Merry CHRISTMAS
CHANGE IS GOOD…
is a lesson we try to teach our children all the time. (Apparently we need to work on our communication skills because their normal reaction is to tell us that paper money is better and that a series of untraceable wire transfers to a numbered bank account in the Cayman Islands is ideal.) Regardless, it was all about “change” at our house this year. Nothing extreme, but we can’t help feeling that we are leaving one of life’s highways and merging to the on-ramp of the next avenue of our lives. We may be here awhile; the retirement SUV keeps getting cut off by the are-you-nuts-you-still-have-kids-in-school mini-van.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO CHANGE…
otherwise the clothes you have on will never get laundered. This was the sage advice we gave Dan this fall as we sent him off to freshman year at the University of Illinois. Thirty year old déjà vu struck on the inaugural trip to drop him off when Dan’s I-Pod randomly kicked out a remake of a Talking Heads song, followed by a cut from the new Devo album and then some Motown inspired music. Like Pavlov’s dogs, Robin and Dave were all revved up for a frat house kegger by the time we arrived. We were disappointed, yet again, that a college dorm room is the size of, well, a college dorm room, making it difficult to find a place to stow the 64 piece tool set Robin insisted Dan bring with him (apparently mistaking that mechanical engineering is what one studies to become a mechanic). Dan is getting along well so far, although when he came home for the long Labor Day weekend singing Marvin Gaye’s, “Let’s Get It On” with the fervor of a gospel choir, it caused us to wonder just what he’d been up to those first two weeks.
WHEN YOU’RE FINISHED CHANGING, YOU’RE FINISHED
Cary, now a high school sophomore, lives by this credo, at least when it comes to fashion. One must wear numerous outfits during the course of the day. The same is true of her friends who show up for a casual overnight stay with a couple outfits for the evening, something else to sleep in and yet another to put on in the morning. Having Cary’s friends over is a lot different than having Dan’s friends over. Last night, we bought one pizza for a group of about ten girls and still had half of it left at the end of the evening. The only conclusion is that they stuff the pockets of all their outfits with granola bars before they show up.
THINGS DO NOT CHANGE, WE CHANGE
Dan changed into a dog. No sooner had Dan left for college when he was replaced by Peaches, a 100 pound palooka of a dog that moves with the deliberation of Congress trying to pass a political kidney stone. Since both Dan and Peaches eat a lot of food and sleep most of the day, we hardly notice the difference. Fortunately, only one barks at the neighbors (but we plan to work on that while Dan is home for Christmas break).
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…
the harder it is to remember stuff. Dave turned 50 this summer. AARP duly noted the milestone about a thousand times. Family and friends came together to sing a moving rendition of “Happy Birthday”. It was either that or a Yoko Ono song played on vuvuzelas; we’re not entirely sure. The onset of old age has started. There is a lot more going on about which we, Dave and Robin, have not a clue. We like to think that the next generation is just smarter than we are. Case in point, in the process of bringing Dan back to college, we stopped for something to eat and the conversation turned to the food. The kids got into a discussion about how cheese soup was theoretically impossible because cheese is a lipid and therefore would not dissolve in water or broth. As parents, we looked at each other, first to assure ourselves that we hadn’t wandered off to some else’s table on the way back from the washroom, but more importantly, trying to distinguish whether either of us had ever known this fact about cheese, or that we had known it at some point and subsequently forgot it. Thus the struggle to determine the exact state of our decline. (However, the incident does give you a sense of how bone-rattlingly entertaining our family dinners can be.) Sadly, the bulk of the evidence leans towards categorizing our ability to recollect as “suffering”. Trying to find files on our computer and remember passwords has all the mystery of a Cold War spy novel. If any of you are associated with Wikileaks, we invite you to go through our hard drive and publish all the important bits; it would be a tremendous time-saver for us.
BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD
It would be nice to get the global economy back on track. If we could only figure out how to “be” quantitative easing. Ironically, quantitative easing involves increasing the money supply and buying more bonds. If this is the definition, an achievable New Year’s Resolution is going on a diet, as long as we refer to it as a caloric quantitative easing. Hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season.
Merry Christmahananza, D,R,D,C
CHANGE IS GOOD…
is a lesson we try to teach our children all the time. (Apparently we need to work on our communication skills because their normal reaction is to tell us that paper money is better and that a series of untraceable wire transfers to a numbered bank account in the Cayman Islands is ideal.) Regardless, it was all about “change” at our house this year. Nothing extreme, but we can’t help feeling that we are leaving one of life’s highways and merging to the on-ramp of the next avenue of our lives. We may be here awhile; the retirement SUV keeps getting cut off by the are-you-nuts-you-still-have-kids-in-school mini-van.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO CHANGE…
otherwise the clothes you have on will never get laundered. This was the sage advice we gave Dan this fall as we sent him off to freshman year at the University of Illinois. Thirty year old déjà vu struck on the inaugural trip to drop him off when Dan’s I-Pod randomly kicked out a remake of a Talking Heads song, followed by a cut from the new Devo album and then some Motown inspired music. Like Pavlov’s dogs, Robin and Dave were all revved up for a frat house kegger by the time we arrived. We were disappointed, yet again, that a college dorm room is the size of, well, a college dorm room, making it difficult to find a place to stow the 64 piece tool set Robin insisted Dan bring with him (apparently mistaking that mechanical engineering is what one studies to become a mechanic). Dan is getting along well so far, although when he came home for the long Labor Day weekend singing Marvin Gaye’s, “Let’s Get It On” with the fervor of a gospel choir, it caused us to wonder just what he’d been up to those first two weeks.
WHEN YOU’RE FINISHED CHANGING, YOU’RE FINISHED
Cary, now a high school sophomore, lives by this credo, at least when it comes to fashion. One must wear numerous outfits during the course of the day. The same is true of her friends who show up for a casual overnight stay with a couple outfits for the evening, something else to sleep in and yet another to put on in the morning. Having Cary’s friends over is a lot different than having Dan’s friends over. Last night, we bought one pizza for a group of about ten girls and still had half of it left at the end of the evening. The only conclusion is that they stuff the pockets of all their outfits with granola bars before they show up.
THINGS DO NOT CHANGE, WE CHANGE
Dan changed into a dog. No sooner had Dan left for college when he was replaced by Peaches, a 100 pound palooka of a dog that moves with the deliberation of Congress trying to pass a political kidney stone. Since both Dan and Peaches eat a lot of food and sleep most of the day, we hardly notice the difference. Fortunately, only one barks at the neighbors (but we plan to work on that while Dan is home for Christmas break).
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…
the harder it is to remember stuff. Dave turned 50 this summer. AARP duly noted the milestone about a thousand times. Family and friends came together to sing a moving rendition of “Happy Birthday”. It was either that or a Yoko Ono song played on vuvuzelas; we’re not entirely sure. The onset of old age has started. There is a lot more going on about which we, Dave and Robin, have not a clue. We like to think that the next generation is just smarter than we are. Case in point, in the process of bringing Dan back to college, we stopped for something to eat and the conversation turned to the food. The kids got into a discussion about how cheese soup was theoretically impossible because cheese is a lipid and therefore would not dissolve in water or broth. As parents, we looked at each other, first to assure ourselves that we hadn’t wandered off to some else’s table on the way back from the washroom, but more importantly, trying to distinguish whether either of us had ever known this fact about cheese, or that we had known it at some point and subsequently forgot it. Thus the struggle to determine the exact state of our decline. (However, the incident does give you a sense of how bone-rattlingly entertaining our family dinners can be.) Sadly, the bulk of the evidence leans towards categorizing our ability to recollect as “suffering”. Trying to find files on our computer and remember passwords has all the mystery of a Cold War spy novel. If any of you are associated with Wikileaks, we invite you to go through our hard drive and publish all the important bits; it would be a tremendous time-saver for us.
BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD
It would be nice to get the global economy back on track. If we could only figure out how to “be” quantitative easing. Ironically, quantitative easing involves increasing the money supply and buying more bonds. If this is the definition, an achievable New Year’s Resolution is going on a diet, as long as we refer to it as a caloric quantitative easing. Hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season.
Merry Christmahananza, D,R,D,C
posted by Robin at 11:57 AM
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