Parenthood
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Clinton joke – as told by Marleigh while in Preanesthesia
This was after the Versed, but before the sedation (she was in a great mood). For some reason we were looking at portraits of US presidents and deciding which one was the strangest looking (Martin van Buren) – Marleigh, for no knowable reason came up with this Clinton Joke
Why did Bill Clinton go down into the mine?
So he could hear the sound “Clint, Clint, Clint”! -
Proud parenting moment – Halloween edition
When we were wrapping up trick or treating we were talking about the prevalence of 15 foot skeletons. Either me or the wife mentioned that people left them up year round, and the Halloween skeletons became Thanksgiving skeletons, then Christmas skeletons, and so forth, and how this angered neighbors and neighborhood associations. After clarifying that the neighbors did not in fact buy the skeletons somehow, Marleigh had the memorable line
That’s ridiculous – just because they have opinions doesn’t mean they have rights!
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Quote of the day – Parenting
From Marleigh
I really like Kate Wolf – her songs are short, sad, and good.
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The state of American education, as told by Marleigh
Third grade is like a giant pit with nothing but sharp pointy ice crystals at the bottom. You fall in and you just keep falling and it hurts and hurts but eventually you get rescued. That’s summer.
She is worried about multiplication…
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Challenging parenting moment
Tonight I had to explain both cancer and the French Revolution to a seven year old!
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Marleigh on Trump
While listening to the radio on the way to school:
Marleigh: Daddy – how much longer is Trump going to be president?
Me: About two and a half year at least
Marleigh: Two and a half years!? We’ll all be dead by then, the trees will die first, and they make our air, then we’ll die, then the werewolves will die, and then the regular wolves will come and eat everything else.
Me: Everything will be fine – have a good time in school.
I guess today’s bedtime conversation will be about
- resilient systems,
- Adam Smith’s line about “There’s a lot of ruin in a nation”
- Checks and balances
- Keeping people occupied with projects (and out of the way)
The existence of werewolves will be a separate day though, don’t want to mix the topics.
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I’m not sure if this is a sad comment or not
From Marleigh on the way to zoo camp this morning.
Daddy – you haven’t made any new friends in a long time – do you want some help making new friends?
She is good at that sort of thing…
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A weird thought for our modern age
There will come a time when I will have to tell my daughter that Santa Claus is fake, but Buckethead is real
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Commandment #1 – Be Positive At All Times
And by positive I mean no “Venting”, whining, or complaining about things where you have no influence. force yourself to be upbeat if you have to. People have a limited brain capacity and naturally occurring bad thoughts crowd out anything else. After a while you get talented at being negative, which is a road that leads nowhere good. Go ahead and evict bad thoughts and negativity from your head as much as possible. By and large a forced positivity is better than a natural negativity, and will crowd out negativity.
This is very difficult to and I do not always follow through on it, but nonetheless, that’s what you must do.
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Ten Commandments, 100 Rules, and 1000 Suggestions
As I mostly keep this blog around to bore my daughter in the future, I guess I should start moralizing early. Towards that end I’m going to start my top ten commandments, one hundred rules, and one thousand suggestion. It will serve as the definitive source for whatever wisdom I believe in at the time, ordered by importance and severity.