Don't Look Past the Tips of Your Skis

Years ago, when I lived in the Pacific Northwest, my dad and I learned how to downhill ski together. Every so often, we'd pile into the car at some god-awful hour in the morning, drive awhile to some breathtaking mountain that I took for granted then but miss desperately now, and we'd spend the day skiing. Being a fearless teenager, my method of skiing was to point my skis straight downhill and attempt to break the sound barrier on every run. Of course, some runs went better for me than others. My dad, being of a much sounder mind, chose to take a more conservative approach to the slopes--one that did not involve him hitting the ground at 187 mph in a cloud of powder and expletives. He found that it was rather intimidating to stand at the top of a slope and look all the way to the bottom, so he focused on the tips of his skis, took things nice and slowly, dealt with what was right in front of him, and before long, he was at the bottom of the mountain. He reminded himself not to look past the tips of his skis.

That mantra became a metaphor for life in general. I had to remind myself of that strategy recently when things became a little overwhelming in my world. I'm in one of those times right now that everyone experiences, where everything seems to be going wrong. I made the mistake recently of looking all the way down the mountain, and the thought of navigating the slope all the way down was terrifying and overwhelming. So as the weight of my world was crushing me, I was reminded of my dad's words: don't look past the tips of your skis. Take one challenge at a time, deal with it the best I can, and move on to the next challenge. I'm older now, and I can't bounce right back up from spectacular wrecks like I used to in my youth. Plus, I have a wife and two daughters who are strapped onto my skis with me now. Pointing my skis straight downhill just isn't an option anymore.

By focusing on the tips of my skis, I already feel better, and I'll focus on one challenge at a time. Before long, I'll be at the bottom of the mountain and ready to take the lift back up to the top again. Thanks, Dad.

Son of a........

I think I might be jinxed.

A little over a week ago, one of my good friends, Mike, had quite a health scare. By the time the doctors were done with him, he wasn't feeling up to mowing his lawn. So my best friend, Chuck, and I loaded up our lawn mowers last weekend and headed over to Mike's house to spiffy up his yard for him. Everything was going fine for about 15 minutes until I threw a belt on my self-propelled lawn mower. As the belt came off, it fell into the blade, so it got pretty mangled. Having virtually no mechanical skills myself, I stopped Chuck from his mowing and had him and Mike take a look at it. In return, I decided to use Chuck's mower to continue mowing while he figured out how to repair my mower. I grabbed the handle, yanked on the cord, the engine fired up, and about two steps later, smoke started billowing everywhere, and oil was spraying out the side of the engine. Yes, I managed to kill two mowers in the span of about three minutes.

Fast forward to last night. Being Father's Day weekend, I wanted to take my dad to dinner. I was going to take him in my new Toyota Sienna van that I blogged about repeatedly in April. You know, the one that did so much better in performance, maintenance, and owner satisfaction than most other makes of vans in all the publications. The one that has only 2200 miles on it and hasn't even been in our driveway for two months. My dad had seen the van, but he had never ridden in it, so it was my opportunity to show off my new wheels.

About halfway to the restaurant, I realized that the air conditioning was no longer blowing cold air. This alone was distressing, as it was a hot day, I loathe heat and humidity, and earlier in the day, I had gotten dangerously overheated while mowing my lawn with my self-propelled mower minus the self-propulsion. (No, it's still not fixed. There is apparently no store in the western hemisphere that has the proper replacement belt in stock.) So I was already hypersensitive to the heat, and now my air conditioning wasn't working. I was not happy.

A little further down the road, my dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree. My heat gauge was pegged on Hot, but then fell all the way to Cold, back to Hot, Cold, Hot, Cold, Hot, Cold, Hot, and finally fell permanently to Cold. And as we stopped at a red light, the van idled roughly for a few seconds and then died. I got it restarted and got into the turn lane before it died again. Got it restarted once more, limped through the intersection, and eased into a nearby parking lot. It would stall out, I'd get it restarted, and it would stall out a couple minutes later. Over and over again.

So I called the Mrs., who had to pull Olivia and June out of the bathtub to come get us. As we waited for the Mrs. to arrive, I told my dad that my plan was to take some back streets to get as close to the nearest Toyota dealership as I could, and then just cross my fingers that I could make it across the very busy, multi-lane road that I'd have to cross to get into the dealership. But each time I restarted the van after it stalled out, it would run for a shorter period of time. Eventually, I revised my plan. I wasn't willing to risk trying to get to the dealership.

Fortunately, I have a BlackBerry that I haven't yet broken, so I used it to get on the Internet and locate some local wrecker services. The first number I called, no one answered. The second number I called, someone picked up the phone, and never said anything. I could tell that someone was on the other end, but when I said "Hello? Hello?" no one responded. The third number I called, someone answered, but he informed me that he doesn't do towing anymore. He gave me the number, though, of someone he knew that does towing. So I called that number. It was disconnected. I couldn't even get a damn tow truck.

My dad, somehow sensing my frustration as I was screaming expletives in the middle of a parking lot for three minutes straight, cut the tension with some timely humor. My rage subsided, and I started thinking clearly again. Who have I repeatedly told my kids to call when they need help? The police. I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner.

So I called the non-emergency number for our local Dispatch, identified myself and explained my problem. The Dispatcher graciously offered to send a wrecker my way. Problem solved.

While I waited for the wrecker, the Mrs. arrived and took my dad back to our house, where he got in his car and headed in my direction. The wrecker and my dad arrived almost simultaneously, the wrecker driver was very friendly and helpful, we got the van towed to the nearby dealership, and my dad and I headed to dinner in his car, two hours after our ordeal began.

The bright side to all of it was that the restaurant we went to had draft beer on sale for $2.00 a glass. Dad and I ended up having a great meal and great conversation, so it wound up being quite an enjoyable evening.

I'm just not sure that I want to touch anything that has an engine for awhile.

Olivia and the Sunscreen

I've really been struggling lately with Olivia, our three-year-old. Everyone keeps saying that her behavior is that of a typical three-year-old, but that doesn't make me dislike it any less. Olivia's latest method of acting out is to do the exact opposite of what we tell her to do. Sometimes, she simply looks directly at us with a smirk on her face, and then does what we just told her not to do. Sometimes, she qualifies her disobedience with "I'm just..." An example: we tell Olivia to quit clobbering her sister, June, over the head with a toy. Olivia's response is: "I'm just giving the toy to June." Or we tell Olivia to stop climbing into the dryer while we're trying to shift a load a laundry, and she responds, "I just have to check something out in it." This sort of thing instantaneously sets my blood pressure to "through-the-roof."

In my many rants when she has openly defied either me or the Mrs., I have predicted that one day, we'll tell Olivia not to do something for her own safety, and she'll do it anyway, winding up getting hurt in the process.

Today, that prognostication came true.

It is in the low 90's today in Central Indiana, with humidity of about 99.99%. I'd estimate the heat index to be roughly 12,472 degrees. Celsius. It's freakin' hot. And I hate the heat and humidity with an indescribable passion. How I survived living in Texas for ten years is a complete mystery. At any rate, Olivia wanted to swim in her plastic swimming pool. So she changed into her swimsuit, I went out to our storage building and got the pool (and, incidentally, it's about twelve billion degrees hotter in the storage shed than it is outside), put the pool in the yard, dragged the garden hose over to it, turned on the water, cleaned up a week's worth of dog poop in the yard (and our dog enjoys taking little walks while he's pooping, so it was like going on the world's nastiest Easter egg hunt in downtown Hell), got the patio umbrella up, got all the pool toys out of the storage shed, and got Olivia sprayed with SPF 90,000 sunscreen. As I'm spraying her with sunscreen, I tell her not to rub her eyes because her hands have sunscreen on them, and it will make her eyes burn.

Naturally, the very next thing Olivia does is announce that "I'm just gonna rub them real quick." But Daddy saw that one coming and was prepared with the arm block. I tell Olivia again that the sunscreen on her hands is going to burn her eyes if she rubs them, and I instruct her to go to the pool and wash her hands off in the water to get the excess sunscreen off.

Olivia then walks over to the pool, dips a microscopic portion of one of her toes into the water, and announces that it's too cold. I'm standing there, drenched in sweat from being outside for twenty minutes in what feels like a Brazilian rain forest, with my mouth hanging open. She's been nagging me about the pool for two hours, we've spent close to thirty minutes getting everything ready, and now she doesn't want to get in the pool?! Are you freakin' KIDDING me?!

So I walk over to the pool and put my hands in the water. "Feels pretty darn good to me!" I start to tell Olivia, when she begins crying and saying, "Ouchy ouchy ouchy ouchy." What has she done in the five seconds that I wasn't looking directly at her? Rubbed her eyes. We go back inside before I pass out from heat stroke, and you'd think she was having her eyes torn out by rabid monkeys, the way she was crying. (Fortunately, June didn't awaken from her nap that she was taking at the time.) Her crying, though, being only theatrical in nature, wasn't producing any tears. And I knew I wasn't going to convince her to sit still for me to put in some eye drops. So I came up with a strategy forged by years of being a Boy Scout and years of being a probation officer.

As a Boy Scout, I've learned first aid. As a probation officer, I've learned how to make people cry.

Olivia is very dramatic and needy. So as she's giving her Oscar award-worthy performance, I just crossed my arms and stared at her. She held her arms up for me to pick her up, and I calmly said, "No." That stopped the performance, and in a moment that seemed to last forever, she gave me a look like I had just broken her heart into a thousand pieces. What I didn't let on was that she was doing the same to me with that look. (I've also learned how to keep a poker face from my years as a probation officer.) But then the real waterworks started. Olivia cried and cried and cried, tears flowing from her eyes in a river of sorrow that her daddy is so cruel. Meanwhile, of course, those tears were flushing out the sunscreen. After a minute or two, Olivia realized that her eyes didn't burn anymore. She's now happily playing in her room.

I don't get the impression that Olivia learned anything from this experience like, "Listen to Mommy and Daddy, and do what we tell you to do." Hopefully, she will learn that someday. And hopefully she won't get seriously injured before she learns it.

No, what I suspect Olivia learned from this is that her daddy is a cold, heartless s.o.b. and that if she really wants some comfort, she'll have to wait for Mommy to get home from work. And I suspect that this won't be the last thing that I do for her own good, for which she resents me.

Little League Updates

Well, this will teach me to call my best friend's son's Little League team a "pretty bad team." The ink was barely dry on my last post when his son's team went out and upset the #1-seeded team in the playoffs last night! They play for the league championship on Saturday! His son pitched quite well, striking out 12 batters, and another boy on the team hit one out of the park. Depending on which account you believe, the ball either cleared the fence by 20 feet, or it landed two zip codes away. I wasn't there, so I don't know for sure. At any rate, I think it's safe to say that everyone in the league is stunned by the outcome. I know Chuck was about to burst at the seams with fatherly pride last night. He hardly noticed when I took the Grand Championship of the World home with me last night. In his defense, though, it's hard to shoot pool with an enormous cheesy grin permanently plastered to your face and your chest all puffed out because your son's team did the totally unexpected, in large part because your boy played so well. Unfortunately, his son can't pitch in Saturday's game (league pitch-count rules), but they have another good pitcher on the team, so keep your fingers crossed.

The son of my other set of friends that I mentioned yesterday? Well, his team lost 21-0 last night. I guess that's better than 32-2, though, right? My friends' son was out of town and missed the game, but it doesn't sound like he missed much.

So there you have it. Because I knew you were hanging on the edge of your seat after yesterday's post.

I Have Nothing to Say

It’s been awhile since I really wrote about something, hasn’t it? Almost two weeks. Granted, I posted some photos last week, but that’s not really writing. That’s just distracting you with my kids’ cuteness while I think of something to write about.

I guess I haven’t gotten really riled up about anything in the past couple of weeks. Well, that’s not entirely true. I read this story on the Internet this morning and got really, really angry because yet another selfish tool decided to try to take out as many people as possible, instead of seeking professional help or at least just eating a bullet in his garage or something, because his life wasn’t going the way he wanted it to. But I’ve done the pro-police post a few times already. Don’t want to overdo it.

I’ve also blown several gaskets at other drivers in the past couple of weeks, including the dump truck today who could have moved into my lane at any time during the five miles it took for me to catch up to him on the highway. But he decided to wait until the hood of my van was aligned with his back tires before he started his lane change. Those reflective thingies hanging off each side of your truck are called MIRRORS, moron!! Try LOOKING IN THEM once in awhile! But I’ve already done the idiot drivers post. That would just be boring to read about again.

I’ve been dealing with probationers in all of their loveliness, too. And it was a full moon recently. That’s always fun. Had a woman show up in my office for her first appointment and test positive for alcohol. Apparently she didn’t read my post on the Secret to Probation. Neither did any of the dozens of people who have lied to me in the past couple of weeks. So it seems pretty pointless to write about that kind of thing again.

I just posted photos of my kids, so you know Olivia and June are doing well. They decided last night at dinnertime to have a screaming contest. I’m amazed they didn’t blow any windows out. I still can’t hear out of one ear today. But I’ve already done the kid post several times. Too much sugar makes for upset stomachs.

I’ve gotten a lot of stuff lately. We got our professional photos that we had taken by Marchelle Mosley a couple weeks ago, but I’ve already written about that positive experience. (The photos look terrific, by the way.)

I also got a new pair of boots. I wore out my last pair. Try to contain your excitement.

I got a Blu-ray player and a subscription to Netflix, and I have been in movie heaven for about a week now. I watched some French action flick that I had never heard of last night because Netflix said I would “heart” it. I did, indeed, “heart” it. I also amused myself while I watched it by using my French language skills with their 20-or-so years of rust on them to nitpick the subtitles. Although I have to admit, French actors speak REALLY quickly when I’m two decades past the last time j’ai parlé français. I’d be lucky to find my way to a restroom if I was dropped into downtown Paris today. But that’s not really something anyone’s interested in hearing about.

I went to three Little League games this weekend, all of them massacres. My best friend’s son is on a pretty bad team. I think they’ve only won one game this year. There was hope on Saturday because they were playing the only team they’ve beaten, but after four close innings, the wheels came off the wagon for our team, and the final damage was an 11-4 loss. Later in the afternoon, I watched most of a double-header involving a team that the son of another set of friends plays on. His team is absolutely horrific. They only hung in there for a couple innings before giving up 13 runs in the third inning. They came back with 8 runs in the bottom of the third to make it a five-run game, but then they coughed up another 7 runs in the top of the fourth before the mercy rule kicked in. After they lost the first game, 22-10, I made the mistake of thinking that it couldn’t get much worse than that. Oh, how wrong I was. In the second game, my friends’ son’s team sort of hung in there for two innings again, but once again, the third inning was catastrophic. Entering the third inning in a 9-2 deficit, they gave up 23 runs in the third inning and lost 32-2. The other team really wasn’t trying to run up the score. They would only advance one base per hit after awhile, even if everyone had reached base safely before an outfielder had even gotten to the ball. They stopped stealing bases. And ultimately, they started batting with the opposite hand. Right-handed kids were batting left-handed and vice-versa. And they were swinging at everything except for the pitches that went behind them and seven feet over their heads (at the same time). Mothers of the opposing players were angrily yelling at their sons for making contact with the ball. They were DESPERATE to let our team get some outs. I half-expected them to start laying down in the base paths in between bases for a couple minutes until they could be tagged out. Finally, after the other team went through their batting order about eleventy-seven times in the inning, the last (right-handed) batter popped up to the pitcher while batting left-handed. While the game was painful to watch, it was still a fun afternoon and evening with good friends. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time as we tried to cope with what we were witnessing through humor. But really, who wants to read about a bunch of kids getting demoralized on a baseball diamond?

So as you can see, I’m not exactly leading an exciting existence right now. That’s not a bad thing, but it makes it difficult to find something of interest to write about.

When I think of something to write, I’ll let you know.

Medal Night at Gymnastics

I'm a little delinquent in the blogging department, so I'll try to make up for it by posting some photos from tonight's gymnastics session. It was the last week of the current session, and all the participants got medals. Olivia's in the black leotard. June's in the pink leotard. The woman in the orange t-shirt is Olivia's instructor, of whom Olivia is quite fond.