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Thursday, January 31, 2013

A Welcome Break From the Norm


Raising a teenage girl is a lot like riding a double barrel, double flip roller coaster; it's fast, loud and scary as all get out and at the end of the day you feel like throwing up. It's filled with more drama than a typical episode of "Dallas" and most days you feel like this guy:


Today something happened that makes you sort of forget all that hair pulling out drama normally associated with dealing with a 14 year old; on the bus home from school there were two girls bullying a little girl that lives down the street and Ciera stood up for her and made them stop. For no other reason than she saw somebody getting treated wrongly and felt like she needed to do something to make the sides more of an even playing field.

Which just goes to show you that in the middle of all the crying and shouting and complaining that a closet full of clothes and shoes just isn't enough to survive High School there comes, every now and then, an oasis in the middle of the teenage desert known as Raising Ciera.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Help Fight the Good Fight

My Mom had it. Thankfully, she beat it.

My Father in Law had it.

My best friends Mom had it. And although she fought the good fight for several years, she passed away from it.

My friend fought it, twice, and lost.

We all know somebody, or will know somebody who will get cancer one day. I don't know what the statistics are but most likely most of us will deal with cancer in the future. And cancer doesn't give a crap if you're white or black, male or female, rich or poor, good looking or ugly, Red Sox fan or Yankee fan. It is an indiscriminate killer that just keeps coming.

And while there have been fantastic advancements in treatments and medicine there is still such a long, LONG way to go.

Which brings me to my brother from a different Mother Josh and his beautiful, saint of a wife Amy. (If you know Josh, you KNOW this woman is a saint.) This year is the 4th year of Project Cupid, an event Amy started to raise money to fight cancer and have a great time all in the same night.

If you live in or near the city of Boston, please make plans to support this incredible event for such a worth while cause. There will be good looking women and men auctioned off for dates, sports memorabilia to be won, great food and drinks to be had, and a chance to see Josh dressed up.

 Which happens approximately once a year.

You can read about the event here http://www.project-cupid.org/ and you can visit their Facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/projectcupid. And if you can't attend, click on the link where you can make a donation.

Because one day in the not too distant future, hopefully during the lifetime of my children, people will be able to talk about this disease that used to kill thousands and thousands of people every year and thanks to events like Project Cupid?

It doesn't anymore.

Monday, January 14, 2013

And I couldn't even SPELL technology 5 years ago.

I realize that I've gotten pretty slack with blogging over the past year or so and there are a multitude of reasons. One is I'm inherently lazy and after working all day and dealing with the three ring circus that is my family at night by the time I've got 5 minutes to myself I'm too tired to think most nights, much less come up with anything remotely entertaining to write.

Also, I just don't know how many "Trot peed in (insert new place here) " stories I can write about without coming to the inevitable conclusion that either he or me or most likely both of us are gonna need intensive therapy in the not too distant future. Throw in Rakes and Ciera and Ang and that dumb dog I let them talk me into and it's a small wonder I have enough brain cells left to come up with a thought.

So I decided to open a Twitter account. If nothing else, whenever something happens I can document it right away before I get sidetracked by Rakes wanting to look up cheats for his latest video game or Ciera talking about what happened at school that day and all of a sudden I can't remember my name, much less something that happened 4 hours ago.

I'll still blog, hopefully with a little more regularity, but I'll try to put at least something up on Twitter everyday.

I'm at dted19 @twitter.com

Don't say you weren't warned.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The Older I Get? The More I Don't Get.

Even though I own approximately 1 gun, which belonged to my Grandfather and I have no idea where in the great wide world of sports I put the shells and I've never fired it, I don't really understand this fascination we have with the 2nd Amendment.

When that was written it was a different world and a different time and I'm pretty sure our founding fathers couldn't have imagined a semi-automatic gun that could kill 799 people in roughly 20 seconds. When the Constitution was written it took roughly 10 minutes to load a single round into a gun that had the accuracy of a guy trying to hit a barn from 3 feet away.

I have no problem with people owning guns for protection, hunting, and trying to compensate for some physical shortcoming, much like Monster Trucks and 85" plasma tv's. But whenever somebody tries to convince me that it is necessary to own a gun that fires 500 bullets per minute, or whatever it is, I get a little hinky. When is enough enough? People in Colorado went to see the new Batman movie and never imagined, and rightfully so, that some dipstick with a mental complex was gonna come in with enough artillery to take over Panama and kill them.

Or all those innocent children in Connecticut who went off to school that day didn't expect to see the Devil himself show up in their room. I honestly don't know what the answer is; all I know is that over the past few weeks I've seen people try to convince me that these shootings are some vast government conspiracy to take "our guns away from us and make us Germany" all over again.

Horse crap.

It's people sick and tired of hearing about innocent people being gunned down by raving lunatics with access to weapons our forefathers couldn't dream up and have no reason for existing other than killing. Not protection, not hunting, not target shooting, and not for any other reason than killing. Pure and simple.

And if you've watched what has happened over the past few months and you don't question what in God's name we're doing about guns?

You're operating on a whole other level that I really don't want to think about.


Thursday, January 3, 2013

Cinderalla Gone Haywire

Kids being kids is something we've gotten used to around here. Peeing in the plants, "forgetting" to wear underwear, tracing all the light switches in the house with a permanent marker and rubbing a whole tube of lipstick into the carpet are all things that we've dealt with over the years.

Tonight, as Ang tried to get the boys clothes together for school tomorrow she could only find one of Trot's shoes. According to her she looked everywhere she could think of, up to and including the refrigerator. (Don't laugh; I found the remote control for the tv in there about a year ago, right next to the cheese.)

After looking up and down all over the house she was finally ready to give up until she walked into the kids room where they play the Wii and watch movies. It was here she found the following:


There it is, on the top shelf of one of the bookcases sitting next to the television. I don't know if he threw it up there or climbed up there or if he even remembers how it got there.

When asked by his Mom WHY it was there?

He simply grinned and said "That's where I keep 'em, Mom".