Patience Is A Virtue...Just Not One of Mine

Surprises aren't really something I enjoy. At work, in fact, being the cause of a surprise is one of the worst things you can do...especially avoidable ones. I suppose I have similar feelings about surprises in my personal life, even when it comes to good surprises like Christmas gifts and finding out the sex of your unborn children. I would much prefer to have all of that information as soon as possible. Let's just say that I have an affinity for immediate gratification.

During my lifetime only a few birthday and Christmas gifts have truly been surprising, which is just fine to me. This is mostly because I pester people so much that they end up telling me or giving me hints that I'm able to follow-up on. And of course, if they won't tell you then there are other investigative techniques that can be employed. When I was a kid I learned of most of the spots where Christmas gifts were hidden and these days a quick review of web browser history and cookies and yield a few hints.

I pretty much have the same view in regard to finding out the sex of your children prior to their birth. To all those people who say they want the sex to be a surprise when the baby is born, I have news: It will still be a surprise when you find out in the obstetrician's office. I know this is a very personal decision and I certainly don't criticize anyone for wanting to wait until the big day...but I guess I just have not heard a rationale for waiting that has resonated with me. For the most part Sarah has agreed with me, enough so that we've discovered the sex of both of our two kids prior to their births. Although we've not decided whether or not we'll have a third child, Sarah has floated the idea of waiting next time. So I may have to brush up on my patience skills if we have a third. They say patience is a virtue…its just not one of mine.

Bedtime Bribes

At some point about the time I entered toddlerhood my mom discovered the secret to keeping me in the bed through the night. It was Tang...you know, the astronaut drink? She'd set a bottle of Tang on the dresser next to my crib. I would wake up, find the Tang, get my fix, and go back to sleep. To this day I love that stuff.

Several months back during our bedtime routine I told my daughter Sydney that the book we were reading, "Goodnight Moon," was a book that Bammy, my mom, used to read to me at bedtime. Sydney found this nostalgic fact fascinating. Since that day, every time we read that book she reminds me that Bammy used to read it to me.

Tonight during my nightly battle for bedtime supremacy it occurred to me that I might be able to feed Sydney's affinity for the nostalgic with the Tang story. She drank in my manipulation beautifully. As I told her about Bammy giving me Tang "in my own bed" I could see her visibly loosen up. Within a few seconds she was virtually putting herself to bed so I quickly whipped-up a bottle of Tang. After reading, singing, praying, and our "talk about the day" I told her that she could have more Tang tomorrow if she slept in her own bed tomorrow night.

Boy, I hope she likes Tang as much as I do...

What a Gift!

Earlier this week when I was doing some maintenance on my computer I came across some old email from a previous job. I was amazed to read my own words from two years ago where I was telling a friend that I had not left the office before 8:00PM in over a month. I recall that several of those weeks were capped with weekend work as well.

Although 70 hour work weeks were difficult, at the time they were not really much of a problem for me because I’d grown so accustomed to it. We so easily can adapt to very difficult circumstances but I am so thankful to God that I'm no longer having to adapt to such long hours. My job at Pepperdine in Malibu allows me to be home every night to eat dinner with the kids and help put them to bed. I would have missed two years of those precious moments had I stayed at Disney.

What a gift!

Slow Down, Kid

Less than a month ago my eight-month-old son Jack could barely roll over. Well, at the rate he's progressing he'll be participating in the 2008 Olympics. Last Sunday, July 12, he decided he would conquer the stairs. He had been pulling himself up to a standing position for a couple of weeks. His favorite place to practice his new trick was on the bottom stair of our staircase. On Sunday he simply pulled himself up onto the next step...except he didn't stop. He went all the way to the top. Of course, he gets his drive and ambition from me.


Jack climbing the stairs for the first time...

Sports Un-fan

Today I've decided to come out of the closet...the sports fan closet, that is. I'll just say it. I hate watching sports. I'm one of about a dozen males in the United States that does not drool like Homer Simpson staring at a Duff beer when they hear the phrase "Sports Center." I just don't understand what draws most men and some women in to sportsfanship. And I'm absolutely dumbfounded when I see people have an actual emotional reaction to the outcome of a sporting event. Is it competitiveness? I consider myself a fairly competitive person but this personality trait doesn't seem to translate in this context. Why would my personal level of competitiveness attach itself to the performance of some sports team...that I am not on? Is it a sense of community? Perhaps this makes more sense but I seem to get quite enough community between work, church, friends and my hyper-active two-year-old daughter.

This should be no surprise to my parents, in-laws, and extended family. Invariably, I end up watching small parts of several football games around Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. But most of the time I quietly slip out of the room to find something more interesting to do like trim my nose hair or organize ID cards in my wallet. However, there have been days when I was not able to escape. The most memorable was New Year's Day 1994 when I sat glassy-eyed on a couch for more than eight hours watching two football games at a time...yes, two at a time. My family set up a supplemental TV on top of the larger family room TV, each TV tuned to separate football games. I feel sure my life was shortened by a few weeks because of it.

I often find myself in the midst of real men who are talking about some sort of sports related subject. My personal policy is to maintain total silence during these awkward moments lest I say something stupid like, "Hey Bob, how'd yur Broncos do this weekend? I heard their pitcher was really good this year!"

Let me share my hierarchy of hatred toward watching sporting events:

Watching a live sporting event is the most palatable scenario but, geez, these games can be long. I was at a Dodger's game yesterday when half-way through the game my sports fan brother-in-law says to me, "Wow, this game is going really fast." I'm sorry but there is nothing fast about baseball.

Watching sports on television easily trumps a live sporting event in the hierarchy of hatred. On television you lose the festive nature of a live event and once the three to five hour game is over there are always several more just beginning.

Sports related news, however, rises to a totally new circle of hell. The only thing worse than having to watch a sports event is hearing someone tell you about watching a sports event.

Only slightly worse than televised news is written sports coverage in newspapers and on the internet.

The most unbearable form of sports viewership are sports related video games. These guys are amazing. They'll watch random games all day long on TV, review everything just watched on ESPN's Sports Center, then go to their video games and simulate a sports event. Enough is enough. Now I love video games. In fact, I actually own an X-Box; however, you won't find any sport-related games in my repertoire.

As with most rules there are a few exceptions to this one. I love the Olympics. I love the spirit of world unity that it brings and I love watching the best of the best. And I love to watch the finals of most professional sports. I also have completely different feelings about playing sports. I loved High School football. And I still enjoy flag football and pick-up basketball. The problem is that my extremely out-of-shape body hates participating in sports more than I hate watching it and in the event that my brain thinks the word "exercise" my body puts me in my place by kicking a disk out of place.