Get Off The Ground

The Little Wooden Reindeer

Sunday, December 13, 2020

The Primary Pooper Scoopers

She had left the spray cleaner and the dirty wet paper towel in the sink.

"Beatrice!" I called out.

"What?"

"Please come put away the cleaner and throw the paper towel away."

"Why?"

"Because the job isn't done until everything's put away."

"Fine."

Reluctantly Beatrice trudged into the kitchen and did what I asked. Which I shouldn't have had to ask, since this is something we repeat over and over again.

But then again, we have come a long way from little kid world, where like most parents, my wife Amy and I did all the things (yes, Amy does more of the things, but I do things, too!). This included cleaning around the house, putting their toys away, emptying the dishwasher, folding clothes, getting the mail, feeding the pets, walking the dog in the rain and picking up her poop, etc.

Like that part in one of our favorite holiday movies The Family Man, when Jack Campbell and his wife Kate return from the Christmas party and their dog needs to go outside. Jack doesn't want to do it and Kate jokes that she'll wake up their toddler Josh to walk the dog out in the cold snow. Of course they don't do that, so Jack acquiesces and walks the dog, like he does every day and night, picking up the dog poop along the way.

For those who have seen the movie (we've watching it every year since it came out in 2000 when we saw it in the theater), you may remember this part when Jack, Kate and their kids are in the mall shopping and Jack wants to buy the expensive suit:

Jack: Do you have any idea what my life is like?

Kate : Excuse me?

Jack : I wake up in the morning covered in dog saliva. I drop the kids off, spend 8 hours selling tires retail. Retail, Kate. I pick the kids up, walk the dog, which by the way, carries the added bonus of carting away her monstrous crap. I play with the kids, take out the garbage, get 6 hours of sleep if I'm lucky and then everything starts all over again. So-so what's in it for me? Wh-where are my-my Mary Janes?

That's something Amy and I joke about all the time -- one of our many ongoing catch phrases -- Where are my Mary Janes?

Because really, what are we going to do? Make our little kiddos do all the housework? Don't get me wrong, we thought about it once they start to walk and make messes everywhere they walked. But, this isn't Little House on the Prairie, and we don't live way out in the country or have a farm or a dairy, so instead, we waited until we thought they were old enough to be more responsible around the house. About two years ago we started giving our girls an allowance based on completing chores around the house. When you first teach your kids to help around the house, it's more about the act of doing chores and learning the value of money for work, then it is getting the chores done like we the adults in the room want them to get done.

They are just kids after all and there is a learning curve to getting housework right. When I was their age, my sister and I learned how to clean house from our mother. Although both my sister and I had our standard chores, Mom learned quickly that if she wanted the chores done more thoroughly, she'd ask me, although I took a long time to get them done. I was a daydreamer and dawdler, that's for sure. But when Mom wanted the chores done quickly, like when if we were going to have company coming over at a specific time, then the work went to my sister, who was super efficient (and I would argue just as thorough as well, even if there were a few shortcuts here and there).

Our girls more or less complete their chores with the same speed and efficiency, except when they tell us they did one and it's obvious that they didn't do it (that'll be a future post). One of the things our youngest Bryce does is to vacuum downstairs. She does a pretty good job, although we have to remind her to vacuum every part of open carpet, and I still go over the traffic areas again myself. Our oldest Beatrice cleans all the sinks and the granite counters, although we have to remind her to not just smear the cleaner around on the counters, but to wipe and dry them off, too.

And then to put the dang cleaner away and throw away the paper towel!

But they're working on it and we continue to incrementally add chores for them to do while ensuring completion of each one -- and until the job is done. Since we're home all the time due to the ongoing pandemic, there's never been a better time to add more chores. The girls even negotiate with us now, especially when they want to earn more money for stuff they want, like when Beatrice bought her iPad from the bank of Mom and Dad.

This also includes walking our dog, Jenny, even walking her in the rain like the girls just did with me, although Mom and Dad are still the primary pooper scoopers.

"So, where are our Mary Janes," I said to Amy when we returned, again referencing The Family Man.

She laughed. "Exactly, but really, where are my Mary Janes, Dad! I've been cleaning this house since 6:30 am! C'mon!"

"We love you, Mom!"

Other "Days of Coronavirus" posts:

A Well-Being Worth Practicing

A Well-Being Worth Practicing

Sunday, December 6, 2020

The Little Wooden Reindeer

"Well I'm not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don't last
Well it's just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages..."

–Al Stewart, Time Passages

After we went downtown, the song crept out from the shadows. I couldn't help but sing some of it while our family played Apples to Apples. Then I listened to it while fixing dinner. It's one of many older songs from my childhood that always takes me back decades.

Or, just one year ago to 2019. One year pre-pandemic, when we were downtown with much of our community celebrating the season with our annual holiday parade. Our oldest Beatrice played flute in the school band, marching down Pacific Avenue, our Main Street, playing Jingle Bells, over and over again.

I walked along with the band with other parents, and my wife Amy and our youngest Bryce waved to us from the side of the street towards the end of the parade route. There was finally a break in the rain, and all us parents who traveled along with the band took tons of pictures and videos. The community clapped and waved, we clapped and waved, some danced in the street like Bryce and even the chief of police, and for a couple of hours the local social spectrum shone like a rainy day rainbow -- with Santa riding in at the end on a city fire truck.

We were all so looking forward to 2020. It was going to be a year like no other.

Well, it was and has been, that's for sure. But not even close to what our expectations were -- coronavirus, economic downturn, millions out of work, social and racial injustice and inequity, political upheaval, fires, missing family and friends, and much, much, more. A year later and there's no downtown holiday parade, no school marching bands, and the Bay Area is again on the cusp of locking down further due to surges of COVID-19. It's been tough on local businesses everywhere and our in our own local community many businesses have closed forever.

The shop local campaign has never been more important, and we've tried to do our part, ordering goods locally whenever possible. The Downtown Association of Santa Cruz has worked with local downtown merchants to make it easier to buy online and in store. That doesn't mean we haven't defaulted to ordering stuff online from Amazon, because we have, but we do try to strike a better balance when and where we can.

This year the Downtown Association of Santa Cruz launched a Reindeer Round-Up hunt (which runs through December 23), where kids (and adults) visit participating businesses displaying a small wooden reindeer, and then when enough reindeers are spotted, fun prizes are given away. Our girls loved it. We got some treats to eat, did some window shopping and then bought some downtown dollars for gifts to give away that can be used later at participating businesses.

Amy went to get the car and I walked the girls to the downtown information kiosk to turn in their reindeer forms. The woman working the kiosk wore a sweet candy cane elf hat and was thrilled that the girls did the reindeer round-up.

"You know, there's one more in here that you girls could find and add to your list," she said.

The three of us circled the kiosk but couldn't find it.

The kiosk employee exited and said, "I'll let you know when you get warmer. Try again."

We circled again.

"Ah -- you're getting warmer!" she said.

Then I looked up, and there on a little white shelf was the little wooden reindeer. And then the girls saw it, too.

They both pointed and said, "There it is!"

The kiosk employee literally jumped in the air, her candy cane elf hat bouncing on her head.

"Yeah! Great job!" she said.

The girls got to pick out a little gift, and they chose a small stuffed elephant and zebra. We got in the car and they told Mom all about it as we headed home. On the way home we drove along the ocean and as I looked out across water, I thought about how much we all looked forward to 2021, on how it could be a year like no other, how maybe we might be able to put this pandemic behind us, and much, much, more.

We should all look up more often.

"Well it's just now and then my line gets cast into these time passages..."

Other "Days of Coronavirus" posts:

Saturday, November 28, 2020

A Well-Being Worth Practicing

I want to be a grateful tree
unending love
for all who pass
to stop and smile
and then after awhile
embrace their grace within

–A Grateful Tree

Sunset by Beatrice

Even though we weren't together, we're still grateful. This was the first time in seven years we didn't go to my sister's house for Thanksgiving due to COVID-19. That tradition started after our parents passed away. We knew going into this holiday year that the pandemic reality would preempt our gathering. Instead, we fixed our own Thanksgiving meal and were grateful from afar.

This played out throughout America, with families choosing to not gather, and yet, there were many others who did choose to travel and gather. No judgment, just choices we all made. According to the latest numbers, nearly 50 people are dying each hour and the rate of infection is probably closer to 8 times higher.

A few weeks ago our youngest Bryce didn't feel well. We were worried, so my wife Amy called the doctor, who then said we should get Bryce tested for coronavirus. We had been practicing safety protocols ourselves and with our friend pod (wearing masks, social distancing, etc.), but then we ran a haunted garden with our pod, where more people than we thought came to walk through it. Plus, earlier that same day on Halloween, we went to the Beach Boardwalk, which I'm sure was grateful to be open, as was the families with kids who came, all masked up, even if it was only the food vendors giving away candy to the kids.

Thankfully Bryce was negative. We were grateful.

But, we would've been grateful even if she was positive, despite all the things we would've had to do after the fact, including getting sick ourselves. Because that's what we practice every day: gratitude. It was a long time coming for me; I had a hard time with happy even after Amy and I were together.

For years now, especially after we had our daughters, we've been practicing mindfulness and gratitude. And for the past two years we've had, and continue to have, weekly family meetings where we share our compliments, appreciation, things we notice about each other, and what we're grateful for. Plus, every night at dinner we share what we're grateful for. It's our way of saying grace.

Amy and I know that practicing gratitude can help improve health and emotional and spiritual well-being. We try to live that way every day. That was reinforced to us when we recently listened to a Hidden Brain podcast about the power of gratitude. Towards the end of the podcast, the psychologist who was being interviewed quote famed sociologist Georg Simmel.

"Gratitude is the moral memory of mankind."

And womenkind, of course. Without gratitude, as well as kindness and empathy, we are lost. We all have the capacity to overcome any kind of adversity and to thrive, even when we feel like we can't. It's up to the adults in the room to be mindful of this and teach our children in kind to be kind and to be grateful, because practicing gratitude often encourages others to do the same. That's a well-being worth practicing.

Other "Days of Coronavirus" posts:

Thursday, November 26, 2020

A Grateful Tree

I want to be a grateful tree

with branches high

that reach skyward

like all arms wide to

welcome the sun and moon

and heavens above

I want to be a grateful tree

with roots so deep

that reach downward

like arterial thrive

to feed its heart and soul

and heavens below

I want to be a grateful tree

a home to all

that fly and crawl

and scurry and pounce

in a welcome safe-haven

where no one is without

I want to be a grateful tree

unending love

for all who pass

to stop and smile

and then after awhile

embrace their grace within

--Kevin Grossman, #BhivePower

Sunday, November 22, 2020

It's This Moment That Matters

"Static on your frequency
Electrical storm in your veins
Raging at unreachable glory
Straining at invisible chains..."

–Rush, The Pass

The wheels came off my senior year in high school. Riddled with anxiety and daily panic attacks, I began to skip classes. My grades suffered. What had usually been somewhat effortless for me since I could remember, completing all my work and getting mostly straight A's with math and English being my best subjects, it all became a Sisyphean task for me. Something I had always done easily felt fruitless, pointless, even painful.

This continued into my first two years of college. And then one year at a time after that, I began ease off pushing that horrid boulder up the hill, until I finally arrived at one day on the beach.

When I think about all those years, I try to imagine any of them, especially the end of high school, being stuck in the middle of a global pandemic. If that would've happened back then, what would've then happened back then? Would we have gone to distance learning? Would that have helped ease my panic attack, being put into much fewer social situations? Not having to go to class in person? Although the reality is the technology didn't exist back then like it does today to go to all virtual classes. There probably still would've been back and forth to school to pick up school work, and that would've been too stressful for me.

Ugh. None of that matters though, because that's not what happened. Not even close. Today we are most certainly in a world in the middle of a global pandemic, and like millions of other parents, we're helping our two daughters traverse distance learning and limited social situations with friends and the pods we hang with.

But unlike me growing up, our oldest Beatrice struggles with math and reading (except when it comes to saving, giving and spending her allowance). My wife Amy works with her a lot, and so do I in between work, reading with her and helping where I can. Our youngest Bryce does not struggle with any subjects, but we help her as needed as well. However, for both, it's been quite the transition going to distance learning last spring and staying in it all of this fall. They're pretty resilient, though, and we're so grateful for that. We just want them to study, to learn and to do the best they can. To try, no matter how much Bea despises math (and she's quite vocal about that). They may even get the opportunity to go back to school two days per week in the spring, if and only if COVID-19 doesn't surge again in our county (which it has of late, and everywhere for that matter).

Unfortunately there are too many students falling behind everywhere, struggling with distance learning, with some students not even attending online school. It's been difficult for all involved -- students, parents, teachers, administrators -- everyone. We all just want things to go back to the way they were, but until we're mostly vaccinated and infection rates go down with the virus under control, there will be more distance learning and hybrid school models, and more students falling behind.

It sucks. Plus, we just had another Friday the 13th in November. Now, 13 is my lucky number, and yet, Friday the 13th is always associated with bad luck. At dinner one night the week of November 13, Bryce became quite animated and told us that because the last day of in-person school was Friday the 13th in March, when we wake up on Friday the 13th in November we should say "Jumanji" and everything would go back to pre-covid normal.

That didn't happen (even I hoped it would), and it will never happen, but the girls' fall semester grades did happen. For Bryce's grade school, there are no letter grades, but she had high marks overall. For Beatrice, we couldn't be prouder, because she got straight A's. It may not always look like this, but that doesn't matter. It's this moment that matters. And the next one. And the next.

Other "Days of Coronavirus" posts:

Sunday, November 15, 2020

The Bank of Mom and Dad

We have way too many devices. Big devices. Small devices. Medium-sized devices. Laptops, iPads, iPhones and old iPhones that are now iPods for our daughters. Most are still in pretty good shape, even if they're a few years old, and only one is a PC. Thank goodness for that (a vendor gift from a conference a few years ago). We prefer the Apples.

Of course we're grateful that we can have all these devices, even with the double-edged sword of managing device time with our daughters. However, as operating systems, applications and games evolve, older devices begin to show their age. They're just not supported anymore, and our girls can't play the games they love anymore. It's a racket, a scam, and it drives us a little bonkers. Damn those Apples.

I'm the gadget guy in our house, and yes, I upgrade my phone every other year, and upgrade my work computer every other year as well. My wife Amy doesn't care about the new gadgets like I do and still uses my old MacBook Pro that's at least five years old (it has had one major repair to date), and uses an iPhone 7.

But Beatrice, our oldest, has been asking for a new iPad for months now. We told her we weren't buying her a new one and she'd have to keep using the older one she has (one of our older ones). She kept asking, and we kept saying no.

And then we started talking to her about buying one with her own money. She did save over $100 of the "spend" part of her weekly allowance for a Nintendo Switch that we ended up buying from a friend. So, she began to consider saving her money again and buying a new iPad.

But that would take her quite a while to save for even the cheapest newish iPad available today. Instead, we offered her a line of credit from the Mom and Dad bank. She was intrigued. We told her that, with no money down, if she paid us at least $5 per week from her allowance for 72 weeks ($20 per month for 18 months), then we would buy her the iPad. All of this contingent on her doing her weekly chores she does for her weekly allowance, which she always does.

She said she wanted to think about it. We said that's great. Buying something on credit you may or may not want to afford, or shouldn't afford, or can't afford, is a new lesson for our daughters to learn. Beatrice thought about it, asked questions, thought about it some more, asked more questions, and then finally decided she wanted to do it.

I said she'd need to sign an agreement to make it official. Mom didn't think it was necessary, but let me do it anyway. I just wanted her to understand that this is something she'll have to do later in life and that when you agree to credit, you'll have to pay up or negative consequences will come. I didn't go into any detail on that yet, because she is only 12.

It's enough of a lesson for Beatrice to understand that you can buy things on credit (hopefully within reason) even if you don't have the money saved to do so. Every week Bea and her sister Bryce work for their allowance and then put money into three buckets: spend, save and give. This means money to spend, money to save and money to give to others, charities, etc.

Bea loves her new iPad. We did cover the extended warranty and buy her a cover, but she's already paid two installments on her shiny gold device.

When I had her sign her credit agreement, she said, "Really?" And I said, "Yes." She signed it.

She's in good hands, though. The Bank of Mom and Dad is a compassionate and forgiving creditor.

Other "Days of Coronavirus" posts:

Sunday, November 8, 2020

Something To Celebrate

Beatrice keeps using the word in the wrong way. In her defense, she does think she's kidding, so I get that. I'll ask her to clean up her clothes or a mess she's made, and she'll say, "Dad, stop bullying me."

We know she understands the difference; she's had enough Kidpower in her life to never get that one wrong. That's the organization my wife Amy works for that helps kids, teens and adults build healthy relationships and protect people from bullying, child abuse, kidnapping, prejudice, dating/domestic violence, and sexual assault.

But when Bea uses the word "bullying" in that context, I get uneasy. The fact is, bullying, harassment, intimate partner violence (domestic violence) and sexual assault are all to alive and well in 2020. Thankfully both her and her younger sister Bryce have the safety skills to protect themselves from all of the above, and we'll continue to reinforce them.

Because all of the above continues:

Lots of work to do here. Plus, divisive anger, fear, hate and general toxicity have thrived this year, just more of the same from the past decade, except now we're in a global pandemic and another election year. It's never been harder for so many of us to find common ground.

So, I'll try find some common ground here for those of us with children. Daughters in particular since that's Amy's and my world today. We all want our daughters to be safe. I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

Check.

We all want our daughters to be empowered with safety skills and to always be aware, calm and confident.

Check.

We don't want our daughters to be in toxic relationships of any kind, or support toxicity of any kind from others, whether those be friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, other adults, future bosses, future leaders, etc., and to not be a bystander as well -- to call it out when they see it.

Check.

And if they are in toxic relationships, for whatever reasons, we support them and help them to get out, not just tell them to deal with it.

Check.

We want them to have healthy, loving relationships, and healthy boundaries, and have empathy for others regardless of physical appearance, race/ethnicity, gender, disability, religion, political ideology or sexual orientation.

Check. (Although that's always a hard one for some of us.)

Because we want to be proud of our children no matter what they end up doing with their lives, and for them to lift others up instead of tearing them down. Today we can imagine that one day our daughters could be an astronaut, or an author, or an artist, or an actor, based on what they've told us to date. To have the freedom and support to make their own way regardless of where it leads, and to be safe along the way.

My God, one of them could someday be the vice president, or even the president. Can you imagine that? How amazing would that be?

Definitely something to celebrate!

Other "Days of Coronavirus" posts: