The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for June 2016

It’s More Than Just Another Father’s Day

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I found out Uncle Jimmy was HIV positive in 1989.

I was 20 years-old and had known he was gay for 2.5 years. It wasn’t ever a secret or something that was hidden from my sisters and I.

We visited him at his place in San Francisco many times but for some reason it never occurred to me that the guy who shared his bed was his boyfriend.

I just didn’t think about it and since no one made a big deal of them it never occurred to me that there was anything going on.

The funny thing is that my Uncle Mike was also gay and it never occurred to me that the guy he brought to every party was his boyfriend.

Uncle Mike and Peter lived in the same town as us, so we saw them a lot.

So the common theme here is that your old friend Jack was oblivious to some things, not that it matters because I never cared one way or another about their sexuality.

No one in the family did, they were part of our lives.

I loved my uncles and was happy to see them.

It’s More Than Just Another Father’s Day

The kids told me Father’s Day is this Sunday and wanted to know if I wanted to do anything special.

I asked them what they wanted to do and they told me that since both of their grandfathers are out of town I get to make the decision.

If I really was given what I want I’d bring Uncle Jimmy and Mike over to the house to hang with my dad and grandfathers but that is not possible.

Uncle Jimmy died in 1994.

It was an ugly death, AIDS or should I say complications from it made the last chunk pretty nasty. He handled it pretty well, but it wasn’t the way anyone should go.

Uncle Mike died six or seven years ago at the ripe old age of 91, definitely a far cry better than Uncle Jimmy’s 49 years.

And since both of my grandfathers have been gone for five and 10 years respectively there is no way to bring them by either.

That shrinks the guest list down dramatically and the few family members that I would definitely invite are out of town so it is a different sort of Father’s Day this year.

Kind of reminds me of 2013 when I spent Father’s Day by myself in Texas, but it will be better because the kids will be with me this time around.

And given the fact that we are going to be moving soon well, this will definitely be a different day and could mark the last of one way and the first of another.

fanyourflames

If I were a sailor and the blog was my ship I’d climb up my mast and get as close to the stars as I could get and commune with whatever powers that be.

Wouldn’t matter to me if the sea was calm or stormy, I’d be up there fighting my natural urge to lower my horns and trample or gore whatever crosses my path.

I’d learn how to move with the rocking of the sea and not come down again until I found my sense of balance.

And somewhere in the midst of it all I’d find those that have moved on to wherever it is we go after we slip the bonds that tie us to this place.

That is not news to anyone who reads these words with any regularity because you already know I miss them all and would like to have the conversations we never did get to.

Some of those didn’t happen because I wasn’t smart/aware enough to ask and some because I hadn’t had enough life experience to know I should.

I’d tell them about some of the changes that have happend and those that haven’t yet. We talk about the moves I know I have to make and I’d explain why and what I hope to have happen.

But since those aren’t going to be a part of the festivities I’ll have to close my eyes, center my thoughts and have the sort of silent communion in which I wonder what they might say and think about what I expect it would be.

I figure midway through I’ll hear my maternal grandfather laugh and say that I always do what  I want so there is no reason to ask for advice.

My paternal will nod his head and smile and tell me I know what to do and then I’ll go do it.

And I’ll do it knowing I have their complete support and a wistful smile will break across my face because my biggest cheerleaders only live in memory.

The End Game/Goal

The end game/goal is to live the kind of life that makes my children and whomever comes after miss me the way I miss these other men.

It is to die at an old age feeling like I did my best to leave no stone unturned and to have made the kind of impact I know I am capable of making.

To have been the kind of father the kids celebrate for more reasons than I just happen to be their dad.

******

This shouldn’t be taken as a morbid or sad post because I am not sad.

I might miss these people and wish they were here but I have a library of outstanding memories to draw upon and part of the purpose of this blog is to catalog some of them.

It is to let my kids know that I drop dead tomorrow I’ll be disappointed because I have a million things I still want to do but I’ll also know that I lived hard and that makes a difference.

And they’ll see notes and stories here that help them understand that while they may not have always liked, agreed or appreciated every decision I made they were always a part of them.

The goal has always been to do things that help me provide a better life for them filled with richer and deeper experiences and though I have some regrets, overall I am pretty good with what I have done.

I am a good dad, but there is always room for better, always a reason to follow  Coach Lombardi’s advice to chase perfection so that we can achieve excellence.

The adventure continues.

Remember When Quinquagenarians Were Cool

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He is in his late twenties and he wants to know how it feels to be out of touch with all that is cool.

I tell him it is never something I really worry much about.

He takes it as an invitation to take another poke at me, tries to stick me with another comment about being too old to recognize how dated I sound.

I ask him if he wants to pull down his pants and prove he is the bigger man than I am.

Kid doesn’t recognize the sarcasm and tells me he doesn’t want to embarrass me. I laugh and ask him what he is afraid of.

“You just spent time telling me how I am too old to be cool and suggested that I am so far beyond my prime I ought to be in a facility and now you back down. How telling.”

Before he can respond I tell him I am not a quinquagenarian and suggest that instead of Googling it he go visit a real library.

Don’t Poke The Bear

It is not a conversation I ever wanted to have but we work together and I am temporarily stuck with him.

We’re together for training purposes but he doesn’t seem to recognize it is not a level playing field and I am not particularly interested in pointing that out.

I am not his father so I am not going to tell him not to poke the bear. I am not going to mention that I am supposed to file a report about our time.

What I am supposed to be doing is evaluating his ability to represent the company and to determine what areas he needs to improve upon.

He was told all this before we left by his supervisor and I am not interested in babysitting.

I prefer to see what he is like when he is loose and I figure that this must be it. So for a long while I just wait and see.

I listen to his remarks and I don’t engage until after I have told him it is not of particular interest to me.

But he insists on poking the bear.

Remember When Quinquagenarians Were Cool

The dictionary says a quinquagenarian is a person who is 50 or in their fifties so technically I am not part of that group.

But I have twenty years on him and that is enough for there to be a generation gap.

What he doesn’t recognize is I am not bothered by whether I am considered to be cool, young or old.

I don’t know if I was ever considered to be the cool kid by anyone. It never mattered enough to me to try very hard to be him either.

Won’t say I had no interest because let’s face it, there are certain perks that come with it but I never did see an easy way to try and become that guy.

And though I have never been afraid of hard work I never felt like I should work hard to make people like me.

You either did/do or didn’t/do not.

As for those perks I mentioned, well I never had trouble finding women to date or convincing girls to become my girlfriend.

So even though it might have been nice to have had more women chasing me it wasn’t like I lacked for companionship.

Did I mention that sometimes I wonder who was chasing whom in some of those relationships?

Sometimes I look back and wonder if one or two of them didn’t manipulate me into doing exactly what they wanted me to.

****

Anyway, it is strange sometimes to think about how much has changed since I was in high school and college.

People may technically be the same  but there are moments where I think about things like encyclopedias, the Dewey Decimal system, albums, record stores and drive-ins are things that kids don’t know about.

They can’t relate to the frustration and experiences of not having change for payphones, busy signals, emergency breakthroughs or collect calls.

Computers make erasable ink pens and White-Out sound quaint.

Hell, how many times would I have given my right arm for a computer because I was told a final report had to be submitted error free and without any modifications made to the typing.

musicsoul

I never owned a T-Bird like the one in the photo but I always wanted one.

My dad got a Thunderbird when I was in college.

I have some great memories in that car. When he and my mom went away to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary I took that car and drove it all over.

It is one of the cars I pictured being part of Sometimes Trouble Finds You.

But at the moment I am thinking about a convertible Cadillac and days at the beach. Might be because I am listening to Don Henley sing The Boys of Summer or because of the music I hear inside my heart.

I have to believe that if the universe can hear anything it hears the song inside my head and feels the one inside my soul.

That Pied Piper called out to me long ago and I have spent eons looking for the path from the earth to his sky castle.

I am pretty certain I am walking on it now.

Young People Can’t See It

Age is definitely a relative thing and I know that there are many who consider me young just as I consider the colleague at work to be.

But I am old enough to have loved and lived and to know what it is I am in search of. Doesn’t matter if I can describe it in terms that you can see or feel because it is an individual thing.

Won’t be long before I move again and though I don’t know whether I’ll move into a house, apartment or townhouse I know it will all work out.

Kind of funny to think about how much I don’t know here and how not so long ago not knowing the specifics would have made me crazy.

But today I look at the uncertainty, close my eyes and listen for the music the piper is playing.

I almost told the kid from work that he hasn’t touched the surface of life yet and that if he thinks he has he is mistaken.

Didn’t because I didn’t want to sound like a pompous windbag and because he wouldn’t believe me anymore than I would have believed an old man when I was his age.

****

Life is about to get really interesting. Someone tell Gandalf I am ready to go to Rivendell with him.

Sometimes Trouble Finds You

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She put him out like the burnin end of a midnight cigarette
She broke his heart he spent his whole life tryin to forget
We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time
But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind

Whiskey Lullaby Braid Paisley and Alison Krauss

The police tell you that the best thing to do is give a mugger your wallet. Don’t argue and don’t fight. Money and valuables can be replaced, but your life can’t. Unfortunately I have never been real good about listening to advice from anyone.

We were older when we met but by no means were we old. Rather we were both old enough to have drunk deeply from life’s wine bottle and had more than enough life experience to feel like we knew something about ourselves and what we wanted.

Neither one of us expected to fall in love and certainly not with the kind of passion that we felt. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it felt as if we had rediscovered that feeling you got with your first love.

The days were filled with magic and mystery. Sometimes I would stop what I was doing and just stare at her. The intensity of my gaze often made her look away. So I would walk over to her and gently lift her chin and tell her to look in my eyes. Find your reflection in my eyes and you will see why I get lost.

She’d blush and tell me to shut up. And then I’d laugh and tell her that she just needed to accept that she was beautiful.

Sometimes she’d get teary eyed and kiss me.

But the thing is that when you have the kind of passion and intensity that we have it can come out in other ways and it did.

bestnagry

Sometimes Trouble Finds You

Sometimes you go looking for trouble and sometimes it comes looking for you. I can’t say whether I was or wasn’t looking for it because I don’t remember. When I left the house I was so very angry. Twenty some years ago I probably would have gotten in the car and gone flying down the road at high speed towards the closest refuge from whatever it was that I was getting away from. But not this time.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t spitting blood but rather maturity had taught me to go walk and clear my head. The park seemed like a smart place to go. It wasn’t quite 10 O’clock and the place had lights. I had been there a million times and never had a problem.

There were two of them standing on the grass. Just two skinny guys in t-shirts and jeans. One of them called out to me but I shook my head and kept walking- at least I have planned to.

Instead I found myself lying on the ground trying to figure out who hit me and how I fell. I felt a hand reach into my pocket and I grabbed it. Something hard and heavy hit me in the back but I didn’t let go, I twisted and pulled it underneath me I felt a body come down on top of me.

The strange thing was that the whole time I could hear her screaming at me and it just made me angrier.

We are wrestling this unknown assailant and I. It is not a holy experience like Jacob and the Angel.

It is just Jack, the guy who had his heartbroken and some poor schmuck who is going to be savaged by me.

He doesn’t know that the combination of fear, anger and adrenaline have made me numb. He doesn’t know that the shock of her leaving me has made me feel like I have nothing to lose.

But he is lucky because there were more than just two of them. The others pulled me off but I can’t tell you much about afterwards other than the cop that came to see me wanted to know where I learned to fight.

You’ll take my life but I’ll take yours too
You’ll fire your musket but I’ll run you through
So when you’re waiting for the next attack

You’d better stand there’s no turning back
The bugle sounds as the charge begins
But on this battlefield no one wins
The smell of acrid smoke and horses breath
As you plunge into a certain death
The Trooper Iron Maiden

I am standing in a makeshift locker room located in an abandoned warehouse. A pair of headphones are on my head, my eyes are closed and I am starting to prepare myself for what is going to come. It won’t be long before it is my turn to step into the ring. Won’t be long before I give the standing across from me the thousand mile stare. I’ll look through him and do my best to hide the butterflies in my stomach. I never mention those butterflies to anyone because no one cares and this isn’t the place for showing weakness.

It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that you never want the man who is supposed to beat you with his fists and feet to think that you fear him. You NEVER do anything to give him an ounce of confidence and you never show mercy. If you see his knees buckle you do something to make sure that he doesn’t regain his balance. Every fight is a moment in time and every fight is a message to the next guy you face. If it is possible to instill fear in him you have an advantage or so I have always thought. Of course it is ironic for me to say this and acknowledge the butterflies in my stomach but that is the truth.

Adrenaline is beginning to surge through me and I am doing my best to channel it. You don’t want to peak too soon or you’ll face going flat. So I stand here staring absentmindedly at the wall. I stand here listening to a mix of music. Much of it is stuff that I would use for a workout but there is a healthy dose of angry music too. I am turning inwards and looking for the darkness that lies inside me. I am searching for the places where I have never let go of things that hurt me. I am looking for the dark corner where my demons hide because soon I will call upon them.

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Find Your Pain

Sometimes it is hard because the images of my kids race past me. I hear their voices and see their faces. They are my contradiction. They make me smile and feel loved. They bring me hope and warmth but at the same time the reason that I fight is for them. I fight because we live in hard times where college educated men who have worked all their lives can’t find a job. My life is like a scene from a movie except if I was the one directing it the lead would be a guy who used to work in a coal mine or a steel mill. He would be blue collar and fighting for a better life for his family.

Instead they got some jerk that looks like me and signs checks with my name. I can’t stop thinking about the kids but I can’t let myself be distracted. They can’t know about this. They can’t be told what their dad does to earn a living. I am already ashamed that I had to lie to them and say that I am out of town on a work assignment but I had to. If they saw me after one of these fights they’d be scared silly. It is not an exaggeration to describe me as battered and bruised. I have taken a severe beating more than once and the only reason that I have won is because I am too stubborn to fall.

So I lie to them and stay in cheap motels. In the dark of night I lie in bed self medicating with a fifth of whatever helps me sleep. Every night before I close my eyes I tell them that I love them and promise that I will come home soon.

Jimmy knocks on the door, walks in and interrupts my thoughts. He says that it won’t be much longer before it is my turn. The music changes to Breathe by Prodigy and I start to dance around the room. I start shadow boxing and work on getting loose. In a few minutes Jimmy will come back and together we’ll walk through the dilapidated halls to the ring. It won’t be anything like the professionals see in Vegas. There won’t be a big musical number or an entourage to accompany me. Michael Buffer won’t be there to give his trademark Let’s Get Ready to Rumble either.

Instead there will be a sad looking ring surrounded by a blood thirsty crowd who doesn’t care much who wins as long as there is blood and a beating.

Jimmy is back. I close my eyes and unlock the cages that contain the demons. Sometimes I think that I can hear them howl in anticipation but that doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that sometimes I hear myself screaming too and the screams aren’t necessarily angry. Sometimes I hear something that sounds like pleasure. Sometimes I hear something that makes me wonder if I haven’t begun to enjoy this.

Something better change soon. I better find another way or get some sort of break because if this keeps up it is a guarantee that one day I will begin to enjoy this and I’ll lose that much more of whatever remains of my humanity.

Editor’s Note: I took A Mugger, Old Dumb and Stupid and The Animal Inside and wove them together to make this story.

I might play around with it a bit and make some additional tweaks and changes. Never hurts to test things out and mix things up a bit.

For me it is always about how to tell a better story.

One Father’s Expert Parenting Secrets Revealed

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The boys in legal told me I shouldn’t write a post about the 15 dumbest dad bloggers, 27 annoying mom bloggers and 985,084,093,093 how to make money online bloggers because I might suffer blowback.

I told them the only blowback I fear is the kind you get when you pee at the urinal and don’t aim properly and they just rolled their eyes at me.

Yeah, sometimes I play fast and loose with the rules of blogging and life. That is because people call me dad and somewhere during the last 16 years of fatherhood I lost the final shreds of my sanity.

If you are not a parent, you just won’t get it and that is ok, because I’ll describe parenting for you in one magical post here or you can settle for the snapshot below.

Parenting is everything you ever heard all at once. It is sensory overload that is often unrelenting and at times unforgiving. You figure it out as you go. Two days before your child turns is going to turn nine you realize that you are an expert at eight. You know how to handle eight.

Congratulations. You now have two days to enjoy your role as an expert. Nine is going to be different.

It kind of reminds me of the moment you realize that the degree(s) you earned in college didn’t really teach you all you need to know to go out and work.

At best they gave you a foundation of knowledge you can fall back upon but it is not enough to get the job done, oh no, you are just at the beginning stage of learning you don’t know very much about the world you just walked into.

Some 0f you are probably thinking that is where you fall back upon the “fake it until you make it” act so many of us engage in.

It makes sense and I understand why you would go that route, but let me assure you that parents are the kings and queens of it.

Since babies don’t pop out of the womb with guides that explain how they work and or handy-dandy trouble shooting flow charts we are always winging it.

One Father’s Expert Parenting Secrets Revealed

Yeah, if you haven’t figured it out my expert advice doesn’t have as much structure as some of you might want.

That doesn’t mean I can’t provide any or won’t but it does mean I have learned life as a father is filled with a lot of “what the hell do I do now” moments.

Some of them are simple and some are complex with a whole crapload of stuff that falls somewhere in between.

During the days/nights when it is most challenging I often find myself gazing up at the stars, headphones on my ears and focused on trying to figure out the song I hear inside my heart.

That last part isn’t supposed to be snarky, goofy or anything resembling silly.

musicsoul

Every age my kids have been has been among my favorite ages but I am finding them as preteen and teens to be even more fun and interesting.

That is because they are capable of having conversations with the kind of depth you can’t get from a toddler or young child.

Believe me, I am not knocking those ages either because some of my favorite memories come from when my kids were really little.

And because when you have preteens and teens you miss the days when they were cute without trying to be and not quite so damn mouthy.

*****

Anyhoo, one of the bigger changes that has come as a dad blogger is how I approach my content and the extra care I take in maintaining good boundaries.

My kids and their friends are tech savvy and known to Google themselves and each other.

And even though I haven’t used our real names it is not impossible for the semi-anonymous to be discovered so I try hard not to write stuff that will be embarrassing.

Granted when you have kids of a certain age it almost doesn’t matter because anything and everything you write can be embarrassing but I figure stuff that happened when they were truly little is fair as opposed to what happens now.

Now, well that is stuff I am more circumspect about sharing or at least more careful in putting them on paper.

Part Of A Father’s Job

See that Lao Tzu quote above, the one about music in the soul?

Well part of my job is helping teach my children how to get along in the world on their own. Part of it is helping them learn how to be self-sufficient and productive members of society.

And part of it is showing them that it is ok for people to grow and change over time and that we never stop looking for what helps us bring out that music in our souls.

That is why I blog. That is why I write. That is why I am in transition.

It is part of the song I hear inside my head and the great dance.

Ignore it and part you dies, I can’t and won’t be that person or that parent.

What about you.

We’re More Than A Resume

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When my children or people I know ask me to tell them about how I became a huge success I’ll tell them it was a simple path and point to the picture above.

Or I’ll draw a squiggly line and then when I know they are staring at it I’ll kick them in the ass, slap them across the face and poke them in the eye.

When they get upset I’ll tell them to suck it up and remember that life is full of surprises and not all of them are the kind that are nice.

Some are very unpleasant and are things we would choose to avoid or skip over, if we had the choice.

But we don’t always get that choice and more often than not we need to soldier through and get to the other side.

Don’t believe me?

Ask your parents and or do some reading about how to become successful and take a gander at the posts that tell you why failure is a good thing.

Really.

Yeah, some of that is serious and some of it is snark.

We’re More Than A Resume

Steiner the minor and I spent a few minutes talking about what is really involved in getting a job.

He was dismayed when I told him how the process works and explained you don’t always get an interview, let alone a response to your application.

“Dad, how can they do that? Don’t they know we are not just words on a page?”

“Technically they do know that we’re more than a resume, but sometimes the way they take the measure of a man is far too simple.”

einsteinimpossible

Don’t mistake any of this to suggest that I am in between jobs because I am pleased to say I am not. I am employed full time and have been for more than a year.

It still feels and sounds funny to say that because my father had one job and held onto for almost forty years.

In the more than 20 years since I graduated from college I have held multiple jobs, several of them were for a chunk of years, but not all.

That bothers me, even though I know it is not entirely my fault and that the world has changed since my dad was a regular Joe with a daily grind.

But it is hard not to measure myself against him.

The man worked really hard and it paid off, he retired before he turned 60. I doubt that I am going to be able to do that.

It is ok with me, honestly it is, but there are moments where I forget about then not being now and wonder what I did wrong.

Accountability.

Ma and Pa Steiner taught me to be accountable and responsible for my actions. I have done my best to pass it along to my children.

But I have learned and come to accept that our control is limited and sometimes it doesn’t matter whether we are accountable or responsible.

I didn’t cause the layoff I got stuck in nor did I perpetrate 9-11 and wreak havoc upon people and companies that did business with a company I worked for.

Sometimes shit happens.

So I teach the children to be prepared to roll with things and I wonder if I should push them to adopt a trade or pick a particular line of work like Occupational or Physical Therapy.

Maybe I should push them to become doctors or nurses.

Healthcare is never going to go out of style.

But that doesn’t change the fact that dear old dad loves that Einstein quote above and thinks it is applicable to his life.

Or should I stop the third person crap and say my life.

laotzuwhoweare

I know that the people who look at my resume aren’t getting the full story or measure of who I am and what I have to offer.

It is not tied into how well it is written because the best resume only gives a short snaphot and synopsis and I don’t think mine is the best out there.

Good maybe, but not the best.

I want better, but mostly I want people to bring me in and hear me.

I want them to see me.

I want them to not let fear of mistakes prevent them from taking a chance on someone who may not hit every keyword listed in the damn job description.

We’re more than just words on a page.

We’re people with experience, skills and abilities that are transferable that can do more than just fill a desk.

The Bottom Line

That fire in my belly is burning bright and pushing me to move from the place I currently occupy into the one I know I need.

Push the envelope, stretch the limits and go beyond it all.

I can’t live a partial life. Can’t stomach a half measure.

Have to get more, have to do more.

The question isn’t when but how.

It is not even about money as much as it is about time. I know I can always find a way to make more money but I can’t make more time.

We’re more than just words on a page.

Outraged Parent Bloggers Discover They Have No Power

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I overheard a self-proclaimed progressive declare they were going to give up their US citizenship because we put an American flag on the moon.

They said it was a sign of an American hegemony they couldn’t support.

I heard that and thought about pieces of modern art I have seen and how some people spent time telling others what the piece meant.

“It is a sign of neoliberal classical monstrosities as presented in the classical sense. It has so much depth I can’t take it. It is simply stunning.”

That is intentionally garbled and confusing. I don’t think half of those self-proclaimed experts have  a clue what they are talking about or whether the artist carved the stone in half intentionally or by mistake.

Maybe I am wrong, won’t be the first or last time.

What I am certain of is that we are living during one of the most intolerant times I can think of.

Doesn’t matter what position you take, someone is going to say you are wrong and a bunch of people will declare you the epitome of whatever epithet they think fits that particular moment.

Makes me think I ought to start a career in professional outrage. I’ll get paid to lead marches, coin terms and come up with examples of how society is against the men and women who make balloon animals.

Outraged Parent Bloggers Discover They Have No Power

I stumbled across the words another parent blogger wrote about how they gave up blogging because people don’t do it for the right reasons and rolled my eyes again.

Not just because he is a pompous windbag who needs a double colonoscopy to pull the stick and crap out of his butt but because he flat out lied.

When you quit blogging because you don’t like what you see and don’t need validation you don’t hire a marching band and skywriters to help get attention.

You just hang up your keyboard and walk away.

Relatively few of us actually do that and it almost doesn’t matter because there are legions of bloggers out there who will fill the space you used to occupy.

Many of your readers will move on to other places and spaces and life will go on as if you had never been there.

Kind of disheartening to look at it that way, but that has been what I have seen and if truth is based solely upon individual experiences well…

people think

The joy of having children in middle and high school comes with a price, or several of them I should say.

The financial one can be stiff because that teenage metabolism allows them to eat ridiculous amounts of food in one sitting and then be hungry again.

Not to mention the whole grow out of the clothes/shoes you bought last week thing.

But that is nothing compared to the social crap that comes with it all, you know that pressure to fit in and be a part of it all.

The I Don’t Care Mentality

Had a long conversation this weekend with my daughter about the importance of adopting the I don’t care what other people say or think mentality.

I believe wholeheartedly  in that Lao Tzu quote and shared it with her because I thought it would be useful.

We have been lucky and haven’t had too many run-ins with the mean girls, but we have had a few.

Last week my daughter had the pleasure of bumping into one of the mean girls from the past and discovered she is still…a bitch.

Her mom is too, no surprise there because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Mom still doesn’t like me, but that is because I called her out in front of all of the parents in school.

Happened a good five years ago, but I don’t put up with bullying and I don’t care if you are the room mom.

That doesn’t really do a good job of giving you all of the details but you don’t really need them and I am not going to waste time trying to explain the who, what, where, when and why of it.

It is done and over and the fact that this lady made a comment to someone about me made me smile. She is still carrying a grudge from all those years ago, that is proof that I won.

The Value Of This Post

Sometimes people ask me to help them determine the value of a post.

Ask me how much this one is worth and I’ll say I don’t know. If you learned or got something important from it you could say it is worth quite a bit.

And if you got nothing from it, well it is not worth all that much is it.

But for me it was worth a lot, it was part of my practice set and is helping me become a better writer.

And it was fun to write, can’t ever discount or put a real value on the importance of having fun while blogging.

That is the key to everything in this business…having fun.

Life is too short to take so damn seriously, now if only I can convince myself to believe that with the with the same intensity as I say it with…