Ghost from my past ~

I remember growing up we lived on bases in different parts of the country. In this one deplex my bedroom had this Formica-looking floor with black and gray pattern in it so that is always cold hard and what we dropped anything broke so it was a pain. My brother and I were in the bedroom in the front corner of the house on the end of the house with a window on the front yard. We had bunk beds. And then on either side of the picture window sort of thing there were jalousie windows that turned and opened up to let the airflow coming in.

I remember one night after it had been dark for maybe 20 minutes or so I was in my bedroom getting ready for bed. I looked out the window as we had closed the curtains in and it looked like a ghost was in the front yard. And it looked like the ghost was jumping up and down and waving at me! And I remember being so scared and thinking oh my gosh it's a ghost. But it turned out to be one of my friends from the neighborhood and he was still out. And he was having a real good time jumping up and down waving in his way muscle shirt and white color shorts and tennis shoes. It was insane because I thought it was a ghost and I was very scared until I realized it was my friend.

Kinda cool..

Getting older thoughts ~

It's interesting how my thinking has changed as I've gotten older.

I used to worry that I didn't know what people were talking about. Now I know I don't know what they're talking about and that it won't matter to me later. Yet I'm still interested.

I hear people younger than me talk with hope and try not to burst their bubble with the experience I've had. My mother handles this well and I'm still trying to learn it from her before she passes away.

People that are full of themselves used to bother me. Now I accept them, laugh, and wish them luck.

Formula for communication ~

Telling my wife does not equal telling me.

I have had this running battle for my married life where people assume that if they tell my wife something that I know it also.

I've had situations in my family were things were done and because my wife was told about a family members assumed that I knew. My wife had not told me, so when the question got asked me about wasn't that nice that the gave him your name or is not a shame that he's going in for surgery tomorrow other things that were happening I had to honestly ask what are you talking about? And then when I was told old and the assumption was expressed again that well you know I just figured you knew I had to remind people that I am not my wife, that she does not tell me everything that she talks about throughout the day week month or year. And that if you tell her that is not the same as telling me.

We had this issue with email even when the email was the kind of new. In the 90s on the Internet was ramping up and people were starting to use email we would have friends and even our church send emails to my wife's email address and then they just assumed that we shared the email address and that we both read it and that I knew it. And I had to explain many times that we have separate email addresses because she manages information one way and I manage information in a different way and that we have separate email addresses so that we can do our own thing. We are one flesh as a couple, but we are not one person.

I even had to give my children and my mother a formula that I can even draw in the year with my hands that says telling her does not equal telling me.

I had a situation come up just this past week with some other family members that assumed that because they had talked to my wife that I knew about it and I was an honor to when I said no I had a trip planned and hadn't really expected to cancel the trip there was shock.

It's one of those things it's a challenge and disappointing but overall I've learned to just accept it and move on. Now I need to learn not to cancel my stuff when people don't communicate properly.

Corona meme ~

I saw a meme last night about the all efforts to inhibit the spread of the Corona virus that has everybody scared right now. The meme asked the question if I offered you some skittles from a bowl and I told you there were 100 skittles in their and only three of them were poisoned would you take a handful from the bowl? And it ended with that's what were dealing with with the coronavirus hashtag stay home.

My problem with the meme is that it assumes that anyone who catches the coronavirus is going to die. And it's just not true! You may get sick, you may have a fever and have to struggle through some illness, but if you're strong and healthy and you have good lungs and the ability to deal with illness you'll come through it just fine if you catch it. And if you treat it. And not necessarily at a hospital unless you get into respiratory distress.

And so all the fear about dying from this coronavirus is what's driving everybody to post things about who do you think you are going out and shopping and are you stupid because it seems like you are if you're doing anything other than sitting at home waiting for death to come and get you with the coronavirus.

I disagree with the premise! I disagree with the idea that were all going to die because of this thing.

So I will continue doing my thing. I am staying home on my days where I am being given administrative leave from work. I will go on work Street evenings for five days over the weekend as punishment for being the senior guy during the coronavirus event. But it saddens me that so many people are scared of this.

Candle is a focus for prayer ~

With the violence and rioting associated with this Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of a black man and then the black man dying from other things there's a lot of stuff that I really want to pray for and I want to be reminded to pray about it. So many people are posting trash in trash talk and commentary in opinions about what's happening and why you shouldn't of done this and this is a crime and that's not in all the silliness that's just echoing and making the violence worse in the in the anger and the frustration bigger and worse and more complicated.

And I remembered that the candle is often a symbol for all focusing of prayer. Catholics light a candle for somebody as part of their prayer when they're at the Cathedral or Basilica or church. Many of the meditation things that I've read encourage the use of a single candle and focusing on the flame to help you focus your energy and thoughts. And I've used candles in the past to help me focus as I pray.

So last night I found a picture of a single candle flame on top of the wax candle with a dark background and posted it with no words on Facebook, Instagram, twitter, and anywhere else I could posted. I made it the background on my phone both for the lock screen and the home screen. And as I see the candle on praying for the people involved in the people that are doing all the foolish things and the people trying to bring down our country through this opportunity that's been presented to them. And I pray for me to not get worked up and upset about the whole thing, which would be very easy.

I hope that people see it and understand what I am trying to encourage without using any words. And I hope that they pray also.

800+ streak in DuoLingo ~

How I accomplished in 800+ the streak in Duolingo.

So I started wanting to learn Spanish in high school but could not figure out how to plug that in the my schedule. Over the course of college of course my parents encouraged me to take Spanish because so many people spoke it and it would be good to speak another language. In my 20s I wanted to learn but I was focused on my career and my wife and starting to have children in our late 20s. 30s and 40s I didn't do a lot because I was busy running around working, taking care of kids, being with my wife and family and traveling here and there to see other family, and all the things that you do as an adult. They were really good excuses for not learning Spanish.

At one point we invited a friend from church to come to our house and teach us Spanish. We got all four kids in the room with us and she taught us a few words and phrases. Nobody practiced so she stopped coming after three visits.

Almost 2 years ago I finally paid the subscription price for DuoLingo and decided that since I was paying for it I needed to do it every day. I started learning Spanish and Chinese. Spanish came along pretty well although it's still challenging. Chinese is so foreign that I had to stop but I would like to try that again.

But now I have over 880 days in a row of doing a DuoLingo lesson or two or three per day. How did I do such a long run?

At first it was an issue because I would say I have to do my DuoLingo. That made it feel like it was an enemy or something bearing down on me and I had to do it. And of course my wife had some resentment toward toward it because it distracted me from listening to her. The kids didn't understand. Everybody would just walk up when I was in the middle of doing a lesson and interrupt me. I couldn't get any consistency.

Another thing that I ran into was the repetitive and singular nature of it. It became "DuoLingo" and in my brain I couldn't accept that I was to be focused on this one app that could crash at any minute and beyond. So I started doing another language learning app alongside of it. And I paired it with DuoLingo so that if I did DuoLingo I did the other one also. That gave me a lot more variety and different tracks of learning so that my brain got to see and hear different words in different challenges and instead of just being singularly focused on dual lingo and following the line now I was approaching something from multiple log directions and it was more challenging.

As I went along I had other things that I wanted to do consistently like a devotional and meditation. And I decided that I wanted to read a chapter of Proverbs a day for every day of the month.

So I incorporated all those things into what I call my "lessons". That way it's kind of mysterious and exciting when I tell people that I'm doing my lessons they ask if I'm going to school and then I have an opening to talk about it with them. Or with my family especially my wife it's a way to let her know that I need a few minutes alone.

The other thing that I did was I made a specific place that I tend to go to to do my lessons. I chose the hope in our bedroom. It is in front of the bay window. I sit on it like a bench and I got my wife to agree that when I'm sitting on the hope chest I am not to be disturbed. At first she would walk in and start talking and then start apologizing, then she would come in and start to talk and look at me and get a scowl on her face and turn around real quick and leave and then talk to me as soon as I came out. My two teenage boys still walk in and just start talking to me and I hold up a hand and ask them to leave me alone for a few minutes. And then after I'm done I go and find whoever wanted to talk to me and find out what it is we were going to talk about.

So combining things it's about half an hour worth of work. Along with having a specific place that my family supports not interrupting me this has helped me to do my lessons consistently now.


The best part is that I'm starting to really learn and understand Spanish. I'm extremely slow and I feel like a child when I try to speak it, but when I look at words on webpages and signs I'm starting to really grasp what they mean and what they're talking about. Especially in context because there's other clues. When I hear it I can pick up bits and pieces but just like with English people that speak Spanish natively are very fast. When I listen to the radio and they're going at full speed talking about the store and the sales and all that I only pick up about every fifth word or so. Still fun to do!

I'm very satisfied with my approach to learning this and I'm happy that I am actually accomplishing one of my life goals of learning to speak and understand Spanish. Makes me want to set some other goals so that I can accomplish them to.

Another word ruined ~

I saw a bumper sticker today proudly proclaiming the owner of the vehicle as a "dog mom".

"Mom" is a word that is being ruined by its misuse. I understand the cute part of this use. We're supposed to think that they take care of their dogs the way they're supposed to as if they're children. But my logical mind that tends to take things too literally automatically thinks and wonders if that woman should be referred to as a bitch now?

Army mom, dog mom, mama called by husband, and other uses mess up the word "mom". Stepmom is one that drives people crazy because that woman is not that child's mother but you want to apply the intent of the word mom to someone who is not the mother of the child but married into that position.

And I guess that's the problem. It's that when I call my mother "mom" I mean mother and one that I love. So I can see the use of it in those other ways. But I just can't stand how words get bastardized by people trying to be too cute or too smart.

There are other examples. Wife. Boss. Others. We just tend to take words and twist them into meanings that weren't intended.

My 18-year-old tells me that they do that on purpose at his school because they're trying to hide what they're talking about. And half because it's done for the shock value.

I wish they would stop twisting words in the meetings that they just don't mean.