you'll see it's a good show."
His reply, "it's boring."

Within a minute someone in a bright red cape flies into the picture and Griffin was interested. I could see in his face that he was loving this movie. If you've seen the movie you know there is an ugly scene were Lex Luthor, or as my son says Lex Loser, kicks and hits Superman. Lex let's his henchmen kick and beat the Man of Steel and finally he stabs Superman with a Kryptonite knife. While Superman is sinking into the water I hear crying. My precious, tender hearted son is crying about Superman getting hurt. He says that he hates this movie. I paused the movie and talked to him, telling him it would get better. That's Superman after all, he can't die.

For the rest of the movie we talked how a real hero acts. It was a good moment. Overall we don't let our kids watch violent movies or scary movies so it was somewhat surprising to have a crying moment while watching Superman Returns. But you know, I like that he cried about Superman getting hurt. I want him to be a man but I want that tender heartedness as well.

Mallory had a middle child day yesterday. Griffin is so cute and Olivia has so many more priviledges but I have nothing. Ahhhh, the middle child, talented, smart, driven and yet insecure. A few hugs and some assurances that I'm on her side seems to make everything better.

Ron