Attention Deficit Disor.... Wanna play hopscotch?

SO. I have what I prefer to call an "active child."

Turtle is starting kindergarten next week. Somehow, during the course of realizing and preparing him for that, Babe and I have noticed some unusual behavior patterns. in short, The frickin kid cant sit still. No matter what is going on, he has to be moving something on his body or fidgeting with something all of the time. Once we realized that there was some sort of force at work here, my wife began to research.

Ive said before that the Babe is a kid-genius. I have been continually impressed with her ability to get to the source of just this sort of thing with children throughout her career to date.

But you all know that I think im pretty smart too. When she explained to me her suspicion that the oddball behavior was possibly a food allergy involving dairy, I just about dropped my beer. But she insisted. SO... We have tried an experiment here at casa Wilker.

We took turtle off of most dairy. The return to the old kid we knew came about almost visibly. Within a few days, he had regained his attention span, his cool, calm nature when problem solving, and coolest of all, his ability to remember what tool Dad needed from the garage when working on a project.

Next step, go see the Doctor and see if we're right. This is sort of like taking a home pregnancy test, and then going in hoping that its just a coincidence. Doc thinks that we're on the right track.

This means that our family has to learn about food. I have never even heard of glutin before, much less thought about what foods might have it inside. And last time I checked, a soy was a plant. They dont have teets. How the hell do you get soy milk? Try to milk a Soy. I dare you. ITS SOY JUICE! ( this bit courtesy of Louis Black) Turtle says that it tastes like marshmallows. He likes it.

Turns out that this particular food allergy has the capacity to resemble ADHD.

I would have believed ADHD just as easily... During the course of our research on this little rugrat that we love, I found out what ADHD really is. Turns out that I might have it.

Reasons that I say this.

1. I am really good at getting projects accomplished that I can do in less than 1 day. Anything longer than that might take another year to finally get completely finished. (see also; half the woodwork in my home)

2. Although I can spend hours on the computer, I am likely to visit a different site every few minutes unless I find something truly interesting.

3. I have to carry a little flip style notebook at work so that I dont forget to do some of the small tasks that I might think of during the course of my day.

4. I love Hulu because I can watch a 30 minute television program in 20 minutes, and every so often, they show me a commercial just to keep me interested.

5. Anything that I build, from the deck to the playset, remodelling the house, my hotrod, constantly seem to be in the process of being rebuilt, based on some new iteration that I have dreamt up.


SO I think that I have ADHD. Fortunately, I also think that this will make me much more able to deal with turtle should he fall off the soy-juice wagon. Knowing this about me will hopefully help me to become a better role model for him.

Now where was that varnish? i just remembered that the table that I built for Babe's classroom still isnt sealed...

The Community Chest

Remember the last time you played monopoly? There was a card in there call community chest, and maybe you won 10 or 15 dollars for landing on it.

I always thought that it was some sort of a myth.

But here in our little town, I have been the Board President of the Village of Valders Community Chest for I guess about 5 years.

Each year, through some fairly intensive fund-raising over a one month period, usually the month of October, our board enlists the help of some of our community members, and we proceed to raise a significant amount of money..

The purpose of this is the support of our community.

Our monies are then donated to quite a few of our local charitable and non-profit organizations, enabling them to continue to do their jobs. In some cases, we are the only support that these programs have for the entire year.

Imagine us as the United Way for our little area. As a matter of fact, they are one of the organizations that we contribute to.

This entity has been in existence for I think, something like 50 years. We do have a reasonably slow rotation of board members and volunteer, with the average tenure spanning something like 10 years.

And here is my point. Like any other event, group, volunteer organization, fraternal group, fill in the blank, it is the same group of faces that are seen here.

Why is it that in any organization, even our town, there seems always to be a core group of people who are involved in absolutely everything? I bet in your church, school, ymca, theatrical organization, etc, you can find five to ten people who seem to always be involved in whatever it is that is going on.

I expect the easy answer to be that this sort of person just has the right personality. BS. I am quickly turning into one of those people in this village, and believe me, I have never been one of those people.

What changed for me? Somebody asked.

So here is the deal. I think that a great many of you reading this are one of the people that I am talking about tonight, involved, always involved. I challenge you to become one of the people who asked. I dare you to pick one or two, (or ten, you know who you are) of the things that you spend your time being involved in, and see how many people you can recruit to participate. Remember, many hands makes light work.

Recruit, Recruit, Recruit!

Learning Every Day,
Greg

that Favre guy..

Unless you live under a rock, you have heard by now that Brett Favre is about to play football for the Minnesota Vikings.

There is all manner of banter out there about this situation. There are some of us who feel that the guy should just retire. Others think he should be playing for green bay. Still others cheer him for his enthusiasm.

I'm on the fence. Here is what I know of the man.

I remember the first game that he played for the Packers. They kept calling him Brett Favvvray. But they talked about him a lot during the game. I dont recall the score, or even whether they won. I do remember that there was a lot of buzz about this young quarterback.

I remember a ton of risky, and not risky passes that led to interceptions. I remember a lot of those same kind of passes that led to touchdowns.

I remember a player who had so much excitement in him to be playing the game that he never missed a start. I remember a ton of records that were set by number four.

Mostly, I remember a time in my life during which I actually cared enough about the game of football that I didnt miss watching a game. Those of you who know me well also know that it is saying something when you think of me being a religious sports fan.

There is not another venue for football that Brett could have chosen and would have been as successful.

Im talking about the images that football teams carry with them, and the attitudes of the fans here. There are teams out there who are regarded as glamourous. Consistently challenging. Ugly but scary. Daring. The list goes on and on. Picture any NFL team and it seems as though it is easy to come up with some adjective that defines the image and skill of them. The Cowboys have a very glamourous town, They players date movie stars. The team owner, well hell, you get the point. The steelers are one of the most consistently playing teams out there, but it seems as though they wont hire anybody that isnt scary looking.

And then there are the Green Bay Packers. This team is owned by the city. And its not a very big city. The residents of our area are hometown, normal folks. We drive chevrolets and fords. We even wear cheese on our heads and our blaze orange parka's to the game. No place else could have loved a hometown guy like favre the way that packer fans did.

His tenure here was a great era in green bay football. Around here, the term "glory years" comes up in conversation often, and it is because it was a really long time between those times when Green Bay had a really good football team. I consider his stay here to be part of the glory years.

Brett had the ability to make superstars out of every position on the field. His enthusiasm and love for the game was contagious. And it was visible whenever he played.

Shoot, Green Bay invented the Lambeau Leap, and that alone speaks volumes about the relationship between our fans and our players.

So he's going to play football this year. For one of our biggest rivals. Anybody that is upset about this needs to remember that we certainly didnt make him feel as though he could come back and play for us.

This is one of those times when we have to be able to separate our interests. ARe we Packer fans or football fans. If we are Packer fans, we should be cheering Brett on with all our might. We all know that we have never had as much fun as we had watching him play for the Pack, so why not be happy that he is still playing? As foot ball fans, crap, its the same thing.

I say Go Pack Go. And if we happen to beat Favre and the Vikings, which we will, more power to it. At the same time, I wish Brett Luck, and can tell you that I will be cheering the guy on every chance I get. Unless the Packers are on.

The Valders Car Show

Two years ago,
Oh Crap. Let me preface this.

Our Village holds a picnic every summer. If you imagine any midwestern town, you can most likely imagine what our picnic is. We have a softball tournament, a horseshoes tournament, a few bands on friday and saturday night, and some concession stands where we sell beer, soda, and food. There is a big parade on Sunday noon, and then the whole village (and then some) comes down to the park to take in all the other stuff.

It is all sponsored by our villages Lions Club.

But what we have not had in the eight or so years that I have lived here is a car show. Not that having one is really very important to anything, but it bears noting that our attendance at the picnic on sunday has been steadily declining over the last few years.

My own involvement in our community has been very very slow to progress. Some people, like my wife, join a new community or organization and are instantly involved, coordinating things, giving thier time, you have met these people, and you know the type.

You also know my type. We join the same community, the same organization, and find ourselves idle. Any involvement we have is by being dragged, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the midst, at which point we find ourselves having a tremendous amount of fun, and increasingly willing to work.

So lets try that again,

Two years ago my total involvement in our community picnic was the fact that I had gotten into the habit of spending friday and saturday night pouring beer in one of the concession stands for the late shift each year. The Lions call it tending bar, but since our menu consists of three kinds of canned beer and one kind of tap beer, (no matter what kind of tap beer you order, I nod my head and pour you a bud light) I refer to it as pouring beer.

The professor, coincidentally, always seems to have his own picnic, revolving around our car buddies, the same saturday. So, two years ago, I brought my freshly primered and (sort of) drivable pickup truck from his party directly to my shift at pouring beer.

After explaining to one our villages more involved people where I had been, She posed to me the question, "Why dont we have a car show next year at the picnic?" I thought, In the words of Herrick Kimball, (see blogs that I follow) that it was a whizbang idea.

Last year, the lions didnt really grab the idea. By the time they started planning, I already had plans to be out of town for the day of the show. Still, they managed to arrange about 40 cars for the "display" It worked out well.

This year, I again was tapped to be on the committee. Turns out, we started planning in January because the lions were impressed with last year and wanted a "real" car show this year.

Finally I reach tonights thought.

Any Event Involving a Lot of People is Going to be a Lot of Fricking Work.

We seven spent the better part of eight months planning, and executing all of the things involved in putting on a car show. WE solicited sponsors, help, space, financed trophies, the list goes on and on and on.

i have said before that I love this little town of which I am slowly becoming a part. We turned out over a hundred show cars. But that isnt the point. So Many People Helped Us Make This Successful.

Our sponsors never batted an eye about dishing out a hundred dollars per class. Or about donating door prizes, or raffle prizes. One of our local volunteer organizations sent us six people for seven hours to help help in any way that they could. Foose and Puller ran Puller's gator around and sold beer and soda all afternoon for free. Everyone helped. And everyone had a good time.

The crazy thing about living in a little pond is that you actually can make a difference. WE raised a very large amount of money, (in small town terms) for the betterment of our village. We contributed to the members of our village having a really fun sunday afternoon. And we arent anybody special. It was fun.

What I wonder though, is how much better the world would be if everyone found some way to contribute to the village, city, or neighborhood around them. The state highway that runs through our town is involved just east of town in one of those "adopt a highway" programs. Last weekend, I saw the president of our villages biggest employer picking up trash by himself in that ditch because his company (i think) adopted that highway. Damn. Where were the employees of that company. Where were the residents of this village for that matter.

Go do something to make your world better. For everybody around you.

what other people need.

when the light is getting dim
and hope is not so near
the days when things are not so great
you feel like no one hears.

when the world just wont slow down
and let you find your pace
those times are when you think your life
is filled with empty space.

and all the days of time gone by
and all the things you've done
every test you've tried, and failed
every single one.

the days when it all goes to hell
and those when no one cares
no matter of the work you've done
or of the love you've shared

it doesn't matter who you've helped
in selfless thought or deed
and nobody will see you there
in your own time of need.

and these days are a test of strength
of guts and power and grace
if you can just gather up
and get back on your pace.

remember always, in your head
what no one ever says
the good things that you do without
a thought of being praised.

and if you are so fortunate
to find yourself raised up
remember those around you
who deserve to get some props.

you cannot see in others
those whose lights are getting dim.
so remember when you greet a friend
to try and lift up him.

it never fails, it never does
just when youre at your worst
that somebody more thoughtful
will find time to put you first.