I Hate Golf

I hate golf.  I’m sure that sentiment stems entirely from the fact that I'm not good at it.  In my early college days, a few friends and I would occasionally head up to the cheapest golf course in the area and play a scramble.  For those of you uneducated in the sport, it is a golf game where you split into teams and always use the position of the best shot for the next swing.  This was a requisite, because left on my own I’d never make it to the green.  I was deadly once I got there, but as far as driving the ball on the fairway, I only hit “worm burners”.  I can probably count, on one hand, the number of times I’ve managed to loft the ball off the tee.

That being said, I’m told that follow through is a very important part of the swing. From what I’ve read, it has a great effect on ball velocity and direction.  The physics of it makes sense to me.  But this isn’t isolated to golf only.  If you look into almost any sport you’ll find that the follow through is a universally important concept.

This is one of those things that I think extend into our lives as parents.  Follow through is integral to establishing authority and training obedience in kids from toddler age on up.  Unfortunately, it’s one of those things that is easy to let slip if you aren’t vigilant about it.  Often times, it’s combined with a threat against some behavior that young ones are engaged in, “If you don’t stop _____, I’m going to _______.”  The temptation to relent is seeded in the fact that we don’t really want to punish our children, or maybe that were too tired to enforce it.  We’d rather that they just obey.  Unfortunately, a lack of follow through is always interpreted as condoning from that child’s point of view.

Let’s take a real world example…the McDonald’s playground.  I would submit that there is no other place on earth that you will hear people breathe out more threats.  I’ve heard some parents engage in saber rattling so outlandish that it would have made Kim Jong Il sit up and take notes. 

“Susie!  Get down here right now, or we’re going to leave you!”  And guess, what.  Little Susie doesn’t even make a move to get out of the tunnels.  Do you know why?  It was a useless threat.  She knows mommy won’t leave her there alone. 

“Charlie!  I said get down here!  Don’t make me come up and get you!”  And Charlie ignores his daddy and plays on.  He knows you probably can’t even fit in the tunnels, much less make it up to where he is.  Even if you could, he can maneuver through the playground faster than you could ever hope to.

Now, lest someone get all bent out of shape, I’m not advocating that you leave your child alone at McDonalds, or even that you go flailing through the tunnels in a bid to snag your youngster.  What I am suggesting is that you stick with threats that CAN be enforced.  For instance:

·         If you don’t _______, we won’t come back for the rest of the month.

·         If you don’t _______, you will forfeit your TV time.

·         If you don’t _______, you won’t play Xbox the rest of the day.

You get the picture.  The main thing your child needs to understand is that every word you speak is fact.  If daddy says something, then it’s going to happen.  Once they believe that everything you say is God’s honest truth, it will segue into more complex thoughts like Cause and Effect.  You can actually teach your child that every action they perform has a consequence.  It’s a concept that has far reaching benefits:

·         I need to brush my teeth, or I’ll get cavities.

·         I shouldn’t speed, or I might get a ticket.

·         I need to focus on my study time, or I might lose my scholarship.

Follow through might seem like it’s hardly worth the effort sometimes, but that line we choose to enforce is a basic building block for things our children will experience further down the road.  We are the authority in their lives.  If a child won’t obey their parents, who will they obey?  Or more importantly, if a child won’t obey their parents, what other authority will they disobey?

Oh, Happy Day

Maybe I have too much time to think, but the significance of this holiday is really eating at me.  You know, as well as I, that this time of year has become closely associated with family get-togethers, over-eating, football games, and shopping.  In my heart, it just feels like there should be more to it than this.

You see, the most integral part of this holiday is something called ‘Thankfulness’.  Being “thankful” is a multi-party interaction.  You can be glad you have a job, without ever involving someone else, but if you are “thankful” for your job, then you are thankful to somebody (most likely your employer).  You can be glad you have health, but if you want to be thankful for your health, then you are thankful to someone (let’s say your doctor).  At its very heart, Thanksgiving is a day set aside for us to be thankful to someone for what we have, be it job, health, family, possessions, or whatever.

The question naturally follows, “Who should we be thankful to?”

In my opinion, it’s useless to be grateful to your employer for your job.  Unless you’re self-employed, your upper management would probably drop you like a rabid squirrel if the company got in a stiff enough financial bind.  Even if you are self-employed, it merely takes your customers deciding that they no longer need your services, and you’re in trouble.

What about health?  There’s only so much you can do to keep yourself healthy.  Walgreens would like you to think that hand sanitizer will solve your problems, but no matter how much you drink, you can still get sick.  The doctors you routinely see may or may not be able to figure out what your illness is, and even then, there are some things our physicians can’t heal.

The things we have, be it house, car, furniture, etc, are only one disaster away from being gone.  And even more than that, our precious families are just as fragile as our possessions.

If this day, set aside by our government, is to be a day of thanks, then let it be to the One who gives us the health, knowledge, ability, and in some cases sanity to perform our job.  Let it be to the One who guards us and those we love as we go about our days.  It can best be summed up in the words of James:

James 1:16-18 (New Living Translation)

 ¹⁶ So don’t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters. ¹⁷ Whatever is good and perfect comes down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. ¹⁸ He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession.

It’s amazing how we become so entitled about our lives.  Most of us walk around every day, never giving a second thought to what we’re doing, but take a person who’s been paralyzed in a car accident, and they would give almost anything to stand and move on their own again.  We take our children for granted, yet if we had one taken away from us, we’d never cease to be thankful for the ones we still have.

The biggest trick to this whole holiday is finding a way to express true thankfulness while we still have these good things we’ve been given.  I think if we got to a place where we honestly believed that everything we have is a gift from God and could be taken away at any moment, then we would be thankful as we should be.

I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, and hope that you will be able to reach that point where you can whole-heartedly express gratefulness to God for all He’s given you and continues to give to you.

A Guide On Brownie Points

I have finished an exhaustive search of the Internet, trying to find a guide on the collection and use of Brownie Points.  After googling it and looking through the first 10 hits, it was apparent that no such guide exists.  I will attempt to rectify this in 800 or less words.

Brownie Point (BROW-knee poi-nt)

-noun Informal

a credit toward advancement or good standing gained especially by currying favor.

Origin:

1960-65; from the point system based on good behavior and performance used by Girl Scout Brownies for advancement

In modern times, the Brownie Point system has morphed into a way of storing up good will toward another person.  On rare occasions that good will can spill over into an act of kindness for the accumulator.  For example, an entire month of thoughtful actions toward the lady of the house might result in an evening of kicking back on the computer and playing Starcraft 2 all night without a stitch of guilt or negative repercussions.

(A note of warning here, indulging in a reward activity before accumulating the required amount of Brownie Points will most often result in nullifying the current stash of points, and in some cases cause a negative balance.  Extreme caution is advised!)

Collection

Brownie Point collection can be confusing at best.  The service rendered that may earn you 100 BP this week, may net you zero the next week.  Or even worse, you may lose points from your balance if the same service is expected and not performed the second week. For instance, if I empty all the trashcans in the house before trash day this week, Brownie Points!  If I fail to do the same next week, brownie point deduction.

Also, there is no set pay scale in the brownie point system.  This morning, I stayed up and fed the baby a bottle.  I knew my wife was tired and that she would appreciate me letting her get back to bed, so I probably earned about a bazillion Brownie Points.  That exact same offer, made during the afternoon, might only net me 10 to 15 BP.

As far as collection of points goes, I can sum it up thusly:

Points are earned for actions that meet a need, want, or desire in your partner.  The larger the need, the bigger the reward will be.  The amount of points will also vary on willingness to offer said service.

            Service Offered Out of the Blue – Mondo Point Reward

            Service Offered with few hints – Point Reward

            Service Offered at request – Meager (if at all) Point Reward

            Service Offered after nagging – You done blew your Brownie Point stash

Storage and Retention

Brownie Points are accumulated and held by the party receiving the service.  This can be a great disadvantage if that person is prone to transient global amnesia or some other mild cognitive impairment.  Basically, if they forget, you lose all your points.

To combat these occurrences, it’s best to keep a small but steady trickle of good-will going.  That way the ‘Brownie Bank’ is always open and making transactions.

Use of Points

Finally, we make it to the end game.  Stored Brownie Points can be used in one of two ways, intentional or unintentional.  Both are good in their own right, but intentional use is the best.

Unintentional use amounts to about the same as a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card, if you’re familiar with Monopoly vernacular.  For example, the wife walks into the room holding a small scrap of cloth in her angrily shaking fist, saying, “You threw my brand new drip-dry sweater into the dryer, and now it’s shrunk beyond all practical use.”  If you have a stash of Brownie Points built up, answering with “I’m so sorry” will usually diffuse the situation at the cost of your current Brownie Point tally.

Intentional use is the crème de la crème.  This is where good will is heaped back upon you, once you reach the overflow point at the Brownie Bank.  Unfortunately, the tipping point is also on a sliding scale that may or may not be related to the moon cycle and local ambient temperature.

I’m a numbers person, so it pains me greatly that I can’t lay figures to actions and provide you a complete table on how to earn the most Brownie Points in the smallest amount of time.  That being said, I think this guide is mildly informative and can be useful.  Please feel free to add to it or redistribute it where you think is necessary.

How NOT to React to Dinner

There are far too many times in life where I look back, and in my reflection think, “That probably wasn’t the best way to handle that situation.”  Last Monday night’s dinner would be one of those.

I feel that a bit of scene setting is necessary, so bear with me.  Since Haven was born, we’ve been very blessed to have the ladies of M.O.P.S. and other church friends bring us meals.  We are incredibly grateful for them, since it frees us up to take care of the other necessary activities of the day as well as see to the needs of our newborn, who is particularly demanding at this stage of life.  I must say that I don’t know how people make it without the love and support of a church family.

Anyway, Tamara got back in the dinner making saddle with glorious plans of fixing oven roasted chicken, creamy mashed potatoes, cooked carrots, and garden salad.  Little did she know that she had already been thoroughly sabotaged before she even began.  The first error of the evening lies squarely at my feet, for it was I who went to the grocery store on Saturday and picked up some off-brand oven roaster instead of a Tyson chicken.  I paid for that mistake.

Having been a while since she prepared one of these delectable birds, my wife sorely miscalculated how long it took to cook it.  Instead of the usual 5:30 dinner time, we made it to the table a little closer to 7:00.  This worked out OK, since it gave me a chance to get the boys bathed, ready for bed, and packed for school the next day.

In her preparations, she had taken great care to place butter on the skin and season it, so when it came out of the oven, it looked like a golden, savory feast.  Tamara put together the rest of the meal while it cooled.  I came in a little while later and started to cut the chicken into edible pieces.  I noticed I was having a bit of trouble slicing into it, and that bummed me out because it meant the knives were getting dull and I was going to have to sharpen them.  Little did I know…

As we reach this point of the story, I do hope you men will begin taking notes on how NOT to act when dinner doesn’t live up to your expectations.  Without further ado, here we go.

We were all pretty hungry as we sat down to the feast before us.  The smell of the potatoes and chicken alone were driving my taste buds crazy.  We held hands and prayed over the food (not nearly enough to make a difference), and then dug in.  I grabbed my favorite, the chicken wing, and tore into it.  Or at least I tried to tear into it.  The texture and strength of the golden skin lay somewhere between twenty-year-old leather glove and cement.  The meat beneath it was delicious, but getting to it was taking far too much effort.  That leads me to Point # 1:

o        If the skin is too tough to chew through, get a knife.  Tearing at it with your teeth, like a barbarian, does nothing but remind your wife that the meal she prepared wasn’t quite up to culinary standards.

Next up was the mashed potatoes.  They’re always a good match for chicken, in my opinion.  I scooped up a large spoonful and shoveled it in.  Instead of tasting the rich, buttery goodness that is Tamara’s usual batch of potatoes, I felt as if someone had yanked my tongue out about a foot and tazed it.  I yelled.  It was at that point Tamara got around to telling me she put too much pepper in them.  She had unscrewed the cap on the pepper shaker, but instead of sprinkling into the mixer, the pepper came out in a huge glob.  It didn’t take a genius to realize I had shot down any chance of assuring her that they weren’t as bad as she was making them out to be.  Still, to save face, I downed everything I had put on my plate.  Point # 2:

o        It’s never OK to cry out in surprise while eating something your wife has prepared, unless you can be assured that it will be interpreted as “joyful” surprise.

All that being said, she nailed the carrots.  They were absolutely perfect. 

I think anyone who’s eaten my wife’s cooking will be shocked that she had such an off day.  I suppose we can’t all work at 100% our entire lives, but hopefully I’ve given you a few hints that will help minimize the damage to the cooks self-esteem should you find yourself in a similar situation.

Bon appétit!

___________________________

This Blog post has been approved by Tamara Thomas.

Running For Office

I have decided to publically declare my candidacy for position of Emperor of These United States of America.  Through years of dedicated research, my P.A.C. (Political Action Committee) has determined that I will receive the most support by running on the platform of “Act Like A Kid Day.”

If I am elected as the Supreme Emperor, I will enact the Non-Responsibility Act of 2011, which states:

            Upon the second day of the new school year, each adult will be required to 

            cease from all normal acts of responsibleness^† and endeavor to be as childlike 

            as possible.  This includes, but is not limited to:

·         Sleeping-in as late as possible and then getting up to a prepared breakfast.

·         Playing video games or reading until you have a headache (other activities may be substituted).

·         Eating a picnic lunch after being forced outside to play “on such a pretty day.”

·         Washing the sticky Flavor-Ice residue off your body at the local swimming pool.

·         Mandatory nap.

·         Watching old school cartoons until dinner is ready.

·         Playing chase with the neighborhood parents until its dark outside.

That’s all well and good, you might say, but who will cook our food, teach our children, and call us back in the house for the night?  It’s a valid point you raise, and I must confess that details are a bit sketchy on this facet of the plan.  The current line of thought is that these positions of necessary responsibility will be filled by those individuals who needlessly and shamelessly leach off of welfare and those among us who are illegal immigrants.  This will provide the added benefit of getting something back from persons who do nothing but take from us during the other 364 days of the year.

I know that some of you are afraid to elect another official who promises high and lofty ideals, but let me encourage you to push past those fears.  By virtue of being elected Emperor, I won’t have to battle congress to get something accomplished.  I can simply write the law into existence and it will be done.  So, you are assured that I can keep my campaign promises.

If you have any questions about my policies, practices, or the impending dynasty in general, please feel free to write.  I am a benevolent leader and will do my best to address your concerns.  I look forward to ruling you in the near future.  Just make sure to write-in Michael Thomas on your next ballot for position of Emperor of the United States.  Thank You.

Emperor Elect,

Michael Thomas

(After writing this Public Service Announcement, I was informed that you may also have to write-in the actual position “Emperor of the United States” on the ballot, as it is not included.  I encourage you to do this unless it is illegal in your area.)

__________________________________

^† Emperors are allowed to make up their own words.

A Babies Diary

Dear Diary,

I just had to write and tell you about the most horrible experience I’ve ever had in my life (granted, I’ve only been here for a month, but still…it was awful).

This morning, about 1:45 or so, I woke up and was terribly hungry.  It was pitch dark in the room, so I was pretty sure the big people didn’t know it was time for First Breakfast.  As usual, I decided to make a little bit of noise to help them get me what I wanted.  A few seconds into my cat-waulering, I heard movement in the room.  I figured my troubles would soon be over.

Imagine my surprise when the closet light came on and an Ogre was standing over my basinet!  Even though it gently picked me up, I was terrified.  Large puffy eyes stared apathetically at me, as it hoisted me toward its face.  It had wild hair that shot in all directions, and breath bad enough to wilt the flowers on my little pink pajamas.  I just knew it was going to eat me, but instead, it merely grunted in some strange language and headed for the bedroom door.  If I didn’t know better, I would have swore that it sounded like my dad, but I couldn’t deny what my eyes were telling me.

Had the tale ended here, it would hardly be worth telling, but there’s more.  The ogre held me close to its chest and stalked into the nursery. After laying me on the changing table, it unwrapped my comfy blanket and started pulling my warm, snuggly pjs off.  It left me there in the cold morning air!  This made me mad.  Instead of yelling out in fear, I cursed him with every single baby curse I knew (I’m going to have to learn few more of those).  In the end, this turned out not so well for me, cause after that, he pulled off my diaper and grabbed the cold wipes.  Let me tell you, if I had thought the air was chilly before, I had a different opinion now.

To add insult to injury, he got one of those cotton balls, dipped it in alcohol, and started rubbing it on my belly button.  At this point, I’d had more than I could take.  I started yelling for mama.

After a while, it worked.  Apparently the ogre feared my mother’s reprisal, cause he dressed me, wrapped me up in my blanket, and handed me to mama.  I don’t know where he disappeared to, after that, but good riddance!

I hope this never happens again, but next time it does, I’ll know exactly what to do.  Scream for mama until she comes and gets me.

-Haven Thomas ♥♥

I Wonder

Something about this time of year is almost magical.  One morning you wake up, and the oppressive summer heat has been changed to a slight chill.  Sometimes, in the early morning, when the sun is overtaking the last twinkling stars, you can still see the moon shining proudly down from the clear blue sky.  Often times, it stirs a bit of wonder in me.

I think about space, about the position of the planets, the speed at which we’re moving, the size of our earth, the distance of the moon, and the speed of our rotation.  Did you know that if any of these factors were off by a small margin, our planet would no longer support life?  Say what you will about a big bang, but as an engineer, I’ve never come across a system so complex that didn’t have a designer.

For thousands and thousands of years, people have looked up at the same moon that I look up at.  It’s amazing to me that people thousands of miles away can still see the same moon that I look at, on account of its distance from the earth.  Sometimes it looks like you could almost touch it, yet the fastest trip any human has ever made to it took over 3 days.

There’s something special about these brief moments of wonder and clarity.  I’ve noticed that as an adult they are far fewer in number and frequency.  My children have them far more often than I do, and it takes much less to induce them.  With Griffin, it merely took driving by a line of semi trucks to render him wide-eyed and awestruck.  With Gage, driving by a moving train will have him fighting to get out of his seat.  You can see it on their little faces on Christmas morning or on vacation at a water park.

I miss having that kind of wonder and excitement.  Do we become too busy as adults to marvel at our surroundings?  Do we become so overwhelmed by the day to day demands that we don’t even see the little things that could brighten our day?

I wonder.