"Time Out..."

I took a mini vacation this past week, or as my daughter so aptly described it, "Mental Health Days." Not your typical vacation, but one that best suits my temperment...sort of a working vacation. I did play golf with some of my now retired buddies (lucky them) from church on Thursday, which was a hoot. The weather was gorious and my golf game was anything but. Still, it was good not to be shackled to my business cell phone and to enjoy the companionship of close friends who enjoy each other's company and do not take themselves or their golf games seriously.

Took my beautiful bride of 24 years to dinner at Carrabba's Italian Grill for a Valentine's dinner that was intimately shared with 200 plus other romantic souls who, like us, waited in line of an hour and a half to be seated. The food was, as always, excellent and we stuffed ourselves shamelessly to the point that when we returned home around 10 p.m. we went right to bed...and to sleep. Such is the life of contented old married folks....

Friday I worked on my long, self-impossed, home improvement project's list. Contentedly, I might add, as this gives me a sense of satisified accomplishment as I see things I've envisioned turned into reality. Vocationally I am a project manger for a construction company, wherein I become too often frustrated at trying repeatedly to get the various involved trades to accomplish those categories of work that must be undertaken in sequence to complete the project. Working on my own projects, I enjoy being nobodies boss but my own.

Saturday I spent half the day at church completing the construction of the set for an up-coming dinner theater play that our choir is going to put on in March to benefit our youth. The ministerial staff has long ago realized that I know my way around a hammer and a table saw and assume (I usually can't say "No.") that such construction projects are to fall to me as chairman. Then it was home again to work on my projects until after dark when it was then time to take Judi's Mom out for some dessert on her 85th birthday. We showed her old photograph's from her earlier years, but she had no recollection of any of them, so advanced has her failing mental capacities rendered her. Sad...

Yesterday we had a follow up birthday lunch for Judi's Mom so that our daughter Megan could also be in attendance. Grandmother dotes on granddaughter Megan, which was the best gift we could give her. We again brought out the photographs that she had looked at the previous evening, sharing them with Megan as well, but grandmother had no recollection that she had done so, nor did she again recognize anyone in the pictures. The decision is looming that we place this poor soul in a facility that can watch over her, as we have become increasingly disturbed that she can no longer care for herself. She'll go kicking and screaming, but she must go and soon.

The intention was to spend the balance of yesterday afternoon at the beach, enjoying the early balmy spring weather and what promised to be another memorable sunset. So much for good intentions. Judi and I both fell asleep on the couch while the 50th anniversary of the Daytona 500 hummed on the TV in the background. Had to read the paper this morning to find out who won.

Now it's back to the work-a-day routine...already looking forward to next weekend when my time will be my time. Mental Health Days are a good thing. I'm looking forward to when each day will be a metal health day.

"From The Heart..."

What do Jamie Lynn Spears and Rodger Clemens have in common? They are two pseudo-celebrities du jour who in their respective 16 and 46 years of residing among us have contributed nothing of lasting substance to the betterment of mankind as a whole. The older throws a baseball arguably more proficiently than anyone else in the history of the game and derives an insane amount of compensation and public acclaim for doing so. The younger's link to notoriety is that she is sibling to sister Britney (sadly and pathetically infamous in her own right) who determined that the best means to influence impressionable and gullible youth who worship blindly at her misguided alter of fame would be to spread her legs and become pregnant. The media of very stripe is literally hemorrhaging with nonstop, wall-to-wall coverage of these two latest examples of popular American Idols in order to feed the public's shallow adulation of and addiction to celebrity. Neither is worth the ink it requires to print their petty and trivial sad stories.

So...who is the young man featured in the photograph above? His name is Johnny. He is 19 years of age. He has downs syndrome and he works as a bagger in a super market. Johnny will never be elevated by the star-starved media to the heights of pop icon because he has no Hall of Fame athletic abilities, nor does he possess celebrity status as a headline performer. He just bags groceries. But because he cares that he does so to the very best of his ability and by doing so he had discovered a way to impact his sphere of influence for the betterment of all who come into contact with him on a daily biasis. See his story by clicking on the WEB link below:

http://www.stservicemovie.com/

Greek philosopher Pericles penned, "What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lies of others." Impacting one's world for the good does not require unique talents nor a pedigree of ancestral service. It only requires a desire to do so...a heart to do so. Kindness is not a disease, but it is contagious. Johnny the bagger caught the spirit of reaching out to others, spreading it with a pure heart, and by doing so he touched the hearts of dozens of others with his infectious spirit. Our world can do with far less adolation of pompous and arrogant prima donnas who have no light unless it is in the limelight and far more recognition and limelighting of nobodies like Johnny. They're out there. They are all around us. They are you and me. It all starts from the heart.

"PANIC!!"

I know that Valentine's Day is not until the day after tomorrow, but a profound sense of panic is already permeating my otherwise demure and sedate state of complacency. I don't do particularly well with gift-giving. I require hints. A list of gift suggestions is even better. Christmas, birthday, wedding anniversary and Valentine's Day all give me a sense of dread. Not that I am at all opposed to these celebratory opportunities...it's just that I want to expend enough personal grey matter to demonstrate to my darling wife that I have given each occassion more than just a passing lick and a promise, knowing that a dog-eared card and a wilting rosebud doesn't exactly convey a much appreciated essence of romance or a renewed pledge of my unwavering love and devotion. What to do that demonstrates sincerity and depth of feeling?

Being a typical red-blooded male, lingerie instantly leaps to mind. But, let's be honest, who is that gift really intended to please...hum-m-m-m? Judi would see right through that ruse. "Sex, Sex, SEX!! Is that ALL that is on your mind!?!" (Actually, no. Occassionally my idle thoughts turn to what may be on the Golf Channel.) Still could a little something frilly be such a terrible idea? I was thinking of perhaps this eye-appealing little number...

Then again, maybe not...

Jewelry is always a dependable gift stable. Nothing says "I love you" more eloquently than a diamond encrusted piece of well-crafted Bling Bling. I've had my eye on the following bobble...

Again, maybe not...unless I have a desire to spend between now and hell freezing over sleeping on the couch.

Guess I'll fall back to the old tried and proved expressions of my love by purchasing a well chosen Hallmark inspired card and red roses, and maybe a small box of chocolates. Dinner reservations have already be secured, promising that we would dine at one of the finer eating establishments rather than being satisifed with pulling up a couple of bar stools at Al's Crab Shack. Perhaps if the evening gravitates toward a romantic conclusion I'll spring that little red number above on her and she'll present me with a gift only she can give with complete and utter freedom of expression.

It's the thought that counts. Happy Valentine's Day ya'll!

"Too Close To Home..."

In 2005 I suffered a heart attack. Turned out to be "mild," if such an event can be so classified, with no residual damage to the heart muscle. I am under a cardologist supervision and, as long as I continue to faithfully take my prescribed medications, I "should" live a very full and productive life. So far so good.

A year later, after my general practioner strongly advised that I should do so (His words, "I have set the apointment and you will go!"), I had my very first colonoscopy. As everyone knows who has ever under gone this procedure, it is the prep prior to the actual procedure's scheduling the following day that is the pain in that part of the anatomy where the attending physician conducts a thorough looking up of one's personal address! Hindsight (pardon the intended pun) is always 20-20. I am glad my GP insisted that I was overdue to "have a look around." It was discovered that I had several pre-cancerous pallops that had to be surgically removed. Outcome...pallops removed...all clear. (Before moving on, let me stress that every person 40 years of age and above needs to undergo a colonoscopy. Mine may have saved my life. Not doing so could end yours and the thought of the inconvenience of doing so pales when compared to the real and permanent inconvenience of being excluded from the next U.S. census.)

Although distance now permits me to make personal light of my most recently successfully diagnosed and treated physical maladies, and to say how truly thankful I am for the advancements in medicine that have granted me, Lord wlling, many more years of happy memories yet to be created, I am also grieveously aware that modern medicine has not advanced to the point where every affliction can be successfully eradicated. This truth came home to me this day as my boss announced with all the courage he could muster that his oldest daughter, Jennifer, has been diagnosed with a type of melanoma cancer that is speading rapidly in her brain. The prognosis, absent of a modern medicine miracle coupled with God's merciful intervention, this young lady in her early 30s has perhaps a year at best to live. I am at a loss as to what to say or how to feel.

As a father or a young and vibrant daughter myself, my heart goes out to this fellow father who is struggling to comprehend that the daughter he so successfully loved and protected for all these preceeding years is beyond his earthly ability to snatch safely and permanently away from this far too premature visitation of finality. How does one realign ones emotions to comprehend that the assumed expectation of years to come with this daughter of promise is not to be? This is a reality that defies human explanantion, leaving one numb with helplessness and searching for answers to the questions that all begin with "Why?" My heart is filled with his saddness and no words of comfort form on my lips. I am left with the only source of comfort that I know exists but cannot myself fully comprehend: the undefineable power to pray for God's grace and mercy to be visited upon this family in their coming hours of desperation.

Look with your heart today to those you care and love the most. There is no promise for tomorrow. Say "I love you" and mean it, and be thankful to God for the gifts that these special people are in your life.

"When All Hell Breaks Loose..."

I handle it much better now, but when I was a child I was deathly afraid of lightening, especially at night. My Mom and Dad told me that when I was but a toddler my abject fear was the result of a lightening strike that occured just across the street from where my parents and I were standing looking out our front picture window. The blinding brilliant flash and the instanteous accompanying thunderous boom scared me so profoundly that I hurled myself across the room, knocking both of my parents down in the process. I was too young then to bring to the fore now that particular memory, but the consequences of the incident obviously made a most profoundly frightening and indelible impression upon me. As a result there are a dozen or so other childhood memories involving my lightening phobia that invoke a remembered mixture of either knee-buckeling hysteria or nervous humor.

As for tornadoes, I have only been witness to one such awe-inspiring storm from afar as it tore up the uninhabited landscape along the perimeter of McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas where I was stationed in the early 70's. Someone, who obviously had little personal regard for the vastness of that region of the country, once remarked that "Kansas is miles and miles of just miles and miles." Fortunantely this observation of fact proved of benefit on the day of that particular tornadoe's appearance, as for all its sound and fury it merely meandered across the open planes reeking havoc only upon some pour farmer's early summer wheat fields. While living in Lebanon, Tennessee I was on the outskirts of an unseen tornadoe that was striking at that moment in Mount Juliet approximately 20 miles to west of my location where I had hurriedly stepped outside to lower my garage door before the arrival of a most fierce thunder storm overtook my location. Just as I had all but closed the door a terrific gust of wind suddenly lifted the door with me firmly attached and flung me across the backyard. The tornadoe to my west was sucking all of the air into its core for miles around. I managed to secure the door and hurried into the house hoping and literally praying that I would weather this storm without further incident. I did, although my nerves were still frayed long after the departing thunder had rumbled its last.

I relay my brief personal encounters with nature's wrath as a reflection upon the death and destruction that visited five of our southern states last evening when untold dozens of deadly and destructive tornadoes visited their terrifying hell upon the unwitting lives of the communities arrayed in their paths. Thus far the death toll stands unsteadily at 52 with untold additional injured. I can only begin to barely imagine the indescriable terror that clutched at the throats and hearts of these poor souls as they heard if not actually saw the raw devasting power of the swirling rage racing toward their front doors. Nothing...nothing, in my opinion, can possibly be more paralyzing to rational thought than to stand helplessly on the threshold of an advancing storm bodding mass destruction. What does one do? Where does one go? "Dear God in heaven, help us!!" I hear the cries of those who survived. I morn the cries for the loved ones lost.

Joseph Stalin, the satanic and despotic ruler of Russia in the 19th century, who callously authorized the cruel and inhumane deaths of millions of his own country men, women and children, penned the following: "The death of one man is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." The English poet John Donne had a far fuller understanding of the interlaced dependencies we humans have on one another. "The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that this occasion would wrought him, he is united with God. Who casts not his eye to the sun when it rises? But who takes his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occassion rings? But who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of this man." Mr. Donne realized what Stalin could not...that every injury...every death...rises far above a cold statistic by those who bear the pain of such loss. And each of us must not allow ourselves to become callous in our reflection upon the tragedies of others. They each, as one soul to another, deminish each of us as well.

God be with these souls who were visited last evening by a calamity that has no name but saddness.

"Let's All Go Out And Buy Stuff!!"

Okay...now that I've got your attention, which is exaclty what the dozen or so companies pointedly conspired to do with their varying array of Super Bowl commercials, I would be disappointed in myself if I did not offer a few passing comments on those that I appreciated for their artistic approach and/or comedic content. Super Bowl 42 was indeed a "great game," which kept me firmly planted on the couch and reluctant to take those necessary potty breaks, made doubly more so because this year's commercials were for the most part in and of themselves most entertaining. Now for the highlights...

Hands down the winner for the best commercial once again was garnered by Budwiser's "Rocky" commerical. Animals and heartstrings always seems to be a winning formula and Budwiser has once again further perfected that art from. The Audi offering made me salivate like a Pavlovian dog...so esquisite was that automobile. In my dreams could I only wish to drive much less own such a fine piece of automotive engineering. But reality dictates that much like reading of all the exotic places in the world in my monthly edition of National Geographic I, alas, will never get to visit any of these locales first hand. I do agree with another blogger that perhaps the Godfather reference was most likely lost on the younger generation and that perhaps also the front end of a Ford Mustang would have been a better option to place at the foot of the bed to invoke more clearly the namesake movie's image of a severed horse's head. To each his own...

Bridgestone Tire's offering of the screaming squirrel in the middle of the road was fun, as was Dorito's mousetrap commerical. I laughed out loud when the giant rat burst through the wall and began to beat the living daylights out of the smug would be assassin. Planter's Nuts had a winner with their unibrow vamp who wooed her many admirer's with the alluring scent of cashews emanating from her person. Never again will I view the lowly salted peanut with the same casual disregard. For pure entertainment value Pepsi Max's commerical with the bobbing heads was an obvious winner. Watching the otherwise austere sport's comentator Joe Buck bob his head in rhythm to the song "Don't Hurt Me" was indeed a fun spot to watch and enjoy. My personal award for the best special effects goes to FedEx and their carrier pigeons entry. Having giant piegons pick up full sized automoblies and slam then into the side of a building was most inventive.

Being an example of the typical male, when a commercial break comes on the tube I am quick to command my remote to scan for anything but. The trusty remote during this year's Super Bowl was treated like an unwanted stepchild. I was happily engaged in escapism for three hours Sunday evening, only being pulled back to reality when Victorian Secret's commerical aired offering more than a subtle reminder that there is far more to life than football. "Let the games begin," they suggested, and being a red-blooded consumer of American enterprise, I dutifully complied. The "Boob Tube" never had a finer hour!

"Now That Is SUPER!!"

Not rivaling the audience that tuned in for the last episode of M*A*S*H, but estimated to be perhaps the most watched Super Bowl of the proceeding forty-one. I lay claim to admitting that I viewed both, Super Bowl Forty-Two and M*A*S*H... and if memory serves all or a portion of all of the intervening Super Bowls.

As far as this Super Bowl may be judged, it was very competative and, therefore, entertaining. I had no personal dog in this contest, nor any of my hard-earned cash wagered, so I gravitated toward pulling for the proclaimed underdog New York Giant just to have something to keep my interest in tact between copious mouthfuls of snack food. The game was "good" overall, but very good in the final quarter when all of the scoring was accomplished with Eli Manning and the N.Y. Giants pulling out the victory against the heretofore undeafeated, 18 & 0 New England Patriots.

Good, as far as it goes. There can never be any real losers in any game of athletics. My sense of dispair or exhuberation at the conclusion of any athletic event is always tempered by the realization that there are men and women in far away places wearing the uniforms of our armed forces that are making game day decisions that literally could mean whether or not they get to put that uniform on again tomorrow. There will always be "another game," but there is no guarantee that there will be another day for these brave men and women who face with determined trepidation the prosepct of placing themselves yet again in harm's way. God Bless 'Em. God protect them. The real victory...one worth celebrating by us all...is when these men and women come home to their loved ones permanently. Now that will be SUPER!!