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Showing posts from March, 2015

Parenting 101, and work life: making changes to improve

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I grew up with parents who taught me how to get stuff done. Saturday and Sunday were chore days. If you got in trouble, it meant chores continued all week after school, out in the yard, or in the house. The punishment depended on what happened at the time, and what we had done wrong in the midst of it all. I remember getting spankings with a spoon and usually being terrified that the wooden or metal would really hurt my bottom. There was nothing scarier than my father smacking each one of us with his hand. As a kid, it sounds awful, but looking back now it isn’t. We learned that disrespecting our mother, or goofing off in class, or causing a ruckus meant no dinner, time out, and no playtime with friends. As siblings, it was understood how much we loathed this arrangement and we made our parents out to be the worst parents in the universe. “Well, their parents let them stay out late, and watch TV, and eat junk food and candy, why can’t we,” we bargained and or pleaded our otherwise...

Felt Like I'd Been 'Punked'

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 If you have ever seen the TV show Punked with its producer Ashton Kutcher, you will know why this was such an eye opener. Name changes for protection of individual and myself. Last week I went to go visit Mason at his house and see what progress he had made and to enjoy the outdoors and the countryside, which I am a huge fan of. Mason was trying to fix a lawn mower he purchased from a neighbor and so after showing me a tour of the house, he got right back to working on the project. The drive there took me 45mns, because it's definitely remote. He didn't ask me how it went, nor how I was, but continued working. He admitted he was a terrible host and to make myself at home. So I did. I sat out in the back yard next to his coy pond that came with the home and played with his dog. He had planted a garden around the back and made it homey. Indoors the living room is really spacious and the children's bedrooms and his master are quaint.    The place really is a...

Family Time, God Comes First, and Remembering You Matter

 Last weekend, my sister drove up from L.A. to buy a car off my parents to save money with a more economical vehicle. I went to see her and my grandfather instead of going forward with my own plans. Some people make choices to do their own thing, but I for one choose family a lot. I try to talk myself out of it, but I know this was the right thing. Family is a big deal. Sure they nag, they frustrate you, they invade personal time it seems, but really they are the cornerstone of strength when it seems like everything else is falling apart.  I feel better with family and it challenges me to check myself. If when I want to be annoyed or mad about something completely trivial or that I launch into opposition, I have to remind myself who owns the problem, where I am, and what can I do right now in this situation, if I can't do anything to let it go. I butt in, because I want to be heard and I sometimes feel like my family doesn't hear me, or that they don't care. They answer b...

Life in Your 20's, in the fast lane, or In a movie: Suicide is not Okay

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I am living in a world where we have to pay to date someone or find someone to date. No, but seriously though. Before internet, you couldn't just type in a search box to locate someone or something to do on the weekend. We drug test kids as young as sixteen when before we didn't even have the equipment to pull of a task. Hey, when I ran that unfortunate red light last week(awful by the way), imagine less roads, no cameras, no fines, less cops. Was the world better or worse? I love the motion pictures, but I have begun to detest the media, making me feel more increasingly in angst and stressed and or emotional. I agree that what we feel we own,  but if a preacher wasn't clear when he said satan is all around us, then I need to pull the blinders off if I have them on. This life is crazy and no it isn't getting fluffier, easier, or more peaceful. That's in the Teddy Crafters Department in the mall, not outside, real world. We move for change so quickly, it's as if ...