So...What Do You Know About ....

... Mark Earley and juvenile justice reform?

It seems a long time ago, but at the same time just like yesterday I was asking that very question.  You know how it is when 6219 days all wander together, right?

In any case, Sunday marks seventeen years of...dating I guess.  (You can date when you are married or so I am told.)

In any case, I figured I would go with Lifehouse.  First, momma likes the band.  Second, she likes the song.  Third, it fits...at least for me.

When we met my career was on my mind.  I was not thinking girls and I certainly was not thinking marriage and children.  It took a while for me to "let go of my defenses" that he talked about in the song, but when I did it was all the better.  Hopefully, you will find that one person who you will be all in for the rest of your life.

Enjoy life, enjoy the music, and enjoy the chance to find your "all in."

My Girl And Me For Fifteen Years...

I realize this is a bit early, but tomorrow is June 6 and today is my anniversary, so the tunes have to come early.

After fifteen years of marriage I am going with The Beatles and "I Will."  I think we know the song more from the movie Love Affair than from the Beatles, but what can I say?

In the movie Annette Bening does an amazing job as a music vocalist who finds herself teaching to school children and falling in love with a playboy ex-football player.  Well, I don't think anyone will confuse Dianne with being a music teacher and while ownership has its privileges, football is not my number one sport.

Whether the sport is baseball or football or even rugby, whether or not you are teaching music or risk managing Big Four clients, it wasn't hard for me to say "I Do" or for that matter waiting for the next seventy-nine years to say "I Will"...

Mothers

"God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers." - Rudyard Kipling

So Mother's Day comes again.  Or so the calendar says.  Mothers come in all shapes and sizes, good dispositions and bad, but I suspect I agree most with Rudyard Kipling about mothers.

From a religious perspective, I believe in the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit).  Beyond that is Saint Mary, an easy one for Catholics, but one step further has to be mothers.  They bring us to life.  No not alone, but without mothers would men carry children?  I doubt it.  Pregnancy would be too cumbersome and get in the way of all the things we like to do so that leaves the fairer gender.

In my case, I am lucky to be married to the best mother children could have in Dianne.  The thing that amazes people the most about her I think is how she balances work as a full time risk manager for a Big Four tax firm with the care and instruction of four children ranging in age from ten to almost born, for what will be our fifth addition.

Some days I am not sure how she can manage a conference call on a contract with a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 in Brazil with a school parent-teacher conference and then get Dodge to baseball practice.  Not sure how, but never unsure about her ability to find a way.

At the same time she teaches the girls how to be a lady and encourages a little brother to find his footing in a household dominated by a dominant older brother who seems to excel at things with ease.  Somehow she also seems to keep him in check as well without being overbearing.

She does it all with what seems ease...in a million places in a million moments with few tasks that she can not perform.  Perhaps Kipling was right and mothers are God's other representatives to show us how things can be done with grace, determination, and care.  I think so.

DMS

So first big girl's birthday, then momma's birthday the next day.  What is a guy to do?

Whew.  I don't know how people did it back in the day, but I might say thank you Outlook.  On the other hand, my best man had a speech on my wedding day where he started out talking about how a wife is like a leatherman.  A leatherman?  Really?!?

You nod politely and listen and just go with it, but it takes a while before you say, yeah, maybe he was right.

It took me a while (and at least three children, if not all four) to get he was right.  People give me a hard time all the time because sometimes I call Dianne the horse, but the crux of that isn't she is an old nag, but that she is the work in the family.  She is also the glue that keeps everything sticking together and working.

Most of the time she let's me be the pretty one, the face of the franchise so to speak, while she get things done (and I am not the pretty one.)  She lets me be Babe Ruth, while she is Lou Gehrig, juggling grocery shopping with two boys' desires to play Minecraft, a budding princess who wants to have her hair done, and an infant...all the while supporting me while I hop scotch across the country and world talking EMS or disasters like I am at the upcoming Spring Fling Conference in Idaho or the South Carolina EMS Conference.

I have zero idea how she can keep #23 doing his homework, while #24 asks to have her hair done, while #12 is practicing baseball, and keeping #27 from eating something off the ground, but that is the whirlwind capability of my girl.  So....hopefully, I have not messed up her birthday too much this year as she asked for and is getting a toned down version, but either way, she is my queen, my princess and certainly my leatherman - the one part of my life I couldn't do without.

Girls With Blue Diamond Eyes...

 

 



Okay, so granted this video isn't quite right.  I mean do you ever see this girl's blue diamond eyes?  Seems like your casting director would have been able to at least find you a model with blue contacts, however, a few years ago I may have met a girl with blue diamond eyes.  No, she wasn't in Mexico, but she did go to Tia's Tex Mex with me for Valentine's Day way back in 1998.  That was before we decided to go climbing a rock wall- well I did - in cowboy boots and post two too many margaritas.

Nonetheless, we ended up married and in his song he is in Mexico (I assume he ate some good good like we did), he's singing a country song (I was wearing cowboy boots), and he met an amazing girl with blue diamond eyes (which I did, though a few months earlier), so for this Valentine's Day edition of Friday Night Music, I will go with Brett Eldredge and "Beat of the Music."

Influence

Who knew?

So my dear wife has joined the blogosphere with her once weekly memo, Wednesday's Words.  I'm not sure it has the catchiest of titles, but what can you do?

In this week's edition however, she decided, to run through all the deleteriousness that our marriage had been on her life....like giving up Pepsi for Coca Cola.  Personally, I don't think it was me as it was the ridiculous heat and humidity we found in Cambita, Dominican Republic while building a school house as part of a church trip.  During lunch and occasionally for fun, our local hosts would treat us with liter bottles of cane sugar Coca Cola.  It gets pretty easy to give up on Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, or almost anything else when you are losing three pounds a day in sweat.  It also makes your newly minted hubby something of a rock star when he drives around on other people's scooters as a Dominican Republic James Dean.

As for the rest of the list, shouldn't everyone know who Legendary Santa is?  My question is how did R-V-A (Richmond, Virginia) get so lucky as to pull that one off?

To the others...I don't make her eat sloppy joe, but it is one of those childhood things that now and then I crave.  Maybe I'm pregnant, who knows?

I don't make her listen to sports radio...I think my oldest son does.

I don't wear heels either.

Zero clue who turned me on to pepperoni and black olives pizza, but thank you.

You also don't have to have very front row tickets, but if I am in section 829 at a game or a show, what is the purpose?  So I can buy the teeshirt?  No thanks.  We don't go to nearly as many ball games now as we did when we were Orioles season ticket holders so I am spending the same amount of money, I am just doing it on fewer live games.  There is an economic principle here about buying better quality or something, but when you are sitting front row by the visitor's dugout and their pitcher tosses your kid a ball (thank you Gavin Floyd) there is something kind of cool about that.  He aint tossing to section 340.

She does fine with keeping score, but I keep track of pitches because as we all know there are metrics out there that predict pitcher success based on whether or not a pitcher can throw a strike when he throws his third pitch.  No, I don't mean strike three, but whether you are 2-0, 1-1, or 0-2, the third pitch should be a strike.  If you don't have the zone figured out yet, you probably cant be on my mound.

 

She thinks she knows emergency medicine acronyms.  Ha.

 

She does go get me great limited edition runs of ice cream like Scotch Scotch Scotch.  Sorry, I have another huge issue with butterscotch.  Want to sell me something, add butterscotch.

 

Look here Mr. Suprun, this BMW has the finest of features: steering wheel, tires, windshield, and look....butterscotch ice cream.  I mean really, what's not to like?

 

In any case, it's nice to know after all these Valentine's Days I have had some influence.