P Stands For....

My three year old daughter has been learning her letters and their sounds. Additionally, she's grasped the concept of rhyming. She's starting to figure out by the sound what the first letter of a word is. And as every parent will tell you, 'my child is really smart'. In fact, listening to the helicopter mom's at school - 85% of all children are above average.

The other night I decided that to save some time, I would put her in the shower with me rather than giving her a bath of her own. So you know what's coming - she points and says, "what's that?" "It's a penis." "What does penis start with?" I pause. Quick-quick-quick. So what do I say? "Um.....usually a dinner and a movie."


The next day my son is on the laptop looking up planets. "Guess which planet I'm looking at now? Venus!" My 3 year old responds, "I know what rhymes with venus!!!"

Later, she picks up my son's Star Wars light saber and holds it between her legs. "Look, I have a penis!!!"

Oh, boy!

It's That Simple

Mr. Eludius has been stressing at work at lot lately. Not only has the workload increased significantly, which normally in a bad economy would be a good thing, but I've also been put in charge of a project run under the Lean Agile methodology, which I am not that familiar.

Things here at American Amalgamated Corrugated Conglomerates of America are tight, just like everywhere else. In fact, there's been a lot of talk of laying off some amalgamaters, some corrugaters, and even some conglomerators. Yes, it's that bad.

My one project to work on the dehumidifier or Corrugator #2 was to last throughout the year. I'm now being told that it has to be done by May. Additionally, the budget for the amalgamating department was cut by $1 million last week. No one is supposed to know about it, but I heard it from everyone.

With these uncertain economic times, you'd think that everyone would be buckling down trying to stay busy. That is not always the case. I still see engineers surfing the Internet, spending lots of time on Corrugatorbook.com, that social networking website for cardboard box engineers.

Anyway, I had this big 2 hour meeting yesterday that was to gather steps needed to complete each step of this new dehumidifying process. I gathered about 10 analysts, developers, and project leads to go through every step of the process.

I was very nervous about this meeting because I don't know many of them and I am now reporting to a new supervisor, one which I have little or no rapport. On Wednesday my wife asked me what was wrong. She said I looked anxious and worried. I said that I was anxious about the meeting because I felt like I had to give a good impression and I was not very comfortable with the material. You see - I normally work with humidifiers, not dehumidifiers. This totally threw me off of my game. After telling her this, my 9-year old daughters says, "Papa, if you can coach a soccer game you can coach a meeting."

How profound is that? Let's keep everything in perspective. I knew little about soccer, didn't know the players, coaches, and parents, yet I was able to bring them all together, coach the soccer games, and have a good time.

So the lesson from the 4th grader is - "Don't perceive life as being that complicated. Put it into simpler terms and it will be okay." I thought about this throughout the day leading up to the meeting, thought about it during the meeting, and I got through it just fine. I was even told by the project lead that I did a really good job.

When I got home I thanked my daughter for making my meeting so much easier.

That Cold?

On Sunday you may recall that it was really windy and really cold. We have a pond just beyond our property and my 6 year-old son asked if we could go over and see if the pond was frozen. So we did.

The pond was about half-frozen. We tossed some sticks onto the ice and watched them slide across to the other side. That' was pretty cool.

We also have a beaver in the pond. And lately he's become a menace. He took down a 30 foot tree this week and there's evidence that he's working on 5 other trees. I think he may "accidentally" disappear before the winter is over.

Anyway, on our way back into the house we got caught in one of those really powerful wind gusts. It was probably a 40 mph gust of brisk, skin-stinging cold air. The prompted my son to say, "It's like a cold tornado out here!"

A Cold Tornado. Awesome. That's now my favorite weather term.

Mock Election

I meant to post this earlier in the week but you know how time gets away from you.

On Monday my 6 year old son came home from school and said that they had an election at school. My BIL asked who he voted for. My son replied "John McCain". Sensing parental influence in his answer, my BIL asked for the reason he voted for John McCain. Proudly my son boasted, "Because Barack Obama wants to raise taxes." Needless to say, BIL was a bit stunned, though admiring of his answer.

Later that night I asked my daughter for whom she would have voted had she not missed school for illness. She paused, then said she didn't know. I asked why. "Because Barack Obama wants to raise taxes and John McCain wants to continue the war in Iraq."

How politically astute for a 9 year old? This girl is really thinking for herself. I am very proud of her.

Finally, I asked my 15 month old daughter who she voted for. She said, "Deedle-deedle-deedle-Bah!" I think this means Obama, because he is a deedle-deedle. We'll have to work on her a bit.