SOC

The morning after hurts but in a good way. The house is destroyed and the remnants of a thousand howling middle school age boys is all around us.

It is not the calm after the storm but the clean up and I am tired but happy. My boy is smiling and so am I. He’ll officially be 12 in less than a week and we have had another sleep over party for him.

This may or may not be the last, but it definitely won’t happen next year. That is because next year will be his Bar Mitzvah and I won’t even tell you how surreal that feels to me.

These boys all used to be tiny little creatures but that is not the case any more. One of them is 5’9 and we wonder if he won’t be well over six feet. Two others aren’t much shorter than him and I know that in a few years I will be the one who has to look up to make eye contact.

My son won’t ever be as tall as them and that bothers him a little, but he’ll get used to it. He asks me about it and I laugh, tell him that my hands are bigger than a lot of the guys who are taller than I am.

He wants to know if that matters and I say it doesn’t matter any more than their being taller than I am.

Values are a funny thing. Some change over time.

We are all tired and worn out. Sleep will come soon, but I am happy to say there will be no need to hit the mall until after the 25th.

Tired doesn’t go well with holidazed.

This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post (in the sidebar).
• Link up your post below.
• Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

Don’t challenge me unless you are willing to take what comes with it. Don’t throw down the gauntlet and then cry when you are engaged by someone who doesn’t let up because you are losing or things are rough.

This isn’t just about me although it ties into me.

It is about people who start things they can’t finish and then cry because they get hurt. It is about those who get smacked, slammed and mauled because they bit off more than they can chew and then spend time racing around the blogosphere, the UN or wherever to cry about it.

Victims

I don’t have patience or tolerance for a victim mentality. If things aren’t figure out how to change them.

I don’t claim to be special, profound or insightful. I just know these things because life has kicked, hit, bit and chewed upon me a bit and all I could do was take it or move.

Change is hard. Change is frightening, but it is a part of life and it has to be met head on.

Children

We’re going through some growing pains here. My kids have been learning some hard lessons and it hurts because I can’t take all of the blows for them. I have taken many and will take more but they have to learn what to do when they get knocked down.

They have to learn how to rise after they fall and how to deal with adversity.

Life has been bittersweet for a good long while now and yesterday was a day that made me want to scream with frustration because of things the kids said.

But when I took a deep breath and looked around it was also clear how much progress we have made and that some of what they said is because they are just kids. It happens.

I didn’t react outwardly to their words because they take their cue from my reaction, but beneath a relatively calm exterior there was a lot going on.

Just a few more steps, got to push a bit longer and a bit harder and we’ll get beyond this place.

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This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spell checking. This is writing in the raw.
Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.

My nephews play tackle football and they love it.

I wasn’t allowed to play on the school teams when I was a kid because my dad said I was “young, dumb and stupid.”

He was right, I was. The boy I used to be still lives inside me. At 43 I still play tackle football with the guys in the fraternity. Granted I generally play once a year I still play balls to the wall and without fear because fear is what gets you hurt.

That is what we always said and how my nephews play, fearlessly.

Except my oldest nephew got his bell rung in his last game and ended up with a concussion. That is serious. It concerns me. He is tough as nails, but he is smaller than some of the other boys and size wins. I know because I have been on both sides of the fence.

This post is a stream of consciousness and I am flowing with it. This is how I began blogging and still how I like to do it. We are supposed to write about people who matter to us and who have made a difference.

There are many that I could write about but one comes to mind except I can’t go there today. Can’t tell what I am thinking or why. Won’t say if it is good, bad or sad. Just won’t because I can’t do that today, maybe a different day.

Maybe I’ll write something about them elsewhere or maybe I won’t.

Hope my nephew stops playing because he suffers from the same silly thoughts as me.

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This was my 5 minute Stream of Consciousness Sunday post. It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump. Want to try it? Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
• Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
• Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post (in the sidebar). .