Walnuts on My Windshield #41

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Our children are growing up.

The first weekend in June, Scott and I went to our favorite cabin in the woods for our 3rd annual planning weekend. About two years ago, Scott's work had become steady and profitable enough that we were consistently finding ourselves with more paycheck than month. We wanted to be more purposeful than we had been about saving and investing, so we asked my dad whom he would recommend to advise us. He referred us to a great Christian financial planning group, and we set up several phone consults with a wonderful and wise fellow, whose name escapes me right now. He said we should eventually do this and that and the other, but before he could give us any specific advice, we would need to go away for a planning weekend. He would send us detailed instructions and questions for the weekend, and when we got back, we would contact him to plan our next steps.

There's nothing we are if not determined, so we made reservations for a weekend alone at a cabin near Jasper, Arkansas, which is smack dab in the middle of Newton County, one of our long-time favorite areas of the world. We paid a friend who doesn't yet have kids, but seems to tolerate ours okay, to come and sleep at our house for two nights, figuring that the kids, then 14, 12, 10, and 5, could handle themselves all right during the day. We packed everything imaginable - including two copies of the weekend plan - and headed out.

It ended up being a very intense, but very productive weekend. Saturday morning, we faced the list of questions. There are six categories: financial, spiritual, emotional, family, social, and physical. There are ten essay questions in each category. I felt like I was back in school! It took us several hours to answer all the questions individually, and it took us EIGHT hours to go over all the questions together; hence the intensity mentioned above. However, once we got through all that, we had a really good idea of where each of us was on a lot of issues and where we as a couple wanted to go.

Therein lay the rub: the next step was to take each of the six categories and set one (1) measurable goal for that category. Now, that would have been OK, but Scott tends to take goal-setting to an extreme. We came away from that first planning weekend with 16, count 'em sixteen, vital goals to be achieved, each with a specific due date and person(s) responsible. It seemed like an awful lot of those goals had "PSR" beside them, and I came home feeling extremely overwhelmed and slightly depressed.

Actually, we did pretty well with on completing the one-time things, like "call to find out if the chimney is really going to fall over by 8/1/04, SLR" or "update Mission China mailing list by 7/15/04, PSR." However, the ones that really discouraged me were the ones like, "tell Scott 'I love you' at least three times every day, PSR" (That seems SO redundant! I told him that in '87, and if it changed I'd surely let him know) and, "do weekly children's church with Andrew on Saturday nights" (sigh - is it because I'm older now that I just don't seem as highly motivated to crawl behind the couch and do puppets?). So… some we did and some we didn't, and on date nights, Scott would pull out the goals spreadsheet and we'd sit there and talk about them and I'd feel discouraged some more.

The next year, we went to the same place with the same list of questions, but it didn't take as long, because we didn't really need to re-hash ALL those major life issues. We actually had fun and came home with only 12 goals. In fact, it may be that some of the incomplete first-year goals just rolled to the second-year list, so maybe we only had seven new goals.

This year was different, because this year, Katie could drive. Katie runs the Power Point equivalent at church on Sunday mornings, so she needed to be there. Jessica was scheduled to work in the preschool class that day and needed to be there. I had initially told the girls to tell their leaders they just couldn't be there that day, but then it dawned on me that Katie could drive the kids to church - duh! If we/> took the red van (has A/C, whew!) to Arkansas, that would leave Katie with the Honda, which A) she can't drive, and B) has no A/C, but when we got the red van and realized that it can't take a trailer hitch, we kept the green van (with its mere 213,000 miles), so that we could pull the pop-up or the canoe trailer. The green van also has A/C.

My wheels were turning. The green van had not been driven in about six months and had been sitting under the toyport. It was horridly dirty, inside and out and smelled distinctly of mouse poop. (Sorry to offend you city dwellers. Maybe country mice just poop more than city mice.) However, the green van had to be cleaned out anyway for two reasons. Reason #1) Scott drives the green van to work in June, July, and August. He won't get new A/C in the Honda, because he says it's not worth it. The car is old. He only needs A/C three months of the year, and he can drive another vehicle during those months. (Note: I, on the other hand, turn the A/C on at Scott's birthday 3/14 and off at Jessica's 11/14) Reason #2 for cleaning the green van: Ball season was beginning. In our family, Scott plays softball for a few months every summer. We take the boys' bikes to the ball field, and they thoroughly enjoy riding around the paved trail and harassing people who are not me. Jessica takes her roller blades and exercises, and Katie and I watch the game - she on the bleachers, I in my bag chair. To take the bikes, we need the bike rack, because we can no longer fit people and two bikes inside the van. The bike rack mounts into the female part of the trailer hitch - which the old green van has, but the new red van does not. In late May, we put the bike rack on the van, and my bag chair and Jessica's blades in the van, and thus it all stays till after the end-of-season tournament.

So… if we got the green van cleaned out, Katie could use it to take the kids to church while we were out in the woods planning the rest of everyone's life! Scott, my "acts of service" saint, was willing to clean the nasty green van, but there was a problem. It had been having a great difficulty starting. I was not comfortable sending Katie on a 75 mile round trip in a vehicle that may or may not start. I mentioned my concern to Scott, and he maintained that the battery was just low because it had been sitting, and all we had to do was drive it to Springfield and back (which he would do) and it would be all charged up. The skeptic in our marriage was doubtful, countering that either the battery, alternator, or generator was defective (maybe the mice dined on rubber? one year a pack rat did $1000 of damage to a vehicle that sat in our "garage"…), but gave her consent. The optimist drove it to Springfield and back with no problems. We let it sit a day, and it wouldn't start at all. Totally dead. Now, in my defense, ALL I said was, "Scott, the green van won't start." Aren't I getting good?!??! Think how much more I could have said but didn't. He went out to look at it and came back in. He said, "the green van won't start." I said, (are you ready for this?) not one thing. He dug out some papers, made a phone call, jumped the green van and said he was going to town; that the battery seemed to be dead. Silence from the skeptic.

Forty minutes later Scott returned. Although a repair shop had put that battery in and we didn't have a specific receipt for it, it was clearly an O'Reilly battery, and it was marked May 2004. When he took it to O'Reilly's, they tested it, found it to be dead, noted that it had a two-year guarantee, and because this happened to occur on May 28, 2006, handed him a new battery, at no charge (no pun intended)! Aren't God and my husband both great? They can get deals like nobody!

Scott then thoroughly cleaned the green van inside and out, and it's now good as new, with one exception: the sliding door doesn't work properly. However, being a family skilled at work-arounds, we simply have the kids go in the passenger door and climb over into the seats. So that was good, and the kids could go to church. And go to church they did! Katie and Jessica manhandled those boys all weekend, Katie took them all to church, they all did what they had to do, they came home, and had the place all cleaned up when we arrived. Now, I did hear that the boys' behavior at home was less than stellar, but then their behavior with us is sometimes not so celestial, either. I was really proud of them all. Like I said, our children are growing up.

The walnuts are now an inch long, and they are still on the trees.

Patty

From my book pile:

Cork Boat by John Pollack, rank 9. Mr. Pollack began collecting wine corks as a child, and he eventually built a real live boat entirely out of corks! Although he's as heathen as can be, the story is quite amazing, and his writing (he used to be a speechwriter for President Clinton) is excellent. I was truly captivated by this audio book.

The Real James Herriott by James Wight, rank 8. I'll bet you thought that James Herriott wrote all those Yorkshire vet books. Well, so did I, and we are both wrong! James Herriott was his pen name, and, while loosely based on actual events, those books (All Creatures Great and Small, etc.) were works of fiction. The vet's real name was Alf Wight, and his son wrote this autobiography. It was a fun listen.

With a Little Luck:Surprising Stories of Amazing Discoveries, by Dennis Brindell Fradin, rank 8. This was a kids combo biography; the first combo biography I think I have ever really liked. I liked it a lot, I learned a lot, and I'd recommend it to anyone. It actually made me want to learn more about some of these people - like the guy who discovered Pluto, etc.

Phineas Gage: A Gruesome But True Story About Brain Science by John Fleischman, rank 10. This was a fascinating, captivating, page-turner of a kids' biography! In a freak accident, Mr. Gage had a metal pole (over six feet long and an inch-and-a-half in diameter) shot completely through his head (as in, in one side and out the other) in the mid 1800s. Not only did he live to tell about it, he lived 11 more years! While he could later function all right, his personality was totally changed. After the accident, he was literally a different person. This case formed the basis of much study about how the brain functions. For one whose brain is a little off, parenting one whose brain is even more off, this was an exciting read. Josiah, Scott, and I all loved this book.

Copy This! Lessons from a Hyperactive Dyslexic Who Turned a Bright Idea into One of America's Best Companies by Paul Orfalea, rank 7. I was perusing the "new books" rack at The Library Center, and "hyperactive dyslexic" caught my eye, since I have one of those! This guy founded Kinko's - the copy place, you know - and made multimillions with that idea and others. The book is his autobiography with heavy emphasis on the Kinko's business philosophy. It'd be nice if he were a believer, but he's not - yet. He also drinks and gambles, but he does have a lot of good ideas. Well, that is an understatement. The man is a scatterload of constantly erupting ideas, some of them really good. He also uses a lot of quotable one-liners, like, "Integrity is like virginity; you only lose it once." A worthwhile read.

This week's quote:

"Personally I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught." ~ Winston Churchill

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