Somewhere there's an editor who isn't doing his job. (click to enlarge)What happened to Pangea.
Something happened this morning which reminded me of when the boys were young. They got their dad’s lack of physical coordination so it was pretty common for one of them to trip over a shadow on the sidewalk. Our standard response was a blithe, “Pick ‘em up, put ‘em down.” I don’t know where that came from, but it was so standard that earlier today I started the phrase and Pam immediately finished it and laughed.
I think it was our way of doing a couple of things. First, it diminished the chances for excessive drama over a simple stumble and fall. Not that we weren’t concerned or compassionate. There was that time the bus ran over Steve and we asked him if he really was OK. But anyone with the name MacDonald had better get used to a certain amount of self-inflicted pain and suffering. “Pick ‘em up, put ‘em down” said, “You’re not a victim of some cosmic injustice, you’re the victim of your own clumsiness. Get used to it. No drama.”
It also communicated - at least I hope it did - that we’re not going to take ourselves too seriously. We’ll poke fun at each other and at ourselves. (They’ve heard and hear plenty of that, too.) One of the things I really like about our family now that we’re all adults is that we can poke fun at each other and laugh about it easily. Hey, we each provide plenty of raw material. We’re MacDonalds. The necessary flip side is that we demonstrate our love and loyalty to each other on a regular basis. That’s what gives us the freedom to mock each other and have great fun in the process. We know it’s no part of the reality.
Thinking about “Pick ‘em up, put ‘em down” and the weight we give life’s stuff has me working on a hypothesis I’m tentatively calling the Relative Assigned Weight Scale, or RAWS. It goes something like this:
There is a fixed amount of weight we can assign to all elements of our lives. Let’s say there’s 100 units of weight, assignable in fractions of a unit. I decide, consciously or unconsciously, how much importance I’m going to give any element, but whatever I assign to it effectively reduces the amount I can give to everything else.
As much as I like cars they don’t weigh much in my life. I’ve had some really, really cool cars, but when it came time to let them go I didn’t have trouble doing so. Light weight. Al weighed more than any of the cars we’ve had, including the ’59 Olds. Lately I’ve been thinking about how much I miss The Abyss, but houses don’t weigh much, either. When it’s time to move it’s time to move.
Things that weigh a lot in my life:
Do any animals now have a hensile tail?
The rose bed is officially done. The perimeter is surrounded by chicken wire to keep the rabbits out and the watering system is in and working. It’s actually kinda cool. They make some neat stuff for automatic watering systems.
My neighbor says some things to his wife that strike me as unkind, and then he tells me what he said. Why? Is it because he thinks I’ll find his comments clever?
On Top Gear last night (that’s when we watched it from a show recorded earlier in the day) they drove - very aggressively - a Pagani Zonda. I’d never even heard of it. The whole body and most of the interior is made out of carbon fiber. 739 horsepower. They make 17-19 per year and it costs $1.2 million...per car.
Now that’s heavy!
I think it was our way of doing a couple of things. First, it diminished the chances for excessive drama over a simple stumble and fall. Not that we weren’t concerned or compassionate. There was that time the bus ran over Steve and we asked him if he really was OK. But anyone with the name MacDonald had better get used to a certain amount of self-inflicted pain and suffering. “Pick ‘em up, put ‘em down” said, “You’re not a victim of some cosmic injustice, you’re the victim of your own clumsiness. Get used to it. No drama.”
It also communicated - at least I hope it did - that we’re not going to take ourselves too seriously. We’ll poke fun at each other and at ourselves. (They’ve heard and hear plenty of that, too.) One of the things I really like about our family now that we’re all adults is that we can poke fun at each other and laugh about it easily. Hey, we each provide plenty of raw material. We’re MacDonalds. The necessary flip side is that we demonstrate our love and loyalty to each other on a regular basis. That’s what gives us the freedom to mock each other and have great fun in the process. We know it’s no part of the reality.
Thinking about “Pick ‘em up, put ‘em down” and the weight we give life’s stuff has me working on a hypothesis I’m tentatively calling the Relative Assigned Weight Scale, or RAWS. It goes something like this:
There is a fixed amount of weight we can assign to all elements of our lives. Let’s say there’s 100 units of weight, assignable in fractions of a unit. I decide, consciously or unconsciously, how much importance I’m going to give any element, but whatever I assign to it effectively reduces the amount I can give to everything else.
As much as I like cars they don’t weigh much in my life. I’ve had some really, really cool cars, but when it came time to let them go I didn’t have trouble doing so. Light weight. Al weighed more than any of the cars we’ve had, including the ’59 Olds. Lately I’ve been thinking about how much I miss The Abyss, but houses don’t weigh much, either. When it’s time to move it’s time to move.
Things that weigh a lot in my life:
- Being active
- Learning more about anything
- Children
- Family!
- God. He weighs the most. I hope if anything ever ended up on the other side of the scale God would outweigh it easily. It’s a sign of his grace and goodness that rarely happens.
Do any animals now have a hensile tail?
The rose bed is officially done. The perimeter is surrounded by chicken wire to keep the rabbits out and the watering system is in and working. It’s actually kinda cool. They make some neat stuff for automatic watering systems.
My neighbor says some things to his wife that strike me as unkind, and then he tells me what he said. Why? Is it because he thinks I’ll find his comments clever?
On Top Gear last night (that’s when we watched it from a show recorded earlier in the day) they drove - very aggressively - a Pagani Zonda. I’d never even heard of it. The whole body and most of the interior is made out of carbon fiber. 739 horsepower. They make 17-19 per year and it costs $1.2 million...per car.
Now that’s heavy!
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