Tag: homefront

Doing What?

Well, I have been quite remiss in my entries of late. And I figured out why.

Too much doing, and not enough thinking.

Doing what? Like driving. Back and forth. To work and school. Dropping off at practice. Picking up at practice. Oh, and the drive-thrus.

Doing what else? Like talking on the phone. I don’t even know what about. I know that I shouldn’t talk while I am driving, but it has become mutually inclusive. And rest assured there is no thought going into these conversations.

Doing what else? Like furrowing my brow. There has been a bunch of brow furrowing going on for the past few months. Again, not a thoughtful kind of furrowing. Just that just below a boil worry. No great breakthroughs, because that would have meant there was some thinking.

Doing anything else? I will be damned if I could identify effective use of my non-thinking time. It seems like I am in a whirlwind of activity, yet little to show.

I think–hey! that’s a good start–that I will work to be a little more mindful. Using my mind rather than losing my mind. That feels better already.

(c) 2005-2016 Doctor of Thinkology. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons License.
Posted on by docthink 0

Pickup or Delivery

We were driving back from practice and were going to pick up a pizza on the way home.

The 16-year-old: This coupon is for a specialty pizza.
Me: Well my problem is that I just don’t like the specialty pizzas.
The 16-year-old: What?
Me: The meat pizza features “meat products” and that makes me queasy.
The 16-year-old: I like it.
Me: And my big thing is with that supreme pizza. I like everything on it except the green peppers.
The 16-year-old: You can pick them out.
Me: Well, it’s really hard to pick out the green peppers. They get mixed in with the cheese and onions and you always miss some.
The 16-year-old: Well, why don’t you just order it without green peppers?

Me: [pause]
Me: [laughing and gagging] I am pretty embarrassed. To be honest, I have never thought of ordering it without green peppers.
The 16-year-old: Crap. The way you were laughing I thought you were being harsh on me for asking a dumb question.
Me: [still laughing] No, you can laugh at me.

D’oh!

(c) 2005-2016 Doctor of Thinkology. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons License.
Posted on by docthink 2

Homecoming

This week is Homecoming Week for the 16-year old. Today he got to dress like a Bama. So he wore the oddest conglomeration of clothing, primarily consisting of layers of mismatched crap. (Although I do admit surprise to see the T-mac* jersey as the top layer, but this is a digression.)

Also this week, I drove past my old high school, a bunch of times. And for the first time since I graduated, I almost stopped to see what it looked like. It didn’t have a football field when I was there. We had to rent from the other school. But we did have fun at those Friday night games! When I was there, kids and teachers would huddle around the exit doors–smoking cigarettes. I bet that there aren’t ANY teachers bumming a Newport off of a student these days.

When I was there, me and M.P. used to skip first hour and hang out at the Bicentennial Family Restaurant. Drinking coffee and avoiding a VERY dull class. When I was there, we didn’t have AP classes. I was invited by my “college prep” English teacher to sit for a test that could get me college credit. But it cost a bunch of money, and there were no guarantees. I did learn, a few months later, that my college classmates had earned tons of college credit from these AP tests. Shoot, the SAT was a big enough deal, even for me.

When I was there, I had a fight with my social studies teacher who threw me out of class for insisting on fairness in his grading of a test. I only agreed to go out on “independent study” if I could bring 3 of my cronies with me. We obsequiously studied the history of film and were only thwarted by our teacher’s inability to pick up the AV on his way in.

As I drove by the school, I thought about stopping in. But then I just kept driving.

*if you do click here, let the song load.

(c) 2005-2016 Doctor of Thinkology. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons License.
Posted on by docthink 0

Shut Up and Drive

And yet another great thing about our beach locale is the proliferation of low trafficked roads. Just what the 15-year-old wanted.

Him: Can I drive?
Me: Okay!
Him: Alien, return my parental unit.

We drive standard transmissions, so part one of the lesson is getting the clutch, brake, gas thing together. Oh, and the shift part. He caught on fast.

Next was getting out of the driveway and around the circle in the cul–de-sac. Not bad.

So we went to the next phase–driving on the road, turning and down-shifting. That went well, too. Even that time when there was opposing traffic–a pick-up lumbering in our direction–no freak out. Smooth sailing.

Next was going more deeply throughout the neighborhood, all the way to the main road where we played a version of the Chinese fire drill to swap drivers. Very well done.

On the way back from town, we swapped just as we got off the main road and he drove back. We were coming up to an intersection.

Me: Hey, that was a stop sign.
Him: Hunh? (hitting the brakes a bit late.)
Me: Back up a bit and let’s try that again. What do you do at a stop sign?
Him: You mean that was for me? I saw it, but I didn’t know that it was for me.

Turns out that he was used to seeing them and ignoring them from the passenger seat.

Next lesson, basic traffic rules.

(c) 2005-2016 Doctor of Thinkology. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons License.
Posted on by docthink 0

Siren’s Call

The beach beckons the Doc for our annual sojourn.

I know. It’s early for us, but football practice starts in early August and was a big factor in moving the calendar up.

I am looking forward to the 4th over the water. Don’t know what to expect, but the key to this vacation is keeping expectations minimal. So, I am expecting sand and hops. Oh, and clearing my head.

And, for my loyal reader, don’t worry. I’ll be back in a couple weeks.

(c) 2005-2016 Doctor of Thinkology. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons License.
Posted on by docthink 0

Too Much Coffee

I was washing the post-dinner dishes. It was unusual in that I did it after dinner, rather than in the morning. I know, I know. You all can’t stand dishes in the sink overnight. I can see your point, but I can’t stand to stand over the sink after getting dinner on the table.

The spouse is out of town. For like 2o days. So, for me it’s an exercise in single-parenting. It’s times like this when my respect for my friends and colleagues who do it alone runneth over.

[“What?” you child-free readers say. “Doc, your kids are big. So don’t be a whiner.” Yes, they are big, and have bigger responsibilities. More practices, more homework, and the commensurate amount of more yelling–oops, did say that?]

So after a gourmet meal out of the blue box punctuated by some darn good peas (flash frozen, not canned), I turned to the dishes. It shouldn’t surprise you that there were still dishes from breakfast.

My last task was to wash out the coffee pot. I was surprised to spill out a bunch of leftover coffee. Hunh. I made enough coffee for two this morning. But there was only me to drink it.

(c) 2005-2016 Doctor of Thinkology. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons License.
Posted on by docthink 0

Let It Snow

It’s a cold, wet morning. The raindrops hit the car with a thud. They are big.

The 12-year old: Man, I wish this was snow.

Me: Well, it doesn’t usually snow in D.C. this early. When I was a kid, sometimes we would get snow at Halloween.
Him: At Halloween????
Me: Yah. But it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t really unusual, but not really common, either.
Him: Like it happened once?
Me: No, more like every five years or so. It wasn’t unheard of. But one of my favorite snows ever happened on Thanksgiving. At the J.L. Hudson’s Thanksgiving Parade.
Him: You had a parade?
Me: Yeah. I think they still do. But I was there with my sibs, and we were watching the parade and it was cold. And the snow started to come down. And each piece of snow was like the size of a frisbee. And each piece was big and very wet. And we were soaked through and my sister drove home and we had hot chocolate.
Him: I like hot chocolate.

Me too. Happy Thanksgiving.

(c) 2005-2016 Doctor of Thinkology. Some rights reserved under Creative Commons License.
Posted on by docthink 0

The Party’s Over

Yes, that party known as SUMMER VACATION is coming to an abrupt end. The 14-year-old will need to get up at the butt-crack of dawn. This may be the first time that he has seen a morning hour since June 3rd. Except for when we drove all night to make the early ferry to the beach. He mostly slept on the way.

The 12-year-old* has one more day, but, frankly, it’s over for him, too. He is furiously printing out his summer reading assignment. Turns out he needed 5X8 index cards for this assignment. At least that’s what he said. The summer reading info was misplaced sometime at the beginning of summer, so I have to go with his story.

The really good news is that we were able to find all the clean uniforms that were put away a 11 or 12 weeks ago. Well, some pieces were replaced, but others were found, still clean. Sometimes clean clothes that have been put away become less put away. And then they have to be rewashed. We are still, however, without the bucs for the 14-year-old. His size 13’s are backordered. He claims he can wear sneakers until they arrive. Again, I have to go with his story.

So the party’s over for this year. And a New Year starts.

* Don’t get confused. He was the 11-year-old two weeks back. See Naming Convention. I can’t help it if I worry about you, Loyal Reader! Also, I must admit that I originally typed “11-year-old.” He was looking over my shoulder and promptly corrected my big error.

Posted on by docthink 0

House As Locker

Today is my first day off in 19 days. Yes, that is 19 days straight working, most days 11 or 12 hours long. (Some longer, a few shorter.) So, you say, “What do you have to THINK about that, Doc?”

Well, here is what has happened. My house has turned into a locker. Not a locker room, mind you. But simply a locker. It is a place that we drop things off, on the way to the next thing. It is not a destination, but a storage spot.

At Target at back-to-school time, you can find mirrors and little storage thing-ees that facilitate using your locker. We don’t use them here. No-SIR-ee.

Our locker is for backpacks, briefcases, clothes (usually plucked from baskets or tossed dirty, willy-nilly), blackberries and phones to recharge, shoes, football uniforms, and piles of mail (which likely include bills). Any food items are to grab and go. One difference is that we sleep in the locker. But it isn’t for comfort, just practicality.

This week included multiple football practices, an evening (okay NIGHT) in the emergency room with a broken hand, big dance, two tests, multiple quizzes, and like a thousand and fifty hours on the telephone and e-mail on Hurricane Katrina, oh, and let’ s not forget the calls not made to check in on the post-lung cancer operative Dad (doing great), and newly jaundiced mom-in-law (TBD). Whew!

Tonight, we had dinner at the table. It was such a treat that the sixth-grader insisted on candles. It was a special occasion.

The same, said, sixth-grader brought up (in a confused movie reference) the John Bloorman movie Hope and Glory. The movie chronicles a young family during the WWII Blitz in London, and how the family (mostly young son) coped most excellently.

So, maybe life with house as locker isn’t as damaging as I thought. Or maybe the plates filled with a meal cooked on the stove in the locker and the candles on the locker table were a welcome relief.

Maybe (I think) the locker might have been transformed back into a home.

Posted on by docthink 2