How to Impress a Girl

Valentine’s Day is this Sunday. If you didn’t know that guys, stop reading now and go get a card. I’ve told this story before, but I’ve added several new readers over the past few months, so here it is again.

I had my first date with my wife on Valentine’s Day.  Ambitious… cheesy… you make the call.  We were both in college at the time, so it wasn’t anything fancy.  I wanted to impress her, so I bought a couple of gifts for our first Valentine’s Day together.  The first thing I picked up was The Titanic soundtrack (which she already had).  That movie was big at the time, but I wasn’t a big fan.  To this day, I have still not made it through the entire movie.  I blame this film for setting the precedence for several 3+ hour movies that have followed.  Come on, don’t the editors have kids?  The only song I remember from the CD was that Celine Dion tune that seemed to last as long as the movie.  My reasoning for buying it was if I thought it was cheesy and horrific, it must be romantic.

Everyone knows that you have to get flowers for Valentine’s Day, so I paid a visit to the local florist.  Early on, I knew Sara was “the one” so I really wanted to impress her.  Couple this with my botanical ignorance at the time, and you end up with a terrible choice.  While all of the other guys were cliché with their roses and chocolates, Sara was the fortunate recipient of… a shrub… an azalea to be exact.  Hey it was big, colorful, and different.  I thought I was a genius.  Once we realized what it was, I planted it near a stream at her apartment.  It died.

Both of my gifts were useless, but she married me anyway.  We typically don’t even do gifts for Valentine’s Day any more.  With two kids and the busyness of life, we prefer to go out for a nice dinner and have some time together without changing a diaper, mediating an argument over who gets to sit in which chair, or getting boogers out of hair.  My azalea may not have been a great gift, but it’s still a good story.  Try to make a good story for yourself this Valentine’s Day.

 

Aging Gracefully?

I’m in the middle of my fourth decade.  I guess if you were to get technical, I am middle-aged (mathematically speaking).  While I usually think of myself as young, there is mounting evidence indicating the contrary.

While watching the Pro Bowl on Sunday night, I saw that the Grammys were on.  I decided to flip over during a commercial break only to see Lady Gaga and Elton John looking like what I can best describe as flamboyant zombies in superhero costumes.  It seems like there is more work going into the costumes than there is the music.  It took about 10 seconds to get back to the Pro Bowl.

Then there is the college and career class I lead at our church.  This consists of 18 – 23 year old college students and young adults.  One week we were playing Catch Phrase – a fun game where you get a word and try to get people to guess it by describing the word.  One round, my word was “moonlighting”.

Me – This was a show that had Bruce Willis as a private detective.

Them – Blank stares

Me – Cybill Shepherd was in it too

Them – Who?

Me – It was a popular series in the 80’s

Them – Laughter

In case you haven’t done the math, last fall’s college freshman was born in 1991.  I may as well have talked about Audrey Hepburn and Red Skelton.  Again, last fall’s college freshmen were born in 1991!  I have t-shirts older than that!

And what about the language?  I teach college classes, so I am around young people quite a bit.  I’ve come to realize that they actually use a different language around me than they do around each other.  They speak in a sort of shorthand where they drop off the last couple of syllables and invent words whose meanings are completely beyond me.  This is getting really bad – not only do I not know what they are talking about, but they know that they have to use “old person” talk for me!  It’s like I’m their great-great uncle and they have to speak v e r y s l o w l y and LOUDLY so I can understand that my toupee is about to fall into my Jell-o.

Different music, born after the fall of the Berlin Wall, different language… I don’t even have to mention different fashion sense (see the part about me having 19 year-old t-shirts).  The amazing part is how much we have in common.  Our college and career class will spend four hours at our house playing games with us and my college students really seem to connect with me.

I learned something while teaching English in Belarus.  Despite the differences that we use to neatly partition different cultures; there are still the overwhelming similarities that make us human.  When we focus on our mutual interests, the differences no longer serve as obstacles.  They are simply the characteristics that make another person who they are.

 

From Russia with Love

A family that is good friends of our’s recently decided to adopt a girl from Russia.  I won’t try to tell the whole story because Amy (the mother in the family) does a much better job than I could on her blog (http://www.lifeattheevans.blogspot.com/).  We’ve known this family for almost 4 years now.  They already have three children who my oldest daughter, Olivia, absolutely adores and Amy kept my youngest daughter, Amelia, for several months prior to her going to daycare.  I can tell you that they are an amazing family and they will have a significant impact on the girl they are adopting.

Things like this are what my book and original intent of this blog are about – figuring our how you can make a difference in the lives of others and then passionately pursuing that mission without worrying about what others think, what it will cost, or what trivial luxuries you may forgo by pursuing it.

As you may know, adoption is expensive… very expensive.  Our friends have come up with a great idea for their first fundraiser.  They bought a 1000 piece puzzle and for each $10 donation, the person who makes the donation will sponsor one puzzle piece.  That piece (with the sponsor’s name on it) will then be added to the puzzle and the process repeats itself until the entire puzzle is complete.

I urge my readers to go to their website – http://www.lifeattheevans.blogspot.com/ - and click on the donate button near the upper right-hand side.  I know that there are many worthy causes that are asking donations…  I know that in these times there’s not a of extra money floating around…  I realize that there is a good chance that you don’t even know this family.  I also know that you will probably waste $10 in the next few days on something that is completely insignificant and worthless.  Don’t make me go all Sally Struthers on you, but don’t you think that $10 could be better used elsewhere?

 

You Have One Precious Life to Live… Is TV Too Big a Part of It?

This title is taken from one of the works of John Piper and it hit me pretty hard.  Over the past week, I did a little experiment.  I kept up with my time in 15 minute increments.  I tracked everything – work, school, studying, reading, church, family, play, and yes, television.  What I discovered was a little shocking.  I spent just under 30 hours watching television last week!  The data may be a bit skewed because we’re right in the middle of the NFL playoffs (about 15 hours) and American Idol just started back, but almost 30 hours of mindlessly staring at a screen is unacceptable.

According to Piper, “… television reflects American culture at its most trivial.  And a steady diet of triviality shrinks the soul.  You get used to it.  It starts to seem normal.  Silly becomes funny.  And funny becomes pleasing.  And pleasing becomes soul-satisfaction.” 

Ouch.

Think about all the things you would like to accomplish in your life.  Then keep track of how much television you watch.  Don’t estimate it, actually track it.  If you estimate, you will undoubtedly underestimate.  What if you turned the TV off for a week… or a month?  How much more could you accomplish?  I think you’ll be amazed to realize how much of your life is spent doing essentially nothing.

 

Guidelines for Raising Children

We frequently hear comments about how good our girls are and cringe when people say, “You don’t know how lucky you are to have such good kids.”  We’re NOT lucky – it took a lot of work!  There is no such thing as luck.  I believe in hard work, preparation, help from others, and Divine Intervention.  Anyway, since I get these comments, I decided to put out some guidelines for structuring your child’s/grandchild’s activities.

For the firstborn, divide activities as follows and devote adequate time to each activity:

Educational activities

• Literacy
  • Reading
  • Writing
  • Picture books
  • Trips to the library
• Physical sciences
  • Zoo visits
  • Museums
  • At home experiments
• Mathematics
• Social sciences

Creative activities

• Drawing/coloring
• Cutting/pasting shapes
• Music
• Storytelling

Physical activities

• General motor skills
• Fine motor skill development
  • Learning to hit a ball
  • Gymnastics
  • Using building blocks
• Team sports

Social activities

• Teaching table manners
• Use of polite phrases
• Practicing self-control
• Group play

For the second child and all that follow, divide activities into the following two categories and try to spend most of the day in the second grouping:

• Things that require a visit to the ER
• Things that are unlikely to require a visit to the ER

 

The New Normal

As I am writing this, my thermometer reads 17 degrees.  This was our third consecutive night in the teens and the cold weather is the only thing anyone is talking about around here.  The Atlanta news keeps reporting on an “Alberta Clipper” (when did Alberta get a basketball team?), everyone you see – whether at the grocery store, at work, or while dropping the kids off at school – reminds you to bundle up… as if you forgot it was cold, and Sarah Palin is accusing Al Gore of contributing to Global Cooling by overdoing his Global Warming tour (and inventing the internet).  I have to say the three consecutive nights in the teens seems cold to me now, but there was a time when this would have been downright tropical.

I spent most of the past decade moving all around the country.  I know, I know – we don’t actually start the new decade until 2011, but you know what I mean.  Back in 2000, we lived in Indiana and moved to central Florida; in 2002, we moved to northern New York; in 2004, we moved to northeastern Nebraska; and in 2006, we moved to the northeast Atlanta area.  In 2008, just for good measure, we moved about two miles down the road just because we were used to moving every two years but really liked the area where we were living.

While we experienced different cultures and landscapes everywhere we went, probably the biggest change at each location was the climate.  In central Florida, for example, I could wear shorts year round and people freaked out when it got down to 40 degrees at night.  I remember driving around looking at Christmas lights while people were watering their lawns.

We moved from there to northern NY in October.  This was not “Upstate NY”.  Instead, the locals called this area “The North Country”.  I called it Hoth.  We lived just off the northeastern shore of Lake Ontario – an area known for severe lake effect snow that will make Buffalo look appealing.  The coldest it got while we lived there was negative 35 degrees Fahrenheit.  That wasn’t the wind chill – that was the actual temperature.  We also experienced 10 feet of snow in 48 hours during one severe lake effect storm.  I don’t even know how much snow we got for the year, but I do know that we bought our house in October and I never saw our yard until April… only to have it covered by a foot of snow again in May.  How people continue to live there is beyond me.  Oh sure, it’s beautiful in the summer – all two weeks of it, but after that not even emperor penguins would want to call that place home.

The interesting thing is that people up there didn’t understand why Southerners would want to put up with the heat and humidity of the South.  My thinking was as follows:  100 degrees is uncomfortable.  Negative 35 degrees is painful.  In the South, you can go get the mail in the middle of summer and immediately break a sweat – inconvenient.  In The North Country, you can go get the mail in the middle of winter and loose extremities due to frostbite – crazy.

Here’s my point.  Our perception of what is uncomfortable, inconvenient, or painful is based on the climate to which we are accustomed.  In the South 35 degrees is cold; in the North it’s springtime.  To a childless couple, a screaming baby with a stinky diaper pinned underneath her older sister is chaos; to the parents of young children, it’s Tuesday night.  To an adult who’s been out of school for 20 years, enrolling in a college course can be frightening and intimidating; to a  third year college student; it’s just part of the routine.

We have the amazing capacity to adapt and cope.  Today’s chaos is tomorrow’s normal.  This is reassuring if the path we are on leads to our intended destination – we just endure and adapt and eventually we’ll be where we want to be.  It can be tragic, however, if the path we are on leads elsewhere.  We become so accustomed to following the wrong path, it just becomes routine until we finally get to the destination and wonder how we got there: How did we end up with so much debt?  Why don’t my children obey me?  Why am I out of breath after climbing one flight of stairs?  Why don’t I ever have time to spend with my family?

What is your normal?  Could a little chaos today lead to a better normal tomorrow?

 

Hold the Lutefisk

My wife was born in Minnesota and has a Norwegian heritage.  Every heritage and culture is known for its history, traditions, and often – food.  So what are Norwegians known for?

About all I can come up with is:

1.  The Vikings

2.  They talk funny

One thing they are not known for (at least favorably) is their cuisine.  I mean, when is the last time you saw a Viking restaurant?

Sara has an aunt and uncle that live a few miles away from us and wanted us to share in the traditional Norwegian Christmas feast – Lutefisk (pronounced “loot a fisk”).  Unless you are from the upper Midwest (or Scandinavia) you have probably never heard of this, so let me explain.  Note:  any food that needs an “explanation” should automatically raise a caution flag.

Lutefisk starts out as perfectly normal whitefish or cod.  What happens next would probably be protested by PETA if they knew about it.  This is an expert from a website I found on Lutefisk.  I am not embellishing, this is direct quote.

Lutefisk is made from dried whitefish (normally ling, but cod is also used), prepared with lye, in a sequence of particular treatments. The watering steps of these treatments differ slightly for salted/dried whitefish because of its high salt content.

The first treatment is to soak the stockfish in cold water for five to six days (with the water changed daily). The saturated stockfish is then soaked in an unchanged solution of cold water and lye for an additional two days. The fish swells during this soaking and its protein content decreases by more than 50 percent, producing its famous jelly-like consistency. When this treatment is finished, the fish (saturated with lye) has a pH value of 11–12, and is therefore caustic. To make the fish edible, a final treatment of yet another four to six days of soaking in cold water (also changed daily) is needed. Eventually, the lutefisk is ready to be cooked.

In Finland, the traditional reagent used is birch ash. It contains high amounts of potassium carbonate and hydrocarbonate, giving the fish a more mellow treatment than would sodium hydroxide (lyestone). It is important to not incubate the fish too long in the lye, because saponification of the fish fats may occur, effectively rendering the fish fats into soap. The term for such spoiled fish in Finnish is saippuakala (soap fish).

YUM!!!

Let me summarize.  This is a fish that takes on a jelly-like consistency, is caustic, requires special treatment to become edible, is intentionally stripped of its nutritional value, and turns into soap if its treatment isn’t timed just right.  All of the sudden Twinkies look like health food.

After it is cooked, the fish is mercifully served over mashed potatoes and covered in a white cream.  The fish itself looks like translucent, gelatinous cabbage.  The taste is VERY fishy.  I don’t like fishy tasting fish, but if you do, it might not be that bad.  The kicker is the consistency.  Imagine a killer whale’s phlegm after it just had a huge herring dinner coughed up on your dinner plate.  If that doesn’t work, try fish Jell-o that hasn’t been refrigerated quite long enough to completely congeal.  I have no idea why people would choose to subject their palates to this culinary atrocity.

I had my Lutefisk experience and will stick to turkey and dressing for now on.  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and wish you a happy and safe New Year.  Now I just need to find some hog jowl, black-eyed peas, and mustard greens (you Southerners will understand).

 

Silent Night…

Christmas Day will soon be upon us, so here’s a little tune to put you in mood.  Sing to the tune of Silent Night:

Late at night a parent’s plight

To put the kids in bed without a fight

A brain surgeon would be angry and riled

Assembling these gifts of splendor reviled

Oh, is that an extra piece?

Yes, it’s an extra piece.

 

Later that night I get in a fight

With a bulb that just won’t light

This bulb was supposed to go in the main star

On top of the tree that now looks bizarre

Boy my nerves are worn

I glare at my tree with scorn.

 

After the night at dawn’s first light

Little faces lit happy and bright

Unwrapping presents at a frantic pace

Wrapping paper all over the place

This is what it’s all worth

At least I didn’t go through childbirth!

 

Hey, I never claimed to be a songwriter.  Merry Christmas!

 

Deck the Halls

Now that our youngest is able to walk around the house and collect little treasures, Christmas decorating has become a daily routine.  The Advent calendar that my wife bought for the kids is a bare Nativity scene with the little Velcro figures (Olivia calls them “cookies”) spread throughout the house and our Christmas tree, which was once beautifully decorated, is now bare to a height of about 3 feet as the ornaments have slowly migrated up the tree and out of the reach of curious hands.

Of course the actual day of decorating had its usual stresses and blunders.  It literally took about ten trips to the basement to bring up all the decorations – it looked like we were getting ready to move again once everything was upstairs.  Then we got to work on the ginormous 10 foot artificial tree that takes about three weeks to put together with the help of a construction crane.

After completing the tree, I took the empty boxes back downstairs while Sara got to work on the outdoor lights.  We’re not the Grizwalds, but we have a decent amount of exterior illumination and Sara actually enjoys putting the lights up.  I have no problem letting her run with that…

After getting the empty boxes (and a few  boxes of decorations that we never use, but I always carry upstairs, unpack, repack, and take back downstairs) back in the basement, I went out to check on Sara’s progress.  She proudly showed me the routing of her lighting around trees, shrubs, porch rails, columns, and flag poles leading all the way up to the electrical socket on the porch where she held up the wrong end of the plug and asked me if we had an adapter so she could plug it in.  Yep, she started way out in the yard with the end that it supposed to go into the wall and ran the whole thing backwards.

I gave her that look that every husband has given and every wife recognizes.  She still didn’t get it…

I don’t mean to belittle Sara – I’m sure many of you have made this same error and at least she was out there putting up the lights, but there is a good lesson here.  No matter how creatively Sara put up the lights, no matter how good they looked, how hard she worked, or how good her intentions, her plan would fail because she started with the wrong end.  Sometimes we realize that we started in the wrong place and try to correct it by working harder, rationalizing, or simply ignoring our error when what we really need to do is go back to the beginning and look at how our endeavor began.  With Christmas lights, the fix is pretty simple.  With careers, relationships, and life priorities, the required correction can be intimidating, but it is necessary if we want our lives to light up.

 

I’m Entitled to a Week Off

I’m giving finals, turning in final grades, and wrapping up the end of the semester, so it has been pretty crazy lately.  Because of this, there will not be a posting this week.  Give me a break – it’s my birthday!