Lucky 13

This week has been a very significant week in my life.  This past Monday, Tamara and I celebrated 13 years of marriage.  I celebrated by taking Griffin to his end-of-season basketball party, and Tamara celebrated by fixing dinner for Gage and catching up on some laundry.  Things definitely change when you have kids around the house.

Regardless of our celebratory methods, we’re both happy to be together.  In my estimation, it doesn’t seem like it’s been 13 years.  Maybe six or seven, I don’t know.  I guess it’s true that time flies when you’re having fun.  I love my wife more now than I did when we first got married, and I look forward to the years to come.  Things are a little hectic right now, but I know that they will even out, or at least change, as time goes.

And not only did we celebrate our 13^th this week, but my parents are celebrating their 50^th today.  That’s quite a milestone!  Even though they wouldn’t let us throw them a party (in fact, I think they left town on vacation to make sure we couldn’t), I’m still very proud of them and think they deserve the recognition of it.  Far too many marriages end in divorce nowadays, and we need all the good examples we can get. 

In my Sunday School class, the other week, one of my students asked me if planning anniversary celebrations got any easier as time went by.  It was a good opportunity to lay down some wisdom and experience, and in that spirit, I’d like to do the same for the rest of this blog.  I shall call it,

Argument Techniques I Have Learned From Being Married:

Not everyone argues in the same way.  Figuring out and accepting how your partner argues will get you a long way toward restoring harmony.

The woman always has the last word in any argument.  Anything a man says after the last word is the start of a new argument.

Don’t go to bed angry.  Stay up and fight!

My wife’s opinion on a given subject may change many times, but not the fact that she’s right.

Disagreements become much easier to work through when husband and wife clearly understand that they are on the same side.

But the absolute best advice I can give on the subject of arguing comes in the form of a little poem by Ogden Nash:

Secret of a Happy Marriage

To keep your marriage brimming,
with love in the wedding cup,
whenever you're wrong, admit it;
whenever you're right, shut up.

The Paper Parable

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful piece of stationary.  It was very proud of the way it looked.  Unlike the other paper in its drawer, the stationary was made from finer materials and was of a heavier weight.  A dark border of charcoal black rimmed its page with a second border of thin gold ringing the inside of it.  Three letters, M.S.T., were set in the very middle of the page at the bottom, and the little piece of stationary was sure it was a mark of excellence that declared what a fine paper it was.

But above all the fine borders and exquisite lettering, the Stationary was most proud of the flawless field of white that made up the main body of it.  When the Owner had received his new stationary, the little page watched with satisfaction as the man beamed at the large section of pure white paper.  “He is someone who can appreciate true beauty,” it thought.  “I will sit on his desk, and he will look at me and be happy for years to come.”

But the little piece of stationary did not sit on his desk.  In fact, the man did not look at it very often at all, and when he did, it was with the blank look of a preoccupied mind.  Days stretched into weeks and weeks into months, until the little piece of stationary was quite sure that the man did not truly care about it at all.

Then one spring afternoon, a grubby little hand reached into the drawer and grabbed the beautiful piece of stationary, taking it by complete surprise.  The hand was not gentle or for that matter even clean.  Before the stationary knew what was happening, grime had been smeared across its pure surface, and the very fabric of its being had been creased and crumpled.  The assailant slammed it down hard on the wooden surface of the desk and then pressed a dirty ink pen into its body.  The little piece of stationary screamed as the Owner’s young boy ran the pen all over its surface, leaving cuts and indentions marred by the permanent, black ink.

The torturous time ended quickly enough, and the child put away the horrible pen.  However, in his haste to leave the room, the young man forgot about the Stationary and left it in the middle of the desk.  For the entire afternoon the once beautiful page wept over the eternal scars that it had only begun to endure.  And, it was in this sad state that the Owner found it still atop his table.

“Little Page, what is the matter,” the older man said, with a kindly smile.

“Look at me,” it lamented.  “I am scarred, and stained, and utterly useless now.”

“You are of great use to me,” the Owner replied.

“But my beauty is gone, and I still hurt from the marks pressed into my body,” it persisted.

The owner gently picked up the piece of stationary looking more closely at it.  Softly, he replied, “Little Page, you were never meant to be a blank sheet of paper.  Without marks on your body, you would never have been complete.  Sooner or later this is the end you would have met, though I never imagined such a wonderful outcome.”

“What do you mean,” the stationary asked, as the Owner’s continuing smile melted away its thoughts of pain and ugliness.

The man took a small piece of tape from his drawer and fixed the page to a wall above his desk.  “It is your marks,” he said, “that make you so beautiful to me.  From the time you were created, your body was meant for nothing more than carrying a message, and the message you carry is from my son.  It says, ‘Daddy, I love you.’”

From that point on, the little piece of stationary did it’s best to banish all thoughts of ugliness and unworthiness.  For years to come, it hung in its place of honor, never failing to bring a smile to the Owner’s face.

The Unified Theory of Dieting

As a result of my recent foray into tree-felling, I’ve been forced to take a serious look at dieting.  And by serious, I mean at least five or more minutes of research.  What I was able to turn up was astounding.  Do you know there are actually too many diets out there to count?  Thankfully, Medical News Today put out a very informative article on the 8 most popular diets.  They are, in no particular order:

1. The Atkins Diet (Atkins Nutritional Approach)
2. The Zone
3. Vegetarian
4. Vegan
5. Weight Watchers
6. South Beach
7. Raw Food
8. Mediterranean

There are a lot of disparate opinions on the most healthy and effective way to lose weight.  My wife is currently on the Atkins path, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to reach the goal of a slimmer, healthier life.

It got me to thinking that there should be a clear and concise way to let a person compare diets.  This is the birth of the Unified Theory of Dieting.  I realize that I’ve only taken about eight of an innumerable amount of diets into account, but I’m just vain enough to make grand assertions on such a small sampling.  And don’t even think about posting a reply on my lack of statistical significance.  You go research another 22 diets if it really bothers you that much.

To further develop this idea, it helps to rank them based on similarities.

Insulin Control Diets

Atkins

The Zone

South Beach

Habit Control Diets

Weight Watchers

Mediterranean

Crazy As A Road Lizard Diets

Vegetarian

Vegan

Raw Food

After pondering the various ins and outs of these plans, I was able to come up with a medium that appeared constant across them all.  The unifying factor for these diets seems to be…the Cow.  The following segments detail how you can use a bovine to balance the merits of each plan:

Atkins Diet:  If you see a cow, you may cook it and eat it, so long as you don’t slap the meat between two slices of tasty bread.

The Zone:  If you see a cow, you may cook it and eat it, so long as you also eat the same amount of nuts and a slightly larger portion of whatever the cow was munching on before you killed it.

South Beach:  Find the skinniest cow you possibly can, cut all the remaining fat off of it, and then cook it and eat it.  If your skeletal cow was eating fairly low carb vegetables or grains, then you can help yourself to some of those too. 

Weight Watchers:  Don’t deny yourself the cow!  Just control how much of it you eat.  Then, go stand on a scale, in front of all your peers, once a week and confess how you don’t crave as much cow as you used to.

Mediterranean:  Ride your bicycle to the cow pasture where you can wander about, grazing on any plants, nuts, beans, or seeds you find.  Feel free to milk the cows you run across, but only eat a small portion of said cow.  Oh, and drink a lot of wine, too.

I have gone ahead and included the following Vegetarian diets though I feel that they are flawed in their very base assumptions.  My stance is that if we were not meant to eat animals, then they wouldn’t have been made of meat.

Vegetarian:  You may milk the cow, and you may eat whatever the cow is eating.

Vegan:  Do not touch the cow.  Just follow it and eat what it eats.

Raw Food: You may eat the cow, the grass, the trees, the rocks, or even the siding off of your house; so long as you don’t cook any of it (It’s easy to see how this group tends to skew toward Raw Vegan).

And that, my friend, sums up a unified comparison of the most popular diets. 

Bon appétit!

    

Say What II

Once again, it’s time to chronicle the funny things my kids say.

This first one we’ve been trying to correct for a while.  It was very cute when he first blurted it out, but it has really seemed to stick, and now he’s passed it on to his brother.  A while back, Griffin was at the store with his mother, and she bought the kids some toy dinosaurs.  On the way home, the oldest boy wanted to know what type of dino he had:

Griffin:  “Mommy, is this one a Ham-eater?”

Tamara: “A what?”

Griffin:  “A Ham-eater.”

Tamara: “Oh, you mean a ‘Meat-Eater’.”

(It is of interest to note that up until this point, we pretty much only had ham for sandwich meat at the house.)

Gage is at that age where he provides a wealth of humorous quotes: 

Only recently have we been able to persuade him that Chick-Fil-A is not called “Chicken-Bell.”

When he plays basketball with brother, they shoot the ball into a “Basketball Gold.”

One of his favorite breakfast foods is ‘Yogurp.’

He loves looking at reptile pictures in books.  Most specifically ‘Al-digators’ and ‘Croc-o-dye-yules.’

Griffin has begun his first foray into joking and intentional humor.  The other day, a joke was told, at his expense.  His reply, “Everyone’s a Chamelion.”  We think he meant to say “Everyone’s a comedian,” but the mental picture we get from his version is so much funnier that we’ve started using that one ourselves.

Gage has picked up an interesting little phrase that we don’t quite know what to do about.  It is either a mild toddler curse or an expression of excitement.  We think this because he uses it both when he’s frustrated and when he’s stoked about something.  Observe:

Me:  “Gage, go pick up your toys.”

Gage:  “Oh, spanx!”

Also,

Me:  “Gage, are you ready to go to Chuck E. Cheese?”

Gage:  “Oh, spanx!  We’re goin’ to Chuck E. Cheeses!”

Finally, there’s one last interchange I’d like to leave you with.  This happened last Saturday while the boys were playing outside.  Gage came in because he had to use the potty, and after he had been in there a while, I heard him call for me.  I went into the bathroom, and the following conversation ensued:

Gage:  “I have more poo-poos to push out.”

Me:  “Do you need me to wipe you, or are you finished?”

Gage:  “I can do it by myself.  You’re not the greatest.”

(Stunned silence from me)

Gage:  “But I love you.  You’re still my dad.”

Me:  “Umm, you just call me if you need any help.”

Gage:  “OK, I just need to push the rest of my poo-poos out.”

Subtle Hints

From time to time, life feeds us subtle hints about the direction we’re heading.  Other times these hints take on a more obvious bent.

Such was the case this past Sunday when I went exploring with my two boys.  After lunch, and still in our church clothes (much to mommy’s disdain), we started working our way down Vinyard Creek.  Griffin really wanted to make it to the opposite bank, so we spent a great deal of time trying to find a downed log or group of rocks we could use to traverse the running water.  At one point, we found a place that the water ran thin enough to jump to an island in the middle, but we couldn’t get all the way to the other side.

We gathered a lot of sticks and branches to try and make our own bridge, but in the end, it only served to dam up the stream and make it flow around the edges of our makeshift overpass.  We decided to abandon our efforts and move on.

On our way back up the bank, my boys ducked under a thick log that was a little over three feet off the ground.  I elected to hop over it instead, since I didn’t want to get dirt on my knees.  Once I had wrested my girth atop the limb, I noticed that it had a pleasant springy motion to it.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of sitting in a bouncy seat, and I must admit that I got a little carried away.  I knew there was a chance that the thing could break, but I was having way too much fun to worry about such a trifling matter…that is until a solid crack echoed up and down the creek basin.

It took the log and I approximately 0.451 seconds to reach the earth beneath us (disregarding wind resistance and rounding errors for feet-to-meter conversion).  Consequently, that is the same amount of time it takes an adult male to yell out ‘HNYAAARGH’, before being abruptly cut off by contact with solid earth.  It hurt.  My shoulder hurt.  My spine hurt.  My pride hurt.  In fact, I’m still a little sore today.  But the boys certainly got a good laugh out of it.

There are a few things I learned from this whole ordeal.  Number one, like any other muscle, if the pectoral is injured enough, it can spasm.  Number two, an extremely unpleasant way to learn about a seizing muscle is to be woken out of a dead sleep by it, during an afternoon nap.  And finally, number three, I need to lose some weight.

I know you’re probably thinking, “Oh, Michael.  One-hundred and ninety pounds isn’t that bad.  It could have happened to anybody.”  To which I would respond, “Yes, but it wasn’t you on top of that plunging log.”

Life does give us subtle hints sometimes, but I’m afraid when those don’t work, there are more obvious routes that can be used to get our attention.