Tag: family

Patients and Patience: Know when to go home

Disclaimer: This post is not about anyone who is currently living, dead, or actually in the hospital. It’s just a story … let us keep it that way.

There comes a time in everyone’s life where they have to spend a few nights in the hospital. If you haven’t gone through the experience yet, more power to you. But for the other ninety-nine point nine percent of us, this will happen sometime in our life. Sorry. It just will.

Usually, as the folks who are not in the hospital, we have an obligation to those in the hospital. They get out of meetings. They rearrange our schedules. They do what they can to support whoever is not with us. That is what a family does, in case you didn’t know.

A hospital visit is never how you see it on TV. The family enters, the sick person is attached to a bunch of tubes, and usually, and everything is going to be ok. But that is not what I am talking about. When you are able to sit up, have food on your own, and have some reasonable expectation of when you’re getting out: then the relatives flock in and as a patient exercising patience, there is only so much you can do about it. If you find them annoying outside of the hospital, you will find them annoying amplified ten-fold when you are in a hospital bed and get leave the room. Did I go there? Yes. I just did!

When this happens, there are three things you can do to get rid of annoying hospital guests: 1) Saying you want to sleep, 2) keep looking at the clock, 3) say visiting hours are ending, or 4) keep pressing the nurse call button.

No problem! Here is how you can tell that your relative who is in the hospital wants you to go home.

Saying you want to sleep

When a person in the hospital wants to go to sleep … let them. That’s why you’re in the hospital in the first place, to get better. If you can’t get rid of your hospital guests, then start lowering your eyelids and they should get the message.

Keep Looking at the Clock

Just like in school, if you are distracted from the conversation, then your guests should realize it is time to go. They will think you are on some serious pain medication and excuse themselves out the door. You can keep telling them that you are tired. After all, you’re in the hospital! If they don’t get the hint, just fake sleep. They will leave soon enough!

Say Visiting Hours are Ending

As a patient, if you are saying that visiting hours are over, they will believe you. Most of the time, families have no understanding of your schedule and will rely on you to tell them when visiting hours are over. Am I serious? Yes. I am. But, how are you supposed to know when visiting hours are over … you just want to get out of the hospital!

Keep Pressing the Nurse Call Button

If you need some backup to get your relatives out of the room, just keep pressing the nurse call button. After a while of trying to talk to you, but continually getting interrupted, they will figure out that it is not a good time for the visit. Once again, if this doesn’t work, fake sleep …

Conclusion

Using any of the techniques above lets people know that you want to get some rest and get better. This isn’t a hotel! It is nice for the family to come out when you’re in the hospital, but as I mentioned before, if they are annoying outside of the hospital doors, it is only amplified when you’re in a hospital bed.

Snow Days …

Do you remember snow days? Think about it for a moment. Peering with sleepy eyes out of the window and looking at the whole neighborhood with snow. Waking up at the earliest moments of the morning, turning on the radio, and listening intently for the name of your school district to be announced. Once they say it, your heart fills with joy at the prospect of not going to school, meeting up with your friends, and having a great day off.

Sunday night. The weather service sent out an email saying that we are under a Winter Storm Warning. According to the weather service, a “warning” means that you should “Take action” as bad weather is heading your way (link: https://www.weather.gov/safety/winter-ww). The kids are tucked away in bed. I let them know that there was the “possibility” that they wouldn’t have school tomorrow. Any time you say to a kid that they might get a day off, the smile stretches from ear-to-ear, with the hope of a snow day. After they go upstairs, I sit in my favorite chair by the window, take a glance outside, and a few flakes start falling from the sky. That is the point when I fell asleep.

The next morning, after a few hours of sleep, I looked outside. The whole neighborhood blanketed in snow. My son was the first to shoot down the stairs.

He said, “What did they say on the radio, Dad?”

I replied, “Well, I have no idea. Let’s find out”.

As I turn the dial over to the news channel, they start mentioning the names of the various school districts in alphabetical order.

My daughter runs down the stairs, “It’s a snow day!”

I reply, “Not until we get the official word”.

The radio announcer continues to call out school districts. Then, the most miraculous thing happened … our district was closed for the day! The kids jumped up and down in repeated excitement or getting off a sugar rush.

By the time they settled down a minute and started to run back upstairs, I said, “This is 2022. There are no snow days anymore because the county puts all of their homework on the portal acess by Chromebooks. Get dressed because it is school time!”

Mortified, they look at each other, then look at me. They were not happy. It is like explaining to your kids that there is no Santa Claus. The joy and glee in their voices soon turned to a low monotone as they asked the question, “What do you mean there are no more snow days?”

Bottom line: Technology is a double-edged sword. In the first place, it can stream the latest movie, find you the best deal, get conversation over email, or give you the news in an instant. On the downside, because information is at your fingertips … could get rid of snowdays.

Fueling the Drive Ahead

First, Happy New Year!

Many of us have cleaned up after New Year’s parties, taking down Christmas lights, and settling into the fact that a change has set resolutions for the rest of the year. Resolutions? Yes! The (usually) empty promises we set at the beginning of the year, stating that things will be different, but eventually, the fuel runs out, life gets in the way, and lofty ambitions become overcome by events.

How can we take the vision of what we want to accomplish, make those goals manageable, and execute them? How can we fuel these goals and deliver on those resolutions?

That’s the problem, right? The fuel of how to drive the dreams into reality. How do we not get ‘burned out’ by pushing the goals too hard, too fast, that they do not make meaningful change?

Don’t drive the dream, it should be organic

If you have to commit so many resources to the change, then ‘burnout’ will occur. Change is organic so it can fit into the other priorities of your life. If you drive the dream too fast, you will run out of fuel for everything else.

Establish reasonable steps to accomplish your goals

Break down a task into reasonable steps and be realistic about how long it takes to accomplish them.

Stay on target

Nothing is achieved overnight. It takes time to integrate changes into your life. If your end date is too soon, changes don’t take hold, and you’ll wind up starting again.

Change is hard. That’s why we develop resolutions in the first place. Remember that as you make the change it’s not easy. It takes time and patience to make it work.

All of us have something in our lives which we want to change. But, moving forward,.know where you are with the issue, know where you are going, and chart a good course to get there. Driving the solution is what it’s about and making sure you are properly resourced to take care of the work ahead.

Anyway, thank you for your time!

Dear 2022

Dear 2022,

I know that it’s only been one day since you started, but I wanted to lay down a few expectations that I am looking for …

1) Get rid of COVID-19, I don’t care which variant that it is, Delta, Omnicron, Zeta, whatever … Enough is enough! Let’s get back to a normal life where I don’t have to wear a mask, get my own food from a restaurant, and go to the movies. Seriously, enough is enough!

2) There is no number two! Just take care of #1 and everything else will work out.

Thanks!

What I Learned Through Telecommuting

After being stuck in your house for a year, typing on the keyboard, double-checking emojis before clicking “send”: telecommuting gets old!

The best way to describe telecommuting is watching “The Shinning”, a movie about a guy who becomes a caretaker of a haunted hotel over the winter and brings his family with him.

At the beginning of the movie, things are great. He gets some writing done, the family is adjusting, and life is wonderful. But, the longer he is at the hotel, the more reality slips away. Starts typing phrases into the typewriter over and over again. No contact with others except his family. Eventually, the whole thing goes south, and loses his shit with an ax through a garden labyrinth, looking for his son, “HEEEERRREEEE’SSSS JJJOOOHHHNNNYYYY !!!!!”

Working at home for the last year is exactly (well not exactly … my family is alive and I am not running around with an ax). In the beginning, I was focused on the benefits of telecommuting: less gas, and less wear on the car. Everyone worked over Teams, Zoom, Meet, or <insert meeting tool here> and accomplished the work. I got the see the family more as they went to virtual school. My wife liked the fact that I cooked dinner by the time she came home. The laundry was clean. The dog didn’t see the inside of a crate for a year. Life is good.

Then, a few months in, you get tired of the virtual water cooler and miss .. well … the real water cooler to talk around. With the kids at online school, and my load of housework increasing, I felt like I was doing three jobs at the same time. I couldn’t focus my full attention on any one of them. After a while, becoming distracted was a way of life, putting in the time at work and (since there was no more commuting) my days became longer.

The bottom line is the fact that telecommuting is great in the beginning. Working in your house, getting things done, not driving everywhere, is awesome. But after a while, it would be nice to walk into a store without a mask, or worry every time you go food shopping that you might pick up “the virus”. Enough is enough. Now is the time we have to band together, get the shot, leave the labyrinth, and return life back to normal.

New Year’s Resolutions? No! Retrospectives are more fun!

As we end this year of 2019, many of us sit by the fire (cue the snow falling outside of the window) and we set lofty goals or expectations for the New Year ahead. These are commonly called resolutions. Not that we are actually going to get them done, but we hope to have the “resolve” to talk about them a week into the new year.

In my family, the New Year’s resolutions are offset by another wonderful ceremony, called the retrospective: or trying to figure out why things broke down and things did not get done. Resolutions are focused on abstract dreams which lack a concrete plan to get done, such as losing weight or going to the gym.

A retrospective looks at why you, with the limited resources available, simply couldn’t get things done. Is it laziness? Is it apathy? Did a TV show grace the screen that you couldn’t pull away from? With me, it’s probably all three answers and sound like this:

Dear Self,

Your performance last year is best described as poor if not downright lazy. First, you’re still fat. If you doubt what I am saying, then check a mirror. Look at the gelatin figure standing back at you. Didn’t you say that last year was going to be different? Well, it wasn’t. Try again.

This year one of your goals was to spend more time with friends. Just because you use social media doesn’t count as spending time with friends. Let me explain. No one cares what you had for dinner last night so please stop posting those photos. People do not care about witty statements shoved into 160 characters. Anyone can write an email, but when was the last time you actually put some actual effort into a friendship by sending a card or writing a letter. Seriously, put some effort into your friendships, before all your friends forget your name.

There are so many things I can pack into this retrospective, but chose not to, so I can get this wrapped up by the end of the year.

Thanks,

Self

Bottom line: you can’t move forward until you know where you have been. Does it help in crafting new resolutions? Sure. Knowing why you didn’t succeed last time will allow you to be realistic with your goals and resource them properly, ensuring that your goals can be completed in the new year.

Sometimes, You’re Not Funny!

There are times, despite your best intentions, that you are not funny. Sorry. I don’t mean you. You are funny. I mean the thousands of people who are not you. You’re great. Don’t worry.

Humor is a hard thing to do. It is hard to have a balance between providing witty insight, self-deprecating parable, and a dash of intellect. It is a skill that you don’t pick up on the streets of your hometown. There is a rhythm to it, a certain timing of when to drop the punch line and get the right reaction. The right reaction is also dependent on the person receiving the joke and thinking it is funny.

At the end of the day, we own our successes as well as our failures. Also, just because we might fail from time to time doesn’t mean that we don’t try again. All of us are artists whose one wish is to be appreciated in our own time. Sometimes things work and other times they don’t. But, just because you have had a failure doesn’t mean that you are a failure. You remember what went wrong, learn the lessons that are worth learning, and move forward. If you aren’t funny, that’s OK. I’m sure you’re good at something analytical, so please, keep doing that.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns – please let me know.

Did you clean your room?

I ask my son, “Did you clean your room?”

He sits in the living room and replies, “Yes. I put things away.”

So, I go upstairs to his room to check it out.

The door is open, the bed is made and the floor is clean.

I walk into his room, open the closet door and a large pile of clothes attacks me.

My son walks upstairs and sees the clothes escape the confines of the closet.

I say, “I thought your room was clean!”

“No. I said I put things away!”, he replies, “Thanks, Dad! Now I have to clean up all over again!”

Bottom line: when your son says things are put away, it doesn’t mean they are clean, so don’t open closet doors, unless you want to know the truth!

The Lost Art of Manners

Note: The family that I talk about in this blog is built through constant engineering, a pint of soda, and the ability to write in sentences without diagramming them.

Manners, courtesy, respect, and just generally being nice to people is one of those basic building blocks you teach your kids from day one. It is one of those unwritten requirements that kids pick up through examples at school, through TV, church, online and at home. Having good parents who are respectful to each other, their kids and the outside world sets the tone of how they will grow to be outstanding people. This is not by accident. This is something that is learned through the family structure, environment, and simply being a human who will one day work with other humans (and might get married to another human one day).

This is why, when I see examples of disrespectful kids back talking parents, not holding the door open for elders, or simply berating their friends: I turn to my kids and say, “You see how they behaved. Never do that!”

When they were younger, this was easier to explain. Now that they’re teens, this conversation is even harder because they know everything and as an adult, I know nothing! That’s what we are talking about on the blog.

It’s Saturday night. All of us are at home and it’s getting to be dinner time. I poll the kids, asking them what kind of food they wanted before I ordered. Oh, let me backtrack a minute. On Saturday, the meal is not planned, we try not to eat out, but order something at home. Usually, before the rise of GrubHub, UberEats, and other food delivery services: we order from the restaurant and they deliver it to our house. So, this means pizza or Chinese food.

After my informal survey, the consensus was pizza. I made the call, put in the order, quoted a forty minute wait time, and hung up the phone. My family likes pizza. Yes, I know that a lot of families like pizza. It’s a communal food. When the immediate family comes over (which includes my four folks, but including the grandparents on both sides of the family), we usually go to a pizza place and talk, eat, have a beer (maybe two) an relax.  Having pizza with our family is also a ritual, called upon for special events an gatherings, and everyone knows when pizza is ordered that we eat it together, as a family, in the dining room. Phones (and other electronics) are banned and put on vibrate. We actually try to talk to each other as humans, not trying to interrogate anyone, but we try to talk to one another. With that being said, forty minutes later, the pizza arrives.

AfterI makes the exchange, give the money, get the pizza and I get the kids through the traditional call of the pizza, “Hey kids! The pizza is here!”.

With a rumbling of feet reminiscent of a cattle stampede, the kids run down the stairs, take a plate from the cabinet, go to the kitchen, and grab a slice of pizza.

My daughter tries to take the pizza upstairs and I say, “Hey daughter. We are eating pizza in the dining room.”

My daughter responds, “Too bad. I’m going upstairs.” and she proceeds to continue the journey up the stairs.

My first reaction, WTF! Why is she heading upstairs? She knows that Saturday night is pizza night and family night! With all of the running around we do in a week, this is the one night we get to see if everything is OK.

I run upstairs and knock on the door.

My daughter responds by saying, “Yeah.”

I reply, “Is everything is ok?”

“Yeah.”

You just ran up here so quick I wanted to know if there was anything wrong?”

“Nope.”

“Do you know what today is?”

“Friday.”

“No. It’s family dinner night.”

“But, I have homework.”

“On a Friday night? Really?”

“Maybe I just want to be by myself tonight. Is that OK?”

I thought for a minute. It’s not the fact that she wants to be by herself, it’s that tonight is one of the few nights of the week in which all of us get together as a family to swap stories, talk about what’s going on, an even try to talk about problems. It only works when all of us get together. She knows that. I know that. That’s why I am surprised that she ran to her room with dinner.

I reply, “Not really.”

“Why?”

“You know that tonight is family dinner night.”

“So”

“What do you mean so?”

“I mean … who cares that it is family dinner night.”

“What?”

“I mean, I go to school all week. On Friday, I really want some time to myself and not hang out with the family.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

I say, “Daughter. Family dinner night is a time for all of us to get together, talk about our problems, and try to be a family.”

“So.”

“Do you live here?”

“What?”

“One of the rules of the house is that we get together for family dinner night.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously. Time to go downstairs.”

My daughter rushes past me with her dinner plate to rejoin the family for dinner.

Bottom line: The rule of the house is to spend time with your family, don’t be rude and go upstairs. As kids (or even teens) you don’t know how short time really is because one day you’ll have a life of your own and only visit your parents when you need to do your laundry.

That’s all for the blog! Thank you for reading! If you have any questions, please let me know.