A new bully is in town

Not sure how many of you even read this blog anymore. Hopefully, you are all lurkers, just not posters or commenters...

There is a different kind of bully at schools than the ones we were used to. And I have learned this from working at a school and it is kind of sad.

Gone are the days when a furrowed-brow bully would pick on a 'nerd' at school. At least in those days, the bully was 'brave' enough to confront someone face to face. Today's bully hides behind a keyboard and computer screen. Blogs, MySpace, Facebook, and the like are the new "playgrounds" where bullys pick fights. And why not? No parents, no teachers, no rules, and a host of other cowardly kids backing them up all the way.

No holds barred is the one rule on this playground. Language so harsh Jerry Springer would have to think twice before having them on as a guest on his show.

What happens these days is that one bully will decide one kid is fat for example), and say so on their page (whatever kind of page that may be). Parents are usually not as involved in their kids' lives as they once were, so parents don't see it (And some don't even care, as my experience has been), teachers and administrators only hear about it through other kids and parents (who wish to remain nameless as they prefer to fear a child bully rather than help a bullied child from being bombarded with self-confidence-destroying words), and so the cycle continues.

News stories abound about this kind of stuff. Just Google the words facebook bully school. You may find a story where some kids got expelled from posting horrible and horrific words and phrases of teachers and faculty members. The school felt justified as it was not only a private school, but in a round-about way, it violated their rules of conduct. However, many kids protested. Skipping class, pulling fire alarms to get more kids out of class and into the protest, and forcing the police to get involved.

So you have several ways to look at this. Protect children, or protect "Free Speech", But would my democratic friends consider "Hate Speech" to be "Free Speech"? It seems you can't say anything about homosexuals, African-Americans, or Latinos anymore in this country without losing your job. In essence, you are not allowed to be racists but more realistically, you are just not allowed to use certain words when refering to certain social groups... We are either confused about the phrase "free speech" or it no longer exists. I think it still exists, but there is a line. Kids ages 11 to 16 are venerable more than we remember ourselves being. Words DO hurt. It was one thing for us to be made fun of in class, or on the playground, but today, kids are being made fun on on the W O R L D wide web. And others who, in the past, would have stood idly by and let the bullying occur, now get into the act. Again, why not? No parents, no teachers, and they are hiding behind mask of, what they believe to be anonymity. I personally don;t think it is wrong for a school to get involved if students or faculty member are the target of hateful speech. Especially if the school is private.

Though, there is nothing anonymous about a private blog or networking site page. If ONE person can see it, it is no longer private. Printers can work miracles today, and so can pressing that handy little "Prt Scr" button on your keyboard. You know the one, the one you have probably never used?

On a related note, kids are just now starting to realize that employers and colleges that they seek to enter search the web for these applicants. In some cases before the first interview. See my latest articles on this subject here and here. Even if a kid wrote some "bully" type 5 years ago once they apply for a college, Google has this cool thing that can "cache" sites. I am afraid in the near future we will have a generation of hateful kids, many of which didn't get into the college they wanted to get into, or didn't get a job because they couldn't resist putting that video of them dancing drunk when they were 15 on YouTube.

Sorry for the downer, just raise your kids to be nice folks. Maybe we can beat this thing one family at a time.

The Stubbs pay a visit

Our good friends the Stubbs paid a visit to central Alabama this long weekend. It was wonderful to see them and spend time with them. My only regret was that we were not able to spend MORE time with them. With the Sips having two boys, the Stubbs having a new boy, and us having a new boy, schedualing and visit times were limited. Plus, my in laws were in town staying at our home.

Even so, we were able to have dinner with them Friday night, cook out with them at the Sips Saturday night, and go to church and lunch with them Sunday.

Here are some videos made during the visit. The first video has a few greetings to our friends the Brews over in China...

Is it just me?

Something hit me the other day and it kind of made me sad...

This whole parent thing has turned my world upside down. More so than I expected. But one thing I didn't expect would be that my social life would plummet to a near-zero level.

I mean, I expected the first few weeks to not go hang with folks, but he is 6 weeks old now and still a part of me just wants to stick close to home base.

I mean, after the Sips had Noah (If I remember correctly) they were happy to have us over to their home! I keep thinking in my mind all the peoples homes I want to go to and take Tyler along, or to invite people over, but when Friday or Saturday come, and I see that dishes need washing, clothes need washing, the house is a wreck, and not to mention the baby needs feeding in a few hours, I give up the thought, slip into my pajama pants, and roll up my sleeves (Assuming I am wearing a shirt) to get to work. And if we get to eat our meal along the way, that's just a plus.

Believe me Sip, we want to come to yalls home. We want to go to several folk's home and we want to have people over. But when does the fear of leaving home base end? Am I a freak for feeling this way? I mean, I have never been Mr. Socialite, but I do like to hang with my closest friends from time to time and it frankly feels like ages since I have done so!

Travels abroad

With Brew leaving for a first-time traveling experience in literally hours, I thought I would post a blog being that I am in a somewhat similar "First time travel experience" situation as well...

My wife, child, and myself will all be going to my parents home in Tennessee this weekend. The idea is so that, of course, my mom and dad can spend time with thier grand son, and that my wife and I can go out that night.

Those without kids do not realize what a task this will be. Even as my wife and I decided yesterday that we would go take our son to visit them, the fullness of the situation didn't hit us immediately. And before I had this child, I would have just thought "Toss some diapers in a bag, a bottle, a jug of 1% milk and go". After having some dinner at home, we began to think it over. Thoughts turned to paper and pen, paper and pen turned into hands on head eyes widening.

Eventually my wife spoke up and said "Do you remember how Josh and Rachel had an entire suitcase for Luke when we went to Disney World and how we couldn't understand how a baby could need so much?" I agreed, and we both began to feel like the Sips actually packed light for their child on that trip...

So, rather than go in alone on this, I would take suggestions from the panel of experts at my disposal. I know there are a great many men my age with kids reading this. Those who frequent this blog, I expect nothing less than advice. Those lurkers out there, feel free to comment. Women, of course, are welcome to comment just as much as the men.

It is becoming all too clear in my mind that it will be alot more convenient for my parents to visit us for the next year or so than for us to visit them, though, the drive must be made, and often... adults can turn insane when they are turned into grand parents.

The Great Neutralizer

How's Larissa... How are you... How's the baby...?

FINE! FINE! FINE! FINE! FINE! FINE! FINE! FINE! FINE! FINE! FINE! FINE! FINE! FINE! FINE!

There... I feel better.

At work, and at church, the 3 questions you see above are what i get asked on a continual basis... almost as if the people I go to church with and work with are on some sort of question-shift where there must always be someone asking me those questions.

Don;t get me wrong, they are sweet and lovely people for being concerned no doubt. But the funny thing is that one lady at work sees me every day, and will ask me those questions each time she sees me... sometimes (no lie) she will see me, ask the questions, then see me a few hours later and ask again!

My answer is ussually a smile, and "Fine, thank you for asking."

Tonight at church, I dropped the "thank you for asking" and just said "Fine." Sometimes with a smile.. Eventually, someone that asked me earlier heard me say "Fine" to someone else. She said "Thats's all he keeps saying about it!" To which I replied "There are 500 people at this church, if I stopped to give them all a run down on my days I would be here all day." Okay, they know that "That's just Jamison" but some found me to be quite rude. I dont think people are used to hearing people tell them what they think without censorship.

The funny thing, is that I know how alot of these people are. If I said "Oh, he is a dream baby! He never cries, sleeps 6 hours at night, eats like a charm without fussing, doesn't kick like a black-belt in karate when I try to change his diaper..." they would say "Just wait till he is 3 weeks old" or 4 weeks, etc...

If I said "Oh my, he is terrible, he poops all day long, it stinks, it gets on me, he cries like a ring wraith when he feeds, and I only get 59 minutes of sleep a day" They would all say "It will get better."

So, in a way, the "How are things?" people really just want to nuetralize you. If things are going good, then wanna bring you down a notch. If you are doing poorly, they want to lift you up. I give them no such satisfaction so I just say "Fine."

A side note, a gal at church who has a 6 month old never asked me how things were going though mom and I sat next to them. But after church she asked if she could call us or come by this week. To which I responded "That would be wonderful."

FYI, the photo on this blog was not staged or planned. My wife took it unbenounced to me. We let Ty sleep with us for a few hours each night. Either first thing as we go to bed or after his last feeding of the night (4am-ish).

Oh, and by the way... things are fine.

Blast From the Past Tuesday... Babies

Here is a blast from the past titled "Babies" from Rachel on November 11, 2005... Thought it was a fitting blog to post today considering my situation...

Here's a little quote I had as a mantra for a while: "When you wake up one day and say, you know, I don't think I'll ever need sleep or sex again... Congratulations! You're ready to have children." (Ray Romano)

But really, I can't count the number of times I wanted to just drop the birth control pills and get pregnant. I'm so glad I didn't because now I've got Luke and we're in a situation where I can stay at home with him and not worry too much about money or anything else. I finished school.

Sometimes I wonder if it was worth it, since nobody really asks you if you've got an art degree when applying for the job of stay-at-home mom. But then Josh reminds me what an accomplishment it was, how proud I can be, and that in the future I may want to get a job where it'll come in handy. And he's right.

First, let me say that I've never been happier in my whole life. But let me also say that I didn't get a full night's sleep for well over a year. Luke woke up every single hour many many nights. I (and Josh) was lucky to get 3 solid hours of sleep. I was a zombie. A happy zombie, but a zombie nonetheless. I could not have gone to school during this time even if it had been the second grade. School is different from work in two very important ways: one, you don't get paid, but you pay out to go to school; and two, the bulk of your work is done at home after-hours when you're in school.

Baby and Frog

First, my wife will be induced this week. Put it this way, I don;t think we will be at church for Wednesday night Bible study... keep us all in your prayers. I will have my laptop and I will have internet access... so try to keep me company. If you have gmail, log on to see if I am online...



Second... went out in my backyard tonight, the bugs and such are very loud at night this time of year in my neighborhood and I like to listen to them... almost stepped on this little guy. If my motion lights hadn't have come on, he would have been goo on my bare foot... he seems to have tried to bury himself in the ground... wicked frog eyes...

3 things I have learned from being an almost-father..

Being that my dear wife is having our child soon, I thought I would post some things I have learned about having a baby. Not about giving birth to a child, but 3 things I have learned from all the gifts we have received from the baby showers that our beautiful family and friends have thrown for us... Please know that nothing listed is a complaint, but amusing observations. Let me know if you too have found these to be true;

1. Everything requires batteries. And I am not talking about items you would classify as electronics. I am talking about virtually everything that doesn't fall under the category of "stuffed animal", though, many of them do. We got a pack and play and it came with this light that vibrates and plays music. We ended up trashing it. A bouncy-seat... batteries. Oh, and don't think that these battery compartments open as easily as the battery compartment on your TV remote. You actually need a screwdriver to open this thing to get batteries in. Oh, and batteries are NOT included... see ya when you get back from Radio Shack... for the 5th time this week...
   


2. Few, if any noise-making toys have on/off switches. If a toy or item plays "Old MacDonald Had A Farm"*, you can rest easy at night knowing that there will not be an on/off switch... much less a volume knob. What is ironic is that while so many items need batteries, the most annoying ones that play loud music require none! This has to be a joke. Not only can you not turn them down, not only can you not turn them off, but by golly, you can't even take the batteries out to shut it up!
   *"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", "Camp town Races", and "Rock-a-bye Baby" can also be added to this list.
   


3. Toy manufacturers do not want your child playing with the toys they make. Stay with me here. No matter how soft, how safe, or how non-dangerous a toy may be, toy manufacturers will always attach them to the toy packaging tighter than a medieval heretic by Catholic clerics. You literally need scissors to get a teething ring of its cardboard backing. It is as if they just wanted to sell the item, not expecting it to ever be used.

By the way, the Computer Lady offered up some labor advice to me the other day. She was telling me the story of how Ms Elizabeth (Elizabeth Wright Smith for all those who went to Faulkner. A beautiful older lady who beat cancer naturally and has to be 90 but looks and acts 70) induced her first child...

"Ms. Elizabeth told me she wanted to have her baby a month early on her father's birthday so she got up that morning, drank an entire bottle of caster oil, scrubbed the kitchen floor on her hands and knees, took her gun and her dog to go hunting and promptly went into labor that night. So if you just buy Larissa some caster oil and possibly a hound dog, you could have a baby this weekend. "

Diana's In Labor!

All elements of surprise aside, Baby Stubbs is on his way into the world! Last night, Diana called me to discuss the fact that her doctor recommended inducing labor today because of his increasing size. Now, Diana is vehemently opposed to using an epidural- she wants a natural birth, and more power to her for that. So inducing was a scary proposition, because pitocin causes contractions to come on hard and fast; trust me, I know! By the time I got my epidural with Luke, I was shaking uncontrollably and throwing up from the pain. So Diana was going to talk it out with her doctor this morning at her regular appointment, and if she and Charlie so decided, would go ahead and get on the pitocin drip, or "pit" as the nurses affectionately and appropriately call it.

Well, when the doctor examined her this morning, Diana was discovered to be in labor already! So no pitocin, just a good old natural labor. When she called, they were "killing a half hour" as instructed by the doctor, and getting their labor bags out and ready. Last I spoke to her, Diana said she was feeling cramps, but no full-on contractions.

Castor Oil

Here I am. The nursery is finished, the house is clean, the bags are packed, the birth plan written. Every thing is ready. I desperately miss sleeping normally, painting my toe nails, and, oh yeah, not being huge. So it’s easy to figure out why in a moment of desperation Monday night I tried one of the oldest old wives tails in the book. I drank some castor oil.

Castor oil, for those who don’t know, is a laxative. It is thought to “induce” labor by causing your intestines to spasm, which in turn, causes the uterus to contract. After researching it online, I learned that one of two things would happen. Either I would need to go to the bathroom A LOT or I would need to go to the bathroom A LOT and I would have a baby. Again, I’m a desperate woman.

I took the stuff about 9 pm. I mixed a two oz. bottle with half a can of coke (something someone online recommended.) It wasn’t too bad. I mean I’m not going to go to a restaurant and order it, but it wasn’t horrible. The worst part was my last swallow because some of the oil had already settled at the bottom and I got a swig of just castor oil. Ugh.

So we sat around, watched some special on the History Channel about Star Wars, and about 11 pm I got sleepy. I went to bed, only to wake up an hour later needing to…well you know. Then about 2 am, they started. I’ve already had contractions here and there, so I knew what they were. They weren’t bad but I started having a lot.

I walked into the living room where Charlie was reading and watching T.V. “Honey,” I said, “I’m having a lot of contractions, and they’re no big deal, but I think we should start timing them.” Well that got him excited. He got out his watch and a little notebook and started writing them down. My doctor has advised me to go to the hospital when contractions are about 5 minutes apart and about 45 seconds long. Other doctors may suggest something else. After about 30 minutes, mine were averaging about 3 minutes apart and about 45 seconds long. However, even though I was uncomfortable, I didn’t really feel in labor. So we called the hospital. The nurse said to stay home until contractions began to intensify. Then, we needed to go to the hospital.

I decided I just wanted to relax and watch The Little Mermaid. Charlie started to get ready. He got dressed, he made sure his bag was packed, he practiced cutting the umbilical cord on a hot dog. I just sat there watching Ariel, nothing changing, nothing getting more intense, and no baby coming.

Needless to say, nothing every happened. At about 8 am, my contractions fizzled out and I realized that Harrison was not coming after all.

The moral of the story: If you’re pregnant and you want your baby to come, don’t drink castor oil unless you want to poo a lot and want a big let down.

What Happened to the Blogathon?

Indeed, I cannot blog at work any longer. So sorry to be gone so long, but there are a few good excuses/reasons:

1. I have a new job where I work in a secure environment and things like Blogger, MySpace, and pretty much every other fun thing on the internet are blocked. This is a good thing in many ways, though since I really enjoy the work I'm doing. Have I explained what it is I am doing? Well, here goes: I am in charge of writing and enforcing the standards used to protect the entire Air Force network. No small task, but one that has been actually fun for me. I work with some very nice and fun people, too, which makes the job even better.

2. I have 2 little boys now. Luke just turned 3 on March 4th. He's lots of fun. Every afternoon, I come home and we play with his train set or in the backyard or something. By the time he and Noah are asleep, I just don't think about the blog...Noah is beautiful. He's growing way too fast, but strong and well.

3. We're about to renovate our kitchen and family room. This entails so much more than I can mention here. We're doing it ourselves, though, with the help of my dear old Dad. It's going to add some significant space and open up the rooms quite a bit. Lots to do, lots to do...

OK, 3 reasons are enough, right? Wrong. I feel bad about not visiting my dearest friends. Hopefully, this post will expunge my trespass from the blog record. But, I do hope to chronicle a few more things here. I miss writing, too. So many things must move to make space, but for the best, my dear friends.

Oh, I almost forgot! Some of you know this already, but Rachel is working from home now! I'm very proud of her, and the extra cash helps, too.

Alright, that's it for now. I'll write again as soon as I can think of something to write about and have time to do it. Love and peace, my brothers.