Of Kids, Dogs and Plants

I think this way of thinking comes from being a parent since 1974(1973 if you include wife's pregnancy). So now my kids are 35, 20, and 13, with two stepkids 36 and 38 and two god daughters that we helped or are helping through college 24 and 29.

So, I guess the basic premise is that you don't give up on anyone or anything that is in your sphere of influence. It sort of starts with your girlfriend(if you are like me) and then your wife and child, and then their friends, and then all your pets, and then if you have a house and yard the pets, the trees, the plants etc. Until as you age all of life in the world is your concern. You do what you can to help everyone that it is practical to help. A person like this we call a real human being.

The dynamic that I didn't really fully understand much in my early 20s was that everyone and everything takes care of each other. I finally got this fully in my 30s and started experiencing fully "What goes around comes around". I felt like I was giving without getting very much in my 20s but by my 30s I started to realize all my sacrifices were beginning to pay off. However, my sacrifices were not financial to my point of view. It simply meant that I took care of living beings around me, family, friends, strangers in distress that were safe enough to help etc.

But doing this I started to notice began paying off for me starting around my early 30s. From 32 to 37 is one of my favorite period of my life. I had health, a family, new wife, son from first wife, and two step kids. And then we bought 2 1/2 acres on Mt. Shasta and sort of lived a Wilderness family experience for a few years while home schooling our kids and living in an A-Frame I build that could shed the up to 7 feet of snow that fell at one time in that area of the mountain. I think living that wilderness family experience for 5 years gave me the strength to put up with the rest of my life afterwards and before. Don't underestimate the life giving and health giving aspects of actually "Living your Dreams" even if those dreams only last 5 years. So at the end of all this when we spent 4 months in India and Nepal and two weeks in Thailand I had lived all my dreams and didn't know what to do with myself then other than just knuckle down and raise my kids which were either teenagers or almost by then in 1986. So we moved to the California Coast and bought a business and taught all our kids the business so they would know how the business world works too. In these days of "no jobs" including your kids in your business might be the best thing you ever do for them. If they can have their own business when there are no jobs they have a livelihood. Think about it.

So, today I went out to mow down the wild grasses in the back yard. I sort of like the wilderness back yard that harkens to the original lay of the land. And so in the winter I can watch at least my backyard look more like the surrounding forests and meadows near the ocean. We had some really bad storms this year and lost power for around a week total so far this year. However, I have a small motor home that has a built in Onan generator that I can plug my refrigerator into. I find it can run the refrigerator, my 52 inch wide screen tv, my cable DVR, my computers and modem and router and printer and a few electric lights even if there is no power coming into the house from the street. It saves us around 400 to 500 dollars in perished food every time this happens. just remember you have to completely separate all the things coming from the generator from household current because if you don't it could kill not only your generator but all your appliances. The way I accomplish this is to simply run a 100 foot electrical extension cord through my garage up into my kitchen. Then I unplug my refrigerator and plug it into a surge protector strip attached to the 100 foot cord that is attached to my motor home Onan generator. Then I plug in other shorter cords to my TV, DVR, Cable modem and router, lights etc. Since my Onan runs off the large gas tank in my motor home that also runs the engine I could theoretically run the generator for many days without running out of gas if I have a full tank in my motor home to begin with. So, I keep my gas tank filled in my motor home especially during the winter because of this and because there is less moisture condensation in a large gas tank during the winter if you keep it full to the brim.

So, even though I have digressed, taking care of people you find in order to do that you have to take care of yourself too. This has always been good for me for I have always have had a tendency not to care about whether I lived or died all my life. So this also has kept me alive as well. I think the genetic predisposition to perceive oneself as a soldier and as expendable has been bred in most men. Men that aren't that way mostly have been genetically eliminated from the gene pool over thousands of years one way or the other. So, I think that quality of being willing to die for a good cause protects civilization in every way even though as an intelligent person I consider being this way as just crazy and "terminal macho" as in "Being so full of it you wind up dying".

So, it is important to give oneself reasons to stay alive like getting married and having kids just so you don't just accidentally off yourself during your world adventures. This can help a lot.

What actually got me to write this article was that I began thinking this morning as I used the weed eater to clear the path through my backyard to the other side of my house. Since my house is L shaped (excluding the garage) there are actually two backyards one on either side of the top of the L, a large one to the right of the L and a smaller one to the left. To the right of the L we have a Hot tub (Spa) and a 17 foot in diameter trampoline for my 13 year old daughter(even though I use it too). However, she likes to run in circles on the trampoline as low impact excercise while listening to her Ipod. Sometimes she will run for 40 minutes or more and be totally blissed out by this experience. She has a cast iron stomach like her Mom who was a heavy weather sailor with her parents growing up in Southern California. She liked nothing better than to sail in a storm.

However, since I started to get seasick while sailing in Southern California when I was around 34 I prefer not to sail anymore because I almost always get sick and have to throw up at least once. However, often after I do an Elvis throw up(going to the leeward side of the boat so I don't hit anyone with it). Sometimes I'm so good at it that no one even notices I just threw up.

So, anyway the last time I had this experience it was to put my mother's ashes next to where John Denver's plane crashed into the ocean(she loved John Denver) when we rented a large sailboat for this purpose and most of the family joined us for this event.

(As you can see I'm having a terrible time staying on track and task this morning. Maybe it's because it is Valentine's day and the energy is sort of spaced out from that all over). Anyway, Maybe I'll try later. Have a good day! Happy Valentine's Day!