Check yourself before you wreck yourself

An article by Don Quixote

Kara and I had the joy of attending a “Family Connections: A new parenting partnership” class yesterday.

I love it when someone passes out 36 pages of handouts, and then for the next 4 hours proceeds to read them all to me. A $100 well spent. Aside from Kara doodling for about 3 hours, we did manage to squeeze in a game of “dots” and tic-tac-toe while we sat there. I guess it was kinda nice to know that she was as bored as I was.

Don’t take my lackadaisical attitude about this class as a suggestion that I think it’s worthless. I don’t. However, it just was worthless in my case. However, I know the world is filled with people who lack common sense and need 4 hours of instruction on how not to argue in front of your kids, a reminder not to call your ex-wife a slutty wench, your ex-husband who’s shacking up ‘with that whore’ the worst father in the world who doesn’t even love his own kids, and a thousand other things.

The other part of all of this is Kara and I have had a few years to work on these things. We’ve had the chance to learn how to be respectful towards one another, to better express our feelings without making them personal (though we still have our moments), and to always put first in our minds that in the end Dafyd & Jace are all that matter. We are beyond the anger, the depression, and the other stages of grief that we spent part of the morning discussing. It was nice to know though that she and I were on the same page as far as parenting the boys, because we will always be their parents until the day we die. So I guess it wasn’t a total waste, just 99%.

The other good thing was that they used a cheesy quote from my ol’ buddy Chuck Swindoll:

“Attitude

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

Attitude, to me, is more important than facts.
It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.
It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.
It will make or break a company…a church…a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.

We cannot change the inevitable.

The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…
I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.”

I’ve always said it this way, “The only thing in life you can control is the way you react… well, that is unless they use one of those little hammers and whack your knee with it, because WHAMO, you’re leg will shoot right out and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

You can quote me on that.

After I got back from the fun filled class, Michelle and I decided to talk a walk around the neighborhood. I’ve been working on loosing weight (who isn’t?), and this seems like a good way to start. Michelle’s been really encouraging and even agreed to walk with me (no man should have to walk alone).

In other news, Michelle and I watched Hidalgo yesterday. She liked it a lot, I liked it okay. It’s not that I don’t like true stories, and it’s not that this one was a bad one, I was more bothered by the *quality* of the film more than anything. It seemed like every scene was shot on a blue screen or a matt painting, it just all felt fake to me. I was driving Michelle nuts because I pointed it on more than one occasion. Finally I got the hint that I needed to keep my blue screening opinions to myself.

Other than calling it an early night, that was my Saturday.