My old blog is dead, but I sometimes miss it.  I spent years developing it and I formed an attachment to it over those years.  I was once featured on the week of Father’s day and even had a link to my blog from the MSN home page.  That was my 15 minutes.  I did not make Time’s list, but you can’t have everything, and I am certain this is something I would rather not have been given.

 

You might think that I could just continue the old blog in a new location – I certainly believed this.  Reality has proven this a difficult task and this blog has languished.  I don’t know where to put the blame – it may be that I lack time, it may be that I lack the emotional push, it may be that this blog is under surveillance – but I can see, or rather, I can feel the results.  My writing has suffered.

 

It seems that I have 34 regular readers – I don’t know who they are but one of the stat counters I use consistently reports 34 return visitors (except on weekends – but you can be forgiven for that since I don’t write on weekends).  Who ever you are, I appreciate your patients.  I wish I could promise thrilling content that will eventually reward your dedication, but I can’t.  Still, where ever you are, I wish to thank you for being my silent cheer leaders.  Perhaps someday I will have 300+ readers a day again, and that certainly provides a certain amount of motivation to write, but if I reach such levels of readership, you who are regulars will be the reason.

 

So, what do I give the 34 readers?  What can I say today that will make it worth their click to my site.  I hope that each of them has a bookmark set to save them the trouble of typing in the address.  When I look at the map of their registered ISPs, I notice that the majority live east of the Mississippi river, although the west coast also has a fairly healthy contingent as well.  There is also someone in eastern Australia, someone in India, and a fairly frequent visitor from Africa (but not frequent enough to show up on the map today and I would hate to try to remember where they were from for fear of alienating them forever – I know how strong national pride is over there).  Maybe part of my continuing problem is that I don’t really know who I am writing to yet…  I will think about that some more.

 

 

Monday saw our family invited to the block party that has been celebrated on the last Monday of August for over ten years now.  We went (since it was right next door it was easy to go and we would have been harder to avoid it than to go).  I had the kids help me drag up the grill from the back yard, Carol made a wonderful bow-tie pasta and spinach/mushroom/olive/feta cheese salad, and of course I made ice cream.  It was a wonderful gathering of good people who raved about my ice cream and Carol’s salad.

 

I found it interesting that everyone at the party said that they were so happy to have kids on the block again.  I counted the children in attendance, and there were exactly nine.  When eight of them came from our house, you can see that the demographics of the neighborhood shift more toward the retired end of the scale than what ever part of the scale I represent.  On the plus side, the neighbors treat us as a bit of a novelty and the children have learned which houses give candy and which give tomatoes, but all the houses seem to want to give something.

 

We had to leave the party a little earlier than I would have liked, but some of the 9 children there started having a water fight, and three of the nine have ‘rules of cleanliness’ that include bathing at least once a day every day.  I have a hard time with the bathing every single day because my nose smells a hot, sweaty kid that has been playing on the lawn where another nose smells something vile.  It is easier to bathe them every single night than to hear complaints about how badly they reek.  Cindy tells me that when she is not with me she needs to bathe both before going horseback riding and after she gets home: I am glad that I have not yet been expected to hold to that standard!  It reminds me a bit of my childhood friend whose mother ironed everything that came out of the dryer – socks and underwear included – and I knew that lady was just crazy.  The interesting thing is that I quickly cave to these demands that I can’t understand or accept – even when it means that we have to leave the party early.

 

Recently stress has been building up on several fronts and I have been trying to notice where I stand up strong and when I crumble and cave like a poorly baked brick.  I would like to understand if I am a man or a mouse, but all I have been able to determine for sure is that it depends on who is hunting me.

 

I think I will live longer, and better, if I allow myself to act the mouse sometimes – at least when Carol is not around to see it; I still have to pretend to be all man when I am around her.

 

 

    *  *

I took Marcia and Peter to the gun range Saturday and we had a fun, safe time.  We started out under the covered pistol/rim fire range but we had to move to the sunny, uncovered bench because of the concussion from a large .44 magnum pistol that was being fired near us.  The repetitive pressure wave did not bother me but it began to upset Marcia’s stomach.  The sun was too warm, but moving meant we got to stay a little longer.

 

We mostly shot the scoped .22 rifle, but I brought up a Beretta 92F just to let them have the experience of shooting a pistol.  One shot was enough for Marcia, but Peter fired off a whole clip.  I don’t think any of the other kids would have fired that 9mm pistol more than once so maybe I have found my shooting buddy.  Next test will be with the .410 shotgun…

 

I have some concern about the guns because I have brought guns into a home where there were none before.  My children have grown up around the guns and I have spent countless hours drilling them on safety because of this.  It has become my mantra:  “When are you allowed to touch a gun?”  Only when a parent hands that gun to you.  I still don’t trust the new part of the family as much as I trust the children that have been vetted with time and experience.

 

Carol is also concerned with guns because the only experience she has with guns is trying to put people back together after they have been shot by one.  It is a testament to her trust in me that she allows guns in the house and allows me to take her children out to learn to use them.  Even though she says nothing, I can tell that she has some concern that she can not burry deeply enough to ignore and I respect her all the more for the faith she has in me.

 

Guns are dangerous; there is no doubt of that.  As cautions as I am, and as safe as I try to be, I have had accidents with guns.  A couple of years ago I was shot by a friend while hunting grouse, and although I was not badly hurt, it exemplifies the innate danger of using firearms. 

 

I believe strongly that a child who is well trained in gun safety will be a safer child not only at my house, but also when they leave the house.  I can safely secure my guns, but I can’t trust that everyone else will do the same.

 

  *  *

Medical bills, dental bills, school supplies – the budget is shot full of holes this month.  Carol is constantly telling me how happy she is now that she can rely on someone to bring in money so she can focus on spending it… err, I mean focus on raising the kids.  I truly have no complaints about how the money is being spent; caring for children means spending money: I read once that it costs about $200,000.00 to raise a child from infancy through age 18.  Each child will cost another $80,000.00 for a college according to the Sallie Mae Education Planner – and that is assuming I can keep the kids living at home so I don’t have to pay for room & board.

 

We are still at the start of this, and our financial roadmap is incomplete, but it is obvious that there will need to be substantial changes in the way money is managed.  For example, savings for retirement has been decreased to its lowest level ever – at least for present.  I have also had to cut down on the number of ‘lunch with the boys’ activities and just do without things that I would ordinarily have purchased just because I wanted them. 

 

It may seem that these are hard times.  It may seem that I am suffering or that I would become resentful because of the ‘sacrifices’ that I am making to allow Carol to stay at home more so she can be the mother that these children need.  I could create a list a mile long of things I could do if I had no children to care for, and that list might seem attractive and exciting; the life I could live might seem fulfilling, but it would be an illusion.

 

Last night, long after I should have been asleep, we had a visitor.  A daughter who was feeling the angst that is so typical of children her age came to visit with Carol and me.  She came to be comforted – she came so that we could make it all better again.  Her concerns were beyond our ability to resolve, but we were able to talk to her and to help her recognize that the changes she is looking for need to come from inside.  Of course we pointed her to God and reminded her that with His care, all would be just right.  We told her that she is wonderful.  We told her that she is loved.  We prayed with her, and we sent her to bed with a new roadmap for finding out who she is and why she is important.

 

I want to tell you that all the ‘sacrifices’: the delaying retirement, the selling vacation back to the company for Christmas money, the long hours at work – all of these things are a very small price to pay to be given the chance to be a father to a child that needs someone to make things better in the middle of the night.

 

The life I have chosen is wonderful.

 

   *  *

I was asked to write an introduction that will be printed in our local church's next newsletter.  I decided if it was worthy of publication there, it was worth putting up here.  You might need to know that I live in an area where people don't move around much so almost everyone here graduated from one of the four local high schools.  

 

 

 

The kids say that I tell too many stories.  I must admit that I like to tell a good story.  I also have no problem telling a made up story if I don’t have a real one that works.  You can see that it was dangerous for Carol to allow me to write the story for our neighbors to read but I will try to stick to the facts.  I guarantee I could have made up a better story than this.

 

Since I was born four years before Carol, I will begin with my story first… I am a product of a Bountiful education: Oak Hills Elementary, Millcreek Jr., and of course Bountiful High.  My parents made sure I got the best education and went to all the best schools.  After serving a mission in Tampa Florida, it was back to school at the University of Utah and you can see this theme of choosing the best schools continue.

 

Before I could finish my Major in Biology, Minor in Chemistry, Physics, and German, and take up a career as a High School teacher as was my ambition, I was persuaded to take a job in the computer industry where I have since settled into a comfortable position managing a phone system.  It is not the job I would have chosen for myself, but when I was first persuaded to leave education and pursue money, I set a goal that I would go back to teaching at 48.  8 kids needing college educations might prove that goal as overly ambitious as my course of study was in college.

 

Carol was born in Texas during a hurricane.  Somehow that chaos of the storm resurfaces even now, but she has learned to harness most of that energy and focus it on getting things done.  She needs this energy every Sunday to get everyone ready for church.

 

Carol was raised in North Salt Lake, and attended Orchard Elementary, South Davis Jr. High, and Woods Cross.  She insists that she still got a good education.  I have learned that when speaking with those less fortunate – those who had to go to Woods Cross, Viewmont, or Davis – that it is often best just to say nothing about my superior education.  Carol went on to become a nurse and then to fill a mission in Ecuador.

 

Our story might never have begun except for the meddling of my mother and Carol’s sister.  The two of them attend a neighboring church where their Sunday School lessons are not always as stimulating ours, and the two of them spent one Sunday figuring out how to get us to meet.  By the time my mother bothered to include me, the date had been planned and set.  I was told that Carol was expecting me to invite her to the symphony the next Saturday.  I was a good boy and did what my mother told me, but I refused her offer to serve us dinner at her house before the symphony.  She said that she thought it would be less awkward, but ask your teens this:  “Can you think of anything more awkward than a blind date – with your parents?”

 

I tried to keep my parents in the dark as our relationship developed, but Carol was unable to keep from sharing with her sister so the stories got back to my parents the long way around.  I was not trying to shut them out, but I did not want this to feel like an arranged marriage either, especially when it was evident from the start that marriage was a real possibility: I was looking for a well-qualified woman with experience in raising children to help me teach gospel principles and help me provide an example of a gospel centered marriage for my children.  Carol… well Carol says it better.  She says she dreamed me into existence and then prayed me into her life.

 

We were married in the Bountiful Temple June 17.  Carol’s 5 children:  Marcia (13), Jan(12), Greg (10), Peter (8), and Sam (5), and my 3 children:  Cindy (10), Bobby (6) and Alice (5) needed a house big enough and close to where they attend school.  At the time there was only one available so we bought it.  The house was exactly what we needed; the ward and neighbors that came with it were an unseen blessing.  We have been very happy here.

 

Some time ago I set myself down with a desk calculator and did some math.  I did it just for fun, but this is a copy of the e-mail I sent to friends and family when I was finished.  Little did I know that the project I worked on for fun was only one step away from a viable business plan!  The link at the bottom will explain the relationship between my musings and a viable business plan.

 

The other day I used my chemistry to figure out how many trees I needed to support the CO2 created by my car.  You English majors are the only people who get to use your education less than a biology major does, so I know you can understand my excitement at being able to actually use something I learned in school. 

 The science for this first part is fairly exact, except that I did not account for the Hydrogen molecules bonding with Oxygen to create water, and I took the average CO2 absorption values of trees from other research… and I cut other corners as well, but whatever.  I am fortunate that the rules for Chemistry do not change according to the whims of society, so the science I learned 15 years ago is still valid today… mostly.  This is what I found:

 One Gallon of gasoline produces 19.564 pounds of C02 (assuming that the gasoline were entirely made of 'octane' or carbon chains eight molecules long).  My car consumes 12 gallons of gasoline a week, every week, for 52 weeks in a year, producing a staggering 12,208 pounds – roughly twice its Gross Vehicular weight – every year.

 The average tree (and again I borrowed this science, so don't quiz me on what an average tree looks like) absorbs 24.251 pounds of CO2 every year, so I need only 503 trees.  I am green because I own, manage, and care for many more trees than this.  A lumber company will be harvesting trees from part of my property this summer, and I am going to make sure that at least 503 trees are planted to replace those that are taken just to make sure I stay green.

 R. (at his request, Ross’s name has been removed from this document), being R. began to ruminate on these numbers and wondered what it took to compensate for simply being alive and breathing in and out on a regular basis.  I guess this is about what is to be expected when a math major changes his mind mid-stream and graduates with a degree in English; most have learned to ignore his inquisitiveness, but I have not.  The science to answer R.’s question is a little fuzzier because not everything we digest is made of carbon, but if you allow me to assume that the only carbon is burned in the human engine, I can rough out some figures to pacify any curiosities.

 First, it is interesting to note that the Calories listed on food products are really kilocalories.  I knew this once, but I had forgotten, and I have since been slightly baffled at the economy of the human body to consume so little energy.   2,500 food Calories equals 2,500,000 calories, and a gallon of gasoline has about 31,000,000 calories.  If we could digest gasoline, we could live on one gallon of gasoline for 12.4 days – talk about an energy drink!  Because a calorie is a measure of heat, the two caloric totals can be related to each other – at least using my fuzzy math.  Working it out, I find that we emit 575 pounds of CO2 each year.  It is curious to note that this is substantially more than twice my weight, and is closer to four or five times my weight (who am I kidding?) meaning that my gas-guzzling Tahoe produces less CO2 per pound than I do.  This makes it obvious that it is much more efficient for me to drive than to walk.  I did not try to figure out how much CO2 came from which end, I will leave that to more intrepid scientists, but assuming the same 'average' tree above, we each need to care for 23.72 trees to counter the greenhouse gasses we create each year simply by being alive.

 I have trees to spare if anyone is interested in becoming 'green' by renting them from me.  Prices are reasonable.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18659716/

 

I know you all trust me, so feel free to start sending your ‘green fees’.  I would provide an accounting of what I do with this money, but that accounting would only force me to work harder and expend more CO2, and none of us want that.

 

   *   *

Yesterday evening was one of visitors.  We had a total of 7 visitors between 6 PM and 8 PM last evening, of which we were expecting 5.  They came in groups of ones and twos, but miraculously, their visits did not overlap – it was almost as if it were choreographed.

 

Most of the visitors were by on church business, but an insurance salesman spiced up things for twenty minutes or so, and then the neighbors to the West came by as well.  I am glad that they sought us out because I did not know how to approach them.  I had asked Mayor Matt on a point of law, and since his son is married to the daughter of the westward neighbors, perhaps word of my impending visit reached them through that grapevine.

 

This is the problem:  When our house was built, there were orchards next door and the people who built the house worried about their immediate needs rather than what things would eventually look like when the trees were torn up and houses were planted.  This resulted in a ‘dead space’ between the property to the west and our property.  It looks a bit like this:

 

 

Property Next Door                                       *

                                                                      *

______________ _   _   _   _   _   _  _  _  _  *

                            |                                         *

                            |                                         *    City Street

                            |___________________   *

Our Property                                                 *

                                                                     *

 

 

 

The Solid lines (and the vertical dashes that were intended to look like a solid line) represent the cement retaining wall that makes our back yard flat.  The dash represents the actual property line as it extends out to the road.  The area between the retaining wall and the property line was left as ‘orchard’ even when the house next door was built.  The neighbor to the west put in his lawn, and then approached the original owner of my house about doing something with this area of dirt.  The neighbor said he would plant some trees and bushes there and maintain a small spot of grass that connected to his lawn.  He did this, and he did a wonderful job.  18 years or so later, the planting he did still looks good.

 

The problem is that despite talking about deeding this small spot over to him, it was never done.  The people who had the house next also said that they would be willing to deed the property to him, but then the house was sold to several ‘investors’ and eventually sold to us. 

 

The neighbors came over because they wanted to put up a fence.  They did not say it was to keep our kids on our side of that fence, but I think it was universally understood.  Their question to us was where to put the fence.  Should they put the fence along the retaining wall or should they follow the property line?  It is a tough decision and one I am still agonizing over.

 

Obviously the husband has a vested interest in keeping this property that he has maintained much more than the wife does.  It makes sense since it is probably his sweat that has kept this area looking good.  If there were no other concerns, I would have told him to put the fence along the retaining wall and let it alone.  Right now we have kids and not cars, so we don’t need the parking lot created by the retaining wall as it stands.  Carol and I have been trying to figure out just how to make the yard more kid friendly, and we have decided that ripping out the parking lot and putting in a garden is our best option.  This garden is planned for the contested area.

 

The wife was intrigued by the idea of a garden in this spot – especially when I mentioned that we would be happy to share garden space with them.  The husband was not so thrilled, but perhaps that was only because he really wants to wall our kids out of his yard.  I will have to ask him if he intends to wall off the rest of his yard or not…

 

I want to figure out what is fair in this situation.  The husband said that he had no claim on the land, and that if he had pushed to have the property deeded to him it would not be an issue, but that it was not important enough to him to see that the deeds were changed.  Although he might not have a legal claim, he certainly has worked very hard to improve and maintain this spot, so he should have some moral right to determine its future. 

 

I think I need to start with more conversations about this spot so I can understand what is really driving the neighbor.  Perhaps if I understand his underlying motivations, we can together come up with a plan that works for everyone.

 

   *  *

We took the family fishing Saturday.  We went to escape the heat, but we did not choose a lake high enough to truly get out of the heat.  I had less of a problem with the heat because we took the canoe and so I divided the kids into groups of two and spent the day taking them around on the water.  I think it was a good trip, but I did not get a chance to take Carol out in the boat (and I don’t know if she has ever been in a canoe before).  The hot, dry wind was parching for those left on the shore, but I think we might have forgotten about it if we had been able to catch fish.

 

I had a couple of poles baited up on the shore for the kids who were left behind to fight over, and then two more poles in the boat to troll behind us as I rowed.  Peter said he had a fish for a while but was unable to land it, but the others all say that he was telling stories.  All I know is that no one caught anything when I was around, but holding the fishing pole gave the kids something to do as I paddled.

 

It was interesting to notice how much concern everyone gave to the distance that we went.  No one was comfortable going as far as the other kids, but rather everyone wanted to go farther than everyone else.  I am sure that I was like this as a child, always wanting the biggest or the best, but as an adult the behavior confuses me.  Why will a child take the biggest piece of something even when they are not hungry?  There is some drive that forces them to take the biggest, and then to make sure everyone sees that they have the biggest.  You might be surprised to learn how often we find fights and fits about who got more or about who got the wrong kind.  You would sometimes believe that we had a household of 10 four year olds.

 

The trip only served to remind me of how much I like taking the canoe out on a lake.  I really feel at home on the water and my muscles enjoy the resistance of water as I make the canoe skim over the water.  Fishing is often secondary and I have been known to wake at 3:00 am and just go ‘fishing’.  There is a lake in Southern Utah called Navajo Lake – a long, slender lake in a blind basin of mountains, and I have been all the way around that lake several times.  I usually make the journey in the early morning, and I always make it alone – and not just because I am the only one stupid enough to wake up in the middle of the night to go for a boat ride.

 

  *  *

I went fishing again yesterday.  My fishing buddy Andy and I left work a little early and headed for the same pools that we fished on Friday.  The results were better and a mystery was solved. 

 

On Saturday, both Andy and I had trouble hooking and landing fish.  You may remember that I attributed this to my lack of recent experience setting hooks, and although experience certainly has something to do with it, the bigger problem was the type of fish that we were probably catching.  You see, yesterday I was setting the hook better and I was landing fish – and I found most of them were really, really big whitefish. 

 

Whitefish, as you will read if you follow the link, have a small, bony mouth making it difficult to set a hook properly.  The fish put up a wonderful fight, but I have never eaten one despite such articles like this one.  Maybe next time?  I guess I won’t know how they taste until I try one.  Until then, I will savor the wonderful, powerful fight that they put up as they flex my fly rod and lead me on a chase down the river.  It is no wonder that we had difficulty hooking fish Saturday if we were feeding to whitefish!

 

The other problem is with our materials – it has been many years since Andy and I were last fly fishing, and our leaders and lines are old and probably decaying.  There are no visible signs of wear to our nylon leaders, but when they are under stress – even marginal stress – they are failing. 

 

The first problem, the one of being rusty compounded with a difficult kind of fish, is easily resolved.  The second problem is more problematic because it costs money to buy lines and leaders.  I know for a fact that the fly lines I am using are all more than 10 years old and the leaders are between 3 and 5 years old, so it is time to replace the whole deal.  That costs money.

 

A co-worker has been begging me to sell my Matrix Figurine and today I relented and sold it.  I see them for sell on line for as little as $50.00 and I sold mine for $40.00.   Of course Ebay has them for $139.00 too.  All I know is that I would rather replace my fishing lines than have a really, really cool Sentinel protecting a corner of my office space.

 

Actually, that corner looks a little empty now.  I miss his myriad eyes and his dreadlock arms already.  Maybe if I put something fishing related in that spot I will be reminded what I made the trade for and I won't miss him so badly.

 

 

    *  *