Top Ten Best Things About the Empty Nest

The empty nest is great. In the month of July Pam and I moved our daughter and her new husband into their new apartment in Columbia, South Carolina. Then a week later moved our son into his new rental house in Nashville, Tennessee. Finally, after several false starts and 26 years of kid-centric living, we are home, alone. Now that we have had an entire month of freedom under our belt, let me list for you the best parts of empty nest life:

1.     We never have to fuss at either of them about how messy their rooms are. Every time we pass by their doors, their beds are all made…just like the last time we checked. What a relief it is not to have to nag them about it. Now, if we get unexpected guests from out of town. We won’t have to scramble around making their rooms presentable. Of course, we’ve never actually had any unexpected guests show up on our doorstep recently…or ever, but if it happens, we’ve got a couple of immaculately clean guestrooms going for us.

2.     Since our kids aren’t here to constantly leave their bedroom lights on 24/7, our electricity consumption has been slashed by…3.5%

3.     Now that they have moved out, the street in front of our house doesn’t look like a used car lot. Their two cars aren’t there and neither are the cars of their friends. It’s just empty…and since Pam and I both park our cars inside the garage, you can hardly tell if anyone is home…kind of like an abandoned house. It’s great.

4.     Our grocery bill has been cut virtually in half. Finally, the cupboard isn’t stuffed full of chips and snacks. The freezer isn’t packed to the gills with ice cream and freezy pops and all the other delicious stuff that they used to inhale. As a consequence, we are eating healthier. Yes, no more calorie filled sweet treats for us, no sirree Bob.

5.     Did I mention the laundry? Did I mention how we only have to wash clothes once a week or so? That’s a good thing…right?

6.     Quiet, it’s so very quiet. Peace and quiet used to be an impossibility around here and now it’s like…all the time. Really great.

7.     We don’t have to clean the kids’ bathroom anymore. We don’t have to scrub Kaitlin’s hair products off of the tile floor with a toothbrush. It really wasn’t her fault. She had to use all kinds of stuff on her beautiful curls to keep them from getting out of control. Cleaning up after Kaitlin’s beautiful delicate curls are now the responsibility of Jon. Finally…a clean guest bedroom, and no beautiful curls. Great.

8.     Oh, and the music thing. When Patrick was here, he was always sitting down at the piano working something out in his mind, playing the same measure over and over trying to perfect it. It was always very difficult to read with that piano going all the time. Sometimes I would sit there at my desk and just listen to him play and the next thing I knew, thirty minutes had flown by. I am so much more efficient now that I don’t have beautiful, creative, soulful music being written all around me.

9.     It’s also quite refreshing not to have the violent crash and flash of video game noise pulsing out of the movie room. Now I don’t have to remember to not trip on all the chords laying all around the floor. Sooo much safer in there now.

10.  Where before we saw our kids all the time, now we get to decide when we would like to see them. And when we do, all we have to do is hop in the car and drive 7 hours to see Kaitlin and Jon and a mere 9 and a half to see Patrick. That way, we will arrive fresh and rested and truly enjoy our two days together before we have to drive 7 and 9 and a half hours back…to our quiet, clean, nearly abandoned-looking house.

Yes, the empty nest is…great.

PC rules

The good news is, Harry Reid’s job is safe. Because he’s a Democrat, his career will survive.

While speaking to an Asian group the other day the Senate Majority leader threw out this gem: “One problem I’ve had today is keeping my Wongs straight.”

This is the same Harry Reid who referred to then candidate Barack Obama as that “light-skinned African American with no negro dialect.”

And yet…Harry Reid hasn’t been shamed into retirement by the PC police. He hasn’t been forced to endure a crying mea culpa with Oprah. He has the political equivalent of a get out of jail free card, a capital D next to his name.

After word of his ill-chosen words leaked out, the complete text of his “apology” is as follows: “My comments were in extremely poor taste and I apologize. Sometimes I say the Wong thing.”

Oh, wait, my bad. That should be wrong thing…sometimes I say the wrong thing.

Put Your Name On It!!

Plato once asked the question, if people were granted invisibility would they behave more or less morally? In other words, does anonymity make us better or worse, more honest or less honest, better people or worse people? The fact that Plato even asked this question brings into doubt his reputation for intelligence. History is littered with overwhelming evidence that when human beings are granted anonymity, they become capable of practically anything. Without the judging eyes of our peers we become mean, hateful, brutish thugs for the most part. Need proof? Visit the message boards of your favorite social media site when the subject of race pops up.

My Mother never went to college. She never sat around eating pizza and ruminating on philosophy all night in a dorm. But that’s not to say that she didn’t have a philosophy, or at least philosophical insights. One of them was, “You’re only as good of a person as you are when nobody’s looking.” Mom used to hate it when people would only do their “good works” to the sound of trumpets. She would get all “up in the pictures” talking about the vanity of men and women who could only be counted on to do something decent when there was an audience.

But there is another side to this anonymity business. Yes, people do act artificially better in public but that redounds to the public good. Hypocritical good deeds are still good deeds. But anonymity gives the darkness of our character an outlet. When my Dad was the Pastor of Winns Baptist Church back in the 1970’s, the majority of the members were good people, honest, hard-working, salt of the earth types. But when you spend 16 years in the pulpit of a church, you will make your share of mistakes and Dad was no exception to that rule. When he did, he got called on the carpet usually face to face with someone who had taken exception to something he had said or done. But by far the worst treatment he ever got came in the form of the anonymous letter. Always typed, always without a return address, these screeds would attack him with ruthless vitriol and...unspeakably bad grammar.

With the advent of the Internet, anonymous communication is everywhere and most of it is poisoning us and our discourse. To read comments that people make about race, sexual orientation, and religion behind the cloak of anonymity is to peer into the dark night of the soul. Dad’s hate mail at least took some degree of forethought and planning. They had to get a piece of paper, find a typewriter, address an envelope, lick a stamp, and walk to the mailbox, all activities that allowed time to think things over before actually sending it. Today, anyone can spew forth the vilest thing and broadcast it instantaneously without filter. Technological advancements in communication have not made us better communicators. It has granted us a license for cruelty.

The readers of this blog don’t always agree with everything I write. But my name and my reputation is attached to everything you read. Consequently, I must exercise temperance. Some of the stuff floating around in my head needs to stay there, because to give them voice would be hurtful. So here’s my proposal of the day, how about instead of censoring the Internet, we insist on disclosure.

Put your name on it.

The Earned Income Puppy Credit

My search for a Golden Retriever puppy has been about as productive as a trip to the DMV. Buying illegal drugs would be easier than finding a purchasable puppy. There are waiting lists involved, not to mention down payments and background checks to be endured. I’ve seen prices ranging anywhere from $800 to $1800….for a dog.

Funny thing happens when you’re shopping for a dog. When you see this type of price range, you start turning your nose up at the $800 puppies. You wonder what is wrong with them that they are so cheap. Do you really want to purchase a dog from the bargain bin? This is capitalism at work at its notorious best. How much should a dog be worth? The answer is and always will be in a free economy, what the market will bear. Am I willing to pay $1800 for the perfect Golden that I can get at the perfect time? The answer is…yes. Is $1800 outrageous for a puppy? No, if someone if willing to pay. Would I or anyone out there be willing to pay $1800 for a flea-bitten, tick-infested Basset hound? Probably not.

Like everything else in life that I have wanted, it’s not that things are too expensive, the problem has always been that I can’t afford them. Luckily, this has given me sufficient motivation to change that equation. I can either rage against the high price of Golden Retrievers or make more money. Since I have no control over the price of the product, I must change what I do have control over…my income.

Of course, there is another option open to me. I could try and get the government involved. Why should only the 1% be able to afford Golden Retrievers? Does not the Declaration of Independence speak of the “pursuit of happiness?” I can’t think of anything that provides more happiness than a puppy. First, I would have to hire some high priced lobbyist. Then I could get some intrepid reporter from the NYT to write an expose on dog breeders and tag them with a sinister label, “Big Puppy.” Soon the headlines would read…Big Puppy Lands in Regulatory Doghouse. Then legislation would be submitted to impose strict price controls on dogs. Perhaps a tax-credit for low income families who buy a dog, a modification of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Sure, there might be a few negative consequences to these new laws, namely the creation of a black market. “Psssst…wanna buy a puppy? I know a guy who could hook you up.” Of course, if the past is any teacher, ultimately a shortage of Golden Retrievers would result, making them even more expensive, but in order to make an omelet, you’ve got to break a few eggs. Besides, it would be the intentions of the legislation that mattered, not the results.

I hope nobody in Washington is reading this.

The Here and Now

Is it just me, or does the world look like it’s about to blow up?

Look, I’m a life-long believer in the old adage, this too shall pass, but it’s getting harder and harder to rely on adages. Another of my go to truths has always been, things are never as bad as they seem, but even that one has taken a beating lately. Every morning, my inspection of the overnight news sends me to the medicine box for a couple of Rolaids.

This morning, for example. I learn that a freak storm dumped two feet of hail somewhere in MEXICO. Flash floods wiped out scores of homes in the deserts of Arizona. A snowstorm was forecast for Scotland…in August. ISIS published a video of the beheading of an American photo-journalist with more to come. The rioting, looting and grandstanding continue unabated in Ferguson. With the ink on the latest cease fire barely dry, a barrage of rockets hit Tel Aviv overnight from Gaza. The Ebola epidemic in West Africa continues to double in size every three days. The Chinese army has crossed into India several times over the last few days for reasons unknown. The Cubs have won three games in a row. After a brief 36 hour trip to the office, the President is safely back at Martha’s Vineyard and his vacation.

Whenever the news gets like this, I think about the “wars and rumors of wars,” and the “groaning of nature” lines from the Bible, staples of end times prophesy. But then I remember what a fever swamp of nitwittery the whole “end times industry” is and I relax. Still, our world seems out of control most of the time, and resistant to easy cures or any cure, easy or not. No political movement has any workable solutions. Religions are everywhere in disrepute, even my Christianity seems bent on irrelevancy, more interested in slugging it out with each other over arcane theological disputes than bringing the love of Christ to the world.

So, I suppose it’s left to each of us to do the best we can in the here and now. I can’t fix Ferguson, but I can try to make someone’s day in Short Pump. I can’t bring peace to the Middle East but I can do a better job of loving my neighbor here in America.

I can’t do everything, but I can do something. The here and now is all I’ve got at the moment. I need to make the most of it.

The Dog Days

 

I hate to use this term because it seems awfully mean-spirited to dogs, but we have officially entered the “dog days of summer.” This is that mid-August through Labor Day time period when most people have already taken their vacations, and now there is nothing exciting to look forward to except soul-crushing humidity and back-to-school sales at Target. Even writing this blog is a chore, ‘Ok, what should I write about today…wait, I know, how about the scourge of ingrown toenails?”

What follows is a rambling, incoherent string of observations that have been on my mind recently:

My favorite game is in some serious trouble, sports fans. Sunday night, a Little League World Series game between teams from Philadelphia and Texas beat a Big League game between Atlanta and Oakland in the ratings. Yes, that’s right. Oakland, with the best record in baseball played the Atlanta Braves, another decent team on television and more Americans preferred to watch the 12 year olds play. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is…Little League baseball is AWESOME. The kids play with reckless abandon. They don’t stop to adjust their batting gloves after each pitch. They run the bases like their hair is on fire. When they get a hit or make a great catch their faces light up the screen with broad, unashamed glee. Their parents cry in the stands. In other words, they are having fun and they don’t care who knows it. Big league players look like they are at work. They play the game with unsurpassed skill, but take forever doing it, as if they are getting paid by the hour. The only expression on their faces is one of earnest determination, as if smiling were...er…frowned upon. There might not be any crying in baseball, but whatever happened to laughter, joy, and fun?

There are two professions where you are allowed to be constantly wrong without fear of losing your job: politicians and weathermen.

I have been playing Words with Friends now for the better part of three years. I have finally found a group of seven letters out of which no English word can be formed, at least I can’t think of one. U U Z R R R I. I share this with you to see if any of you are smarter than I am (very likely).

Johnny Manziel played in his second preseason game last night and he has already shot the bird to an opponent. It takes some quarterbacks years before they master the refined skill of bad sportsmanship. I can name a list of hundreds of NFL quarterbacks who played in the league for years before perfecting the ability to completely lose their composure on the field, and Manziel has it figured out in week two. This kid is gonna go places!

Give Food a Chance

I saw a movie last night that affected me deeply in two ways. It gave me hope and made me hungry.

The One Hundred Foot Journey is an imperfect film in that although it is terrifically acted and beautiful to look at, it does suffer from idealistic overkill and at least one major plot defect that probably went unnoticed by most viewers.

First the plot defect. How does a family from India who has just lost everything in a tragic fire and who are now reduced to wandering the European continent with all of their meager belongings packed into a beat up bucket of bolts, whose brakes fail just outside a small town somewhere in France leaving them all wondering how they will be able to afford to pay for repairs, suddenly find the money to buy a large restaurant? A quibble, I know.

Now for the idealistic overkill. The town that the Kadams stumble into is in the French countryside. The restaurant that the family purchases is just outside of town, right across the street from the best restaurant within 50 miles, a beautiful, majestic building that has earned one Michelin star. The two establishments are one hundred feet apart in distance and a thousand miles apart culturally. It is hard for me to believe that a place like this exists anywhere in the world. The weather is perfect. Everyone dines al fresco 24 hours a day. Even when it rains, it’s romantic. In the entire movie, I never saw a car drive down the road that separates the restaurants. In town, an impossibly quaint sidewalk café features children playing hopscotch in the middle of the patrons while birds flutter above them. If there actually exists such a peaceful, unhurried place in France, then “Honey, where’s my passport?”

The story is simple enough. The Kadams owned a restaurant back in Mumbai, a true family business, all hands on deck sort of place. Hasan, the oldest has been taught the art of cooking by his mother, who tragically dies in the fire. All this family knows is cooking and serving food, so naturally they try to make a new start. First they try England, but in the best line of the film explain that they had to leave England because, "the vegetables had no soul." So, they finally decide to compete against the French. The culture clash is immediate and complete. Madame Mallory, the widowed proprietor objects to the loud music, the kitschy décor, the smell of curry and just about everything else she can think to bring to the local constable. What she really objects to is the competition and the amazing skill of Hasan who although lacking formal training, has “the gift.” Of course, romance is soon in the air along with the aroma of spices old and new. Hasan starts falling for Marguerite, the doe-eyed chef in training across the street, and Papa and Madame Mallory, against all odds, unbelievably fall for each other.

The appeal of this film is in the conflict of cultures. The French, representing the “classical” definition of high culture and the Kadams representing the immigrant “other.” Once the Indian cuisine starts to attract customers, and especially once the French chefs realize that Hasan has more talent than they do, the Kadams face some backlash in the form of Molotov cocktails and a racial slur painted across the wall in front of the place. When Madame Mallory fires the chef she suspects of instigating the vandalism and shows up at the wall, scrub-brush in hand to remove the slur, relations begin to thaw. Then she does something that successful countries do with immigrants…she co-opts them. She hires Hasan and paves the way for him to attend a French cooking school in Paris. He becomes famous because of his talent, but ultimately tires of Paris, returns to Marguerite and lives happily ever after.

One scene in particular stood out for me. At one point Madame Mallory tastes one of Hasan’s variations on one of the five classic sauces of French cuisine. She asks what the strange taste is and why he would want to change a sauce that has been around for 200 years. Hasan answers, “Maybe 200 years is long enough.”

When I look around the world I see nothing but violence and strife, most of it either religious or ethnic. Whether it’s in the Middle East, Africa, on our southern border or in Ferguson, Missouri, we have a hard time co-existing with “the other.” Maybe we can learn something from this heart-warming film. Maybe we can all sit down and eat good food together. There is precedent for peace through eating. While Americans are understandably concerned about the gusher of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America, we have absolutely no problem with their food. Mexican restaurants are every where in Short Pump and they are all amazing. Americans might have some resentment at the number of Asain-Americans who win Valedictorian awards, but we love their food. Recent graduates in computer science might resent the stiff competition they get from new arrivals from India, but if they would sit down for a meal at Anokha they might fall in love with the Tandoori platter.

Call me crazy, but I believe in an America who welcomes all who come here (legally), and takes the best of what they bring to the great big American table. If we can sit down and eat with someone, it’s much more difficult to give in to fear and hatred. The more savory dishes, the better. I enjoy nothing more than a plate of mashed potatoes with gravy, string beans, and fried chicken, with a glass of sweet tea to wash it down. But I love living in a country where I can be welcomed into a Chinese restaurant for a helping of orange beef and honey shrimp.

Give food a chance, give peace a chance.