I See a Career in My Child's Future

My father was in the Air Force. All four siblings breathed huge sighs of relief when our oldest brother went ROTC in college and then entered the Air Force. We were off the hook. Bonus? He went on to reproduce quickly, freeing the rest of us up from the pressure to do the same. [Remember, I came late to the parenting game. By the time I had my first child, my father had been dead nearly a decade, and my brother's kids were into the teen years already.]


Up until just a couple of days ago, I was of the mind to not pressure my kids into any particular career path. My mantra is was "Graduate from college and do a job you won't hate." No more. Based on my experience over the last week or so with all of our home computers being essentially fried and spending triple-digit dollars and double-digit hours online with tech support, I have decided the only career path for at least one of them is IT.

My thinking is this will best suit me in my old age. Now, you might think it would be handy to have a doctor in the family. Nope. The good ole U.S. of A. is more than happy to pay for my health care when I'm old. Let me be a drain on the taxpayers as a whole rather than my offspring.


But computer problems? Sadly, the U.S. hasn't gone socialist enough -- nor do I think it ever will -- to fund computer repairs and Trojan horse removals and computer virus inoculation. It costs a freakin' fortune to counteract those effin' hackers in the Ukraine who get off on effin' with good ole Americans' ability to telecommute, not to mention being able to access Netflix for the latest American Dad episode or post snarky diatribes about the school district. [Nothing against the Ukraine, mind you. I'm sure the non-hackers there are just fabulous folks.]


So one of my kids needs to go into tech support. I will, however, heed the advice of the tech support guy at AVG I spent quality hours with on Friday and make sure that child of mine does not get into the whole sweatshop atmosphere of a call center.

Buzz Cutting the Christmas Tree

We must have missed the missive from the garbage people waste management company telling us the day of the Christmas tree pick-up. The tree was long ago undecorated and set out on the little spit of land that is our property but close enough to the curb to be an eyesore to neighbors. The week we figured trees would be picked up, our slowly decomposing tree was not. Not really giving a shit what our neighbors think of us, we left it out for another entire week. That second Friday after trash pick-up waste removal, it was still there.


Rather than start a brand new compost pile at the front of the house -- something a lazy person such as me would have done -- Pete started sawing off branches and loading them into the yard clippings trash can. It's a good thing we did miss the pick-up because look who had escaped from the house by hiding himself in the Christmas tree branches:

It makes me wonder where Woody and the others are. Have they gone to look for Buzz? Had he gone out to look for them? I've put Buzz on my router to remind me to go into the hellhole that is our storage closet overrun with so much crap it will take a full day to go through it secret room, where all the decorations are stored, and track down Woody and the gang. Otherwise, I fear Chicken Man will get his greasy paws feet on them and ship them all off to Japan. And then how sad will our tree look next year?

Kayla Rose and Grace

This is a girl I have never met.

I do not know her family. I first heard of her family when I read a very funny story on a local Patch site which included a picture of her father and the lengths he went to as coach of her recreational soccer team. This is a picture of him.





Within a month of reading that story, I learned about the story of Kayla Rose and her very recent cancer diagnosis.


She is currently undergoing treatment at St. Jude's. Her mom and dad and younger brother are all with her in Memphis right now. Her mom is keeping locals apprised of what's happening at her blog, Curing Kayla Rose. Many fundraisers are going on back home as people who know and love her -- and people who don't know her -- do their best to ease the family's financial strain while their physical and emotional strain is surely bursting at the seams.


I don't know her at all. But I do know that there but for the grace of God or Budhha or the Fates or the Big Bang go me and mine. 


Last week, the school she attends held a coin drive. It occurred to me, remembering how I first heard of Kayla and her Angry Bird dad, that this Sunday's soccer Jamboree would be as good a place as any to collect for them. So I'll be at the high school turf on Sunday for a couple of hours as the kids warm up for the looming soccer season, and I'll be shaking down everyone who comes in, asking them to shake loose their change, whether they know her or not.


[Top photo courtesy the Curing Kayla Rose blog; bottom photo courtesy Nicole Choi.]

Psychics and Super Powers

Youngest steers the dinner conversation toward his latest school assignment: choosing a SUPER POWER -- not of the Soviet Union v. U.S. v. China sort -- and detailing how he got his SUPER POWER and how it benefits others. His choice appears to be SUPER KNOWLEDGE, and he scoffs that most of the kids in his class choose INVISIBILITY or SUPER STRENGTH.


His dad opts for the ability to FLY, noting that this will dramatically lower his carbon footprint. This, of course, leads to a three-minute break in the SUPER POWER discussion in order to explain what a carbon footprint is and why we are freely ridiculing the choice of FLYING as a SUPER POWER. The other break in the conversation? Why we hate politicians and how we've never had the chance to vote for a great presidential candidate and none of us ever will.


SUPER POWERS. Right. That's what I was writing about. I toy with TIME TRAVEL, but we all nix that because of that whole space-time continuum issue. Yes, that's right, we have to take reality into account when we're talking SUPER POWERS. We also believe that taking out, say, Gaddafi Duck would only have let some equally evil dictator take the same appalling actions. In the end, we're all for taking out Hitler and Pol Pot and Stalin, but again come back to that continuum issue.


PREDICTING THE FUTURE? They say that's got the same issues as TIME TRAVEL.



How about READING MINDS? Pete scoffs at that, pointing out it will all just be like a tweet stream to me.


In the end, I choose SUPER JUDGE. Yes, I get to determine what and who is right and what and who is wrong. My SUPER POWER makes me a SUPREME JUDGE of the world. I certainly am quite the critical sort, right?

*******

This conversation came on the heels of a conversation I had with a friend not that long ago. There is a murder trial set to happen soon in Marin County. Joseph Naso appears to be a serial killer. They seem to have him dead-to-rights on it. I doubt they'll seek the death penalty, though, seeing as he is 78 years old. His victims likely number more than the four women he is accused of killing.


What if you suspected someone you knew was of a similar ilk? What if you encountered someone with psychic abilities who told you things that fed that belief? What if there were little (and bigger) events or circumstances or feelings or senses that you got that told you someone in your life was not only fully capable of doing evil but likely had? Did Naso's ex-wife ever somehow know but didn't really know and so did nothing about it? Would some of those women still be alive if she had?


You'd sound crazy with absolutely no evidence. Throw in the unexpected encounter with a psychic, regardless that it was in a social setting and she just started telling you things, and you'd sound totally bonkers. Besides getting yourself the hell away, there really isn't anything else you can do. Right? Except hope that 10 or 20 years later it doesn't all turn out to be true and the best you can do is say out loud, "I had no idea," but know inside that's not true.

MIA

Here's an incident at work I can finally find some humor in. We were looking for an administrative assistant to work from 2 p.m. to closing each night. The woman I work for with pays hourly workers on the low end. [Thankfully, she makes up for it by paying me on the high end. Heh.] But this particular job included benefits of the health care and vacation and sick time variety, so it was a decent salary for someone starting out.


I waded through a huge number of resumes, narrowed it down to a half-dozen, interviewed them over the phone, and then invited five in to talk to us. Two never showed. Among the other three, one was so-so, one was really good, and one was fabulous. We offered jobs to both the "really good" and the "fabulous." "Fabulous" accepted right away. "Really Good," who had just moved here from New York, scoffed at the hourly wage, saying she was holding out for at least $2 more an hour.


So "Fabulous" started the next Monday. In accepting the job, she indicated she had already made plans to be out of town for a three-day weekend starting on the Friday, so her first week was only going to be Monday through Thursday.


On Monday, she dove right in and did brilliantly.


On Tuesday, she did more of the same.


On Wednesday, when I wasn't in the office, I got an email in the morning from the night supervisor saying that "Fabulous" had left Monday at 7:30, citing a deadline for a school essay. On Tuesday, "Fabulous" ducked out at 8:00, not saying anything about why she was leaving early. (She was supposed to stay until 9:30 each day.)


Since I wasn't going to be in Wednesday, we all agreed the night supervisor would reiterate the hours that day and I would have a come-to-Jesus talk with her on Thursday when I was in again.


Wednesday night, she waited until the night supervisor stepped out for a smoke, and then she left without saying good-bye at 8:30.


Thursday, she sent an email saying she was sick and would be happy to work from home. I declined the offer and said she should just stay home and recover and I would see her Monday.


Of course, she never showed on Monday, and we never heard from her again, until payday 10 days later, when she sent a note. 


"I wanted to deeply apologize for my abrupt disappearance... I am so sorry about that, and I realize I handled myself very unprofessionally. I just don't think I was a good fit for the job.

However, I still do of course expect to be compensated for the work I did. I believe I left my time sheet on the desk I was working at.. I did keep track of the hours I worked there, in case you need me to send them to you etc. Please let me know if there's anything I can do from my end to make this less work for you.

Again, my sincerest apologies. I'm so sorry it didn't work out.

Best,

Mia"

Yeah, the Missing In Action employee was named Mia. And her time sheet listed hours as if she had actually worked when she was supposed to work.

The upshot for us? We will never again hire a person we believe is absolutely fabulous.

I Gotta Feeling I Like American Pie

I am driving Daughter home from her Girl Scouts meeting, and the Black Eyed Peas song "I Gotta Feeling" comes on the radio. At best, I know the chorus and a few random lines throughout. Daughter? She has it down cold, inflections included. Hand gestures, even.


I listen to her sing along -- and I pipe in with my own feeble warbling of those random lines and the chorus -- and I wonder how many times she has listened to the damn song in order to memorize it. I imagine her sitting at her computer, singing along with a YouTube version that has the lyrics scrolling along. She intently listens and stares and backs up the video when needed. Eventually, she knows it as well as the Black Eyed Peas do.


"What a waste of time," I think.


After the song ends, Don McLean's "American Pie" comes on. Daughter knows the chorus, of course, but only only only because her boyfriend was in the car with us once when the song came on the radio. I sang along then, of course, because, hell, it's "American Pie." Daughter bitterly complained, not just over the embarrassment of her mom singing IN FRONT OF HER BOYFRIEND, but also because the song is so lame.


Her boyfriend, however, is an aficionado of classic rock, and he informed her that "American Pie" is fabulous. So Daughter, while still embarrassed to death that her mom is singing IN FRONT OF HER BOYFRIEND, no longer complained about the song itself. She even learned the chorus.


All of which leads us back to last night's "American Pie," when I sing every single solitary line of that song -- and Daughter chimes in at the chorus -- and we even drive around the block so as not to arrive home before the song is complete. And I am transported back to the days of 45's and playing a song over and over and over until I know it as well as Don McLean himself does.


"Maybe not so much a waste of time," I think.


At the end of the song, as we are pulling into the driveway, I tell Daughter that "American Pie" is the only non-Springsteen song I want played at my funeral. She agrees to remember. Here's hoping she has to remember for a very long time.

Soccer season? Already?

It is. The season kicks off with some warm-up sessions for the kids the next two weekends. Then there is a 10-day break, and then try-outs are in February. Alas and alack, it turns out Youngest has to try out with his age group. You remember all my bitching about that team, right? And the coach? And the other parents? And the fuckin' nightmare that all that was? [Oh good God, don't click the links. We'll all just get sucked right into it again.]

I remember, too.

It's not a foregone conclusion that he'll play on that team. On the upside, there will be a new coach. Yes, everyone, you can thank me and mine for that. On the downside, it's possible that the former coach will still have his kid play in this league, on that team. Worse, of course, is the certainty that a couple of very vile parents will certainly still have their kids playing on that team.

In the end, we lucked out by having Youngest play with the older kids this year. The coach was fabulous. It was as if the old coach was a Stephen Colbert parody on what coaching should be like, and the coach of Youngest's new team was the real thing. Hell, he even won Coach of the Year. And, no, I don't think it was because he had to put up with me, thanks for asking.

Mostly, I'm so sad that the league president sent me the following email:

I am very pleased to hear Youngest had such a great experience with BEST COACH EVER. Our policy does require Youngest to try out for his U11 team (correct age group)...NEW COACH BECAUSE OLD COACH HAS BEEN KICKED OFF is fantastic! We are so excited to have him and I am equally excited for Youngest to meet him!

So, stay tuned. Nearly all of me wants Youngest to continue playing up. In a testament to my managing to keep my mouth shut about his original team, Youngest is excited that he might be able to play with his age group again. There's that damn "excited" word again.

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