Inheritance

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of the word “inheritance” is money, but there’s so much more. How many of us focus on the social status we’ll pass on to our children, to the exclusion of our intangible – and perhaps more valuable – assets? I have no social status, [...]

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Is hate too strong a word?

There’s someone I know that I don’t like very much. Although nothing about this statement is extraordinary, being commonplace is little consolation. This guy loses his temper more than I would like, and I cringe every time he yells. I see him show patience at the office and I wonder where it goes when he [...]

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A prisoner to pre-teen impulse

It scares me sometimes how much my mood depends on events that I have no control over. Every day my daughter is picked up from school by a local program which gives her a safe place to do her homework, followed by a Tae Kwon Do lesson. While it has done wonders for her focus [...]

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Before the game

Putting aside this evening, which was a total loss, today was a pretty good day. The latest round of steroids and antibiotics gave me a bit of a reprieve from sinus pain. Dad came over for a nice dinner. Afterwards we sat around the table sipping a dessert wine, just hanging out and enjoying each [...]

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What would you do?

Imagine you had two young children in your house… say ten and two. Now imagine you went to brush your teeth, you noticed your toothbrush was wet, and you knew it shouldn’t be.
Is there anything your children could say that would put your mind at ease?

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Already

I didn’t expect this until high school. Beth pulled a late night, last minute school project throw together tonight. If you’re keeping score from home, that’s a fifth grade, last minute project.
We like to think we’re good parents. I knew she had “homework” that was due tomorrow. Somehow I didn’t catch on to the significance [...]

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Leave it to my father

He says I’m a perfect square today. It took me a while, and I have the benefit of knowing what today is.
I’m six squared today.
(Dad’s an engineer, and we grew up with a lot of math in the house.)
My dad is always good for a “huh?”
… followed by a nice chuckle.

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Overheard this evening, in a home near me

“Come on Beth. This should be easy.”
“Maybe for you it is. You graduated from college. This is homework at my grade level.”
Sometimes kids can be infuriating and hilarious, all in the same sentence. You may find this exchange neither infuriating nor hilarious… in which case I can only trot out the “you had to be [...]

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The time is now

Friends, have I got news for you. A “girl’s shopping day” turned out in my favor, due to the efforts a friend of Cheryl’s. After a fair bit of arm twisting, Cheryl was convinced to surprise me with a new 20 inch iMac and iPod Nano yesterday evening. (My birthday is right around the corner.) [...]

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Too much reality

My wife spends most of her time at work behind a desk. It’s that little bit of time that she doesn’t that gets interesting. It can be hard to reconcile the high school girl I met over a peeled cat in anatomy class, with the person who straps a gun on a few times a [...]

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