The Days Are Long, But The Years Are Short

Just this past weekend, my daughter returned to Michigan State University and moved into her first apartment.  After taking more than a year off to recover from some health issues I have gotten used to her being here, and the house seems so quiet now.

My son is still at home but will be starting his senior year of high school in just a couple of weeks.  His time here, too, is limited.

I often think back to when they were small and how long and chaotic the days felt.  Now it seems like it has gone by in the blink of an eye.

Years ago I heard an expression regarding the time spent raising your children.  "The days are long, but the years are short."  When you are in the middle of play dates, school plays, sports, scouts, and the myriad of other things in which your children are involved, it feels like the time you spend carting them around will never end.  Now it seems it has ended far too quickly.

If parenting has taught me anything, it is the virtue of patience.  Patience not only is needed to deal with children on a daily basis, but also with the time and energy that is spent guiding, teaching and just plain giving of yourself to them.  For that precious time will one day come to an end.

For those of you still in the midst of raising young children, enjoy every moment, even the difficult ones, and resist the urge to wish them away.

Like it or not, one day that wish will definitely come true.

DVR-ing Through Life

A few years ago I discovered something life-altering: the magic of the DVR.

This wonderful device now allows me to watch a half-hour show in a little over 20 minutes.  It has spared my hearing from the obnoxious advertisers who still insist on recording commercials at ten times the volume of the program I was viewing.  I have been able to escape from the endless array of product promotions extolling the woes of PMS, incontinence and, my personal favorite, erectile dysfunction.

There are a  few commercials I find clever and funny, like the Allstate "Mayhem" commercials with the guy who declares himself to be a tree branch, a raccoon, or an annoying child in the back of a car to demonstrate what could happen if you aren't insured for these situations.  I love the one where he is the streaker on a football field and declares, "I'm 300 pounds, painted blue and wearing nothing but cleats."

Most commercials, however, are downright annoying.  The Pier One commercials with the tag line "Find what speaks to you" get on my nerves, but that is mostly because the only thing the items in Pier One say to me is "You can't afford me."

The commercials I absolutely cannot stand are the Cottonelle toilet paper commercials where the woman with the British accent walks up to strangers in shopping malls and airports and asks them "How's your bum?'  Clearly this is staged since the people in the commercials cheerily discuss personal hygiene with a perfect stranger.

If some woman walked up to me on an airport concourse and began firing off questions of this nature, I would not be so lively and forthcoming.  I would whip out the pepper stray and start screaming for a TSA agent.

So these days I happily skip through the feminine hygiene commercials and get to the good stuff.  It's a shame we can't do the same with the little everyday annoyances in life.  How nice would it be to press a button and skip the traffic jam, the long lines at the grocery store or the endless wait at the doctor's office.

But life doesn't work that way.  Like commercials, you have wade through the annoying to get to the gratifying part.  If you get into the habit of skipping through what you think is unnecessary too often, you might miss out on something good.

Sometimes you just need to resist the urge to hit that fast-forward button.  You might just discover a hidden gem.

Then again, you may also come across an advertisement for adult diapers, but that's a chance you take.

Paranormal Witless

The other night while perusing through the 300-some channels on our satellite television network, I discovered that there was once again nothing worth watching to be found.  I settled on something called Celebrity Ghost Stories where so-called celebrities you have barely heard of recount their paranormal experiences. 

Everyone from Greg from in The Brady Bunch to some woman who appeared in The Bachelor have apparently had a ghostly encounter.  Something like 78 percent of people say they believe in ghosts, yet only 18 percent claim they have actually seen one.  Funny, though, how nearly every C-list celebrity in Hollywood has apparently been haunted.

From Celebrity Ghost Stories to Paranormal Witness to A Haunting, ghost stories seem to dominate the airwaves these days.  I have to wonder what the fascination is with these shows.  Do we enjoy being frightened?  Or is it simply an effort to understand the mysteries of what lies beyond this world?

I have never seen a ghost, nor do I have much of a desire to find one.  My Aunt Nancy, however, would love to have this experience.  When her brother-in-law Fred was dying of cancer years ago, she asked him for one special request.  She always wanted to see a ghost.  Fred, who always had a great sense of humor, replied "I'll see what I can do."

Fred has been gone for many years and has yet to make an appearance.  Being that Fred, during his lifetime, had a hard time walking the straight and narrow and had a reputation as a gambler and a somewhat shady business man, we have a feeling that Fred is in a place where they are not letting him out.

Most of us have an opinion of what happens after we die.  Many believe in the concept of heaven and hell.  Others believe that death is simply a dark, mindless, endless void. 

More than likely, I have family and friends in all three places.

My religion teaches that we are either rewarded or punished for our actions during our time on this earth and does not really address the concept of ghosts and hauntings.  However, if someone has passed in a violent and untimely manner, or has lived a less than ideal mortal existence and is afraid of what awaits them in the great beyond, I believe it is possible that their souls can become lost or choose to remain behind.

Nevertheless, I am making a conscious effort to live a life that will be rewarded after my demise.  The best that any of us can hope is to leave this world a little better than we found it.

But just in case, I am keeping a list of those I plan to haunt.

Politically Correcting Christmas

Be warned--the politically correct police have run out of everyday faux pas to pursue and are now coming after Santa Claus.

A child advocate named Pamela McColl has decided that the classic holiday rhyme "'Twas The Night Before Christmas"  needs to be revised because Santa is a smoker.  She has published a new version that has removed the lines, "The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath".

McColl's reasoning is that 25 percent of long-term smokers first pick up the habit before age 10, and that having a beloved children's character smoking in the middle of the living room is a bad influence.

I must have read this tale a hundred times over the years, and I never once thought of Santa as a smoker.  It is all part of his "jolly old elf" persona.  I would imagine the reference to smoking goes over the head of 90 percent of us, but McColl is apparently convinced it will result in millions of children writing to Santa for a pipe and tobacco in their stockings.

What's next?  We will be deleting the references to Santa going up and down the chimney because it is technically breaking and entering?

What about the line about his protruding stomach?  Will that also be changed because it appears unhealthy?  A Santa with washboard abs is just wrong.  And what about the reference to his stomach as "a bowl full of jelly"?  Somehow the line "shook as he laughed like a bowl full of tofu" doesn't have the same ring.

If we are going to p.c. Christmas, let's just take it all the way and do away with the term "elves."  Couldn't this be considered derogatory?  Perhaps it would be more correct to refer to them as "vertically challenged production and shipping coordinators."

I agree that there are certain terms and expressions that should not be part of polite society. However, in an effort not to offend anyone or make sure children are only exposed to healthy images, we are taking things a bit too far.

There have always been and will always be smokers, overweight people and other characteristics we deem less than ideal in this world.  Perhaps these are not the best lifestyles or attitudes to pursue, but it allows children to understand that everyone has attributes and qualities that make them unique.  And just as those around them can reflect good examples, it is not a bad idea that they are exposed to behaviors NOT to imitate.  It does not take much to make them understand that smoking is what causes Grandpa to have yellow teeth, a bad cough and smell like an ashtray.

There are some icons in the world with which you simply do not mess, and Santa is one of them.  So I will take my Santa chubby with pipe smoke circling around his head, thank you very much.

And if anyone suggests he should not wear red because it represents gang colors, may they be strung up with garland in a pear tree occupied by a partridge, three french hens and four calling birds with full stomachs.

Annoying The Vote Out Of Us

The saying "every vote counts" certainly hold true in any election, but I am really starting to feel honored with the caliber of people who are vying for my support in this election.

I have been disconnecting, ignoring and blocking political phone calls for months.  In the past four days, I have hung up on former President Bill Clinton, actor and former Senator Fred G. Thompson, and Clint Eastwood.  The fact that these are recordings are merely a technicality.

I usually have some choice words for these robo-callers before I hang up.  I know they can't hear me, but it does my blood pressure good to let them have it.

The closer this election gets in both proximity and statistics, the more both parties break out their "big guns" and bombard us with mail, media ads and phone calls.  I have to wonder how effective this is when we become so overwhelmed with political statements and conflicting information that we are essentially numb to their messages.

I like to have the "Today" Show on in the mornings as I prepare for my day.  Yesterday morning, three out of every four commercials were political ads.  Out of these three advertisements per station break, two of them were from the Super PAC trying to elect Mitt Romney.

I suppose this blitzkrieg was supposed to persuade me that Romney is the more effective, desirable candidate.  Frankly, the only effect it had on me was sheer annoyance.  Surely not the result for which they were aiming.

The barrage of these ads did encourage me to change my mind, however.   I changed my mind about listening to the "Today" Show and turned on the Sonic music channels on our satellite dish.  These are blissfully commercial-free.

I really hope I have the chance to hang up on Barack Obama and Mitt Romney themselves.  That would really do wonders for my ego.

I have to admit however, that I did enjoy speaking to Clint Eastwood.  I explained that I could not talk at the moment because I was too busy having a conversation with a table lamp.

He understood completely.

Election 2012--Lighten Up, People!

I always knew going into this election year that some people were simply going to lose their minds over this political contest.  What I did not expect was that so many would lose their sense of humor.

I recently put a photo on Facebook that I found on another friend's page that parodied Mitt Romney's Big Bird comment at the last debate.  It featured several Sesame Street characters holding guns and knives and, to paraphrase the quote, basically said that it was going down with Romney.  Perhaps there is something warped about finding a picture of public television characters holding weapons and beer bottles while using street language amusing, but that is for another blog.

Although I was just posting a funny photo, I was chastised by two people who wanted to know why I was making a statement that Sesame Street needs federal funds when they make millions on merchandising.  Funny but I thought I was just copying a picture.

Sadly this is only one example.  Shannon recently had to "unfriend" someone on Facebook  when they attacked her for posting a political cartoon.  When she messaged him to ask him to please respect her views, she was told he would not show any restraint because she was "responsible for the deaths of thousands of people."  Never thought a cartoon held that much power.

Why does society feels when it comes to politics, it is perfectly respectable to attack and belittle those whose views differ from their own?  Is it part of the general rude and disrespectful behavior that now permeates our society, or is our political system encouraging radicalism and intolerance?

I have many friends with differing political views, but what would ever cause me to refer to them in terms such as neo-Nazis capitalists or baby-killers?  I simply cannot comprehend becoming so wrapped up in politics that it is acceptable to cross the boundaries of tolerance and decency, but more and more people do it every day without thinking twice.

When our founding fathers created a two party system, do you really think they envisioned constituents firing weapons into political offices full of people or a public refusal to cooperate with an opposing political party simply out of spite?

Regardless, I refuse to let this election rule both my life or my sense of humor.  I stopped getting a local newspaper years ago because they allow people to write into a forum and basically make fun of the political views of others.  I saw more mature behavior in a preschool sandbox than these so-called adults exhibit.   I certainly plan to vote in this election, but I am confident I can do the research and make up my mind on the issues without the help of political calls, advertisements and forums that pose as "news."

I for one will not allow this election taint my character or my sense of humor. Perhaps it is because I have learned over the years that I can only be responsible for myself and my own actions and decisions.  I do not waste time worrying about things beyond my control.

More than likely, however, it is because I do not believe this next election will mean the end of America if President Obama is elected for another term.  Nor does it dictate that lower class will be wiped out and the middle class decimated if Mitt Romney is the winner.

I know this because we are a nation of innovation and strength.  We have weathered storms before.  We survived British colonialism.  We survived a civil war.  We survived Herbert Hoover.  We survived Jimmy Carter.  We will persevere no matter who is in the White House, and succumbing to fringe elements that pits one against the other and leaves no room for compromise or a difference of opinion only weakens us.  United we stand. Divided we fall.

I only hope that respect, tolerance and humor will persevere as well.

No Cure For Olympic Fever

The Olympic flag still flies and the torch still burns for a few hours, but the games of the 30th Olympiad are winding down.

I am sad.

I am a self-proclaimed Olympic junkie.  I will watch Americans compete in anything from the marathon to Dressage, although I do draw the line at synchronized swimming.

I know for a fact that I am not alone.  Even people who normally despise television will be glued to their set for hours watching something like rhythmic gymnastics.  No one I know is a water polo fan, but dress some players in red, white and blue and slap an American flag on a swim cap and you have the potential for a national phenomenon.

And we love it when America wins.  There is something profound about watching your flag being raised at any Olympic medal ceremony.  The fact that we blew away everyone else in the medal count is not too shabby either.

It's not necessarily the memory of watching America rack up medals that stays with me.  It is the moments of profound sportsmanship and true determination that I most admire.

It is the first female athlete from Saudi Arabia competing in spite of death threats in the hopes of paving the way for other young Muslim women to follow.  It is the disabled athlete from South Africa running in an Olympic race on his prosthetic legs.  Or the hurdler from China not making it over a single hurdle due to an injury, but finishing the race by hobbling down the track on one leg and kissing the Olympic rings on the final hurdle before being helped off the field by his fellow competitors.  These moments prove that you do not have to have a medal around your neck to be a true champion.

All good things must come to an end, so I will take comfort in the fact that the winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia are only two years away.

Gotta go.  The gold medal game in handball is starting