The Phamily Times

Delton is pretty much my main man these days. He’s developing a personality all his own and has done a good job of adapting Daddy’s laid back attitude. He will sit quietly in his chair and play alone with his toys while his mommy and I try to get a few things done around the house.

Speaking of his chair, look at the difference in how he fills that chair out these days. He’s gonna be the office linebacker before you know it. I tried feverishly to get these pictures to sit side by side for comparison, but I couldn’t get it right and now it’s time to make dinner, so tough loss, I guess. The point was to illustrate how big he is getting. I have noticed he is a lot heavier because I pick him up pretty regularly but there was a lady with a 4 week old at my office building the other day and that baby looked so tiny by comparison. As my work buddy said, “He’s definitely getting enough groceries” Yes, Delton most certainly is!

The pictures were taken from two different cameras which explains the difference in quality. I tried to crop the one where he was smaller but it never looked right, so you’ll have to use a little bit of imagination.

Last week was the most traffic this blog has ever gotten, 330 hits, almost 100 more than any other week. I am pretty sure that it’s because cute pictures of the baby were on here, so I’ve got some more for you. 

He’s getting ready to sit up one of these days. We tried him in the bumbo seat but he just isn’t ready for that yet.

His newest fascination is the TV. He can’t get enough of it. So much so, that I have been forcing myself to turn it off when he’s in the living room with me because he will not do anything but stare at it and I feel like I am corrupting my baby.  He still forgives me for it though…

Finally, just like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, the steroid scandal, and other irritating news “stories” that won’t go away for all of 2008, the election of a nickname for Big Baby D is back in full force after the New Year. After making a strong showing in early exit polls, which we all know to be a bunch of contrived cockamamie, several candidates, including “D.B.” “Cap’n D”, and “DeeBo” are having to bow out of the race. In a move reminiscent of dark horse candidate Ron Paul, “Miroki” has come out of nowhere to garner several votes, electoral votes, caucuses, or blackbeans, whichever dumb vernacular that few people understand anyway applies here.

Coincidentally, can anyone explain to me why it’s a bad thing to be a “dark horse”? I mean Black Stallion was one of the coolest horses ever and I’m pretty sure if you were to watch The Man from Snowy River he’d be charging down that hill on a horse that was either brown or black. So, why is being the dark horse candidate bad? I think I’ll refer to Miroki as the “sleeper” pick instead. All sports fans are familiar with that and I could be wrong but I think it means, “Don’t go to sleep on that pick because it could show you something down the road.” which makes much more sense than calling someone a dark horse. I like dark horses. Now, if you wanted to change that to a Crazy Horse candidate that would be okay by me. Meaning, this horse or candidate is a Indian from Frontier days that few people know much about. He might be the rebel leader of the Ogallalla or he might be your friend. Either way, he’s coming to town and you better be ready. No one really knows what to expect from this crazy horse candidate. There, much better.

Okay, glad we had this talk!

First, let me clarify something about my “court ordered mediation”. This is what I do for work. It has to do with my property tax blog.  The summary is that I represent people in lawsuits against appraisal districts, but not as an attorney. I am more of the liaison between the attorney and the actual property owner. I put it all in layman’s terms, I coach them on the process, I ease their concerns, I analyze their properties for compliance with the Texas property tax code. Basically, I help people from getting trampled by their government.  That’s where I step in and that’s all going to be in detail on the PTAX blog I am starting. One day, you’ll understand. I just wanted to clarify that I was not being sued for libel, slander or inappropriately dropping trow in public. I felt like everyone should know that.

If you have ever had the misfortune of forwarding me an urban legend, internet hoax/rumor or anything else resembling “slacktivism”, you would know of my affinity for snopes.com. You would also know of my proclivity to lecture you on the dangers of blindly forwarding stories and information that aren’t even true. Honestly, I tell you this now, if you ever get one of those from me, I challenge you to validate it’s truth. Because I can certainly tell you that if I ever do send one of those, it may well be something that I simply made up to see how long it will take to get around the internet. If there’s anything I like more than telling stories, it’s making up stories to see how gullible people can be.

So, here comes this story from snopes.com. In summary, it’s 12 rules for raising delinquent children and it’s sort of satirical, or so I thought.  So, of course, I get this in an email and I’m thinking, “Okay, who’s the idiot who believed this was real?”  According to snopes, it’s been around 25 years or more and the actual validity is beyond provability. (Is that a word?) I have been working on the authoritative list of how to instill character into my son and so I run across this stuff all the time in my daily journey of the internet. Some working titles of this authoritative list include,  “How to ruin your life” (Ben Stein already wrote this book actually), “So you think your parents don’t know anything?” or what about “Chivalry is not going the way of the Saber Toothed Tiger because the Ice Age is Coming” (Very verbose but I envision a large tiger with fangs on the cover and I think some kid will buy it) , “You’re going to do it because Stone Cold Steve Austin said so”  (I’m scared, aren’t you? Just tell us what to do Stone Cold so we can avoid a beatin’) and maybe “How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb” Hey, wait a minute, that’s a recycled joke?!?! COME ON!

So, what about this one? “Fifteen year old Thoughts from a 15 year old”. Sounds pretty weird to say it that way, almost palindromic though if it really were a palindrome it would say 15 yr old thoughts from a from thoughts old yr 15, which would be even more cryptic, so that makes it repetitive but not necessarily a palindrome. Apparently, the standards are pretty high for palindromes. What a bunch of elitist jerks, those palindromes.

You might be saying, enough with the “witty banter”, what is all this nonsense about? To which my reply would be, “Slow Down, Turbo. I’m going to tell you in just a second. Why can’t you appease me and let me make bad jokes for just a minute?” It’s because I received a “gift” from Dodi a while back of a journal I was required to keep for 9th grade English class. One of the assignments for this class was to write a letter to your child. Surprisingly, mine didn’t say anything about “Buy Google or Yahoo” or “Don’t bet on Barbaro”.  However, if it did say that, it would somehow possess the ability to see into the future. Now, that would be an awesome letter to a 15 year old and it also would have been the subject of a made for TV movie. Oh, what’s that you say? They already did that movie and it’s called, “Back to the Future”? “Oh, you say I’m in the movie and my character’s name is Biff?” Well done.

So, in this 15 year old letter from 15 year old Warner, I make the following “charges” to my future child:

Dear Child,

I am writing this letter to give you some advice on life. The first piece of advice and probably the most important is to keep your mouth shut. I cannot tell you how important it is to have someone trust you with a problem. Not only is keeping your mouth shut a good asset, it helps you stay out of trouble by not talking about people. The next piece of advice is to be friendly and be yourself. This will get you many friends. Not only will you find friends, but you will find respect if you are doing this because people will always know if you are a true friend or not. The next thing is even though you are nice to everyone, you need to be choosy about who you’re running around with. Even though they may seem cool, they can still get you in plenty of trouble. Last of all, I want you to always know that your mom and dad love you and forgive you. Please if you ever need help come to your mom and me for help. Love, Dad.

It is handwritten and that’s pretty much it word for word, edited for spelling of course. It also makes me glad that I learned to type because my handwriting, especially cursive as this was, is borderline illegible. I can only imagine that people would read these things and say, “Is this guy a functional illiterate?” What also strikes me is how poorly I followed my own advice to my child growing up. Many of you know that my mouth is very large in the physical sense but it also runs non-stop. To this day, I say things to other people and regret it almost instantly. In fact, just last night I went to bed thinking about how I wish that I had better control over my mouth.  

Additionally, I have gone through periods where I acted like someone else to seem cool or to maybe seem like I wasn’t a wild animal living in civilization.  

Also, I can not count the times that I blatantly disregarded this same advice to be open and honest with my own mom and dad. It’s like I was already practicing for the days when I could say, “Do as I say child, not as I do.” So when my own parents said to me things like “Warner, did you eat all this cheese?” and  “Warner, what’s that smell?” or “Warner, where is your grade report from last semester?” and “Warner, are you taking care of yourself?” to which my dishonest replies would have been, “No”, “I didn’t do it.” “I don’t know” and “Yes, of course”, which were all lies, I was clearly unable to follow my own prophetic advice to my future child.

But it also indicates to me how little credit we give younger people when clearly I knew more about life, at 15 years old, than even I give myself credit for. This ongoing journey of learning about child rearing and enjoying life with a now 4 month old is fun but this little experience has taught me that I might just have some of the tools already and I don’t have to always doubt my own abilities. For the record, I never doubted that I would be able to teach Delton how to throw a spiral or make killer nachos. Those were pretty much in the bag from day one.   

Friday Links:

 Here is a good item I found that has some sound advice. Scott Van Pelt, an anchor for ESPN is known for being laid back and approachable. He has a good personality on air but after reading this, I believe he has a good personality and zest for life. He is one person who seems to actually get it. 

Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper is the snip snap snack! Also, Dr Pepper is kosher. Who knew? Anyway, I’m a junk food fanatic. I’m trying to eat better in this new year but sometimes I just can’t stop thinking about the biggest, dirtiest soft drink imaginable!  I recently told Cara that I could attempt to give up every vice that I have but I will never be able to give up cokes. So, I’m thankful that this is diet and better yet, it’s kosher! Win/Win! 

I also found this heartbreaking piece in the New York Times last week. For those that don’t have the time to read and read and read, the piece is about over 100 different Gulf War/Conflict vets that came back home and didn’t get the necessary help for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The result was massive murders and several suicides. So, get out there and give a war vet a hug this weekend. They need it.

 This article motivated me to finally write something for my other blog. Robert Scoble is a talented visionary. That’s a good read if you like technology.

 Finally, my homeslice E-Machine showed me how to listen to music at work. I don’t mean that I had to have someone show me how headphones worked. I already knew that. This website allows you to search for music hosted on other computers and listen to it through your machine or streaming. You don’t download a copy so it doesn’t seem to be illegal or pirated. The result is that I get to listen to new music like The National or Panda Bear at my desk without dropping a dime on a new CD. Again, Win/Win!

Have a great weekend compadres.