My daughter Leah wants to be a farmer – she thinks it’ll be fun. I could probably find dozens of local farmers who could disabuse her of that notion faster than you can say “sunk costs and unpredictable weather.” Actually, I could only find a handful of local farmers these days – there aren’t nearly as many of them as they used to be. To rework the old joke about the music business:
Q. How do you make a million dollars in farming?
A. It’s easy – just start with two million dollars.
But no, in this case, Dear Old Dad (emphasis on the “Old”) isn’t going to be the dreamcrusher.
After all, she already has her plans drawn up:
Looks a whole lot better than an office cubicle, doesn’t it? Perhaps I can join Leah on her farm… be the Eb to her Mr. Douglas.
Not-so-breaking news from the solar eclipse department: My daughter Leah was one of several kids interviewed at school on Monday by a local TV station. Actually, “interviewed” isn’t the right description – the reporter just asked the kids to use a single word to describe the eclipse. (And clearly some kids need a refresher course in math, because they use more than one word.)
In case you don’t know what Leah looks like, I’ll give you a couple of hints to help you spot her in the video below:
A. When she is interviewed, she lifts up her protective eyewear… much like football players who take off their helmet after they score, she knows that you have to show off your face if you want to get more endorsement deals.
B. She uses teen slang to describe the eclipse.
Yes, that’s my daughter… she’s so sick – in the Urban Dictionary sense of the word.
As Casey Kasem liked to say, “keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for those stars.”
Our oldest child started his final year of high school yesterday.
If you look closely, you can almost see a Mona Lisa smile…
Seems like only yesterday we were putting the “McNicholas High School Class of 2018” sign in our yard when he was halfway through 8th grade, and 2018 seemed light years away. Now it’s just around the corner. College applications await… so do financial aid forms, which I hear are a real treat to fill out.
Gabriel is a great student (no, we don’t have the bumper stickers on our cars but we could). He’s a hard worker (he held down two jobs this summer and will keep one throughout the school year). He’s a safe driver (my insurance premiums are thankful for that). He’s gone from never having played a single second of organized football as a freshman to the starting right tackle on the Rockets team (see “hard worker” above). He’s come so far, so fast… yet the adventure is just beginning.
Here are my three youngest kids waiting at the bus stop yesterday morning on the first day of the new school year.
Leah (9th grade) was “so excited” that she couldn’t sleep the night before. (To be clear, the excitement stems from seeing her friends, not from the classwork.) Peter (11th grade) just had to have his four eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, to stay on his weight training plan (I think it’s called “suns out/guns out”). Andrew (7th grade) had the trepidation you’d expect from someone attending their first day at a 7-12 school with a big campus, a confusing classroom layout and 2000+ kids.
If you believe the funny Staples commercial from the 90s, back-to-school time is fun for parents.
Obviously the dad in that commercial wasn’t the one responsible for waking up two teenagers and a twelve year old every school morning… at the ungodly hour of 6 a.m. They have to be at the bus stop at the end of our street by 6:30, which seems like it could qualify as “cruel and unusual punishment” for kids who, at their current ages, are biologically wired to stay up later and wake later.
During the summer, I can “sleep in” until about 5:50 a.m. That gives me enough time to do a bit of morning exercise (love those kettlebell swings), eat breakfast (it involves sauerkraut – don’t judge), take a shower and maybe check email before my bus to work arrives at 6:45. But the school schedule is a game-changer. Now every morning becomes a fire drill. Especially with our youngest starting junior high – so he’s now on the same wake-up schedule as his older siblings. And we only have two showers in our house. I figure I’ll have to start getting up at 5:15 or so in order to keep up with my exercise regimen, wake the kids (it takes a few tries), make them breakfast (it ain’t gourmet) and get them to the bus stop (a.k.a. the 100-yard mad dash).
On a couple of weekdays, my wife can drop the kids off at school on her way to work. Which seems great in theory, but in reality it just makes “bus days” that much more painful… because when mom drives they get to sleep in an extra 15 minutes, so she’s a hero, and when dad wakes them for the bus he’s a zero.
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
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