Doing It All

Things have been really hard lately. It seems that I start most conversations, or end them with, "I'm tired."

There are three people in my house very tired of hearing me say that. As I look ahead, I only see more reasons to be tired. The kids now have three soccer practices a week (On top of Taekwondo twice a week), I am doing the Leadership Memphis Fall fast Track program which meets once a week, I signed up to be on the grant review committee for Give 365 which means more after hours meetings, we have four more Rock-n-Romps this year, and I will most likely keep my post as PTA president. Oh, and I told Satchel & Jiro I'd help them plan a giant Nerf Gun War in Overton Park.

So something's gotta give. But what? Sadly, I think it is my column in the CA. After three? four? years of coming up with something witty, insightful, mildly interesting, or "good enough" every other week it has become a struggle to come up with new ideas. Sure, the kids provide a constant source of material, but as they get older and the more vocal my commenters (read: haters) get, the less I want to share. I'm hard enough on myself, I don't need to read the nasty things from people who don't even know me on a regular basis.

I'll still share here, of course, and I'll still be writing for the CA, just not from a personal perspective.

So, now back to business. Warren's dad, who we call Oji, was in town last week and it was fun assimilating him into our culture. He is a reader of mine, so he took the whole "don't eat that before I take a picture of it" rule in stride, among others. Like Warren, he enjoys cooking. He treated us to his famous cinnamon rolls last week.



Oji likes to going out to eat in Asian restaurants so that is a bonus, since that's mainly what we do when not cooking. At Shanghai, he taught Satchel how to eat egg drop soup through a straw.



He also enjoys grocery shopping, which is really nice since we seem to make some kind of trip to some kind of grocery store several times a week. If we didn't how would we know that Viet Hoa has giant jackfruits in stock?



Among Oji's skills are making Ramen, which totally came in handy on Thursday and Friday of last week when Satchel stayed home sick. It was really nice that neither Warren or I had to miss work, and it gave them some bonding time. (Had Satchel been seriously ill, I would have gladly stayed home and nursed him, just so you know.)

Oji took a side trip to Branson this week to see his sister and should return tomorrow for another few days with us before heading home. I'm looking forward to taking him to the downtown farmer's market, a Mexican place on Summer or Macon Rd, La Michoacana, maybe the JCC and Rock-n-Romp. Maybe if he has enough fun, he'll never want to leave!