On high alert

Posted on 03/04/2010 by RLW3

I picked the Toyota up from the mechanic today.

The smell of fear is in the air…the fear of having made the wrong decision in rebuilding it.

My senses are working overtime.

“Was that noise there before?”

How should I know?

I wasn’t listening! I bought this car for $1,150! If it was there, it was NOT a problem!

However, now that I have spent another $1,700 to replace the engine and transmission, I wonder if this little noise or that little noise is a prelude to potential disaster.

I ask my mechanic, “Do you hear that belt turning?”

“No, not really.”

“What does that small tapping sound mean?”

The engine is warrantied for 6 months. That means that I must identify any significant problems fairly quickly.

My mechanic thinks it sounds great. I probably should take his word for it. But then the voice of paranoia starts whispering…

“What if he’s just saying that because those small sounds mean future income for him?”

Whoa, horsey, whoa!

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I have not had ANY problems!

Posted on 03/03/2010 by RLW3

Been a busy week…

Monday, anniversary date…

Last night, midweek meeting at church…

Tonight, my wife and I attended our weekly Bible study.

Typically, the Bible study is started with a generic question to break the ice and get people talking. This week’s topic was “Name one thing that is (or was) hard for you to do.”

The answers were pretty typical…speak in public, wait in lines (me), stay on topic in a Bible study (my wife), lose weight, etc.

Eventually, we came to a woman who visited the church for the first time on Sunday. All I can say was that she picked a good day. The presence of God was incredible!

This was also her first time at Bible study. She started to weep…

“To come to church…”

She then explained that nearly 13 years ago, she woke up in the middle of the night with her son on her mind who lived 11 miles away. That very night, his girlfriend shot him and killed him. She had been blaming herself for not driving over to his house to protect him for nearly 13 years!

Talk about changing the atmosphere of the Bible study…

The facilitator then started comforting her by saying that he could relate to her. He then shared how he had married his high school sweetheart and came home one day to find that she had killed their 3 year old son and then committed suicide! That incident is what started turning his heart to God.

I just sat there dumbfounded…What do you say?

The last item for the night was to tell of something good that came out of your adversity. The another woman shared how God had taken care of her and her children through the years. When she was a young wife with three young children, ages 2, 5 and 7, her husband, the pastor of the church, was diagnosed with leukemia. He died three weeks later! He had been given a clean bill of health by a life insurance company just a few months earlier!

Folks, I try to write about the difficulties that I encounter in life in a humorous or insightful manner, but, let me be clear, after listening to these people’s stories, I have not had ANY problems! NONE!

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Happy New Year!

Posted on 03/01/2010 by RLW3

Did you know that today is New Year’s Day?

March 1st was celebrated as the beginning of the new year in the United States and Great Britain until 1752!

Think about it…

Septem-ber (Latin for 7), Octo-ber (eighth), Novem-ber (ninth), Decem-ber (tenth). January and February were added later.

I think it makes much more sense. March 1st unofficially marks the end of winter. Here in Kansas City, the cardinals have just started to sing.

Why am I writing all of this?

Because March 1st also happens to be our anniversary!

24 years…and we still like each other a bunch!

We celebrated with dinner at The Longhorn Steakhouse. I chose that because my wife’s diet allows her to eat steak!

And speaking of her diet, she is looking pretty fine. She wore a pair of her daughter’s jeans on our date! Yahoo!

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No, I have not fallen asleep!

Posted on 02/28/2010 by RLW3

I realize that I have not written very much this week, but…

I doing quite a bit of work behind the scenes on this blog.

My dissatisfaction with this blog after looking at my oldest daughter’s blog continues. I had to ask myself, “Do I really want to continue to write what amounts to short stories for the rest of my life?”

That is not what motivated me to start blogging. My original inspiration was to write my political/cultural/social thoughts on Counter Culture².com.

Then, several people expressed interest in hearing my thoughts on the Bible. So, I started “Crumbs Under the Table”.

If the truth be told, this blog was more of an afterthought than anything. But, our family seems to have been especially blessed. I wanted to share that with others. Perhaps someone might read something on these pages that would help them in their own family.

Then, “The Trip” and “The Beautiful Letdown” happened, I started writing on this blog and have never really stopped.

But, back to today’s subject matter…

I have been working on this blog for the past week, figuring out what code to change, learning through much trial and error, trying to make it more congruent with my original intentions.

When the changes are complete, you will definitely see them. I’m close, but not quite there.

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Here is a woman who really understands!

Posted on 02/27/2010 by RLW3

My wife loves watching movies. Me…not so much.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I like watching GOOD movies. But so many of them aren’t very good…

In my opinion…

And while I am watching one of those “it’s oh-kay” movies, my preoccupation with time starts rearing its ugly head and I get restless. I try, but it is hard work!

Fairly early in our marriage, my wife and I watched the movie adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, “The Taming of the Shrew”. For my younger readers, it was made in 1967, long before you were even thought of! You can read all about the play here.

Elizabeth Taylor, one of the beauties of her era, plays Katerina, “an ill tempered, scolding woman.” Richard Burton plays Petruchio, the young man who agrees to take her off of her father’s hands (for a tidy sum, of course) by marrying her. He then sets out to tame her!

I honestly can’t remember how we learned of this movie but I know that I probably suggested that we watch it together. Why?

Well, there was a time in our marriage (certainly not now!) when my wife…

umm…

how can I put this…

shared some of Katerina’s emotional traits!

And since she likes to watch movies…

and she likes it even more when I watch with her…

and it was, after all, written by Lord William Shakespeare…

But that was a long time ago.

Now, I think she must be getting desperate. Why do I say that?

Guess what DVD showed up in our house recently?

That’s right…and I didn’t buy it!

We watched it last night. It was interesting that both of us forgot most of the first half of the movie. It seems that all we could remember was the taming part. Great minds think alike.

Things were going great but, alas, my Kate fell asleep just before the former shrew Kate gave the greatest speech that any female has ever delivered in the history of movies!

Aahh, yes…Here is a woman who really “gets it”!

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The world is getting smaller

Posted on 02/23/2010 by RLW3

It may sound strange, coming from a blogger, but I have not been a huge fan of technology.

We went several years without a television in our home. When we did get one, TV time was strictly limited. Basically, for most of my children’s lives, we used the television to watch videos.

During his childhood, most of my son’s friends had Nintendos, game boys, o whatever they were called. He didn’t. Why? Because I thought that there were more important things for him to learn than how to get to the 32nd level of whatever game was hot at the moment.

I never had anything but the simplest games on our computers for the same reason.

Our children were some of the last to get cell phones and when they did, their minutes were strictly limited.

I do not regret any of those decisions. In fact, if faced with the same situation, I would make them all again.

But today, I really appreciated the technology that I have available to me.

My son had an important meeting in Philadephia this morning. Shortly after it was over, I not only learned that he was cleared and but quite a few of the details of the meeting via text message.

I then wrote him a e-mail at lunch.

While I wrote that e-mail, I pictured how isolated parents were from their children when they sent them off to college in previous generations. I am thankful that technology has made it so much easier to stay connected.

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You got written up for what?

Posted on 02/22/2010 by RLW3

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I have been having a long distance relationship for more than two years.

Actually, I am in several simultaneously.

It so much more difficult to communicate. I tell you that it is SO much better when you are face to face…

But, what other choice do I have? End the relationship? After all of this time?

I just can’t do it…

So, I continue being a long distance father to my three oldest children!

This weekend, I learned through the family grapevine that my son had been written up for violating the school’s behavior policy!

Whoaa!

I called him…

“For what?”

“Drinking…”

What do I say to that?…

I had no idea so I said nothing…

“But I wasn’t drinking. Everyone knows that I don’t drink or mess around or anything. So, when the other guys involved vouch for me, my record will be cleared.”

I have written about the moral climate in the dorms where he resides. It turns out that his roommate and a friend were drinking in is dorm room while he was present.

I then introduced a possibility that he had not  thought much about…

“What if they don’t?”

I then tried to open his eyes to how exposed he was in his present situation. He is completely dependent on other people to clear his name, people who clearly have little regard for rules and what is right.

I also showed him how easy it would be for the “judge” to find him guilty. After all, he knew the drinking was against the rules and yet he gave tacit consent to people who broke them.

His meeting is tomorrow.

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What else am I going to do?

Posted on 02/20/2010 by RLW3

This stage of being a parent is…how shall I put this…challenging.

When my children were younger, they had to listen to me…or else!

Now that they are launching out on their own, I have to watch them make mistakes. Let me tell you, it is highly overrated! I get no pleasure out of it, no sense of “S-e-e-e-e-e-e-e, I told you so!”

I generally just bite my tongue, all the while hoping that they will ask me for my thoughts on the situation.

Take my son and his wrestling, for instance.

He has developed a counterproductive habit…

He eats like there is no tomorrow and then cuts a bunch the day before a tournament. He started his senior season in high school that way, continued through the season all the way through freestyle season.

He tried it again this weekend.

Since he has been “watching his weight”, he ONLY had to lose 8-9 pounds AFTER Friday morning’s practice for today’s tournament! He ended up going 2-2 for the tournament with his elimination loss coming to a fellow Drexel teammate!

I wonder what might have happened if he didn’t have to run 4 miles last night to make weight?

Oh well…I will have to wonder. He finished his redshirt freshman season with a record of 4-6.

Posted in Children, Parenting | Tagged | 2 Comments

“Pastoral”

Posted on 02/19/2010 by RLW3

I don’t know if you noticed, but I have changed the look of this blog. I have moved things around, changed font sizes, increased the writing area while decreasing the sidebars.

It is not as easy as it sounds because it is all written in HTML code.

I do not know HTML.

However, I am pretty good at trial and error.

On 133rd Street, just past the “no longer a mystery” condos, there is a large bronze (?) sculpture of a barefooted, open shirted young man, laying on ground with his arms behind his head, looking up at the sky nestled amongst a grove of trees.

I stopped the car the very first time that I saw it and have stopped to look at it on more than one occasion since, both while driving and walking.

A few weeks ago, I took a picture of it covered with snow.

I had forgotten that until about a week ago when I got tired of the background on my computer at work. While looking at the picture today, it occurred to me that it would make a great image for this blog.

For the past year, I have wanted to make the images on this blog more personal but that has seemed like too big of a hill to climb. However, ever since Bean took me to the woodshed…

Back to the HTML lab to figure out how to do it…

I still have a few minor tweaks to make but I like the end result.

In the process of figuring out how to change the image, I realized why I like this sculpture so much. After all, I am not an “artsy” guy.

I like this sculpture so much because it is me!

As a young boy in the country, I would go out in the yard, lay in the grass under a tree, look up at the sky and talk to God.

This is the new image for this blog.

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What are the odds?

Posted on 02/18/2010 by RLW3

I saw it and I still can’t believe it!

I mean I was there…

It happened to me…

and I am still having a hard time believing that it actually happened.

This is a picture of the overflow hole in our bathroom sink. (click on the pictures to see them better)

This is a picture of my contact lens.

I realize that the picture is blurry but the contact lens is easily as big as the opening of the overflow hole.

This morning, I put my left contact lens on my finger and moved it toward my eye. Here is a view from the tip of my finger.

As I moved the lens toward my eye, the contact fell off of my finger. No big deal…just find it, clean it up and try again.

As the contact fell, I watched it flip over and over and…

completely disappear into the overflow hole! It was gone!

“No way…that CAN’T be true…It HAS TO BE somewhere in the sink.”

I visually checked the sink carefully…no contact lens.

“I’ve GOT TO BE missing it somewhere.”

I wiped the entire sink out, checking my hand after each wipe…no contact lens!

My eyes were not fooling me! That lens had fallen into a hole that is smaller than the lens itself! I bet you if I stuck the lens on the end of my finger and TRIED to put it in that whole, I couldn’t do it on the first try!

If that were the extent of it, that would be amazing enough. However, when you consider that the overflow hole is nearly vertical, since it is on the side of the sink, and not lying flat, as it is in the first picture, it becomes even more unbelievable! Click on the picture of the sink again to get an idea of how small the target area was!

The rotation as it flipped in the air had to be perfect!…and it WAS!

It didn’t hit the lip of the hole…

It didn’t hit the back of the hole…

It didn’t hit anything! Nothin’ but net!

Do you realize the statistical likelihood of that happening? infinitesimal! Especially when you consider that the contact is wet and likely to stick to whatever it touches (except the end of my finger).

Folks, I saw this happen and I am still dumbfounded!

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