I started this post back in late May.
I started it because I have grown increasingly convinced that I can do better with my life. Better in a lot of ways. I am like everyone else on the planet. Strong in some ways, surprisingly strong. Weak in others, very weak. I have yet to meet, at least as far as I know, any human being who isn't like that. Once you know that the fault lines are there, must be there, you start to see them. I am sure others see them in me, just as I see them in others.
I really don't think that I have made as much of my strengths as I might, nor minimized and compensated for my weaknesses as much as I might. I am not, have not, been making the most of my life (Don't laugh, especially if you came here as the result of a Google search! The same could most likely be said of you!) And increasingly, I have become convinced that one step in correcting the situation is to think very, very clearly about just what sort of life I hope to achieve in my remaining years.
The old adage that if you aim at nothing in particular, you will be sure to hit it every time, is, I think, still true. So, here, developed over some little time, are my thoughts about what I want my life to be like. I am writing them down because the exercise of doing so will make my thinking clearer, and I am making them public--at least the overwhelming majority of them--because there might be, over the years, a handful of similarly-situated souls looking for other people's thoughts. Also, I hate to do this much writing without publishing it, even if it's just in the blogosphere. Also, there might actually be a person or two out there interested in helping me. And lastly, there might be a few people who find this little journey inside my skull interesting--perhaps in a pathological sort of way! (Others, of course, find this whole thing unbearably narcissistic and have already moved on, and I don't blame them a bit.)
FOOD AND COOKING
I want to be very careful about how I write this section. The way I've written about this subject before has raised some hackles. You know, I have written more than once about cooking, and I do the majority of the cooking in our home, and I have a multiplicity of cookbooks on my shelves. I suppose it would be easy for people to think that I enjoy cooking. It would be more accurate, though, to say that I don't dislike cooking and that I see it as an art fundamental to life and the enjoyment thereof. I have often said that if other people would cook what I want to eat, I might never cook again and I really don't think I'd miss it that much. That is not to say that I wish someone else would do all the cooking, or that I think it's anyone else's responsibility to do all of the cooking, or that I think anyone is less a fully-developed human being because he doesn't cook. It's just a reflection of the reality that it's not cooking per se that I enjoy so much, it's eating decent food that I enjoy.
I get tired, when I have to resort to it, of take-out crap and convenience foods.
Normal people, that is, people that aren't quite wealthy, have to cook. It's just part of normal life, whether I enjoy it enough for it to be a hobby in its own right or whether I see it as just the necessary means by which I get to enjoy decent meals at a decent price. If I had the wealth of Rush Limbaugh, I might well never set foot in the kitchen again, in the same way that I might never look under the hood of a car again, had I that kind of wealth.
I don't have that kind of wealth. I have to cook, I have to shoulder at least part of the cooking in the house. Furthermore, other people often actually like what I cook, and I like that and it does my soul some good and is a source of satisfaction, so I'm likely to be doing a fair amount of cooking for the rest of my days.
A further reality is that I love good food and think of it as a marvelous gift from God. It affects life on so many levels.
If that's the case, I know what I want--what I want to have, what I want to do. The kitchen of our old house is adequate, at least mostly so. There is no dishwasher, but that doesn't bother me. I do want more help keeping up with the dishes. I'd like to have a clock in there, and more timers, and a radio, one with an antenna that I can hook up outside, so that I can get the stations I'm interested in more clearly. It's a whole lot more pleasant to spend an evening in the kitchen when you're able to listen to Cardinals baseball. I'd like to replace the refrigerator. Nothing fancy, but I would like it to be black. Color me strange!
If I could just get the Food Network and skip the rest of cable TV, I'd do it.
There's not a whole lot more space for shelving or storage in there, and I'd like to do some canning sooner or later, which means I'm going to have to find someplace relatively stable--temperature-wise--to keep my home-canned goods.
Don't need a whole lot more in the way of kitchen equipment. I love my Henckels knives and my smokers and my Le Creuset dutch oven, and would like to add one of their 2 3/4 qt lidded saucepans. I suppose I could add a food processor to my collection of kitchen gadgets, but I really don't know that I'd use it that much. I would definitely like to replace my grill--another Weber would be fine--and buy an electric element for my water-smoker and a couple of smoker boxes.
I'd like to grow at least some of what we eat. Actually, I'd like to grow a lot of what we eat. I recall reading an article in The Mother Earth News once about a family that had managed to turn just about every square inch of their property into productive garden. They harvested thousands of pounds of food every year off what amounted to a suburban yard. I don't have that
kind of ambition, but I would like to do better than we have been. It is not going to be easy. Due to the trees--some on my property, some on neighbors' property--there is not a whole lot of my backyard that gets the six or more hours of steady daylight necessary to grow everything I would like. I will have to make use of container gardening and shade-friendly plants. I do know that we can successfully grow zucchini. That, at least, grew pretty well, in the only year where I attempted to grow anything other than a tomato.
For tomatoes, I'm going to have to get creative. I'll figure something out.
I would really like for everybody to pitch in with the cooking. It's more fun and less time-consuming if everyone takes part. And I think the food tastes better, too, and it's good for family relationships.
I would like my cooking to focus mostly on grilled and smoked foods, Tex-Mex, and Southwestern. I don't have the fear of dietary fat that so many folks do (read this book!), but I would definitely like to keep refined carbohydrates to an absolute minimum. I do want to make room for honeys, though--not just the ubiquitous clover honey that you get at the grocery store, but what you might call artisanal honeys, or herbal honeys, honey that reflects one particular plant. You can get 'em, but you have to mail-order 'em, and I'm not quite ready, financially, to do that. Maybe soon.
I'd definitely like there to be more in the way of seasonal cooking around here, that is, I'd really like you to be able to walk into our house and be able to tell from the tastes and the aromas that it's Fall, or Christmastime, or getting close to Saint Patrick's Day.
You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned eating out. That's because in general, I really don't like it that much. Oh, it's okay, and I know that a lot of folks really enjoy it, but I'd much rather eat something that we've prepared at home. Unless we're talking barbecue. I do enjoy eating at barbecue joints and don't get to do it as much as I would like. That is probably more reflective of my interest in barbecue than of my interest in eating out although I do enjoy the atmosphere of most barbecue joints. They are always clearly working-class establishments, not hoity-toity at all.
I have never objected to eating off thrift-store plates and drinking out of jelly glasses and second-hand coffee cups and the like. As a matter of fact, it kind of--perhaps absurdly--gives me the feeling of being out in the country. It is pure redneck, pure country-style Americana.
Now, about desserts. I don't have much against desserts per se. I am just convinced that they are really hard to deal with nutritionally. There are few things of which I'm more fully convinced than that refined sugar and flour are bad for you.
But even if I could live without desserts, I still like them at least a bit, and others really love them. So what to do? Well, no store-bought crap, to start with. If we're going to have a sliver of dessert, it at least needs to be something decent, something that we've made at home. There's no point in spending those precious few dessert calories on crap like "Little Debbies."
HOLIDAYS
One of the things I have long regretted about our household is that we never have really gotten the hang of enjoying the holidays (or the seasons, for that matter) to their utmost. We never seem to be quite ready, never quite prepared.
I want to decorate very heavily for Christmas--not the day after Thanksgiving, mind you, that is too soon--but perhaps by the 5th of December.
I want to decorate for "Fall Festival," aka "Hallowe'en," and Thanksgiving, too. And New Year's Day, and Valentine's Day, and Saint Patrick's Day, and Independence Day, and Veteran's Day. When a holiday is approaching, I want you to be able to knock on our door and tell immediately that we're celebrating something. I want you to smell something distinctive from the kitchen: Corned beef and cabbage for St. Pat's, heart-shaped butter cookies for Valentine's Day, barbecue and hot dogs on the Fourth, smoked turkey and dressing and ham on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and sparkling wine on New Year's.
I want to be able to go to church on Christmas morning. If I can't do that, I at least want to have a brief worship service at home.
I want to do more visiting during the holiday season, and have more guests. I am not generally fond of big parties, but I would like to have small groups of guests, or go somewhere where there is such a gathering.
I want to go to the Christmas Parade, and I want it to be called the Christmas Parade, not the "holiday parade," and I want to go to the Festival of Trees every year, and drive around Midtown and look at the rich people's lights. And I'd like to put at least a few lights on our own house.
GAMES
I almost titled this section, "Leisure Activities," but that really doesn't do it. I am talking about games, two games to be specific: chess and go. Both are classic strategy and thinking games.
I am not good at either one. Oh, I have books on them, some excellent books, but I haven't finished them.
What I'd really like to do is gradually work through my two big books on chess and all five books of Soo-Hyun and Kim's Learn to Play Go series. And I would like to go down to the go club that meets, last I heard, at the TU campus on Saturday afternoons, and to the chess club that meets at the OSU-Tulsa campus. Not every week for each of them, mind you, I don't think I will ever be able to pull that one off. But I'd like to be able to look forward to attending one or the other at least every other week, and maybe to an occasional game on the internet. I'd like to occasionally invite a friend over for a couple of games of chess and a frosty beverage or two. I'd like eventually to be able to meet Openhand at some seminar in Missouri and play a game of go with him.
Now, it should go without saying that I'd like to play these games with the family, too. Sadly, the only person who ever shows any interest, so far, is Middle Son, currently age nine. He gets in a mood where he likes to play chess from time to time, and I scarcely have to give him any kind of advantage anymore. No one, I can say with confidence, need be intimidated by my skills, but if a real disparity exists, it is easy enough to handicap the more powerful player in both these games, so that he has a more challenging game to play and the weaker player need not feel doomed from the get-go.
I've already got a decent go board and stones, probably as good as I will ever want to own. I've got a tolerable chessboard, too, and I won't be brokenhearted if I never replace it, but ultimately, I'd like to have a bigger board and chessmen. Boxwood and ebony, please.
RYUTE
If you're not familiar with this blog, perhaps having come here from a Google search, you might be wondering just what the heck "RyuTe" is. I'll be very brief: it is a martial arts system, organized and systematized by the very remarkable Taika Seiyu Oyata. If you want to know more, click here.
I'd like to do RyuTe for sixty to ninety minutes a day, six days a week. Maybe just kata in slow, continuous motion on Sundays.
A couple of times a year, I'd like to go to a seminar. The ones in Amarillo and Wichita are within reasonable driving distance.
I would, someday, like to teach RyuTe. More than that, I think that someday I am going to be responsible to teach RyuTe. I think it's that important to pass this system down.
I'd kind of like to teach in a church setting, say, in the basement/youth room at our church, but I'd want to make the classes open to anyone of decent character who wants to do the work. I do have a special desire to reach Tulsa's Christian, and most especially, Tulsa's Christian homeschooling community with this system. People in the homeschooling community, more so than most, are ready to accept (upon appropriate examination) the Old Ways. If you go to them and say, "Look at this, this is the way karate is supposed to be, the way it was 175 years ago, a life-protection art based on anatomy, kinesiology, physics, and the norms of human perception, it will help you to stay healthy, it will help you and your children to stay a little bit safer, it will help you to become and stay a disciplined person," I think they will be more ready to listen than most people in the population, who are forever chasing after the latest fad, whether it be in religion, martial arts, or popular entertainment. RyuTe would, I think, shall we say, be temperamentally and attitudinally appropriate for the homeschooling community, and vice versa.
Not everyone in RyuTe knows all the weapons, it seems. I'd like to be a jo specialist, but also to learn at least the kihon kata for nunchaku, tanbo, and sai.
CHURCH LIFE
I belong to a church in the heart of Tulsa, a church that you could describe as "big," in the sense that the physical plant is pretty big, and "average" in that the total attendance on Sunday morning is about average for most Southern Baptist churches, which is to say, about 200 or so. It is a church like so many in this part of Tulsa, like a very great many across the country, really. It's dying. Most of the churches in the heart of Tulsa are graying and thinning out and they are dying.
Some of them used to be among the fastest-growing and largest congregations in the country.
What happened?
Well, there are a lot of things that have happened. I am still learning about some of it But one of the things, I am convinced, is that transportation and ease of communication are actually working against the neighborhood church.
If you go to a seminar, or have a workshop on church growth, one of the things you will find out is that a church's natural territory--at least in a city, I don't know about in the countryside--is considered to be everything within about a three-mile radius.
Couple that with the fact--at least I think it's a fact--that the majority of people hear about Jesus from a friend or a relative.
Then ask yourself if you, or any of your friends and relatives, live within a three-mile radius of your church. If you go to an older church, in an older part of the city, I think it is likely you are going to say, "No!"
People can drive--so they, or their children, move out to other parts of town and if they're so inclined, they can still attend the old church they've always attended, but their friends, their relatives, their lives, are all outside that three-mile radius around their church. Naturally, it then becomes very, very difficult for the church members to reach the people around the church! Nobody should be surprised. Nothing could be more natural.
Some people are going to home churches or things like that and I see nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want to do, except that I think that it tends to reinforce a certain cliquishness in some cases, that is, I think there is a pretty good likelihood that you are going to get all eggheads in one group, all the emotionistas in another, and so forth, and that's not altogether good.
And then there's the bad teaching--not in my church, actually, I think our pastor is pretty good (critics would say that he appeals to "eggheads" like moi), one of the few left that actually does expository preaching, and he's not inclined to dumb things down--but it seems to me like there's almost an active contempt rampant in the North American church, a contempt for any sort of teaching that goes beyond the very basics. I will never forget asking my then-teenaged oldest son what the problem with Adult Sunday School lessons was, and he immediately shot back with, "It's the kids' lessons, only with bigger words." If you question this, in most churches and most Sunday School departments, you will be told that the material cannot be made too complex or we will alienate visitors, completely overlooking the fact that visitors are not exactly overrunning the building. And then, if you are not already a teacher of some kind, you will be told that you know so much, you ought to be teaching!
No thought will be given to the possibility that most visitors are not so stupid as to be unable to figure out when their intelligence has been insulted.
In my opinion, the teaching in most churches in North America is execrable. I do not even have to go to them to see in order to have a pretty good idea. Why? Well, just ask around. For example, how many Christians do you know that feel confident in their ability to clearly articulate the Gospel? In my experience--and yes, I have asked--most Christians don't feel terribly confident in their ability to clearly articulate the Gospel, or to answer questions and objections, and more often than not, they don't even try (I believe the stats indicate that something less than 10 percent of all Christians will ever share their faith with strangers).
They just keep coming to Sunday School and church services, hoping all the while, I guess, that they will eventually gain enough knowledge to be able to tell other people what they believe about God, life, death, eternity, and salvation. To my mind, the situation looks like a massive, systemic failure to educate and train, despite a massive Sunday School program and the availability of enough literature to choke a moose.
It doesn't help that a lot of people seem to like it that way. It amazes me how many people say they're afraid to share the Gospel, on the grounds that they don't know enough to answer objections, and then won't come to a Sunday School class heavily geared to equipping people to explain and defend their beliefs.
What to do? How to keep my church and others like it from dying? Well, I envision building a church like this:
On Sunday mornings, first, in Sunday School, we'd tackle whatever subjects the class was interested in pursuing in depth, getting people involved in the discussion and accustomed to discussing and defending what they believed. Then we'd have a service where the Gospel was preached, the text of Scripture was expounded, and Christ exalted. Then there'd be a potluck lunch, and maybe a softball game, or maybe some indoor games (chess or go, anyone?). Then everyone'd go home for a nap, and come back at night for more preaching, teaching, and prayer, maybe followed by some sandwiches (Potluck sandwiches. If you try to make the church responsible for the sandwiches, it'll just create a burden that nobody wants to bear).
I have to say a word about "worship," or, more specifically, about music.
Worship is an absolute joke in most churches, at least most churches I've been to--including ours. That is not to say the music is, quote-unquote, "bad." Often, the music minister and musicians and choir are very capable.
But that is not corporate worship. In all the years I've been going to Baptist churches, I have seen precisely one man I would call a worship leader, in that he always managed to get everybody in the sanctuary singing their hearts out. Most music ministers, together with most choirs, are not leading worship. They are performing for the congregation. That is not right at all.
A worship leader needs to be far more concerned about leading the congregation in corporate worship than about how he and the choir sound.
Monday night'd be visitation. Not like most churches, where "visitation" means visiting people who should've been removed from the rolls years before, or visiting people that brought their kids to the "Fall Festival" five years in a row (that kind of stuff is, in my experience, a complete waste of time), but visiting, first, the members who couldn't be at church due to illness or frailty, those who are having a hard time in one way or another (I am as convinced as I can be that one of the modern church's problems is that we have so emphasized ministry to the community that we have let our ministry to our members slacken. This should not be. Paul suggested strongly that we should tend to the brethren first), and then just going door-to-door in the neighborhood, asking people how we could pray for them, and sharing the Gospel where the Lord opens the door. I would suggest strongly that the same people not do visitation every week, not unless they feel truly compelled. Rather, a whole bunch of people should rotate visitation duties. Nobody should be allowed to become overwhelmed.
Tuesday nights, the clubs would meet. As I mentioned in the section on RyuTe, someday I'd love to teach a class at the church. I picture an energetic, sweaty class, where the emphasis is on health and self-defense, not fighting, not aggression, with maybe just enough free-sparring thrown in to satisfy those that want to compete in an occasional tournament (Tournament fighting is useless for self-defense, but some people find them a lot of fun). There could, and should, be other clubs--whatever people were interested in. Maybe Praisemoves for some. Maybe Pilates. Maybe a homeschooling support group. The point is to have neighborhood Christian people with a common interest be able to satisfy that interest and desire for fellowship through the neighborhood church, not so much to use those activities to attract lost people to the
church--although, God knows, you wouldn't want to turn lost people away from those clubs, and you'd certainly want lost people taught the Gospel while they're at the church.
Wednesday nights'd be for discipleship training and prayer. Classes on all sorts of stuff, from in-depth study of various books of the Bible, to home economics (we all need to know how to stretch a dollar, folks), to New Testament Greek. Classes'd be preceded by a potluck meal and followed by a prayer session.
I think that's the way church oughta be. And very frankly, I think in our case, we need to seriously consider merging with the Hispanic church that meets in our building. They are actually growing, in part, I think, because so many Hispanic families have moved into the neighborhood, and, like I said, people do hear about Jesus from their friends and neighbors.
Many times I think the ideal is to have a little church like this in every neighborhood, with the social life of the whole neighborhood revolving around it. I'm about half-convinced that when we got to the point where you had to drive to church instead of walk (or ride your horse), it allowed us to be too darn selective about who we'd associate with. Being able to drive--I've run across people that drive thirty or more miles to church, folks--well, it seems to me that it makes it easier to ignore the people who are right around us, in favor of people that we find it easier to love. Why would we not expect our neighborhood churches to be dying if we refuse to attend the neighborhood church? And conversely, I can't help but think that if the people and their neighborhood church get all wrapped up in Jesus Christ and in one another, both the churches and the people will quit dying.
That's what, in part, I'm working on for the future. I may die before I see it fully realized. But that's the direction I'm headed.
RUNNING
In a way, I suppose this is a very minor thing. However, I used to enjoy running a bit. I haven't done it, not to speak of, in a long time. But back in the day, I ran a fair number of 5Ks and the Tulsa Run a couple of times, and I really enjoyed them. I saw them, particularly the races I entered every year, as part of the turn of the seasons. I enjoyed the still-cool-and-crisp-not-quite-Spring-but-definitely-not-winter freshness of the St. Patrick's Day 5K, the hot, sticky sweatiness of that race--whatever it was--that the Full Moon Cafe sponsored in the summer, the
unbelievable hills that comprised the Labor Day 5K, and the cold air and the start-of-the-holiday-season feeling of the Tulsa Run. I never did end up running the Jingle Bell Run 5K, but I bet that would have been the capper. And I always wanted to do the Zoo Run.
I miss all of that. But I really don't want to sacrifice my RyuTe training time to run, so what to do?
I think that I'll do a couple of miles--I'll take a few weeks to build up to it, of course, I'm 48 and don't want to do anything stupid--on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and build up to five miles on Saturday mornings. That way, I will be able to comfortably run any 5K (I have never worried about speed) and uncomfortably but successfully run the 15K of the Tulsa Run. And I think I'm going to try to get back into it starting with the Jingle Bell Run, if it still exists.
THE HOUSE AND PROPERTY
In a lot of ways, I am pretty pleased with our little (1400 square feet) house. I have often said that if everything keeps working the way it does now, I wouldn't see any need to mess with it. In the interest of keeping things working, efficiency, improvements, safety, aesthetics, etc, there are some things I'd like to do.
The house doesn't have to be spectacular. I'd like to replace the toilet and redecorate the place. I'd like, as a proactive measure, to put a few piers in place under the floor. Reupholster the furniture, maybe in leather.
Paint or panel the walls, put some gas logs in the fireplace or adapt a wood stove to it, replace the wall furnace. Re-plumb, re-wire, re-insulate, and re-side with hardwood siding. Add several fire extinguishers.
A coffee table. If I am going to have occasional guests, I think we need a coffee table. I'd say "nothing fancy," but in my mind's eye, I picture one of those things made out of polished driftwood. Like as not, I'll never be able to afford one, but maybe I can find or make something a little unusual.
Just for the short term, I'd like to slap some paint on the place shortly, just to buy me some time. Time to scare up the money and skills to pull all the old clapboard siding, replace any rotted timber, reinsulate and install some hardwood siding. It'd look very rustic, plus, I'd like never to have to paint again.
The foundation footings need to be checked. The whole-house fan needs to be repaired. I'd like to rewire the garage, replace the washer, stove, and fridge, get gas heat throughout the house, panel the living and dining rooms, put a ceiling rack for pots, pans, and utensils in the kitchen, and upgrade the ceiling fans. The garage needs to be mostly empty, organized, and with a new side door.
GARDENING AND LANDSCAPING
Roses. Flagpole. garden, gardening containers, a cable slide for the kids, a dog. Hmmmm. How to keep dog out of the garden that I want to grow? Uproot the ugly plants out front and plant some roses.
There are some problems with our yard that I really don't think are solvable. For instance, due to the trees, many of which are on the neighbor's side of the fenceline, I really don't think any part of our yard gets the full 6 hours of sun they say is necessary to raise tomatoes. I know we can raise zucchini because we've done it, and probably other shade-tolerant crops. But if we want tomatoes, I am going to have to try some kind of container gardening or plant them in the front yard. Peach or pear trees might be worth the effort.
I do, of course, already have a makiwara and a bag in the back yard and I really don't know if I need any more martial arts or fitness equipment. I would like to replace the grill, as previously mentioned.
It wouldn't hurt my feelings any to have a small outdoor table.
In the front yard, I like to get rid of all the plants--shrubs, trees, everything, except that one funky-lookin' tree, and plant a few rosebushes.
Other than that, keep it simple and easy to maintain with a weed whacker and a lawnmower.
TRANSPORTATION
You know, the reality is that I just don't like working on cars. I'll do it if there's no way out of it, but I'd really rather not. So you'll understand when I say that while I really wouldn't mind driving my Bronco II 'til they quit making parts for it, I'd also really like to be able to just drive it into R.L. Fix twice a year for a checkup. Same with the other vehicles in the household.
I like the Bronco II. When it runs right, it's nimble and will handle foul weather pretty well. It's a real redneck-mobile and suits my temperament nicely. I figure that to have it "just so" would cost five or six grand. But to just greatly enhance its performance and reliability would be much less--probably less than 1500 bucks--and I suppose I can live with its butt-ugliness. I really can't complain. It's been more than a year since it last went down on me, and last winter, it got me around. As I told everyone who would listen, "It may be an old piece of junk, but it's a 4WD old piece of junk." So since the alternative is coming up with five or six grand to buy a used jeep which will have it's own problems, I guess I'll keep it and strive to come up with 1500 for repairs.
I'd like to have a winch on it. Even if I never use it. It's part of my Redneck Mystique.
It goes without saying that I'd like other family members to have cars that suit them, too, doesn't it? In an ideal world, that would involve at least one pickup. Right now, though, we've got a '98 Dodge Caravan which is, overall, in pretty good shape, but I think we need to add one more vehicle. In another year or so, we're likely to be given a very nice Avalon, but I'd like to get something quicker than that, or--miracle of miracles--resurrect our Aerostar. If I can do that, the one thing I can be sure of is that I'd be the only one willing to drive it, so it'd be a temporary solution at best. Yet it can't be overlooked that I just might be able to do it for less than three hundred bucks...
In an ideal world, I'd add an old Ranger to the fleet and ditch the Aerostar in the next three months.
INTERNET
Gotta move to cable w/a wi-fi hotspot, with multiple laptops. Internet access will probably always be important in our household.
READING AND EDUCATION
I really would like to spend more time reading. As a matter of fact, if I could get away with it, I'd like to retire and spend the bulk of my time reading, for the sad fact is that I feel woefully undereducated. It's ironic, I suppose, for the reality is that people who know me generally think I'm about as much of autodidact as it is possible for a redneck to be.
Sadly, I will probably never have as much time to read and self-educate as I would like, but I can prioritize: much less internet fluff and more classics and history.
Professionally, it woudl be really helpful to clear three big hurdles: one license, one certification, and a big upturn in my command of Spanish, which is microscopic. But if I can accomplish these in the next 6 months, which is very likely, I should just have to have a few CE credits each year after that and my reading time will otherwise be free. And within 18 months, my income should be very noticeably enhanced.
So it's fairly obvious: little to no internet fluff, period; six months of hard professional study, and then mostly classics and history. Sounds like a plan.
FAMILY LIFE
Like to have a few relatives over at holidays and birthdays, and go out to see 'em once a month or so.
Family life is profoundly important. In so many ways, I wish I had time to do things over again.
In general, it seems to me that family life is very difficult to plan, especially as children get older, busier, and more mobile. There are some basics, though, to which I'd like to see. I'd like for everyone to be together at the table for as many mealtimes as reasonably possible. I'd like cooking and cleaning to be family activities. This not only reduces the burden on any one individual, it's educational. Everyone needs to know how to cook and clean. I'd like everyone to attend church together and share in church life and activities.
Where at all possible, I'd like everyone to share activities, all of us go to see the play, for example, or everyone attending the RyuTe test.
Work situations permitting--I've had jobs that kept me working late at night, believe me, I understand scheduling issues--I'd like our sleeping schedules to be roughly similar. We ought to be able to eat breakfast together most of the time.
Some of this is hard to put into words. In general, I'd like to see each family member share in the day-to-day life of the household and embracing a fair share of ordinary household duties.
I'd also like to visit my parents, at least for half a day, about once a month. In addition to the e-mails and phone calls.
DECORATING, INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR
Hardwood siding, wood paneling, gas logs in the fireplace or adapt fireplace to woodstove.
The dickens about saying how I'd like to decorate is that really, I like so many things, so many styles, that it becomes hard to be consistent. When it comes down to it, though, I suppose I'm most comfortable and happy with a look that you might describe as "countrified kitsch," with a few sops to my intellectual vanity thrown in.
We have a very nice sofa and loveseat, 2 recliners built into each one, and for the longest time, I've thought that after the youngest is well past the spill-crap-on-everything stage of life, we ought to have some repairs made and get them reupholstered, maybe in leather. Still might do that. But you know, I'm also thinking that a hide-a-bed might be a very useful thing to have, and if we got that, we'd have to ditch our current sofa.
I get tired, when I have to resort to it, of take-out crap and convenience foods.
Normal people, that is, people that aren't quite wealthy, have to cook. It's just part of normal life, whether I enjoy it enough for it to be a hobby in its own right or whether I see it as just the necessary means by which I get to enjoy decent meals at a decent price. If I had the wealth of Rush Limbaugh, I might well never set foot in the kitchen again, in the same way that I might never look under the hood of a car again, had I that kind of wealth.
I don't have that kind of wealth. I have to cook, I have to shoulder at least part of the cooking in the house. Furthermore, other people often actually like what I cook, and I like that and it does my soul some good and is a source of satisfaction, so I'm likely to be doing a fair amount of cooking for the rest of my days.
A further reality is that I love good food and think of it as a marvelous gift from God. It affects life on so many levels.
If that's the case, I know what I want--what I want to have, what I want to do. The kitchen of our old house is adequate, at least mostly so. There is no dishwasher, but that doesn't bother me. I do want more help keeping up with the dishes. I'd like to have a clock in there, and more timers, and a radio, one with an antenna that I can hook up outside, so that I can get the stations I'm interested in more clearly. It's a whole lot more pleasant to spend an evening in the kitchen when you're able to listen to Cardinals baseball. I'd like to replace the refrigerator. Nothing fancy, but I would like it to be black. Color me strange!
If I could just get the Food Network and skip the rest of cable TV, I'd do it.
There's not a whole lot more space for shelving or storage in there, and I'd like to do some canning sooner or later, which means I'm going to have to find someplace relatively stable--temperature-wise--to keep my home-canned goods.
Don't need a whole lot more in the way of kitchen equipment. I love my Henckels knives and my smokers and my Le Creuset dutch oven, and would like to add one of their 2 3/4 qt lidded saucepans. I suppose I could add a food processor to my collection of kitchen gadgets, but I really don't know that I'd use it that much. I would definitely like to replace my grill--another Weber would be fine--and buy an electric element for my water-smoker and a couple of smoker boxes.
I'd like to grow at least some of what we eat. Actually, I'd like to grow a lot of what we eat. I recall reading an article in The Mother Earth News once about a family that had managed to turn just about every square inch of their property into productive garden. They harvested thousands of pounds of food every year off what amounted to a suburban yard. I don't have that
kind of ambition, but I would like to do better than we have been. It is not going to be easy. Due to the trees--some on my property, some on neighbors' property--there is not a whole lot of my backyard that gets the six or more hours of steady daylight necessary to grow everything I would like. I will have to make use of container gardening and shade-friendly plants. I do know that we can successfully grow zucchini. That, at least, grew pretty well, in the only year where I attempted to grow anything other than a tomato.
For tomatoes, I'm going to have to get creative. I'll figure something out.
I would really like for everybody to pitch in with the cooking. It's more fun and less time-consuming if everyone takes part. And I think the food tastes better, too, and it's good for family relationships.
I would like my cooking to focus mostly on grilled and smoked foods, Tex-Mex, and Southwestern. I don't have the fear of dietary fat that so many folks do (read this book!), but I would definitely like to keep refined carbohydrates to an absolute minimum. I do want to make room for honeys, though--not just the ubiquitous clover honey that you get at the grocery store, but what you might call artisanal honeys, or herbal honeys, honey that reflects one particular plant. You can get 'em, but you have to mail-order 'em, and I'm not quite ready, financially, to do that. Maybe soon.
I'd definitely like there to be more in the way of seasonal cooking around here, that is, I'd really like you to be able to walk into our house and be able to tell from the tastes and the aromas that it's Fall, or Christmastime, or getting close to Saint Patrick's Day.
You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned eating out. That's because in general, I really don't like it that much. Oh, it's okay, and I know that a lot of folks really enjoy it, but I'd much rather eat something that we've prepared at home. Unless we're talking barbecue. I do enjoy eating at barbecue joints and don't get to do it as much as I would like. That is probably more reflective of my interest in barbecue than of my interest in eating out although I do enjoy the atmosphere of most barbecue joints. They are always clearly working-class establishments, not hoity-toity at all.
I have never objected to eating off thrift-store plates and drinking out of jelly glasses and second-hand coffee cups and the like. As a matter of fact, it kind of--perhaps absurdly--gives me the feeling of being out in the country. It is pure redneck, pure country-style Americana.
Now, about desserts. I don't have much against desserts per se. I am just convinced that they are really hard to deal with nutritionally. There are few things of which I'm more fully convinced than that refined sugar and flour are bad for you.
But even if I could live without desserts, I still like them at least a bit, and others really love them. So what to do? Well, no store-bought crap, to start with. If we're going to have a sliver of dessert, it at least needs to be something decent, something that we've made at home. There's no point in spending those precious few dessert calories on crap like "Little Debbies."
HOLIDAYS
One of the things I have long regretted about our household is that we never have really gotten the hang of enjoying the holidays (or the seasons, for that matter) to their utmost. We never seem to be quite ready, never quite prepared.
I want to decorate very heavily for Christmas--not the day after Thanksgiving, mind you, that is too soon--but perhaps by the 5th of December.
I want to decorate for "Fall Festival," aka "Hallowe'en," and Thanksgiving, too. And New Year's Day, and Valentine's Day, and Saint Patrick's Day, and Independence Day, and Veteran's Day. When a holiday is approaching, I want you to be able to knock on our door and tell immediately that we're celebrating something. I want you to smell something distinctive from the kitchen: Corned beef and cabbage for St. Pat's, heart-shaped butter cookies for Valentine's Day, barbecue and hot dogs on the Fourth, smoked turkey and dressing and ham on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and sparkling wine on New Year's.
I want to be able to go to church on Christmas morning. If I can't do that, I at least want to have a brief worship service at home.
I want to do more visiting during the holiday season, and have more guests. I am not generally fond of big parties, but I would like to have small groups of guests, or go somewhere where there is such a gathering.
I want to go to the Christmas Parade, and I want it to be called the Christmas Parade, not the "holiday parade," and I want to go to the Festival of Trees every year, and drive around Midtown and look at the rich people's lights. And I'd like to put at least a few lights on our own house.
GAMES
I almost titled this section, "Leisure Activities," but that really doesn't do it. I am talking about games, two games to be specific: chess and go. Both are classic strategy and thinking games.
I am not good at either one. Oh, I have books on them, some excellent books, but I haven't finished them.
What I'd really like to do is gradually work through my two big books on chess and all five books of Soo-Hyun and Kim's Learn to Play Go series. And I would like to go down to the go club that meets, last I heard, at the TU campus on Saturday afternoons, and to the chess club that meets at the OSU-Tulsa campus. Not every week for each of them, mind you, I don't think I will ever be able to pull that one off. But I'd like to be able to look forward to attending one or the other at least every other week, and maybe to an occasional game on the internet. I'd like to occasionally invite a friend over for a couple of games of chess and a frosty beverage or two. I'd like eventually to be able to meet Openhand at some seminar in Missouri and play a game of go with him.
Now, it should go without saying that I'd like to play these games with the family, too. Sadly, the only person who ever shows any interest, so far, is Middle Son, currently age nine. He gets in a mood where he likes to play chess from time to time, and I scarcely have to give him any kind of advantage anymore. No one, I can say with confidence, need be intimidated by my skills, but if a real disparity exists, it is easy enough to handicap the more powerful player in both these games, so that he has a more challenging game to play and the weaker player need not feel doomed from the get-go.
I've already got a decent go board and stones, probably as good as I will ever want to own. I've got a tolerable chessboard, too, and I won't be brokenhearted if I never replace it, but ultimately, I'd like to have a bigger board and chessmen. Boxwood and ebony, please.
RYUTE
If you're not familiar with this blog, perhaps having come here from a Google search, you might be wondering just what the heck "RyuTe" is. I'll be very brief: it is a martial arts system, organized and systematized by the very remarkable Taika Seiyu Oyata. If you want to know more, click here.
I'd like to do RyuTe for sixty to ninety minutes a day, six days a week. Maybe just kata in slow, continuous motion on Sundays.
A couple of times a year, I'd like to go to a seminar. The ones in Amarillo and Wichita are within reasonable driving distance.
I would, someday, like to teach RyuTe. More than that, I think that someday I am going to be responsible to teach RyuTe. I think it's that important to pass this system down.
I'd kind of like to teach in a church setting, say, in the basement/youth room at our church, but I'd want to make the classes open to anyone of decent character who wants to do the work. I do have a special desire to reach Tulsa's Christian, and most especially, Tulsa's Christian homeschooling community with this system. People in the homeschooling community, more so than most, are ready to accept (upon appropriate examination) the Old Ways. If you go to them and say, "Look at this, this is the way karate is supposed to be, the way it was 175 years ago, a life-protection art based on anatomy, kinesiology, physics, and the norms of human perception, it will help you to stay healthy, it will help you and your children to stay a little bit safer, it will help you to become and stay a disciplined person," I think they will be more ready to listen than most people in the population, who are forever chasing after the latest fad, whether it be in religion, martial arts, or popular entertainment. RyuTe would, I think, shall we say, be temperamentally and attitudinally appropriate for the homeschooling community, and vice versa.
Not everyone in RyuTe knows all the weapons, it seems. I'd like to be a jo specialist, but also to learn at least the kihon kata for nunchaku, tanbo, and sai.
CHURCH LIFE
I belong to a church in the heart of Tulsa, a church that you could describe as "big," in the sense that the physical plant is pretty big, and "average" in that the total attendance on Sunday morning is about average for most Southern Baptist churches, which is to say, about 200 or so. It is a church like so many in this part of Tulsa, like a very great many across the country, really. It's dying. Most of the churches in the heart of Tulsa are graying and thinning out and they are dying.
Some of them used to be among the fastest-growing and largest congregations in the country.
What happened?
Well, there are a lot of things that have happened. I am still learning about some of it But one of the things, I am convinced, is that transportation and ease of communication are actually working against the neighborhood church.
If you go to a seminar, or have a workshop on church growth, one of the things you will find out is that a church's natural territory--at least in a city, I don't know about in the countryside--is considered to be everything within about a three-mile radius.
Couple that with the fact--at least I think it's a fact--that the majority of people hear about Jesus from a friend or a relative.
Then ask yourself if you, or any of your friends and relatives, live within a three-mile radius of your church. If you go to an older church, in an older part of the city, I think it is likely you are going to say, "No!"
People can drive--so they, or their children, move out to other parts of town and if they're so inclined, they can still attend the old church they've always attended, but their friends, their relatives, their lives, are all outside that three-mile radius around their church. Naturally, it then becomes very, very difficult for the church members to reach the people around the church! Nobody should be surprised. Nothing could be more natural.
Some people are going to home churches or things like that and I see nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want to do, except that I think that it tends to reinforce a certain cliquishness in some cases, that is, I think there is a pretty good likelihood that you are going to get all eggheads in one group, all the emotionistas in another, and so forth, and that's not altogether good.
And then there's the bad teaching--not in my church, actually, I think our pastor is pretty good (critics would say that he appeals to "eggheads" like moi), one of the few left that actually does expository preaching, and he's not inclined to dumb things down--but it seems to me like there's almost an active contempt rampant in the North American church, a contempt for any sort of teaching that goes beyond the very basics. I will never forget asking my then-teenaged oldest son what the problem with Adult Sunday School lessons was, and he immediately shot back with, "It's the kids' lessons, only with bigger words." If you question this, in most churches and most Sunday School departments, you will be told that the material cannot be made too complex or we will alienate visitors, completely overlooking the fact that visitors are not exactly overrunning the building. And then, if you are not already a teacher of some kind, you will be told that you know so much, you ought to be teaching!
No thought will be given to the possibility that most visitors are not so stupid as to be unable to figure out when their intelligence has been insulted.
In my opinion, the teaching in most churches in North America is execrable. I do not even have to go to them to see in order to have a pretty good idea. Why? Well, just ask around. For example, how many Christians do you know that feel confident in their ability to clearly articulate the Gospel? In my experience--and yes, I have asked--most Christians don't feel terribly confident in their ability to clearly articulate the Gospel, or to answer questions and objections, and more often than not, they don't even try (I believe the stats indicate that something less than 10 percent of all Christians will ever share their faith with strangers).
They just keep coming to Sunday School and church services, hoping all the while, I guess, that they will eventually gain enough knowledge to be able to tell other people what they believe about God, life, death, eternity, and salvation. To my mind, the situation looks like a massive, systemic failure to educate and train, despite a massive Sunday School program and the availability of enough literature to choke a moose.
It doesn't help that a lot of people seem to like it that way. It amazes me how many people say they're afraid to share the Gospel, on the grounds that they don't know enough to answer objections, and then won't come to a Sunday School class heavily geared to equipping people to explain and defend their beliefs.
What to do? How to keep my church and others like it from dying? Well, I envision building a church like this:
On Sunday mornings, first, in Sunday School, we'd tackle whatever subjects the class was interested in pursuing in depth, getting people involved in the discussion and accustomed to discussing and defending what they believed. Then we'd have a service where the Gospel was preached, the text of Scripture was expounded, and Christ exalted. Then there'd be a potluck lunch, and maybe a softball game, or maybe some indoor games (chess or go, anyone?). Then everyone'd go home for a nap, and come back at night for more preaching, teaching, and prayer, maybe followed by some sandwiches (Potluck sandwiches. If you try to make the church responsible for the sandwiches, it'll just create a burden that nobody wants to bear).
I have to say a word about "worship," or, more specifically, about music.
Worship is an absolute joke in most churches, at least most churches I've been to--including ours. That is not to say the music is, quote-unquote, "bad." Often, the music minister and musicians and choir are very capable.
But that is not corporate worship. In all the years I've been going to Baptist churches, I have seen precisely one man I would call a worship leader, in that he always managed to get everybody in the sanctuary singing their hearts out. Most music ministers, together with most choirs, are not leading worship. They are performing for the congregation. That is not right at all.
A worship leader needs to be far more concerned about leading the congregation in corporate worship than about how he and the choir sound.
Monday night'd be visitation. Not like most churches, where "visitation" means visiting people who should've been removed from the rolls years before, or visiting people that brought their kids to the "Fall Festival" five years in a row (that kind of stuff is, in my experience, a complete waste of time), but visiting, first, the members who couldn't be at church due to illness or frailty, those who are having a hard time in one way or another (I am as convinced as I can be that one of the modern church's problems is that we have so emphasized ministry to the community that we have let our ministry to our members slacken. This should not be. Paul suggested strongly that we should tend to the brethren first), and then just going door-to-door in the neighborhood, asking people how we could pray for them, and sharing the Gospel where the Lord opens the door. I would suggest strongly that the same people not do visitation every week, not unless they feel truly compelled. Rather, a whole bunch of people should rotate visitation duties. Nobody should be allowed to become overwhelmed.
Tuesday nights, the clubs would meet. As I mentioned in the section on RyuTe, someday I'd love to teach a class at the church. I picture an energetic, sweaty class, where the emphasis is on health and self-defense, not fighting, not aggression, with maybe just enough free-sparring thrown in to satisfy those that want to compete in an occasional tournament (Tournament fighting is useless for self-defense, but some people find them a lot of fun). There could, and should, be other clubs--whatever people were interested in. Maybe Praisemoves for some. Maybe Pilates. Maybe a homeschooling support group. The point is to have neighborhood Christian people with a common interest be able to satisfy that interest and desire for fellowship through the neighborhood church, not so much to use those activities to attract lost people to the
church--although, God knows, you wouldn't want to turn lost people away from those clubs, and you'd certainly want lost people taught the Gospel while they're at the church.
Wednesday nights'd be for discipleship training and prayer. Classes on all sorts of stuff, from in-depth study of various books of the Bible, to home economics (we all need to know how to stretch a dollar, folks), to New Testament Greek. Classes'd be preceded by a potluck meal and followed by a prayer session.
I think that's the way church oughta be. And very frankly, I think in our case, we need to seriously consider merging with the Hispanic church that meets in our building. They are actually growing, in part, I think, because so many Hispanic families have moved into the neighborhood, and, like I said, people do hear about Jesus from their friends and neighbors.
Many times I think the ideal is to have a little church like this in every neighborhood, with the social life of the whole neighborhood revolving around it. I'm about half-convinced that when we got to the point where you had to drive to church instead of walk (or ride your horse), it allowed us to be too darn selective about who we'd associate with. Being able to drive--I've run across people that drive thirty or more miles to church, folks--well, it seems to me that it makes it easier to ignore the people who are right around us, in favor of people that we find it easier to love. Why would we not expect our neighborhood churches to be dying if we refuse to attend the neighborhood church? And conversely, I can't help but think that if the people and their neighborhood church get all wrapped up in Jesus Christ and in one another, both the churches and the people will quit dying.
That's what, in part, I'm working on for the future. I may die before I see it fully realized. But that's the direction I'm headed.
RUNNING
In a way, I suppose this is a very minor thing. However, I used to enjoy running a bit. I haven't done it, not to speak of, in a long time. But back in the day, I ran a fair number of 5Ks and the Tulsa Run a couple of times, and I really enjoyed them. I saw them, particularly the races I entered every year, as part of the turn of the seasons. I enjoyed the still-cool-and-crisp-not-quite-Spring-but-definitely-not-winter freshness of the St. Patrick's Day 5K, the hot, sticky sweatiness of that race--whatever it was--that the Full Moon Cafe sponsored in the summer, the
unbelievable hills that comprised the Labor Day 5K, and the cold air and the start-of-the-holiday-season feeling of the Tulsa Run. I never did end up running the Jingle Bell Run 5K, but I bet that would have been the capper. And I always wanted to do the Zoo Run.
I miss all of that. But I really don't want to sacrifice my RyuTe training time to run, so what to do?
I think that I'll do a couple of miles--I'll take a few weeks to build up to it, of course, I'm 48 and don't want to do anything stupid--on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and build up to five miles on Saturday mornings. That way, I will be able to comfortably run any 5K (I have never worried about speed) and uncomfortably but successfully run the 15K of the Tulsa Run. And I think I'm going to try to get back into it starting with the Jingle Bell Run, if it still exists.
THE HOUSE AND PROPERTY
In a lot of ways, I am pretty pleased with our little (1400 square feet) house. I have often said that if everything keeps working the way it does now, I wouldn't see any need to mess with it. In the interest of keeping things working, efficiency, improvements, safety, aesthetics, etc, there are some things I'd like to do.
The house doesn't have to be spectacular. I'd like to replace the toilet and redecorate the place. I'd like, as a proactive measure, to put a few piers in place under the floor. Reupholster the furniture, maybe in leather.
Paint or panel the walls, put some gas logs in the fireplace or adapt a wood stove to it, replace the wall furnace. Re-plumb, re-wire, re-insulate, and re-side with hardwood siding. Add several fire extinguishers.
A coffee table. If I am going to have occasional guests, I think we need a coffee table. I'd say "nothing fancy," but in my mind's eye, I picture one of those things made out of polished driftwood. Like as not, I'll never be able to afford one, but maybe I can find or make something a little unusual.
Just for the short term, I'd like to slap some paint on the place shortly, just to buy me some time. Time to scare up the money and skills to pull all the old clapboard siding, replace any rotted timber, reinsulate and install some hardwood siding. It'd look very rustic, plus, I'd like never to have to paint again.
The foundation footings need to be checked. The whole-house fan needs to be repaired. I'd like to rewire the garage, replace the washer, stove, and fridge, get gas heat throughout the house, panel the living and dining rooms, put a ceiling rack for pots, pans, and utensils in the kitchen, and upgrade the ceiling fans. The garage needs to be mostly empty, organized, and with a new side door.
GARDENING AND LANDSCAPING
Roses. Flagpole. garden, gardening containers, a cable slide for the kids, a dog. Hmmmm. How to keep dog out of the garden that I want to grow? Uproot the ugly plants out front and plant some roses.
There are some problems with our yard that I really don't think are solvable. For instance, due to the trees, many of which are on the neighbor's side of the fenceline, I really don't think any part of our yard gets the full 6 hours of sun they say is necessary to raise tomatoes. I know we can raise zucchini because we've done it, and probably other shade-tolerant crops. But if we want tomatoes, I am going to have to try some kind of container gardening or plant them in the front yard. Peach or pear trees might be worth the effort.
I do, of course, already have a makiwara and a bag in the back yard and I really don't know if I need any more martial arts or fitness equipment. I would like to replace the grill, as previously mentioned.
It wouldn't hurt my feelings any to have a small outdoor table.
In the front yard, I like to get rid of all the plants--shrubs, trees, everything, except that one funky-lookin' tree, and plant a few rosebushes.
Other than that, keep it simple and easy to maintain with a weed whacker and a lawnmower.
TRANSPORTATION
You know, the reality is that I just don't like working on cars. I'll do it if there's no way out of it, but I'd really rather not. So you'll understand when I say that while I really wouldn't mind driving my Bronco II 'til they quit making parts for it, I'd also really like to be able to just drive it into R.L. Fix twice a year for a checkup. Same with the other vehicles in the household.
I like the Bronco II. When it runs right, it's nimble and will handle foul weather pretty well. It's a real redneck-mobile and suits my temperament nicely. I figure that to have it "just so" would cost five or six grand. But to just greatly enhance its performance and reliability would be much less--probably less than 1500 bucks--and I suppose I can live with its butt-ugliness. I really can't complain. It's been more than a year since it last went down on me, and last winter, it got me around. As I told everyone who would listen, "It may be an old piece of junk, but it's a 4WD old piece of junk." So since the alternative is coming up with five or six grand to buy a used jeep which will have it's own problems, I guess I'll keep it and strive to come up with 1500 for repairs.
I'd like to have a winch on it. Even if I never use it. It's part of my Redneck Mystique.
It goes without saying that I'd like other family members to have cars that suit them, too, doesn't it? In an ideal world, that would involve at least one pickup. Right now, though, we've got a '98 Dodge Caravan which is, overall, in pretty good shape, but I think we need to add one more vehicle. In another year or so, we're likely to be given a very nice Avalon, but I'd like to get something quicker than that, or--miracle of miracles--resurrect our Aerostar. If I can do that, the one thing I can be sure of is that I'd be the only one willing to drive it, so it'd be a temporary solution at best. Yet it can't be overlooked that I just might be able to do it for less than three hundred bucks...
In an ideal world, I'd add an old Ranger to the fleet and ditch the Aerostar in the next three months.
INTERNET
Gotta move to cable w/a wi-fi hotspot, with multiple laptops. Internet access will probably always be important in our household.
READING AND EDUCATION
I really would like to spend more time reading. As a matter of fact, if I could get away with it, I'd like to retire and spend the bulk of my time reading, for the sad fact is that I feel woefully undereducated. It's ironic, I suppose, for the reality is that people who know me generally think I'm about as much of autodidact as it is possible for a redneck to be.
Sadly, I will probably never have as much time to read and self-educate as I would like, but I can prioritize: much less internet fluff and more classics and history.
Professionally, it woudl be really helpful to clear three big hurdles: one license, one certification, and a big upturn in my command of Spanish, which is microscopic. But if I can accomplish these in the next 6 months, which is very likely, I should just have to have a few CE credits each year after that and my reading time will otherwise be free. And within 18 months, my income should be very noticeably enhanced.
So it's fairly obvious: little to no internet fluff, period; six months of hard professional study, and then mostly classics and history. Sounds like a plan.
FAMILY LIFE
Like to have a few relatives over at holidays and birthdays, and go out to see 'em once a month or so.
Family life is profoundly important. In so many ways, I wish I had time to do things over again.
In general, it seems to me that family life is very difficult to plan, especially as children get older, busier, and more mobile. There are some basics, though, to which I'd like to see. I'd like for everyone to be together at the table for as many mealtimes as reasonably possible. I'd like cooking and cleaning to be family activities. This not only reduces the burden on any one individual, it's educational. Everyone needs to know how to cook and clean. I'd like everyone to attend church together and share in church life and activities.
Where at all possible, I'd like everyone to share activities, all of us go to see the play, for example, or everyone attending the RyuTe test.
Work situations permitting--I've had jobs that kept me working late at night, believe me, I understand scheduling issues--I'd like our sleeping schedules to be roughly similar. We ought to be able to eat breakfast together most of the time.
Some of this is hard to put into words. In general, I'd like to see each family member share in the day-to-day life of the household and embracing a fair share of ordinary household duties.
I'd also like to visit my parents, at least for half a day, about once a month. In addition to the e-mails and phone calls.
DECORATING, INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR
Hardwood siding, wood paneling, gas logs in the fireplace or adapt fireplace to woodstove.
The dickens about saying how I'd like to decorate is that really, I like so many things, so many styles, that it becomes hard to be consistent. When it comes down to it, though, I suppose I'm most comfortable and happy with a look that you might describe as "countrified kitsch," with a few sops to my intellectual vanity thrown in.
We have a very nice sofa and loveseat, 2 recliners built into each one, and for the longest time, I've thought that after the youngest is well past the spill-crap-on-everything stage of life, we ought to have some repairs made and get them reupholstered, maybe in leather. Still might do that. But you know, I'm also thinking that a hide-a-bed might be a very useful thing to have, and if we got that, we'd have to ditch our current sofa.
So I'm still thinkin' about that one.
Yes, I'm one of those people who like stuff like this...
I like my walls to be thick with stuff: photographs, shadow boxes with memorabilia, art prints (I'm especially fond of Van Gogh), even those ridiculous posters (insert example) with every conceivable variety of pepper on them. Frames don't have to be fancy; in fact, if I can get the plastic sheeting required, I'm leaning toward making and painting (in true redneck fashion) my own frames from discarded pallet wood.
Bookshelves everywhere are a necessity, of course.
I'd like to have some shelves up on the walls to display my wife's mementos, too.
About TV, I don't care so much. Since I won't buy cable, since the only thing I'd care to watch is the Food Network, all I ever do, really , is watch some DVDs. But I wouldn't mind having a small stereo, something I could plug my I-Pod into.
DRESS
I hate wearing clothes I have to worry about. Thankfully, I have a job that provides work shirts, and I can wear jeans.
Outside of work, I'm mostly a jeans-and-t-shirt and ball-cap kind of guy, and I have pretty much everything I need, except that I'd like to add a couple more pairs of jeans, and...
...two pairs of low-top Redwing work boots, with big, lugged soles.
And I have to admit that I'm increasingly leaning toward the idea of dressing up a little for church. I guess I'm gonna have to get some deck shoes, slacks, and a tweed sportcoat. And a collared shirt. But that's it. I don't need more than one such monkey suit.
WORK
Work. What can I say about work? When I was younger, I thought that I wanted to be a professional writer, and I think I allowed the fact that I wasn't a professional writer to partly poison my attitude toward other jobs, even though I never really put forth the effort to actually become what I said I wanted to be. I let my writing wanna-b-ism sap my willingness to really put forth all I had in my other jobs.
More and more, I have come to see how wrong this is, and also to see that I don't really have the kind of gift it would take to sustain a full-time writing career. I'd still like to write, though, and I'd like to earn a few simoleons from it...
Couple that with the facts I actually kind of like my current job duties most of the time, that I really need a sharp upward spike in income (lots of challenges coming up!), that I'm about to start studying for two certifications that should lead to at least part of that jump in income, and I think we're looking at a few months of really hard study, and after that, an attempt to start publishing occasional small pieces on a professional level, maybe starting with e-zines.
And if those certifications don't lead to that jump in income? Well, they asked me to guarantee them a year, which shows that they're fully aware that my market value will increase. I told them at the outset that I was comfortable in my job and wasn't out to hold anybody up for a huge and sudden pay increase. Lately, though, I've kind of gotten the impression that they seriously think they can get away with no pay increase and very little in the way of additional overtime. If that's really what they're going to try to do--well, they've got a year. I don't think they'll be able to pull it off; it would require finding someone to do most of what I do now, and previous experience has shown that to be next to impossible, so it will probably be a moot point, and I'll wind up collecting my overtime.
MY COUNTRY
My country: the more I learn about it, the more I love it, and the more I fear for it. I wonder sometimes if others can really grasp just how much I love this country and its people. As absurd as they often are, I get the most tremendous joy out of them and I love them with a love inexpressible. So often, I have a feeling that I have somehow stumbled onto something very rare and precious, something of which I have tasted but a part.
Were it up to me, I would never see my country and people come to any harm and much of my thinking is devoted to how both can be sustained.
I am absolutely convinced that there are plenty of people, some of them in positions of power and influence, who would love nothing more than to see this country made over again into something unrecognizable, abandoning or destroying the things that have made it great in the process. These people are Jacobins in all but name. They have never really changed, no matter what labels they wear. They care nothing for the concepts and beliefs on which this country was founded, though they often make a great show of pretending to do so, unannouncedly and subtly changing the definitions of some of the words they use. One of the simplest, and most common ones, that they use (and one that has unfortunately been picked up by a great many well-meaning souls who don't really know any better) is "we." Very often, when they say, "we," as in,
"MOTW, don't you think that we ought to care for the poor?" what they actually mean is "Don't you think government ought to care for the poor?" That is a very different concept indeed, and in my opinion, the obfuscation is often intentional, the intent being to get your average American nodding his head to concepts that he and his fathers would never agree to, were they laid out in plain English. There are many other words and ways by which these modern Jacobins pretend to love the great American ideas whilst actually despising them.
I want to continue to learn, and to share my opinions, verbally and in writing, and to contribute to worthy candidates, organizations, and to evangelize and to pray. I want to be strong and to help others to be strong, for I am pretty well convinced that it is oxymoronic to conceive of a tyranny over a strong people. It has been said that a nation of sheep breeds a government of wolves--yet Christ refers to His followers as "sheep." Let me, then, do my part in making the sheep strong. Very strong.
I would like patriotic themes in the household decor, too.
FRIENDS
My friends will laugh to hear it, but it has been said that I don't have any friends! Well, I suppose I can understand this. At least, I could understand it coming from a stranger.
I have a few at church and there are more people at church that I'd like to cultivate. There are people who've moved beyond merely being clients to unquestionably being friends, people whom I cherish. There are people in my ESL class and the Hispanic Church that meets in our church building, whom I just love.
I must pause to note, for those foolish enough to believe that "conservative"= "racist," it is literally the case that I am on "hugging terms" with more Blacks and Mexicans than Whites.
There are also, of course, people whom I know exclusively through the blogosphere and Facebook but whom, for reasons of geography, I have never met in the flesh. They are nevertheless dear friends.
And then there are the friends that I have in the RyuTe Renmei. It is ridiculous to say that I have no friends. Such a remark could only come from someone who hasn't troubled to know me well.
On the other hand, it is true to say that I'm rarely in my friends' homes, and they are never in mine. This is something I'd like to correct. I'd love to have people over. It's just going to take more coordination and better housekeeping.
I'd especially like to have a few friends over for chess or go once in a while. Also, it might not be a bad thing to host an in-home Bible study.
MARINE CORPS
I was only in the USMCR for five years, but one of the wonderful things about joining the Marine Corps is that for the rest of your life, you are a "Former Marine." It's amazing how much respect former Marines are often accorded. People just assume that you're tough, even if you've got 15 extra pounds around the middle.
I haven't been in since 1989, but I will continue to display my old chevrons and "Rifle Expert" badge in a shadow box on the wall, and there will always be at least one Marine Corps t-shirt in my closet and a Marine Corps ring on my finger. And I will continue to shout, "Ooh-RAH!" when I think it appropriate!
BASEBALL
I picked up a small taste for baseball when Oldest Son was playing as a kid. Enough that I'd like to listen on the radio, and watch the playoffs, especially the World Series, but not enough to spend my entire summer sitting on my butt watching the Cardinals on cable TV. So I need better radio reception, for sure. And I need to make sure my calendar's reasonably clear when the playoffs start.
OSU FOOTBALL
Something else I'd like to keep up with via radio, but not television. I frankly don't give two hoots about football in general, but I like to keep up with the Cowboys, if for no other reason than they're not the Sooners.
Yick. I typed "Sooners." Gonna hafta burn mah keyboard.
LIVE THEATER
A small taste for live theater is something I picked up from Darling Daughter. I am pretty sure that now I want to see more of it, though not necessarily everything that's being put on everywhere in Tulsa. The student groups are not only fine, they are actually pretty good. I believe there is a site where I can keep up with Tulsa area theater, and I need to check it once a month and schedule some dates.
ANCESTRY
I know--seems like an odd thing to put in here, doesn't it?
It comes down to this: although I think of myself as an "American," it doesn't mean that I want to forget where I came from, my Scots-Irish background, part of which, according to my sister-in-law, goes back to an 11th century Scots king. So I'd like to complete a little more reading on that cultural milieu and incorporate some Scots-Irish elements into the home decor. Hopefully, my sister-in-law will eventually make her research available to the family (She hasn't yet, as far as I know. I hope I don't end up having to spend the money at Ancestry.com just to duplicate what she's already done.), I'd like to put that genealogy up on the wall, along with any coats-of-arms that may have been associated with the family throughout the centuries.
And I'd like, eventually, when funds allow, to do the same sort of thing for my wife's side of the family.
HEALTH
The more I read and the longer I continue in my current job, the more I grow convinced that most major health issues are in your own hands. Not all of them are, to be sure, but with the exception of cancer (and often not even that), most of what I see bedeviling the elderly can be prevented or mitigated with decent self-care--diet and exercise, mainly. That being the case, it seems acutely unfair to one's family and church not to at least try to take decent care of yourself. I want to be very consistent in proper cooking, diet, exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, and good sleeping habits, and I hope to have each family member follow suit.
DAILY/WEEKLY ROUTINE
Up at 5:00 AM. Take and record blood pressure and pulse. Strength and balance exercises, then RyuTe. Running three days a week. Start coffee. Bible reading and prayer time. Fix breakfast, get the kids up for it (if they aren't already up) and and we all whip out the dishes, and I get ready for work, which would include preparing our lunches. It probably also wouldn't be a bad idea, most days, to throw something in the crockpot, even if the only objective was to cook the meat for enchiladas in it.
Whilst getting ready for work, I check the e-mail accounts and the bank balance.
Then, work. Audio learning whilst driving, especially Spanish.
And then, of course, home. Most evenings, that should be something like this: In the evening--play my part in dinner prep, whether I am cooking or helping or headed for a church potluck. Reasonable house and yard maintenance, some gardening, especially with the kids, followed by a good book, then bed... Of course, this would be varied by what's going on at church, receiving guests, RyuTe classes, making a morning available for my parents once a month or so, and attending a go or chess club a couple of times a month. And I have to keep an eye on the local live theaters.
HOW TO GET THERE?
The problem, of course, is that life is currently in such a state of chaos and flux, and way-behind-ness that I can't even come close to actually doing this. What to do? Well, I think I can continue doing such parts of the morning routine as are under my control, for one thing. And I can do audio learning whilst driving, for sure. And for the next two to three months, I think I have to devote a LOT of time to getting my certifications done, because getting those done should ultimately generate enough cash to do a lot of the other things written herein. And as much home and car improvement as humanly possible before the cold weather sets in. And after that, continual work, making the starts that need to be started and moving as rapidly as possible toward implementing everything.
Frankly, I don't think what I've got here is that weird or unusual. Compared to what some people want to do in life, it's pretty tame. Rather a lot of folks would look at this and say that it's boring. There are other people involved, of course, including some that I haven't mentioned for one reason or another, certainly not because I want to leave anyone out of the discussion, such as it is, but there's the general framework.
Hey, this is me. This is how I want to live, if possible. Not to run roughshod over others, but if you want to know what I'm all about, here it is.
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