"Best Day Ever!"

Last night was “movie night” in our household. I have started to introduce the children to “old” movies (old to them but not to the rest of the world’s population!). The “old” movie last night was the “Karate Kid” starring Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita. I had forgotten that Elisabeth Shue was also in the movie along with one of the Van Patten’s. While the children were upstairs watching this movie my wife and I were downstairs watching “Next” starring Nicholas Cage.

It has been an ongoing thing in our household knowing my wife adores dear Old Nick and any chance there is a movie with him in it my wife does watch. I have no qualms with this because I believe fantasy is a good thing that is as long as it doesn’t determine one’s daily life like it did mine for so long. I will indulge my wife and I really don’t mind Mr. Cage as an actor since most of his movies are filled with action and not to mention have Las Vegas as a backdrop. This was the case with “Next” and overall it wasn’t a bad movie.

We did have difficulty with our DVD player and I think having the DVD player sit in storage for 2 years does not help its playability. Additionally the movies are from Netflix and anything with a scratch seems to exaggerate with our very sensitive DVD player. The playing time of the movie was only an hour and half but with all the delays and freezing it took an additional hour to watch.

Sure it was frustrating but thankfully in my mind I will take these frustrating moments over the moments I had endured a year ago at this time. I do need to be reminded where I have come from and when the DVD froze I had to just shrug my shoulders and say, “ok, it really isn’t so bad”. It really isn’t so bad sitting at home with my family and watching a movie. I missed two years of these and I know I can’t make back that time; I can only make the best of my time. Is getting angry at an inanimate object a good use of my time, probably not!!

This was a Sunday morning where my son didn’t come into our bedroom and instead opted for the couch in the “lounge” so he could watch television. Normally my wife and I watch CBS’ Sunday Morning Program but this was preempted due to the wildfire coverage. We watched a little of the coverage but really there is only so much I can tolerate. The wildfires have been devastating and my heart goes out to everyone involved. I do believe the media makes it more dramatic and seeks out the devastation as opposed to the positive. I know it is difficult to find positive in horrendous situations but I am sure it exists such as the neighbor saving the other neighbor’s house while their own house goes up in flames or the lost dog that is now found. Instead the focus is on “finding the dead bodies”. Anyhow I had enough and headed downstairs to prepare breakfast.

Sundays are pancake or waffle days and today was a pancake day. My family eats a great deal of carbohydrates mostly because I eat a great deal of carbohydrates. I sort of need these because I am very active and could use a little more balance in my dietary requirements. This is why I recently purchased some soy protein not only for me but for the rest of the family. This next statement is a little secret so please keep it to yourself; I placed the protein powder in the pancake mix and no one noticed!! If I had told everyone what I was doing no one would have eaten the pancakes so I decided to be sneaky. The sneakiness worked and instead of a total carbo laced breakfast there were some proteins involved.

My daughter had her end of the softball season party which my wife attended as well. This left my son and I at home. We watched some of the New York Giants football game and then decided to take a bicycle ride or as my son likes to call it “dirt biking”. It was like a summer day so we packed our water bottles and headed out for some “dirt biking”. I have to remind myself that my son is only 7 years old and in spite of his energy level even he has his endurance limits. We started out for a small bicycle ride but I like to explore and we explored the fields around our development. I can see how these wildfires started so quickly because the brush is so dry and this was the case by our development. There weren’t many green parts of the brush and it wouldn’t take much to start an impromptu brush fire in this area. Thankfully this wasn’t the case and we explored for almost two hours. As we were riding our bicycles my son turns to me and says, “This is the best day ever!” He was very serious and I had to agree with him because it was a wonderful day through and through.

As we made our way home my son’s rear tire started to go flat. Apparently during our exploring my son’s tire caught something that made it go flat. We were only a block away from our house when my son could no longer ride his bicycle so we walked the bicycles home. This didn’t deter him because he still had a smile on his face and took it all in stride. We had a wonderful father and son day and I wouldn’t trade any of it!!!