Tradeoffs

KombuchaI like the weird taste of kom­bucha. It’s a fer­mented tea bev­er­age (with lit­tle or no alco­hol). There are many touted health ben­e­fits, such as reawak­en­ing your mind and repur­pos­ing your life (at least accord­ing to the brand I tried most recently). I don’t believe that any more than I believe the tooth fairy will visit me again next week.

But I like the taste. It’s a refresh­ing break from the cof­fees I love so dearly and so many sweet drinks.

The prob­lem is that I nor­mally get a headache after I drink some. But the unusual taste expe­ri­ence is worth the pain.

What expe­ri­ence do you choose to do that causes you pain — but you do it anyway?

Do it today

Blossoms by the side of the roadAbout a week ago, Den­ver expe­ri­enced some of the most amaz­ing flow­er­ing spring-ness that I’ve ever seen. But it quickly started dis­ap­pear­ing. A major wind storm blew many of the blos­soms to the ground. Then a quick hail­storm fin­ished off more of the blooms.

I was able to get out and enjoy the spring beauty by tak­ing a bicy­cle ride one day. I would have regret­ted miss­ing that short win­dow of opportunity.

If you have kids, they won’t be with you for more than maybe 18 years. If you’re mar­ried, your beloved may not be with you for­ever. If you have a dog, she may not be at your side ten years from now. I don’t say these things to be mourn­ful — but rather to remind you — and me — to make time to spend time with the ones we love today.

Time flies

Last Fri­day evening was a sig­nif­i­cant occa­sion for our fam­ily. Our old­est son Jay, a senior, was voted “Mr. Eagle” at a big high school event. He beat 11 other con­tes­tants. (His class has roughly 500 kids.)

It was thrilling to hear them announce the new Mr. Eagle, in a room of more than 700 scream­ing kids. Well, a few were adults, though I’m not sure how many of those were scream­ing. Heather and I screamed along with the rest.

Look­ing back, I remem­bered one of the events that shaped who Jay is today. We moved to Kenya, Africa in 2005, for a two year work assign­ment. Shortly after we arrived, Heather enrolled both Jay and Ben in Ligi Ndogo (“small league”) — a soc­cer club for boys. They were the only white kids in the whole league. They learned to relate to kids of another cul­ture and to speak a lit­tle Swahili. They didn’t want to go every Sat­ur­day, but we basi­cally forced them to take part. “Eat your spinach, it’s good for you!”

The Mr. Eagle evening included answer­ing ques­tions that the con­tes­tants were not pre­pared for. Jay’s ques­tion: “What one thing would you do dif­fer­ently, if you could live your life over?” He paused and said he wished he had been able to spend more time in Africa.

We are so small

We are so smallIt’s always good to get perspective.

Last week, we went to Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park. It’s a dra­matic place — huge sand dunes are spread at the base of a larger chain of moun­tain peaks.

Thank­fully, the weather was per­fect. The wind was not blow­ing very much. The tem­per­a­ture was cool — our bare feet did not burn.

It’s always good to remem­ber just how small we are in the scope of things.

(That’s Heather in the mid­dle. Jay, Ben and Rachel are in the distance.)

Save your kids the effort

Crap at My Parents' HouseI love Urban Out­fit­ters. My sis­ter intro­duced me to the store when she lived in Chicago. They have a col­lec­tion of eclec­tic clothes and weird stuff that I occa­sion­ally spend money on.

So this book on their shelves caught my eye. My wife Heather spent the bet­ter part of six months deal­ing with this very issue at her par­ents’ house. They were pretty much too old to deal with get­ting rid of a house full of stuff before they moved into a much smaller home, so that joy fell to Heather. I helped some, but she did the vast major­ity of fill­ing the shelves at the local char­ity shop.

My dad was a huge col­lec­tor. After he died, it took my mom more than six years to clear out all the stuff that he col­lected, before she was able to move into a 1-bedroom apart­ment. (She didn’t want to buy a condo, as she felt like it would be a bur­den on her kids to have to sell the place!)

So I guess my only point is that if you don’t buy that junky thing that catches your eye, your kids won’t have to give it away later.

Foot­notes:

1. Spe­cial thanks to my friend James, who inspired this post.

2. Here are some related posts I wrote: Not going to buy it, Let it goRecap­tur­ing that lost child­hood and That col­lec­tor gene.

3. I did not buy the book. And I was amused to see that as of this writ­ing, it was sell­ing for just $1.48, used. Appar­ently sev­eral peo­ple decided they didn’t want their kids to have to give it away, much later.

Love you

Drawing of a heartHey read­ers, I wanted to say that I love you.

Thanks for faith­fully com­ing back and read­ing my stuff.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Sadness in the life of toothpaste

used-up toothpasteIf you haven’t been to to my “cut­ting floor” blog, head on over: Paul Merrill’s Tum­blr.

Save your skin this winter

SoapI used to have dry skin all win­ter long. It’s dry in Col­orado and com­bined with the cold, my skin becomes really dry.

Soap makes a huge dif­fer­ence. As soon as the tem­per­a­ture dips down to freez­ing out­side, I switch to fancy soap.

This is not a com­mer­cial. I won’t tell you what kind of soap to use (like I did before), because sev­eral kinds will work fine. Just exper­i­ment. Spend a lot more than you do on your cur­rent stan­dard soap.

Your skin will say thank you!

Sadly, my hands still get dry. Lotion fixes this, but then it takes sev­eral min­utes for the greasi­ness to die down.

The chaos story

Mexican blanketWhen I was young, an obser­vant teacher iden­ti­fied me as a kid who should take a vocab­u­lary test for stu­dents with big­ger than aver­age vocabularies.

To this day, hun­dreds of years later, I remem­ber one wrong answer. The word was “chaos.” In my head, I read it as: “chay-ohss.” Not: “kay-oss.” One of the choices was “a Mex­i­can blan­ket.” I picked that def­i­n­i­tion. Span­ish was not part of my world yet, so “chay-ohss” sounded like a Mex­i­can blanket.

Photo cour­tesy of Gwilmore on Flikr.

Friends

The spectrum of friendsFriends fall into a spec­trum. Some peo­ple we just love — and oth­ers — well, not so much.

Of course you know that. But some­times there is guilt involved. If some­one falls into the not so much end of the spec­trum, we often feel guilty — that we should like them more.

Relax.

Just let peo­ple fall nat­u­rally where they fit into your spec­trum. But give your­self free­dom to real­ize that your feel­ings toward them may change over time. Or not.