The title goes here
I can’t recall the last time I went over a week without posting an entry. Sometimes it gets away from you. I guess I have a decent excuse this time, in that it was last Monday evening that I got the call that my last surviving grandparent had died. As a result, the clan was summoned for a long weekend of funeral related activities, that for the Territorial Nuclear Family meant a Thursday - Sunday road-trip to the ancestral homeland in Metro Detroit.
I’m not going to go into a long, drawn-out, blow-by-blow recap, if only because it’ll bore y’all (’cause other folks’ families are never quite as entertaining as you might thing, even when they are dysfunctional…) & annoy me (’cause it was bad enough that I had to live through parts of it once…). Suffice it to say that there were good parts (it’s always good to meet up with bigsis!), and bad parts (extended family members & social situations that were frankly uncomfortable, physical and mental/emotional malaise, and a funeral service/eulogy that was stunningly stereotypically lightweight in its lack of theology — with the two “hymns” having been In the Garden & The Old Rugged Cross — and thus not terribly comforting as a result…). Layer all that on to the fact that I just don’t like to travel all that much, and you can easily see that it wasn’t the greatest of times for me.
But, it had to be done, and I was more than happy to have been there for my beloved mother. While my grandmother was, to put it lightly, the most difficult of the four grands, it still didn’t make it any easier for my mom to deal with the inevitable endgame. Over the past 14 years my parents have had to bury all four of their parents, including three in the past five, IIRC. Fold into that all of the traveling that they’ve had to do for medical appointments, home care, emergency-room trips, nursing home transitions, nursing home visits, etc… — well, this past decade-and-a-half has aged my parents well beyond the mere passage of time. I pray that the Lord now blesses them with a rejuvenation & removal of stress, that they might enjoy life on their own terms, without demands placed on them by other folks, really for the first time in their 51 years of marriage.
Anyhoo, that was the past week for me. This week, it’s catching up at work & getting ready for another trip to MI this weekend, albeit a planned one for the little woman’s family reunion and for her 20th high school reunion (can’t say I understand why she wants to go, but she does & I’ll do whatever I can to support her — ’cause if she’s odd enough to love me, then she obviously needs all the support she can get! 
).
-ghp
Ambition and vocation
Something that I’ve been grappling with of late (for the last 9 months or so, actually) is the relationship between ambition and vocation, particularly as it relates to one’s individual career advancement and family obligations.
We are constantly bombarded with the idea & mantra that ambition is good, and that there really is no such thing as selfish, blind ambition (except, perhaps, in hindsight to ascribe blame/guilt). Job-hopping up the career ladder is no vice, even if it means uprooting home and hearth.
But does this conventional wisdom mesh with a Lutheran of the Doctrine of Vocation? I think not…
In my case, raw ambition would dictate a full-court press job search, so that I could show “proper progression” and get into a director-level job to have enough time to parlay that into a director-or-higher-level job somewhere bigger & better. And if I have to uproot the family, so be it.
Here’s the rub - to do that, I think I would have to seriously drop the ball on propery executing my vocations as father, husband, & head of household. My family likes where we are. The kids are getting old enough to have “roots”. And the only reason (at this moment) to think about leaving would be my ambition (vanity? selfishness?). And I just don’t think that it’s enough, at least not enough to warrant the type of full-bore search that I would’ve undertaken without a second thought even 5 years ago. It isn’t just about me anymore - not even to rationalize it such that “I need to be happy in order to make my family happy.” That’s true, but not necessarily in quite the way that raw, unfettered ambition would demand. Sobering thought.
So, what say you? I’d really like to hear your thoughts on the subject of ambition vs.vocation - help me out here with your collective wisdom!
-ghp
Boys’ weekend in
It’s been an interesting extended holiday weekend here at Schloß TB - the girls have been away at a softball all-star tournament, leaving us hearty males (and dogs) to fend for ourselves.
In different times, under different circumstances, we might’ve all gone to the the tournament, which was down Indianapolis-way. Finances (hotel/food/amusement costs), sibling attention/amusement issues, dog care issues, and other types of logistical stuff made it reasonably clear that it would be best for this to be a split-duty weekend: “girls’ weekend out” & “boys’ weekend in”. And it’s turned out pretty well, from what I’ve heard & experienced.
I’m very proud of my daughter, who has represented both herself and her league quite honorably — the girl has talent, and she has worked very hard in these past weeks since earning her way on to the all-star team representing Valpo. Unfortunately, Valpo has not been playing at this level for long, their league doesn’t play with the same rules (stealing, lead-offs, etc.) as the tournament, and their team hasn’t had as long to gel together, which resulted in a rather quick two-loss & out tournament. That said, the girls (from what I’ve been told) all had a good time, played hard, and acquitted themselves very well. They’ve had lots of fun, and my girls have had a nice mother & daughter weekend, with (from what I’ve been told) a minimum of snarling, which is a pleasant & welcome development, given the often mercurial natures of the Territorial Queen & Princess!
As to the boys, we’ve had a full weekend of activities, beyond even the normally outstanding hanging around the Schloß watching tube, playing the Wii, reading, & going swimming (him, not me…). We’ve gone bowling, gone out to eat a few times, gone to the library, we’ve got some yard work on the docket for tomorrow, and we caught a flick on Thursday. I would’ve liked to have taken him to a White Sox ballgame at some point this weekend, but didn’t for two reasons: 1) the games were all night games, and I didn’t want to keep him out that late, and 2) the tickets were just too darned expensive. It’s too bad, because he’s getting to the age where he’s ready to really enjoy his first big league game (he’s just a little bit older than when I went to my first game at Tiger Stadium…).
The movie we saw was WALL•E, which was not all that bad - maybe not as great as it’s been hyped to be, but then what is? It kept his attention throughout, and it worked very well on the level of a kids movie, which is good. It’s very clear, however, to any reasonably aware adult that this movie is pretty blatantly designed with two main intentions: 1) as an entertaining piece of eye- & ear-candy for little kids to be adequately entertained for 97 minutes, after which they will want to buy all the merchandise, and 2) as a blatant piece of pro-environmentalist, anti-capitalist propaganda.
On both levels, WALL•E is successful. It is very good eye- & ear-candy — technically very well-crafted, very well-made, & undeniably very entertaining. Why, it’s even possible to willingly suspend disbelief enough to anthropomorphize the robots WALL•E & EVE — that’s pretty good animation production.
As to the propagandistic nature of the flick, I’m willing to forgive it, because it’s so ham-handed & obvious about it that I can use it as a way to easily talk about it, should I ever need to. I didn’t really expect it to be subtle in its satire, but goodness, neither did I expect it to be so boldly cynical & conspiratorial. For a movie that was made by a huge conglomerate, and will make gobs of cash off of merchandise that will clog landfills, well, it’s hard not to view it as at least a little, y’know, hypocritical…
Anyhoo, like I said, it’s been a good, albeit different, weekend.
-ghp
Ballgames
Ballgames are a completely different experience as a parent than they were as a kid. I don’t remeber them being this boring 30 years ago — at least it’s a beautiful 70 & sunny as I sit, watch, and write at 7pm on a Wed evening.
It does my prideful heart good to state that my daughter is good — carrying on in the tradition of me & my dad. And those of you who know me, know that I wouldn’t say she was good if she wasn’t (right bigsis?)
I’m just glad it gets easier to watch each year, particularly as the amount of self-esteem-boosting rule-tweaking gives way to actually playing by the rules - like keeping score, succeeding, failing, winning, and losing.
-ghp
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