Family Fun

We had a houseful this Thanksgiving weekend, as Ann and Patrick flew in to complete the fivesome of Buckeye Scanlans. Dinner was out at Greg and Lois’ house as usual and we all left stuffed like the birds we ate. Priscilla and John decided to have their own holiday dinner with their kids, their kids’ significant others and grandkids, so we didn’t see them. Their youngest, Lisa, and her boyfriend did come over for dessert, but that was it.

On Thanksgiving night, Shane and Patrick and I went off to the movies and saw “American Gangster”, starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. It was a great story and a great “guy” movie—Ann elected to stay home. I came out of the theater not sure if I should admire or despise the lead character. This was the story of the guy who smuggled heroin into the country inside of body bags from Vietnam. Hmmm. Despise. Let’s go with “despise.”

We did not contribute much to the area’s economy for Black Friday, but Ann and I ventured out to a couple of stores in the morning. Some stores were open at 4:00 a.m., but we did not feel compelled to shop in the wee hours. I bought a few toys for Christmas packing at church and some socks at Penney’s. Kathy and I will do some serious shopping at some point, but there was nothing we really saw that grabbed us in the store ads.

Friday was also “Game Day” at Greg and Lois’ house. We all returned to their place along with Shane’s girlfriend Courtney who drove up from Columbus for the occasion. We played Cranium, youngsters versus oldsters, and youth won out, but only by one toss of the die. We had a great time with the drawing, charades and word puzzles that challenged us throughout the contest. Piles of hors d’oeuvres made the ultimate sacrifice around the table, including some delicious apple-cheese-fig creations in little pastry cups.

Max busied himself with some of Greg’s toys while the grownups played Cranium, coming in occasionally to help out by starting the egg timer for some questions. He gleefully flung himself into photos with Shane and Courtney and Ann and Patrick and Shane. We had a stuffed animal that Kathy’s sister Lois had bought for a gag birthday gift (supposed to represent this horrible little poodle they had growing up) and Kathy learned that it was a “Webkinz”. You register your “pet” on line and then kids can play games, earn points, and “buy” things for their virtual pet. We think it’s an insidious capitalist plot to train kindergartners how to shop on line. Anyway, we got Max’s pet registered and we all played the games to win as many points as we could for Max. One Internet player posted a high score of 5,000+ in one game, and we knew that no five year old was capable of such heroics. Of course a screen pops up every once in a while announcing new pets for sale at your local retailer.

Ann decided to get a new Ohio driver’s license in case the driving laws relax in Ireland and allow her to more easily transfer her US driving privileges to her adopted country. The test is now on computer, and once you get thirty questions right, it stops you and tells you that you’ve passed. It only took our brilliant daughter 32 questions to wrap up the test. On Wednesday she will take the driving portion of the exam. We went out to a parking lot the other day to practice the “maneuverability” test and she did fine. Even I gave it a try and could probably pass it myself.

Since Ann won’t be here for Christmas, I decided to decorate the house early, putting up outside lights on Wednesday while it was still warm outside, and putting up decorations around the kitchen and living room to make things more festive. This is definitely the earliest I have ever put out Christmas stuff. I do have one tradition, which is to start writing out my cards during the Thanksgiving weekend, and I did a little work on them on Saturday and Sunday. Now I just have to print off the newsletter. I remember going to Owen Wulff’s offset printing business with Mom when she would drop it off for him to do. I also remember helping put stamps on the hundreds of cards she used to send out. I only have fifty or sixty people on our list.

Woo-hoo—another short week for me, as I am taking Wednesday off to chauffer Ann to her driving test, and then it’s off to the outlet mall where she will be one of the many furrinners who come here to take advantage of the weak dollar.

Biting dogs and drunken car rental agents

Kodiak and I were doing a short course the other night when a white husky ran up to us and sniffed Kodiak for a moment. I noticed that some people were coming down the street trying to recapture the animal, so I went to grab his collar, but he leaped away from me and took off around a building. He popped around the corner further down the street and encountered yet another dog and his master. This guy tried to the same thing I did and the husky bit his wrist! He was bleeding quite a bit when I met up with him. He said the dog had bitten someone else a couple of weeks ago. They quarantined him and he was clean. I told him he should still tell the owner what happened, but I’m not sure he was going to follow up.

This past week I attended one of Max’s karate classes. There were ten kids in the class ranging in age from 5 to 7, so it was a group that Max could keep up with. The sensei seems like a good guy. He opened the class with some affirmations that the kids repeat. One of them goes something like this: “I will not attack someone else, but I will defend myself.” A couple of weeks ago, Max had said something like that to his father, narrowing his eyes and saying ominously, “…but I will defend myself!” Now we know where it came from. My favorite affirmation was “I tell my parents everything”. It’s good to brainwash them early. I was proud to see Max pass his first test and get an orange stripe for his belt. He had to show the correct responses to certain moves that the sensei made, and he did very well.

My meetings in Chicago went well. I was very proud of myself in flying into Midway and taking the trains to the hotel without getting lost, and finding my way back without going the wrong way like I did last time. We had some great panel discussions with employers. One of the Executive Board members is from Enterprise Rent-A-Car and he looked up the top ten reasons new hires get fired from Enterprise. Here they are:

10. Not adhering to the dress code
9. Attitude
8. Job abandonment—they just don’t return to work
7. Theft
6. Fighting!?
5. Ethics violations
4. Unwanted sexual advances
3. Driving drunk
2. Drunkeness at company functions
1. Improper use of email

Gee, they sure are sticklers at Enterprise, aren’t they?

We are agog—Everyone’s flying in on Wednesday for Thanksgiving.

Some amazing people you'll never hear about

This week I felt like my sister who is a nurse practitioner in a busy clinic up in Boston. she meets all sorts of people with all sorts of problems in her work. With so many vacancies in our office, I’ve picked up a student load again—mostly Sociology, Criminology and Social Work majors and this week I met with some very interesting students. One was a young woman who had started her degree at another university thirteen years ago. She had been one semester short of graduating when she suffered a stroke! She has been steadily working her way back all these years. Her speech is fine, her motor skills seem good. She remarked that her memory is the one thing that doesn’t work too well and that problem sometimes slows her down. Still, you have to admire her perseverance.

Another was a man who was 28 whose dream is join a police force. He does well on the civil service tests, impresses people in interviews and presents himself very well. He is personable, fun to talk with and really seems to have things together. He may have to give up this dream, though, because of some things in his criminal record from his adolescent years. He grew up in foster homes, was convicted of trespassing in his own mother’s yard, convicted of disorderly conduct for shoving someone outside a bar—little stuff, I guess, but it all looms large in a background check. So now he wonders what else he can do with his degree. We’ll talk more in the future, I hope.

Yet another was a young woman who had quit one job at an agency working with mentally retarded adults to take another one in the same field that was closer to home, only to find that the new job is not what she hoped. She remarked that her stomach was upset that day—something she ate, she thought. We went on to talk about a strategy to find a new job, and she shifted in her chair and grimaced as I prattled on about something. We cut the meeting short when I realized she was started to feel worse. The interesting thing about her is that she still came to the appointment, even though she was not feeling well.

Our students are a motivated bunch, I’ll tell you. They’ve had all sorts of life experiences, some that help, some that are obstacles to overcome, and they bring them all to their pursuit of a degree in a place that sometimes seems to thwart their best efforts. We try to be known as a place that helps rather than hinders, that eliminates hurdles rather than creates new ones.

Witness

Today I had to run an errand for work, so I dropped Kathy off at the house and drove off. This put me home much later than usual, and I when I did get back, our son and his girlfriend were out walking Kodiak. Since this meant I didn’t get my evening exercise, I walked up to church to put away some donated food.

Walking down my street on the way home, I saw this guy climb onto the hood of a car that took off toward me. I thought they were just goofing around, but then he yelled at the driver to stop and let him get off. The car stopped, he jumped down and walked off, missing a sneaker.

I saw it was a young woman driving. She turned around and came back to our house, stopped and asked me if I had seen the guy on her car. I glanced at Kathy, who looked a little dubious. I hesitated a moment and then said yes, I had seen what happened.

“Who was that guy?” I asked her. “He’s the father of my children”, she said through her tears. Wonderful, I thought. Just what I need—some crazy guy coming after me for interfering in a family quarrel. The thing was, she talked about doing a police report and wanted me as a witness. If I had said no, I realized she would once again be alone—her word against his. I couldn’t do that. Some months ago, I pleaded with my niece to file domestic violence charges against her husband. I just have this thing about women who are threatened by idiot men. I’m not in favor of it.

It’s been a few hours now and the police haven’t called me. I suspected she might change her mind. I pray she makes the right choices.