family

Ships Passing in the Night

This is my son’s junior year in high school and he has participated in athletics the entire time he has been at Rancho Buena Vista High School.  I have watched him play football, swim for the swim team and now be on the water polo team for the first time.  I can tell as an outsider looking in, the swim/water polo program and the football program are going completely opposite directions.

His freshman year, I encouraged him to play football for a couple of different reasons.  Number one being that everyone is so hard core anymore you need to get in on the ground floor because if you try out your sophomore or junior year they won’t know or care who you are unless you’re a dominating athlete.  Number two reason being this is the only time in your life you can play organized tackle football for free and it’s a lot of fun.  He was small for his age and hadn’t had a growth spurt yet, but earned himself a starting wide receiver spot on the team.  The team was lackluster in performance.  The coaching is poor, the scheme is terrible and the kids collectively didn’t have any team speed.  Move onto sophomore year and it’s more of the same.  I think the jv team only won a single game all season.  I knew there was something wrong with the football program when my son broke his leg at the beginning of the season and not a single coach or representative from the football program called or emailed to see how he was doing.  I am happy to say that he is not playing football this year.

It looked like it was going to be more of the same with the water polo program this year and I was disappointed for Stewart.  The varsity coach didn’t show up to practice occasionally this summer and missed a couple of the matches.  It left me to think what the hell is wrong with athletics at  RBV?  Lo and behold, the varsity water polo coach was either fired or resigned and immediately replaced.  What a breath of fresh air!  The new coach came in with qualifications and set the tone immediatley.  You can already see that the other coaches, all the players and the parents are buying into this new guy!  Everyone is positive, the kids are practicing hard and the coach has some serious expectations of these teens.  I like it.  I’m pumped and looking forward to going to the matches and learning about a new sport.

We had a bbq in our backyard over the holiday weekend and someone mentioned that the RBV varsity football team lost 52-0 on Friday night.  Inexcusable.  I really feel for all those kids, several of whom I have known since they were little boys,  who have spent four years of their life to be coached to such a poor level.  These kids lift weights all winter, spend their entire summers at the football field and this is the end result.  Don’t blame it on the kids.  RBV is the most populous school in San Diego county and there are athletes to be had for this football team.  My daughter dances for Maroon Magic and will be dancing at half-time at the home games but you’re not going to get any money out of me to watch bad football.  I don’t watch it on Saturday or Sunday and I’m not going to watch bad football on Friday nights either.  I will save my cash and show up at halftime for free to watch my daughter and head on back home.

I will tell you what I am going to do.  I am spending twenty bucks or so in gas money to drive to La Jolla HS on Friday and Saturday to enjoy the great energy and positiveness and work ethic from these water polo players and coaches.

Someone at RBV was man enough to make the change in the water polo program, now they got to man up and make a change in the football program.  If it’s “all about the children,” then by God get some new coaches in there for these young men.

Out.

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Bang Your Head

Went to a show last Saturday night.  The band was doing its thing.  The mosh pit started and then the crowd parted and there was Kiki Dee.   Weezer

I did go to a show last Saturday night.  I took four teenagers and a nine year old to the Weezer concert at the Del Mar Race Track.  I think the evening left as much an impression on me as it did the kids.  It all started when we arrived after race five and I was delighted to find out all the kids got in free.  Money for the ponies!  We didn’t win anything on that account, but oh well.

After the ninth race, we headed on over to the venue which was in the infield.  If you haven’t been to the track, the infield is the center of the racetrack.  We set up our blankets and lawn chairs and cooler.  My sixteen year old son and his buddy wanted to get as close as possible, so they meandered their way up with my friend’s 11 year old son and friend.  My fourteen year old daughter and her friend weaved their way up front also.  I figured they’re fourteen and I need to let them roam around a little.  Jacqueline and I hung out in the back.

The whole concert was enjoyable.  Jacqueline sat on my shoulders most of the time and sang out loud to the songs she knew.  I told my wife later on that she was a babe magnet.  All the women wanted to come up and meet her and give her a high five because she is so cute.

When the teens returned I was regaled by their stories of being up front and close to the band.  My son, his buddy and the 11 year olds entered the mosh pit and got punched in the face, kneed in the head and tossed all over.  They helped crowd surf a guy into the hands of security.  They watched a guy throw a turkey leg at Weezer and he dodged and then picked it up and took a bite out of it.  The two teen girls had popcorn dumped on them.  They were offered a joint repetitively and declined.  Thank the Lord.  They watched two chicks get into a cat fight and got to bop the giant beach balls that were bouncing around the crowd a couple of times.  Quite an earful for a dad standing just a couple hundred feet away but separated by a throng of thousands.

If that wasn’t enough, getting out of that place was skechy.  The only way out is an unlit underground tunnel about twenty feet wide for 10,000 people.  I told the kids to just relax for awhile and wait for the crowd to die down.  The crowd never seemed to die down.  I asked a security guard about another exit and he said they had just opened a gate where we could walk across the racetrack.  We headed that way but there was no open gate and hundreds of people just started jumping the fence and so did we.  I lifted Jacqueline over and then the cooler.  Jennifer hopped over and then came security yelling  at us to back away from the fence.  I wasn’t about to be separated from my daughters so I jumped the fence anyway and the rest of the kids followed.  We ran across the turf and we ran across the track.  It was during this that I noticed the rail the horses follow around the track was already toppled over in many sections and the bushes destroyed.  I yelled to the kids, “Run fast because the cops are going to be coming!”  The guy next to me said that was the funniest bit of parenting he had ever witnessed.  As soon as we got into the parking lot the squad cars were pulling in.

I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun with my kids and I don’t think they’ll ever forget the night we went to see Weezer.

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It Actually Works!

I liken parenting to running a marathon.  There is  nothing short, fast speedy, quick about being a mom or a dad.  Parenting is a long journey.  In a marathon, you may feel great at mile three, crappy at mile nine and great again at mile thirteen.  In a marathon, you may feel dehydrated, tired, pull a muscle and maybe collapse.

As a parent, all the business distracts you from the passage of time.  You live in a world of carpools, homework, science projects, essays, church activities, sports, piano lessons, tap dancing or whatever it maybe.  Time takes on the dimensions of do this and don’t do that.  Did you say please?  Did you say thank you?  Look the person in eye and say hello.  Sit up straight.  Eat your vegetables.  Stop crying.  No biting.  Time is moving at a much faster rate than you realize when you’re parenting.  All the business of parenting makes the years go by fast and pretty soon you look in the mirror and say what the hell happened to me?  You just hope and pray that everything you have tried to teach them will sink in and they will grow up to be good people.

Every Sunday morning, Karen and I go swim for an hour and a half.  We then race home, change clothes, eat something real quick and then race to church with the kids.  On Mother’s Day, before Karen and I left for the pool, I told the kids if they didn’t have anything for their mother, they had a good hour or so to make a card, eat some cereal and be ready for church.  We had a dinner party the night before and still had the banquet tables out and the kitchen was full  of dishes.

Lo and behold, when we got home, there was a present and cards on the table.  The banquet tables were packed  up and put away.  Decorations were put up on the walls.  The dishes were all cleaned.  Our bed was made and my son had bacon, eggs and toast all ready for everyone.  All three of them worked together in harmony to honor their mom who does so much for them.  We were surprised and tickled pink.  This was the best mother’s day they could have given their mom.  I am so impressed that I don’t expect anything for father’s day.

Feeling pretty good around mile fifteen right about now.

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My Oldest Daughter

The nature versus nurture argument is a great topic for conversation especially when it comes to family members.  It’s relatively easy to understand why your hair is black and your eyes are blue.  Developments in personality and mannerisms are a different story.  Am I that way because of the way I was brought up?

Karen and I have always agreed that our oldest and youngest seem to have my personality and our middle one Jennifer, the oldest daughter, has her personality.  I’m more of the goofball and liking to joke around.  My wife is more of the serious and determined nature.  Due to her shyness and guardedness, she comes off as aloof at times.  This is also how I would describe my daughter.  It’s hard to get them to laugh.  They can be a tough crowd, but when they do laugh, you know you were truly funny and it’s the most wonderful sound to my ears.

It hasn’t been that I’m disconnected from my oldest daughter.  At times, I haven’t felt as connected to her as the other kids.  Her interests and mine are at other ends of the spectrum, similar to her mom and I.  For husband and wife it is opposites attract.  For father and daughter, it can be challenging.  Jennifer is very feminine.  There is not an ounce of tom boy in her.  I really can’t have a conversation on scrapbooking, shopping or fashion and she can’t watch a minute of football or listen to a minute of Dane Cook.

However, I am pleased to say that right now I feel more connected to her than ever.  She recently turned fourteen years old and seemed to transform overnight.  That’s the way it seemed to me, but she’s probably just been changing incrementally and I’ve just noticed.  Maybe it’s the other way around and I’m the one that’s changing?  I don’t think so.  There’s a refreshing spunkiness about her right now.  She has a lot to say about a lot of things.  She’s funny and witty and has a lot of good comebacks.  I have really enjoyed our exchanges.  I enjoy watching her grow up.  I’m lucky to have her.

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How Irish Are You?

There is definitely Irish blood on my mother’s side.  My mother’s maiden name is Reidy and my grandma’s maiden name was Flanagan.  My mom has it all traced back to the 1600’s.  My wife Karen received some great genealogy information from her aunt and uncle tracing her family back to Scotland to the 1400’s.  I think it’s all a great hobby if you have the time, but I don’t have the time.  I’ll let all the relatives do the dirty work and probably latch on sometime in my fifties or sixties to help the process along.

My grandmother on my father’s side always like to talk about our Irish blood.  She had all kinds of limericks and would even do an Irish jig every now and then.  My father always bristled at her so called Irish ancestry because her mother was from France and her father was Canadian making him English or French.  I don’t think my grandfather had any Irish blood in him even though he was born in New York.  My father always contested his mother’s claim to Irish heritage because he insisted there just wasn’t any evidence to the fact.  She was somehow orphaned as a child and was adopted by the McClain family of Chicago.  Who knows, maybe grandma did her research and it just never got to my dad.  I think she just liked to tease him.

The Irish are a proud bunch for all the negative stereotypes.  A lot of people don’t like catholics and most of them are catholic.  The Irish have been painted illiterate, bad tempered, heavy drinkers who like to fight a lot.  Wow.  Blacks and Jews thought they had it bad.  I’m sure there’s a lot of good that comes from being Irish also, but I don’t know what that is either.  I do know that St. Patrick’s Day could use a good makeover.  Corned beef, cabbage and green beer is just going to give you a lot of gas and it doesn’t taste any good either.  Leprechauns are like clowns.  They’re kinda scary.

May the wind be always at your back and a pot of gold at the end of your rainbow.  Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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Talk To Your Daughters

My sister died when I was a teenager.  She had an inoperable brain tumor.  We watched for two years as the cancer slowly took control of her body, day by day, as her physical and mental capabilities incrementally diminished, until the cancer eventually took her life.  I don’t know what is worse, a slow death when you know its coming or the unexpected sudden heinous death that Chelsea King just suffered thirty minutes from my house at Lake Hodges.  I guess both routes to death’s door are equally perturbing in their own ways.  I can’t get out of my mind the fear the young woman experienced in her last minutes.  I also can’t get out of my mind the tremendous guilt and sadness her parents are going to experience for the rest of their lives.  They are going to go through that afternoon everyday for the rest of their lives.  They are going to question every place they went and why.  We should have done this.  Why didn’t we do that?  I pray for them that they can come through this someday.  Nobody or family deserves an end like this.

I know that my two daughters have been preoccupied with the news of Chelsea King’s death.  It’s time to have that conversation that we’ve had before, but need to reinforce from time to time.  Be Safe.  We have lots of open fields around our house.  It’s a great area to go biking, jogging and letting the dogs run free.  It is also an area my daughters are forbidden to go without me.  I have been out there on my own at times and felt uncomfortable.  I have run into many a jogger or dog walker out in the fields enjoying the fresh air and countryside.  I have also been tracked by coyote.  I have run into illegal aliens.  I have run into strange men.  I have also run into the lone woman jogging from time to time.  You can sense their discomfort when they usually don’t acknowledge you and get by you as fast as they can.  They shouldn’t be out there alone.  You should always be with a buddy.  A buddy can always run for help.  A buddy may notice something you don’t.  The old “two heads are better than one” works.  It will keep you safe and it will be a deterrent.  Just like lions and wolves, human predators go after those who have been separated from the herd.

Have you ever watched Chris Hansen’s “To Catch a Predator” on Dateline?  The scary thing is how many shapes and sizes the predators come in.  Sure some of them are creepy looking and you wouldn’t get within thirty feet of them, but too many of them are normal looking and mild mannered.  They are wolves in sheep’s clothing.  The one noticeable thing with most of these dirtbags is their complete lack of any sense of right or wrong.  They seem to think their evil compulsions are normal.  What’s a young woman to do?  Trust your senses.  Your senses are real and they work.  Be wary of strangers.  Am I telling you ladies anything you didn’t already know?  Women have survived for centuries on their instincts and senses.  Our daughters need to do the same.

Chelsea King has suffered and gone on to the other side.  Pray for her family and friends.  They are the ones that need it now.

 

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Sweet 16!

First of all, I am amazed that I have helped create a human being and have gone through sixteen years with him.  His mom and I are excited for him and we truly hope he is enjoying his high school years since we don’t have much time left with him.  Before the blink of an eye he will be a man and off living his life.

It seems like a lot of parents and the government are completely paranoid about their teens getting a driver’s license.  Karen and I can’t wait.  I wish he could have gotten his license on his birthday, but with his broken leg and all, he’s a little behind schedule.  However, in a couple of weeks, we should have a new driver in the house.

I am looking forward to this for mainly selfish reasons.  When you have three children, a lot of your life is spent in the car.  Almost every night of the week, either Karen or I are driving around for dance, soccer, swim, surfing and whatever else you can think of.  We believe the kids need to work hard in school, but we also believe they should have an athletic endeavor to keep fit, so it is all brought upon ourselves.

About three years ago, I had a melt down in the car.  It was Labor Day weekend and there was a soccer tournament.  Why do these morons schedule games at seven in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays?  After a long week at work and spending the entire weekend at a soccer tournament in one hundred degree heat, I lost my temper in the car on the way home.  All this driving around was getting to me.  Something had to give.  We had to change our priorities and we had to actively look to carpool with other families. 

I got over my tizzy and life continued, but when you’re child is fifteen there is a constant tug of war going on.  They want to do more and go more places, but they are entirely dependent on you for transportation.  I don’t know about you, but getting up at 5:30 in the morning, working all day and then picking your son up at  11:30pm on Friday night at a party that is eight miles from your house just isn’t appealling.  I’m becoming a fuddy duddy.

Here we are on the brink of a new driver in the house and I can’t wait.  He can take himself to and from school.  He can help drive his sisters around.  He can drive himself to and from swim practice.  He can drive himself to and from the beach.  We cand send him to the grocery store.  We can make him go gas up the car.  It seems the possibilities are endless.

You’d think it’s my birthday as excited as I am.

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End of a Decade

It’s not just the end of the year, it’s the end of a decade.  Puts things in a different light if you think of it that way.  Do you feel worn out at the end of a year?  I sure do.  I think it has more to do with the frenetics of Christmas than the conclusion of a year.  December is busy in so many ways that it’s the most exhaust ing month of the year.  It is also a good time to reflect because it is the ending and a new beginning all in one.  We measure so many things by the year like birthdays, graduations, weddings, births and deaths.  If you’ve had a rough year, then you put your hopes on better times to come.  If you’ve had a great year, you wonder if it can continue?

Ten years ago the media was abound with Y2K.  The end of the world will happen at the end of the millenia.  A computer glitch will bring the whole world to a stand still.  What a load of crap.  This decade we have a whole lot more important things to worry about like when is my damn sales revenue going to go up?  Ten years ago, I was 32 years old with two children, just moved into a house, vice president at the business and going a million miles an hour.  Present day, I’m still in the house, three children and now the president of the company.  You know those optical illusions, when you look at it one way you see a certain object and then you blink your eyes and see something completely different?  That’s what I feel looking back the past ten years.  In some ways ten years ago seems forever and in other ways it has gone the speed of light.

My main reflections are on the people who’ve impacted my life in the last ten years.  I had the birth of my daughter Jacqueline.  What a wonderful addition to our family she has been.  I can’t imagine the other four of us without her.  I also lost my grandmother and my father.  These are the first thing that come to my mind.  The great joys and the great sorrows.  It’s easy to ride the wave of joy.  It takes no effort at all.  It’s much more difficult to overcome grief.  You only realize these things until years later how they have affected you.

Personally, I have spent the past three years trying to defy mother nature by not accepting my own mortality.  I feel the aging of my body and don’t like it.  You want to go for a five mile run all hills.  Let’s do it.  I’m f***ing sore and my ankle hurts.  You want to do a mini triathlon.  Let’s go!  Let’s have another bottle of wine, I won’t be hurting in the morning.  You want another helping of these cheesy potatoe?  Pile it on.  I have tried my best to defy mother nature and it just doesn’t work.  Instead of fighting mother nature, I’m ready to accept her and be at peace with myself.  Is this a sign of maturity?

I’m looking forward to another ten years.  If all goes well, my house will be paid off.  I’ll get to see all my kids graduate from high school and head off to college.  There could even be a wedding in the next ten years.  Heck, I could be a grandpa in ten years. 

If you want to have a great conversation with your spouse, then select their New Year’s Resolution for them.  I always pick a resolution for Karen and the ensuing conversation is quite lively!

Happy New Year!

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Flu This

The Hooks family just completed one week of barf-o-rama.  So far, I am the lucky one that seems to have eluded the illness but I do have an impending sense of doom that something bad is going to happen at any moment.  It all started eight days ago when we got the call from school that Jacqueline was vomiting and needed to be picked up.  Karen leaves work early and then has to stay home on Tuesday while our little one just lays on the couch and watches television and sleeps.  It’s not too bad staying home from school for the kids when you have three hundred channels to choose from.  I remember when the choices were “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” or “That Girl” and you were dying to go back to school just to get away from the bad television and the boredom.

Of course, Karen had planned on taking Veteran’s Day off but had to work after missing the day before, so I decided to stay home last Wednesday.  It was a good day.  I had the kids work like slaves and we cleaned the place up nice and neat.  We decided to go to the new Sonic that opened up that all the kids are talking about.  Crazy, the line of cars was an hour long for food.  It’s sad that the most exciting thing to happen in Vista in the last twenty years is a Sonic opening up, but who am I to pass judgement on this little town.  Anyways, all was good until Jennifer walked in the door from her friend’s house at 5:15pm bawling her head off.  In trying to console her, we gathered that she had puked in the street right before walking in the front door.  We got another sickie poo!  Wait, what is that I hear?  Mom just got home and she’s puking.  We’re on a roll now.  Stewart gets it on Friday, but didn’t actually puke until Sunday.  Weird.  I’m just thankful that I have still dodged the bullet.  The puking comes on suddenly with no warning.  I sat in a conference room with twelve people all day Friday praying that I wouldn’t spew all over everyone. 

All I see and hear about seems to be getting vaccinated for the flu and H1N1.  No, thank you.  My father had heart disease and was strongly urged to get the flu shot every year by his cardiologist.  He and my mom got the flu shot every year and then proceeded to get the flu about two weeks later.  Call me superstitious.  Karen got the flu shot and then she gets the flu.  I think she might even have had the flu twice in the last month and now she has to get the H1N1 shot because she works for a health care provider.  Suey! 

I hope everyone has a healthy Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Nothing worse than being ill over the holidays.  Take your vitamin C.

Flu this.

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Fundraising From Hell

I want you to think back to when you were a kid.  Do you remember “No Soliciting” signs on the front doors of businesses and houses?  It was a different time before email and websites and eight hundred television stations.  There were actually door to door salesman that would walk around trying to sell you stuff because it was one of the ways available to get their product in front of you.  It actually was so prevalent that people would get pissed from having their front door bell rang all the time, they put these signs up giving you fair warning not to knock on their door.  I can still remember my father slamming the door in the face of some guy from Greenpeace way back when.

When we signed our son up for little league, you had to assist the league in fundraising.  This was done by having each family sell a box of about twenty candy bars.  You either take the time to sell the candy bars or you pay an additional forty dollars cash up front for the registration fee if you want your kid to play baseball.  We take the chocolate bars and walk around the neighborhood once and sell maybe one or two candy bars.  What are we gonna do with the rest of them?  You give it three or four weeks and they magically disappear into my mouth, my wife’s mouth and my kids’ mouths.  Now, we’ve eaten all the candy and have to pay for it.  Good grief! 

The door to door salesman still exists but in a different form and for a different purpose.  They are all cute little boys and girls walking around the neighborhoods in some kind  of uniform or another with freckles and ballcaps or ribbons in their hair.  The typical for sale items are magazines, wrapping paper, popcorn, candy and cookies.  It’s the perfect scam getting the children to do the dirty work for all of these organizations that supposedly need money and it’s high time it stopped.  It’s the same old sob story with the teacher’s, the schools, the pta, the girl scouts, the cub scouts and so on.  If we don’t fundraise, then programs and activities are going to be cut.  I’ve been hearing this same old tune for a long time and it never seems to change and the programs and activities always seem to grow and never diminish.

The ultimate question is where does all the money go?  Do you remember the director of the Red Cross here in San Diego whose salary was $400,000.00 per year?  You ever notice there is never an accounting made available of what the funds are for?  What’s the cost of the actual goods being sold?  Whose really benefiting from the proceeds?  How much of the proceeds actually ends up at the local level?  When did this become the children’s responsibility to do this?  How much free labor did these organizations just receive from us and our kids? 

I know a lot of you think I sound like a curmudgeon.  What put me over the top?  The schools sure do seem to send a lot of papers home with the children.  Usually, my wife reads all of these papers and I never looked at them until recently.  My eight year old daughter brings me a piece of paper saying I have to fill it out because she has to return it in the morning.  It’s an order form to buy books.  The schools’ and the teachers’ are now peddling books to the children through the classroom and I have to fill out a form saying yes or no.  Why can’t they read the books at the school?  Isn’t the library good enough?  Shouldn’t our taxes cover this?  Please don’t tell me some kid isn’t going to learn how to read if I don’t help out.

Do people question things anymore?  Are we all so busy in our own lives that we don’t notice the slow transformations that have taken place incrementally over time?  Are we all ever going to stand up and say no to some of this stuff or are we too afraid of conforming and keeping our mouths shut?  I sure have a lot more questions than answers.

I won’t slam the door in your face, but the answer will be a polite, “No.”

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