I Fought The Lawn

So yesterday, my boss forwarded me an email that was sent to him by a guy I’ve worked in conjunction with for six years without incident. This fellow didn’t think I was doing my job properly when it came to the area he’s involved with, and made all kinds of unfair statements directly to my superior about his concerns. What bothers me most – even more than the tone of the email, and the way the ‘facts’ aren’t actually true – is that he elected to go to my boss without speaking to me first. If he had come to me and not recieved the answers he wanted, then I’d understand.. but I was decidedly not given that option. It’s amazing how people will act when they’re frustrated, and it’s a shame that I’ll never have another pleasant conversation with him again.

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Liam and Hailey have entered a new school. Now that we’ve moved to Pickering and the shcool year has started, we’ve decided to send them to the local Catholic school rather than keep them in the same school in Toronto. Both seem to have adjusted well, but I’m sad to report that Liam has already gotten a detention. I don’t know what it is about that kid, but he just doesn’t care to listen sometimes. I’m reading Children: The Challenge to try to get some ideas on how to point him in the direction he needs to go. I’m trying to temper the discipline by not being overbearing about it, but I don’t know how well I’m succeeding. I want to get him towards a place where he pays attention and completes the tasks put before him, but the last thing I want is for him to grow up and not want much to do with me, the way I don’t want much to do with my mother anymore. It’s a tough road, parenting, and I haven’t much experience.

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My mother and I are not currently speaking. This happens from time to time, when she says something hurtful and I leave her alone awhile. My mother is a very intelligent, well-mannered and somewhat sophisticated woman, and because of what she measures success with, I have not grown into someone she can be especially proud of. At the core of it all, my mother believes I am a lazy, overweight man who never follows through on things he starts and who has never lived up to his potential. She may well be right; I don’t really know. If she is, then my own value system of measurement – having a wonderful wife, some great kids, and being happy in your life – is to blame. I suppose that’s the crux of it all: our value systems are different, my mother and I, and as my father is no longer around to keep the balance of parenthood I became used to growing up [he died in 2001], my mother as a single entity has become someone I have great difficulty dealing with. I wish I could say that I don’t care enough anymore to simply brush her off for good, because I do, and it hurts very deeply that she doesn’t really like me much. I honestly do not know how to fix the rift that’s between us, and strongly doubt that it will ever mend.

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I haven’t been posting here for awhile because I’ve been working on my new blog, God Only Loves Fools. I created G.O.L.F. to chronicle my few successes and many failures as a golfer, and to keep track of the lineage of the Valleywoods Cup – a trophy my foursome has created to up the competition. It’s linked to the right, as is What Do You Think?, a blog created by my buddy Kevin. Also on the blog front, Tracy has renamed her blog from The Piano Has Been Drinking to Cogito Eggo Sum, so be sure to click that – as well as Forclock, her blog about World of Warcraft.