Showing 38 posts from December 2008
The healthiest food my stepson will eat without begrudgment is Subway sandwiches. His favorite is a Melt, toasted (unbelievably you have to tell them that), with banana peppers, oregano and olives. Him being sixteen, we're making him get off his lame dead FX-watching X-box playing duff and find a job. Logically, he's shooting for Subway.
Subway does a little more than just ask for your name and address, references, when you can work and whether or not you'll cop to a felony. You get to take a five-question "Employment Test" too. One of the questions on the Subway "Employment Test" is:
Which do you consider more important as far as a restaurant is concerned: prompt service or a quality product?
Pretty deep, huh? Especially considering my line of work: a service quality coach for a well-known manufacturer of personal navigation devices. Not the same as a Subway sandwich, but the question still applies: If you don't understand how to use your PND and require help, is it more important that you are served promptly, or that the service you receive is of high quality? Or if you sell said devices (or anything else, really), is it more important that they be delivered to you promptly or that they arrive in good order?
I've heard questions like this called "onion questions," because they have layers, and some layers are deeper than others. What makes them fun is they have no one firm correct answer. You can make a good argument for either side. In fact, you can make a passionate argument for either side. . . which makes it that much more interesting. Suppose you're a rock-chalk Prompt Service kind of soul, and your supervisor is a come-hell-or-high-water Quality Product kind of soul; think that might lead to some lively discussions about how well you're doing your job?
If you're curious, my stepson's answer was:
I prefer a quality product because even though I have to wait longer, it's more rewarding in the end.
Pretty deep for a sixteen-year-old. Where do you stand? Prompt Service or Quality Product? Post your preference! Represent!
My stepson, as you know if you follow this blog regularly, is a Life member of a national youth paramilitary organization. You know it as the Boy Scouts of America. (I like pulling people's chains with technically true but shocking-sounding descriptions like that. I personally belong to a world-wide countercultural religious cult. You may know it better as the Roman Catholic Church.)
Today, to his chagrin, we worked together on the early requirements for the Family Life merit badge. One of the early requirements is to "discuss how the actions of an individual can effect other members [of a family.]"
He was irritated I was making him do this rather than let him watch FX on cable and rot his brain all day, so he pretended not to know how to answer this requirement.
"Look at it this way," I said. "Suppose one member of the family is completely selfish..."
"You're going to make this about ME, aren't you?" he said.
"No," I said. "Assume it's me. Assume every Monday, I came home and ate dinner and then said 'I'm going bowling now, see ya.' Assume every Tuesday, I came home and ate dinner and said 'I'm going to go drink some beers with friends, see ya.'"
"Assume every day he blew us off to go hunting or fishing," said his mother, thinking of a brother-in-law we all know and love.
Inspiration hit. "Suppose," I said, with his mother in clear earshot, "I came home one night, ate dinner, and said 'I met this cute girl at work and we're going to a movie, see ya.' How would you feel?"
His response was immediate. "I'd kick your ass," he said.
"You'd kick my ass," I repeated. "And why?"
"Because you're supposed to be faithful to my mother," he said.
"Good answer," I said.
God help us, we've done one thing right raising that kid...
My stepdaughter was up from Pittsburg Tuesday afternoon, packing up her room. Now that she is a married woman, we've decided she no longer needs separate specific space in our home; so she's selling some of her things at a garage sale her mother will have in September, and the rest is going back to Pittsburg with her eventually. Once this happens, I'm converting the room into my office/"mancave." After effectively twelve years of stepfatherhood I think I've earned one.
At her mother's suggestion I gave her a break from packing and took her out to dinner. It'd been a long time since we'd done that. Her teen years, there were occasions where I would take her out for dinner or on a long drive so she and her mother wouldn't kill each other. We would air out feelings, and we would talk about strange trivial things, and by the time we got home she'd be reasonably okay and Mom would be more calm. As is, this time around everyone was calm. Maturity will do that to you.
So, there we were, in a nice new Mexican restaurant on Santa Fe, just talking about whatever came to mind, and the young lady starts talking about her psychotic cat Cuddles (go back to May's posts for a fun story about Cuddles), and she blurts out, "We tried to shave her a few days ago."
"You... what?" I asked.
"We tried to shave her," she giggled. "She didn't like it. There's only a small spot. The vet said they could shave her for us, but she'd have to be sedated..."
There was more, but I don't remember it. I just remember thanking God this couple had yet to bear children and asking Him to keep it from happening for a very, very long time.
But what sticks in my memory was the vet's office saying they could shave the cat for them. And all I can think about that is... why?!?
Barring lice, or an infected sore, or removing a tick, why for the love of Heaven would someone deliberately shave a cat?
Can anyone enlighten me on this? Because to me it sounds seriously ill.
Today, again I am home from work, tending to my recuperating wife with a big hole in her foot from cyst surgery yesterday. I thought after ten years of marriage I had her down fairly pat. Lord, am I wrong. I'm learning how to feed her as she wishes to be fed. I'm learning there is no room for variance. I'm learning things have to be made with exactly the right mix of certain ingredients. None of it is too terribly difficult, just challenging because I am low-maintenance, a skill honed between the ages of 21 to 34 of having to take care of myself by myself on the pathetically low salary of a professional radio broadcaster (something I, gratefully, no longer am). In fairness, she's not as high-maintenance as some people I've known and know today. But compared to me, she's an heiress. Maybe I'll write more about this later. Right now I need to put her ice pack back on her foot. At least she doesn't have a little bell...
Because Your Humble Blind Dog Blogger is a big believer in full disclosure, I'm using this post to let you know that I've removed all of the NaNoWriMo posts from November. (which seemed to have driven most of the people who read this blog away), and I've removed other posts that are of strictly personal nature and have no lasting aesthetic value. And, I'll probably remove this post in a few weeks for the same reason. It's all part of my new effort for 2009 to maintain a green Internet-friendly blog with with the smallest bandwidth footprint possible.
So do yourself a favor and, after reading this post, shut down your computer, step outside, and take a deep breath of clean fresh air. You're welcome. ;-)
So do yourself a favor and, after reading this post, shut down your computer, step outside, and take a deep breath of clean fresh air. You're welcome. ;-)
