Trisha sent this along and it is just perfect! Kelly and Christian, please take notes.
Category: Family Page 11 of 18
Kelly picked me up at the airport in Seattle this afternoon after her work. I am going to meet with a company tomorrow morning that, amazingly, is located on the 19th floor in the same building where Kelly works on the 3rd floor. Tomorrow evening we will head down to Portland to visit Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah. The motel I found close to where Kelly lives turns out to be an apartment building built in 1961 that the Seattle city government would not let be used as apartments, so they turned it into a motel and never looked back. It is a great little price with one of the lowest prices around.
I fly to Seattle on Thursday night for a business meeting on Friday. Friday night, Kelly and I plan to drive to Portland to see Grandma Sarah. She is eating very, very little and is getting closer to the end. This is part of the reason I have not written so much. There are lots of things happening and not so much happening. I get up every morning to go to work through the week, then Lorena and I go to the Snooty Pig on Saturday mornings for breakfast and to our church meeting on Sunday morning. In the meantime, Grandpa Milo and especially Grandma Sarah approach the end. This might be the last time I see her if I make it on time, but she might linger for longer than we expect. It is a time for introspection.
In the whole scheme of things, maybe what is going on in our lives is not so eventful. Still, it is important in the trajectory of our lives. There will be changes soon. We are not sure whether they will be a result of momentous geopolitical events or as a result of our desire to make some changes to get closer to our loved ones and/or “do the right thing.” I hope to be able to write more in the coming days about all that is in process.
Note: The picture is in celebration of National Cat Day.
Lorena and I got married twenty-four years ago today. That was two days before the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. Lorena’s mother, Conchita–the best mother-in-law in the history of the world arrived in Dallas last night to help us celebrate. We are in a new era now that started a couple of years ago, but now we are really starting to accept that fact that the kids are gone, paying their own way and only really need us for moral support. It is a good place to be and I am thankful to be here with Lorena.
This may not sound like such a big deal, but when Kelly sent us pictures of the new glasses she tried on today, it dawned on me that she will get her new prescription and her new glasses with her own insurance that she earns at work at her new job. She starts on Monday. They have all the normal, new employee meetings and paperwork as the obligatory, take the new employee to lunch trip. I love the first day of a new job and this is Kelly’s first, not in internship, not at school job where she plans to be there for a number of years at the very least. How cool is that.
So, my struggles about finding things to write for this blog will get even harder because now she is not only out of homeschool, she is out of school altogether. It is all quite exciting.
This is the semi-momentous announcement that marks an ending and a new beginning for Kelly. Kelly passed her PhD prelims (comprehensive exams) last month. That is a big deal because it moved her to PhD candidacy. She learned a lot in the last two years. She made significant improvements in her data analytics skills, especially with respect to applying them in the specific domain of Marketing. She also learned, though, that she did not want an academic career in Marketing. So she has decided to stop at an MS in Marketing, take a few years off to work, continue to improve here statistical skills (maybe even another Masters degree) and figure out what field might be in alignment with her career goals (probably something to do with Statistics). That is the big news. That and the fact that, after many, many interviews and some good offers, she has accepted a job that is just about perfect for her in downtown Seattle. All good stuff. So, in our homeschool journey, one kid is out of school for the time being and has a stellar “real” job. She might head back toward a PhD someday, but then again she might not. She is in a good place and we are thankful for such a great outcome even though it is not over yet. Gainful employment is always a good thing.
Some really good stuff is happening, some of which has to do with schooling and some with work. Lorena and I are spending most of the day indoors today, not because we want to be here on a beautiful sunny fall day (not to hot for a change), but because we have to work. I have taken on another project to help with a medical device for developing countries and Lorena is studying for her Statistics class. She has two classes this term, so she is pretty busy. That is all good stuff, but not the subject of this post. I just wanted to put up a marker because some good decisions were made to make a change, but the exact direction is not yet established. I think in a couple of days we can celebrate it and talk about it.
I am about to turn 61. A lot of funny little things, and I emphasize the word little, because they are of almost no importance, have been going on in my life. On that birthday theme, I found out today a guy that I have been helping get a business started in Kansas was born the day before me–the day before, the same year. In addition and very randomly, through Facebook, we learned that his daughters roommate in California is the first cousin of one of my daughter’s best friends in Seattle. There was no connection whatsoever between the two, we just found out about it after the fact. There are a couple of other non-coincidences like that about which I really do not have license to speak, but it surely seems odd that things work out serendipitously for great good for no material reason.
The other thing that just seems very random in my life is that the guy in the office next to me is one of those autodidact guys who claims he is an atheist. I called him on it–I really know of no rational person who claims they are atheist. He backed off of his statement. You would have had to been there to understand the context because my calling him on it was not really a heavy handed thing, but an outgrowth of a (relatively) thoughtful conversation. It was about as thoughtful a conversation as one could have with someone who absurdly claims, “No one has given me any good reason to believe there is a God.” That has always seemed to be a profoundly irrational claim, especially in light of the fairly recent, but very clear understanding that nothing existed–literally nothing, not even a quantum vacuum, no time, no space, nothing–then something started to exist. At the very least, that calls for some level of agnosticism. Really, there is no good reason to think there is not a God–much more so than that there is not one.
Life just seems a little surreal right now, but that is not a bad thing, just a little disorienting.
Kiwi and I are having a pretty exciting night on the eve of El Grito de Dolores. People all over Mexico will be in the central plazas of their cities and towns to celebrate Mexican Independence. Of course, we are also celebrating our friend Vanesa’s birthday. We are not sure which is most exciting. You can see from the picture at the right that we are partying pretty hard–so hard that I am almost certain we will not make it until midnight when all the shouting begins.
It pains me when I say Christian is headed home, not so much because he is going there, but that, after two years of graduate school away from our home–that of Lorena and I, his home is really his own and not ours. That is always a good thing, but leaves most parents with feelings of melancholy. We had a great time during his 21st birthday visit. We ate a lot of good food, discussed life and its trials vigorously and saw our now grown son in a different light than before. He is his own man. We look forward to his next visit, probably Thanksgiving and have plans to do more of the same–hang out, talk, eat and enjoy our children as adults.
The book at the right was from one of his classes, Functional Analysis in the Math Department. He studied pretty hard while he was here in Texas. His other class is a hard, graduate level physics class, Quantum Physics in the Physics Department. We asked him why he took such hard classes. He no longer has to do that if he does not want to, but believes taking easy classes are a waste of time–if they are easy, he can learn the material from a book.
Lorena and I are now, officially and with no caveats, the parents of adult children. We have pretty much been that for a couple of years now at least as the kids have been out of the house and on their own since they finished their undergraduate degrees, but it took us a couple of years to realize it all an now they are both adults with all the rights the law bestows and responsibilities the law demands. It seems like things are different now in a good buy melancholic way.
We are grateful Christian flew out to see us. We had a great time with him. He did not have to do it–there was a lot going on with friends in Arizona and Oregon the he missed to be here. We did some of the stuff we did when he was a little kid–went to the zoo and a museum–and a had a great time. It is fun to be at those kind of venues (although, it still seems creepy that they stuffed Trigger and have him on display), the best part being the chance to visit along the way.
Then, last night, we took him out to dinner and today he will be on his way home. His home. That is a good thing.
Lorena, Christian and I had a GREAT experience today at the Ft. Worth Zoo today. We say lions, tigers, gorillas, bonobos, alligators, crocodiles, penguins and only made it half way through the zoo. We highly, highly, highly recommend the Ft. Worth Zoo. The most amazing thing we saw, though was a small bird stalking–slowly and very, very cautiously sneaking, step by slow, slow step–a dragon fly. Christian captured the sequence through a very dirty glass window with the wrong lens and no filter. It still came out pretty good. The fourth picture is a close-up, right after the catch.The dragonfly is small in the image, but you can see it well right before the step in the log toward the left of the image.
I couldn’t not put this up. Lorena and Kiwi trying out my new glasses:
Kelly sent me this link: Dad Suggests Arriving At Airport 14 Hours Early. I did not see the humor in it. Not even a little bit. This is probably why I am so well read.
Street scenes like the one to the left are what I remember from the times I visited La Cienega, Jalisco. I moved to Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico for the fall term of 1982 to study Spanish at the University of Guadalajara. I made good friends there with whom I traveled to the small town of La Cienega over three hours from Guadalajara. Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah went with me one of those times to attend a church event. It is a wonderful, very, very quiet little place with very, very fertile soil. There are some friends of friends with whom we have connected on social media who plan to move there. It is a young family with three elementary age kids. What a wonderful experience they will have. They have a blog we plan to follow and, hopefully, if we can somehow make it work, I would like to take Lorena and Grandma Conchita for a visit there. I have added a link to their blog, named Bloom and Grow on our blog roll. One of the first pictures we saw on the blog showed a couple of Lorena’s cousins. It is a small world.
For posterity–Christian visits Kelly for the Fourth of July weekend after Kelly finishes her PhD comprehensive exams. They participate with friends in “trivia night” at the local coffee shop where Kelly often studies.
Lorena went to a family reunion in her trip to Mexico to visit her mother. The above picture is a small subset of her aunts, great aunts, and cousins on her mother’s side of the family. They met at what I can only describe as an event facility at the very impressive ranch of her Aunt Berta (in blue, fifth from the right) and recently passed Uncle Ishmael. They had a great time. She is enjoying herself greatly. There is lots of stuff going on, carnes asadas, visits with family, lots of cleaning and organizing (of Grandpa Lauro’s stuff) and the installation of a new bathroom. I leave you with a couple of photos of the fruit growing and grown on the small urban lot where Grandma Conchita lives. The one on the left is her papaya tree. The one on the right is two passion fruits.
We just heard our dear friend Jeannie Harris has passed away at age 37. Some who read this blog will know her. She kept the Mountain Memories (Ryan and Jeannie) blog to which we link in our blog roll in the right sidebar. This is a tremendous loss of a wonderful person, wife and mother.
I was very active as a young child. I hear about it from cousins, aunts, uncles, neighbors and other of our family friends to this day. It was recommended to my parents by the government school I attended that maybe I should be medicated to calm me down and that was before medicating kids for things like ADHD was cool. Thankfully, my pharmacist mother knew better. I know I must have been a handful, but I also know I had good intentions and have to say that my problem was more a problem of energy, talkativeness and perpetual motion than of willfulness. Still, an article titled The Transforming of My STRONG-WILLED Child by a very successful homeschool mother at a blog I follow resonated with me greatly. I am sure a lot of what she says would have worked well for me, especially the part about being a friend to your children and taking time to play with them. The article is about how she managed the raising of two strong-willed boys. I think it was just masterful. Read the whole thing. Here is an excerpt:
CONSISTENCY IS THE KEYThe other thing I reflected that worked with both boys, is to be consistent in my reaction to them. It was hard not to yell, scream and curse them out (oh yeah, they can take me there), but MOST TIMES (hey, mom’s not perfect) I was consistent, non-effected outwardly, by their actions.
If I gave a punishment, I tried to think on it, make it conducive to the lesson I wanted to teach the child, and discuss with my spouse. However, for typical behavior, we had a consequence board that left no argument or debate on what the punishment was.
An example of this is when my oldest daughter yelled at her sister that ‘at school you are not my sister!’. That day, her punishment was that I took her own bedroom from her. She had to share a room with her sister until she learned ‘humility’ and kindness. Six months later, we decorated and opened up her own bedroom because she had changed greatly.
The video of the hovercraft Christian made when he was eleven just passed 70,000 hits!