“You have to put happy things in there so your brain isn’t hurting” November 4, 2008
Last night I got home from Cold Lake and I was tired and I told the girls it was because I can’t sleep on the road because I miss my girls.
Dani (4 yrs) says to me: “Dad, it’s because of all the work things and sad things in your brain! Your brain is full up of things that are bad and you have to clean it out! You have to put happy things in there so your brain isn’t hurting” I said: “like what?” And her answer was “well, like happy things. Sometimes I think of skating, or snowmen, or candy…and then your brain feels better and you can fall asleep.”
And to think people buy books written by psychologists to tell us pretty much the same thing…
Blaster lives… November 3, 2008
The kids decided ‘Blaster” is a good name for the Master Deluxe. Maybe because that’s the noise it makes, and with all the smoke. A 67 year old straight six doesn’t exactly purr the first time it’s started. Anyway, I figure it’s a good name, and better than some of thier other choices like “flower” or “kitty”. We got Blaster going last week, and it was actually really cool – I was jumping around like a moron..who wouldn’t!! A $600 car from 1941 and it started…seriously, who’d a thunk it. It caught on fire a couple times in the garage from the gas I spilled working on the carb, and one electrical fire…but nothing serious. It definitely tells a story about the times: there are about 15 ashtrays! There is an ashtray on every surface. Now the real work starts..the stuff I need to do for it to be road worthy: brakes, clutch, lights. The interior will be (according to the kids, to whom I promised the colour choice) black and purple, which actually is gonna be good. (They coulda said pink and orange so i should be glad). They want to chop the top off, but I vetoed that since we don’t live in california. Some projects end up taking so much time and work that it’s only fun when they’re done, but something about this one has been fun since the beginning, and the fact that both kids sometimes draw pictures of it with thier latest paint job idea, means that it actually will be a family project, which was the point from the start.
But we still gotta convince cindy it was a good idea…
It’s time to travel… November 3, 2008
I think it’s time to go somewhere.
We used to travel alot, Cindy and I, and we kinda stopped when the kids arrived, but they’re travel-ready. I grew up travelling: heck I pretty much lived on my own in a foreign country from about the age of 15. I’m in Cold Lake for work, and I wish Cin and the kids were here. It’s a cool place so far. I wouldn’t want to live here, but that’s what all trips are, somewhere away from home for a bit. It really hit me yesterday, I was standing on the pier at the lake, and it could’ve been Holland. It felt like home. Holland is my childhood/youth home really, since I was there for a long time during the years I grew up (about 16 – 25). But it would’ve been better if the 3 girls were here. When I get home, I’m planning a trip…because I miss home…does that make sense? I think travelling makes home that much better, and that’s part of what makes travelling cool. And I gotta take the kids to Holland, see where daddy “grew up”…or maybe just to Cold Lake, it’s a cheaper facsimile…
BEFORE YOU DIE March 20, 2008
I just got this email from my buddy Lindsay:
“Timbo . . . I heard this one at our retreat this week and I thought of you immediately…We were talking about things we gotta do before we die, and a friend of mine said that his 5-year-old son already was working on a list of things he has to do in his lifetime…
Top of the 5-year-old’s list: “I want to shoot a burning arrow into something and burn it down.”
Who doesn’t dream of being able to shoot a burning arrow!
So my buddy is trying to arrange a burning-arrow-shooting day on a local farm . . . they are all going to shoot burning arrows into an old farm building and burn the thing to the ground…and then clean it all up…
Aaahhh the imagination of a 5-year-old eh?”
This is hilarious! I want to shoot a burning arrow! I never would’ve thought of asking someone that young but now I can’t wait to ask my kids what would be on their list.
I’m sure everyone has heard of it, but in case you haven’t: Back in 1993 the Chicken Soup For The Soul series had a story about a guy that had a list of life goals (http://www.johngoddard.info/life_list.htm) and I remember thinking it was the coolest idea ever, so I started one immediately. It’s not a career type thing, it’s more a really LIVE LIFE kind of list, so it doesn’t have “Become Senior Regional Manager” on it, but rather stuff like “light a match with a rifle at 100 paces” kind of stuff. My (and now “our”) list has everything from “hike to Mt. Everest” to “Learn to do that spin-the-pen-around-the-thumb-thing”.
It really does work: Sure, I still haven’t done 80% of it, but we’ve also done a lot more than we would’ve otherwise, simply because stuff was on the list, and so sometimes we just go do it. We did go to everest, skydive, bungy-jump, stand on the Eiffel Tower, read some Tolstoy and Machiavelli, and a few others, simply because the list inspired us.
Try it; make a list of things you’d like to do, (they don’t have to be big important things, just anything that would make you happy) Then, constantly look at the list and make an honest effort to tick things off. It doesn’t have to be a individual thing either, I do all mine with the family now – makes it even more fun. What ends up happening is that, in the process you have a ton of fun and adventures, even if you don’t ever tick much off the list. It’s the reminder process that creates action, and it forces you to stop and dream a bit, like “what would I do if I wasn’t so chicken.”
I started my list like about 12 years ago, and I’ve maybe ticked a only fraction, but the fun it has instigated was way worth it.
I’m definitely going to add “shoot a burning arrow into something and burn it down”, and hopefully soon I’ll get to mark it done.
5-year-old needs job, will work for dolls. March 13, 2008
My 5-year-old daughter Cassidy says she wants to get a job.
Yep. She announced that yesterday when they were in the tub.
She says “Dad, I need to have a job, I need to get paid some dollars like you do.”
I say “oh, ok…”
She says: “ Yup, see, I want the Gymmnasti-brat doll but you guys said no more dolls, that you won’t buy any more but I really want it. So I want to do a work thing where I do work and somebody gives me money and I will buy the doll myself because it will be my money and I can do whatever I want with it. So you have to think of some jobs or something that I can do for you and you can pay me. Is that a good deal?”
I honestly have no idea what to do about this one.
Glass is half full challenge March 11, 2008
In an an earlier post, or maybe the “about Timbo” section, I made the comment that “it’s all in how you choose to see it” or something like that. I was thinking that that’s kind of an easy thing to say, without any actual proof or suggestion of how to do it. That’s like telling a bike racer”just ride faster!” They’re gonna go “ok, how, exactly???”
So I was thinking, how does that work really? When one chooses to see something the positive way, what are the actual mechanics of that? How would one, especially one who is used to seeing the glass empty, switch to half full?
Well, I’m not a psychologist or anything, so I could be way off, but I’ll tell you what I’m gonna try.
In the old days, we used to do alot of imagery and visualizatiuon to tune out the hullabalu of race day, or to learn a track in the head when track time was limited (it was often pretty limited for me, because you buy track time, and I didn’t have any money!) Anyway, it’s not any easy thing to coach yer brain. Here: don’t think of an elephant with red spots. What did you just think of? Hahahha. So you gotta start small. We used to start by just doing imagery about a static situation. Something where you create a favourable scenario in your head: In your mind, make everything perfect: you’re wearing your favorite outfit, your at your fittest, you’re somewhere you love to go. Then from there you just build on getting good at creating that positive feeling from scratch.
The other way was to pick someone you want to be like, and literally, imagine you are them. If they are world champion, then you act and feel like you would if you were world champion. Then you react to situations the way they would.
So, I’m gonna issue a challenge to the incredibly small number of people that read this: try to change your attitude into a full “glass-is-half-full” one by starting at the small stuff.
Here’s the challenge: Every time you have a negative experience (spill a drink, drop a plate, get flat tire, miss an important call) stop, take a Breath and try to think of a positive, an “upside” to what just happened. It’s not easy, but I bet it will get easier, then become habit, and eventually you’ll do it subconciously.
I’m going to start right now: my head and throat are pounding, I feel completely weak from this flu/cold. So I’m going to miss spin. Well, the upside is that my kids think I’m going to be gone all night, so they are going to be soooo surprised to see me, and we can lay on the couch with a blanket and just watch the hockey game, guilt free.
If anyone else does actually try it, let me know how it works out.
Spring weekends! March 11, 2008
Last weekend was awesome.
Ok, I got a cold brewing and I didn’t get to ride, but it was still pretty good. Went to the motorcycle wreckers and found a decent old fuel tank for the chopper I’m building, which is a relief, because the whole project has been collecting dust for years, and getting a tank moves it up a notch, since now I can try to figure out the wiring and build the seat, now that I know where the tank goes. Stopped there on the way to the Stony Plain Eagle Senior Triple A playoff game. We got a friend in town that plays for them, so went to watch and I was blown away. This is close to NHL level hockey, I had no idea! Everyone on the ice played top level junior, US college, or even pro at some point. There’s ex-NHL’ers out there. It’s the highest non-pro over 18 level there is. In fact, the championship is called the Allan Cup, and goes back almost a hundred years, and was originally the Stanley Cup before that cup was given to the league when it went pro. Anyway, the rink was standing room only, the crowd was loud, the music was good, and the hockey was fast and intense…all for 10 bucks! My dad had the kids, and they went to watch our niece’s Peewee girls hockey playoffs, so before they left we painted thier faces with her number and team colours, and they both wore her favorite outfit in honour: pink skirt with a hockey jersey.
Sunday we XC skied a bit with Dani, as the town was shooting a Devon Promo video, and they asked for families from the ski club to come ski. The caught us off-guard when they started interviewing us on-camera: we thought it was just going to be filming us skiing off in the distance.
After that we went for a hike with the girls and didn’t get more than a few hundred yards down the trail when we ran into another family we know. The five kids climed the trees and played tag for like an hour while we visited. We were gone for almost two hours and never got out of sight of the trailhead! It didn’t matter, it was a good day, and the kids were so soaked and muddy we had to undress them on the front porch and leave the snowsuits on the deck to dry.
It don’t get much better than that.
Watching them fail February 18, 2008
Whether you got kids or not, everyone has at some point watched another parent and thought; “ok, I wouldn’t do it that way. If I had kids, I’d do this and so then they’d do that” and it all seemed like it would be way easier. It doesn’t even have to be a parent thing; the same applies to anyone who coaches, teaches, or leads children in any way. It seems so much easier until you gotta do it. Now, that seems obvious, and we knew tthings would be harder than they looked. What I’m surprised about is the thing I’m finding to be the biggest challenge of all: watching them fail, and letting them, without interfering.
As their challenges get bigger, and the price of failure gets higher, I think I’m in trouble. I have to come up with a plan to deal with it. When I would tell my dad about my hair-brained ideas, he would just smile and say; “Hmmm, sounds interesting. Let me know how it turns out”. Or if I was really struggling with something, he used to just ask me a bunch of questions, and I would end up coming with my own answer while trying to answer his questions. Maybe that’s the trick. The question is; how did he resist the urge to talk me out of stuff, to help me BEFORE all the times I failed. It must have been so painful to watch, because I tried a lot of stuff, failed a lot.
I thought discipline would be tough; how to enforce the rules without breaking their spirit. While that one will get a lot harder as they embrace their growing independence, so far it’s been basically a balancing act, their boundaries constantly being re-adjusted, negotiated, imposed, or refused.
I also thought it would be tougher to accept who they are when they are different or even completely the opposite of how I envisioned. You know, like if the football dad buys his son all the sports stuff but the kid wants to paint. My kids don’t like biking. Unbelievable! It kills me! But, that’s them. They love other things; skating, colouring, story-telling, fishing, kung-fu, pink skirts, screaming. It would be pretty silly to let myself get sucked in to defining them by the fact that they don’t like cycling. I admit, it still bugs me, but I’ll get over it.
Watching them fail, now that is the really tough one, and I thought it would be easy. I’d just give them the space, watch them struggle, watch them cry and get frustrated, then I’d give them some magical tip and they’d succeed. Ta-daaaa! No problem. I didn’t realize that my would heart break while I watched, and maybe I don’t have the magical tip, or they don’t want it… they actually want to do it wrong…
I don’t know how my parents did it. Now that I’m experiencing this, I’ve been thinking back to when I was a kid, and dad just let me screw up lots of times. I mean, dad was there for me, always the ultimate coach and supporter, but if I was screwing up, or had some ridiculous doomed idea, he almost never tried to talk me out of it, coach me in the right direction unless I asked or really needed it. He gave me the room to screw up on my own, and when I was older it occurred to me that this was a huge factor in the fact that, for the most part, I don’t fear failure. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like it, and I don’t like looking stupid, but the risk of it never stops me from doing stuff. Try something. Complete disaster, everyone thinks I’m an idiot. Whatever, try again. I want to give that same gift to my kids, and man it’s freakin hard. It affects every little thing: when they’re colouring outside the lines, putting the tape on crooked, trying to jam the Barbie shoe on the wrong foot, throwing the ball wrong. With kids, honestly, they’re learning EVERYTHING, so that means they’re screwing up lots. If a parent corrects all that, it would be an unmerciful barrage of coaching and correcting, but man it’s so hard to watch them screw up when you know they’re better to learn some things the hard way. Just bite the lip and smile.
Today at xc skiing, Cass was falling and falling trying to get up a hill and I kept taking a step forward, closer, closer…I thought; ok I’ll help her…no better not. Ok now…no let her do it! Then she figured out a way to crawl up, and it looked silly and she giggled away as she did it. So, not correct form, but mission accomplished, and my lip hurts from biting.
I have a lot of work to do on watching the failures with a smile. Maybe I’ll come up with something, or maybe someone I know already has some good ideas…I’ll bounce them off my dad.
He’ll probably say; “Hmmm, sounds interesting. Let me know how it turns out”
Everybody stinks sometimes February 12, 2008
A month or so back, the girls and I were watching a movie on a Saturday night, in their bunk bed. (They’re 3 and 5) I farted, and the conversation went like this:
Dani: Dad, you tooted, you’re stinky
Cassidy: Ya dad, you stink, but that’s ok. I was thinking that it’s not so important that you stink, but that I love you, right?
Dani: Ya dad, you stink but we still love you, because sometimes we stink too!
Cassidy: Ya dad, I stink too sometimes, mom said so. So it’s ok.
Dani: Don’t worry dad, everybody stinks sometimes.
Cassidy: But you stink the most.
Dani: Ya Dad, you stink the most, seriously.
I was just a spectator in this whole conversation, and I couldn’t imagine a better way to be told that I stink.
