2009-01-24T10:19:00.000-08:00

I feel a need to talk about what I think is becoming an epidemic of parenting through indulgence and a need to be your child's best friend and gain their everlasting approval. The lack of fore thought that appears to be going into how people are raising their children terrifies me. It seems to be the ultimate in "the tail wagging the dog" syndrome. Everyday I see children 11 and 12 years old wearing "juicy" or "true religion" clothes that costs $200-$300 per item and talking/texting on their $300-$500 touch screen phones... not to mention the newly licensed driving brand new fully equipped BMW or F-350 trucks with 6"+ lift kits. What message are we sending to our children? How many children in today's world have any idea of "self" (IE: if you stripped away all of these materialistic and external things that they have defined and valued themselves by do they still know who they are or what they stand for???)? How many children think that without all of this stuff they are valueless... how many parents have stopped to think about this never ending need for the newest, latest, and greatest that they are continually feeding in their children and how it will effect them when they have do to go without? And how many parents have considered the fact that they are robbing their children of the fulfillment and achievement they so desperately need to build their self esteem and ready them to survive as self sufficient adults in the real world through earning some of these luxuries themselves. What sense of value do these children have? When they move out and are paying their own way they will not be able to buy these sorts of luxuries for themselves. Are these parents going to still foot the bill into adulthood until they are able to secure jobs that will provide for this lifestyle or are these children going to start providing this lifestyle for themselves by burying themselves in debt that they will not be able to get out from under until well into their adulthood? What a disservice we are doing are children...raising them to be empty, devalued, entitled, and most likely depressed adults. Will anything ever be good enough as an adult with this type of a childhood??

2009-01-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

On this last Wednesday night everything was running as usual...
Marshall had migrated from his bed into ours to wedge is body horizontally between Troy and I...
Kirtee had fallen asleep with her head buried in her current book of interest, bedroom light on...
Troy was asleep with the last snack of choice next to him on the nightstand...and some remnants on the sheets...
I had finally dozed off with whatever medical or crime show I had found to watch still filling our room with the sound of sirens...
Suddenly Troy and I woke to our dogs feverishly barking and an unidentifiable noise. When he asked me what was going on I suggested he should head outside to find out. After looking out the window and going outside to look over our pool fence he said there wasn't anyone there and seemed somewhat content to go back to sleep in his warm bed. I opened the window and was able to make out what appeared to be a tractor running on the other side of the fence on the edge of our property. I hopped into the car to check it out and Troy grabbed a flashlight. When I rounded the corner onto the dirt road nothing could have prepared me for what was caught in my headlights... The tractor I had seen was not on the other side of the fence but rather bouncing against one of the gates with several 20+ foot holes behind it. Now to fully appreciate this story you have to understand that less than six months ago I painstakingly built this 1000' fence with my own hands with the help of two wonderful people and a little hindrance of one less than helpful "fence contractor" (if you can call him that). I flew into a rage naturally assuming that someone was trying to steal our tractor, teenagers were vandalizing our property, or this was some sort of sick revenge from the tree contractor that I had had a disagreement with a week earlier about the damage he had caused to my precious fence. In truth, I thought of the latter first. I drove up and down our road for any sign of life that didn't belong. Luckily, there was no one to be found. I could hardly go to sleep that night, blood pumping rapidly in my ears, thoughts of how someone could be this cruel running through my head. The next morning before I had a chance to call the police and launch my investigation Troy called me. Earlier when he had talked to Hector, the foreman at his shop, he found out that these old John Deere tractors have a tendency to start themselves when moisture gets into the cylinder in the starter because it is such a natural conductor.

So this was all some sort of a cosmic life lesson for Susie to learn to calm down in the moment and not come to snap decision about a situation until I have all of the facts in front of me...and to enjoy disassembling 50' of fence (that I just built) in the rain, mud up to my ankles with the lead tractor mechanic getting his truck pulled out of our dirt(mud) road with the very tractor he had just fixed for us that had in fact single handedly caused the entire situation in the first place and the irrigation guys (bless there hearts) asking me why I was taking the fence apart because... didn't I just build it???

You've got to love life and try to catch some of the lessons that this amazing and sometimes confusing universes throws at us!

Suzbug's Blog