There is good in the work that we do

"Now you say that the answer's within ourselves

And that time is a wish come true

And no matter how troubled the toiling seems

There is good in the work that we do."

- Bill Staines, "Philosopher's Song"

Unless you're born into considerable wealth, or maybe you win the Powerball or something, you are likely going to spend half or more of your life working for a living.

This is traditionally seen as somewhat of a curse, even in a Judeo-Christian society in which a strong work ethic is celebrated. It likely has some connection to God's words to Adam in Genesis 3:19 - "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

How you view work also depends heavily on how much you like your job, of course. I happen to like my job quite a bit. I get to work with good people and do some interesting (interesting to me, anyway) stuff.

But if I had my druthers – and maybe your druthers, too – would I choose to continue working as a communications director for an advanced materials manufacturing company?

Of course not. I would do things about which I'm more passionate and from which I derive some higher level of satisfaction and enjoyment.

But it turns out reading World War I books and PA announcing and all the other things I like to do in my spare time don't generate much of an income. And income is what we need to put food on the table and pay our bills.

So off to work we go, usually five days a week.

That doesn't mean work has to be seen as a bad thing, though. Hard work does build character, as cliche as that sounds. It's the primary way many of us contribute to society. And it builds structure and satisfaction into our lives in ways that might otherwise be lacking.

Whatever your personal definition of "work" (inside or outside the home, full or part time, you're a student, etc.), this Labor Day is a good time to celebrate yourself. You put in a lot of time and effort, and you should feel good about that.

I hope you take a moment today to step back and appreciate all you've accomplished along the way in your career, and all you will accomplish. Even if you see work as a necessary evil, there is something good there that makes you better for having done it.

Happy Labor Day, my fellow laborers.

(NOTE: For a somewhat different perspective on this topic, check out this excellent blog post by my friend Peter Vertes.)

My wife and I brought back date nights. It was a good call.

A few months ago, I decided Terry and I should have once-a-week date nights.

This is in no way an original concept. Lots and lots of couples have intentional/scheduled date nights, to the point that we're probably a little late to the party.

It just wasn't something we had done before, or at least not something we had done in many years.

When you've been together for any length of time, it's easy to stop thinking of yourselves as a couple. If you have kids, you are instead co-workers in an ongoing enterprise, the goal of which is to keep your offspring fed, clothed and educated.

You get so caught up in it that sometimes you forget that, at one point, the two of you had a romantic relationship (which is of course what led to you having a family in the first place).

So you have to make sure you carve out little chunks of time dedicated to being together, preferably away from the children if they still live at home.

It doesn't have to be expensive, though a couple of our date nights have centered on dinner at a restaurant. Nor does it need to be elaborate.

It just needs to be the two of you together, as free of distractions as possible. We've gone to movies, taken walks, watched Jack and his friends play volleyball...whatever.

So far I think it has been good for us. I like to believe I've always appreciated my wife, but talking to her one on one always reminds me again how smart, funny and full of life she is.

It also affords us some time to talk about short- and long-term plans. What's next for our house? What vacation will we take this fall? What does she have coming up that she's excited about?

In short, date nights have been nothing but good for our relationship. I just hope we can continue coming up with stuff to do each week.

It's the activity brainstorming that's the real trick.

Introducing Calvin: The Official Grandchild™ of "5 Kids, 1 Wife"

 

The handsome young gentleman pictured above is Calvin, my grandson. He is two days old and the first grandchild with which Terry and I have been blessed.

We are, naturally, smitten.

Little Cal made his mother Chloe (our daughter) work hard through her first labor and delivery. She went into the hospital at 8am Sunday to be induced, the result of high blood pressure readings that prompted her care team to take Calvin from the relative warmth and comfort of the womb three weeks before his official due date.

It took nearly 23 hours for Cal to make his entrance, ultimately via an unplanned C-section. Despite the best contraction-inducing drugs and techniques modern medicine could offer – along with 3 1/2 hours of exhausting, heroic, middle-of-the-night pushing on Chloe's part – the little guy simply wouldn't come out.

This was largely because of his big head, an anatomical feature I will freely admit he inherited from his maternal grandfather.

So C-section it was. He came into the world at 6:43am on Monday, measuring 21 inches in length and weighing 8 pounds, 7 ounces.

Let me say two things about his weight:

• Terry, Melanie, Jack and I were sitting around the fire pit in our backyard Sunday night taking guesses as to what Cal's birth weight would be. One person was spot on with his guess. I will not tell you who that was, except to say it was me.
  
  
• If Chloe's pregnancy had gone the full 40 weeks, using the very general rule of thumb that babies gain a half pound a week in the final days of pregnancy, he would have been pushing 10 pounds just like his uncles Jared (9 pounds, 15 ounces) and Jack (9 pounds, 13 ounces) did.

Calvin has needed a little help breathing, which is why he has spent the first few days of his life in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). This is common in babies born even as late as 37 weeks – especially boys, for whatever reason – so there was no cause for alarm.

As for Chloe, in addition to the normal fatigue of labor, she also developed an infection that resulted in a fever, AND she hemorrhaged a bit after the C-section.

Give that woman a medal. Give every women who has a baby a medal, as far as I'm concerned.

And give her husband Michael a medal for keeping her going and supporting her through the whole ordeal.

When Terry and I got to the hospital about eight hours after Cal was born, I saw this wooden disc resting on Chloe's bedside tray:

Until that moment, while we knew Chloe was having a boy, we didn't know his name. That was the one thing Chloe and Michael had kept secret from the rest of the world, which I thought was perfectly fine. It was only fitting that Mom and Dad had at least one surprise to reveal.

It took me a minute to register exactly what the information on the little wooden circle meant. Then I realized not only that our first grandchild's name would be Calvin, but also that his middle name would be Scott.

It made for an emotional moment. It was all I could do to keep from breaking down and crying right then and there. What an honor it is for your grandbaby to share your name. It's something for which I'll always be grateful to Chloe and Michael.

I have a feeling I'll be grateful for a whole lot of things as Baby Calvin grows up.

The three mornings a week I don't exercise are as valuable as the four I do

This guy is a good example of how happy I am in the morning
on my "off" days.

As a creature of habit, I follow essentially the same morning schedule most of the time,

Two days a week, I go for a brisk 2.3-mile walk.

Two other days a week, I strength train in our home gym (upper body one day, lower body the other).

The remaining three days are "rest days," at least as far as intense physical activity goes. Those are the days when instead I exercise my mind.

And I so look forward to them.

I enjoy sitting at the kitchen table doing my New York Times puzzles, playing games on my phone, and catching up on the news. It's a fun way to spend those first couple hours of the day, and it gets me mentally ready for work or whatever else I have to do.

It also allows my body to recover from the relative pounding it takes walking on hard asphalt and slinging around heavy (heavy for me, anyway) weights in the basement.

Going to bed the previous night knowing that in 7 or 8 hours I'll be trying to figure out the Wordle or playing solitaire on my phone, rather than sweating through my shirt, is a good feeling.

Don't get me wrong. It's not like I don't want to exercise.

It's just that, much as even the most satisfied employee welcomes the weekend, recovery days are a good way to break up the demands of physical activity. They are always well received.

Because I tend to like order and routine, those off days are still somewhat regimented. After I feed the cats, get them fresh water, and scoop out their litter boxes, I make myself a cup of coffee, sit down at the kitchen table, and do the following things in the following order on my phone:

• Play Wordle (I do OK)
• Play Connections (usually perfect, but not always)
• Play Strands (my strongest puzzle)
• Play Mini (my weakest puzzle)
• Play solitaire until I "beat" the game
• Play Yahtzee until I score a combined 750 points over three successive games (this can sometimes take a while)
• Read my news digest emails, including the 1440 (highly recommended), the Cleveland Plain Dealer's "Wakeup", and my customized Google News update

Only after all of those things are completed do I make myself some breakfast, eat, wash my dishes, and head to the shower to get ready for the day.

As I type this, tomorrow is one of these off days. In just 12 hours I'll be awake and Wordl-ing away.

I can't tell you how excited I am.

When your kid is expecting, your perspective changes in unexpected ways

This is one of those 4D ultrasound images. Taken last month, it shows my grandson at around 30 weeks gestation. Ain't he handsome?

For years, my kids were vocal about their desire to add a pool and a trampoline to our backyard.

My answer was a consistent "no, not happening." Setting aside the financial outlay, I was simply too lazy to mow around more obstacles, and I wasn't interested in taking over the ongoing maintenance a pool requires.

As the kids moved out, the pool and trampoline discussion subsided.

Until one day earlier this summer when Terry and I were sitting on the deck and she matter-of-factly raised the question of where in our backyard we would put an above-ground pool. I reflexively expressed my reservations, at which point Terry played what has become the ultimate trump card.

"Our grandson will love coming to our house even more if he has a pool to play in," she said.

I stopped cold. Chloe hadn't even birthed this little boy, our first grandchild, and already he was coloring the way I saw the world.

And for the first time ever, I was open to the idea of becoming a pool owner.

I love my five kids. They're all great. But why was I suddenly OK with a pool for a baby I haven't even met after years of not being OK with it when my own children would ask?

Practical reasons, for one thing. I no longer cut our grass, so mowing around a pool becomes a problem (admittedly a very slight one) only for Nick, our lawn guy. Plus, honestly, we're simply in a better financial situation now than we ever were when the kids were little.

There's also the ever-present and powerful desire to spoil our grandson and make Grandma and Grandpa's house the fun place to be.

The point is, I can't believe how attractive the idea of a pool suddenly sounds after years of resisting it.

As far as a trampoline goes, that request will have to come from the grandbaby himself. If he wants one, we'll look into it.

Why do I get the feeling that all of his adult aunts and uncles on our side of the family will be whispering in his ear to ask for that trampoline in a few years?

Car trips with my wife are fun but often involve stopping at places like the Libbey Glass Factory Outlet

Last month, Terry and I drove up to Detroit to spend a little time with our son Jared. He was on an extended road trip with the Tampa Bay Rays (his employer) that included some games in the Motor City. Since we're only 3 hours from Detroit, we thought it would be fun to hop in the car one morning, meet Jared for brunch, and attend a Rays-Tigers game.

And it was fun, no doubt. Jared lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, and while Terry travels down there quite frequently, we still don't get to see Jared and his fiancée Lyndsey nearly as often as we would like.

The morning after the game, we again met Jared for some brunch (actually for pastries at a bakery in the tony suburb of Birmingham, Michigan, not far from the Rays' hotel). Then Terry and I hit the road again to return home.

We made the usual lunch/bathroom stop, but before that we took a detour into Toledo, Ohio, to visit the Libbey Glass Factory Outlet. This store is situated maybe 1,000 feet from the banks of the Maumee River in what I assume is the heart of Toledo, and as you might imagine, it features a lot of glass products.

Like, a lot of glass products. Several thousand square feet of glass products and related merchandise, much of which is priced ridiculously low.

This store is – again, as you might imagine – much more Terry's jam than mine. My interest in glassware was limited to seeing if I could find a coffee mug to add to my collection (I did not) and discovering if I could successfully navigate the store with a shopping cart without breaking anything (I managed it).

Terry, on the other hand, happily walked around the Libbey Glass Factory Outlet for 45 minutes, leaving with an array of items, not all of which were made of glass.

I followed her around patiently and was actually way more engaged than I thought I would be. There was some pretty cool stuff in there, though that may simply reflect the fact that I'm entering old manhood. Thirty-year-old Scott never would have been as interested as I was.

My favorite part of the experience was being there with my wife and watching her enjoy herself. Because that's what you do when you're married: You take pleasure in your spouse's pleasure. Even if it's not your favorite activity in the world, you do it because he/she wants to do it.

And honestly, it wasn't any sort of big sacrifice. We walked around laughing and talking as we do, then we paid for the stuff Terry had picked out, carried it to our car, and took off east toward Cleveland to finish the drive home.

Do I look forward to returning to the Libbey Glass Factory Outlet any time soon? I do not.

Do I want to make my wife happy and preserve my marriage? I do.

I have to admit, though...it was fascinating to see just how wide a selection there is for anyone interested in discount glass stemware.

You sleep on the same side of the bed every night, right?

Yeah...I'm with Jeff on this.

(Our monthly Blog Rerun series continues today with this post from August 18, 2021. For the record, Terry and I are still sleeping on the sides of the bed we chose when we got married 33 years ago...)

I guess it happened on our honeymoon in 1992, but at some point, Terry and I settled on which sides of the bed we would occupy for the rest of eternity.

From the point of view of someone standing at the foot of the bed (creepily staring at us as we sleep), you will always, always, always see me on the left side and Terry on the right.

Was there a reason for this? Or did it just kind of happen?

I don't know. You could argue it should be the other way around, since this arrangement puts our non-dominant hands nearest our respective night stands (Terry's left, my right). Not that it's a problem to roll over a little so we can use our preferred hands to grab our phones or whatever, but I can't remember if there was a reason we settled into our permanent sides of the bed.

NOTE: This is assuming we're both on our backs. I start on my stomach and end up on my back, so I guess it's not a problem at the beginning of the night and turns into one by the time I wake up.

Interestingly, when I travel for work and find myself alone in, say, a king-size bed, I sleep way over on my normal side. The other side remains untouched, as if I'm expecting Terry to show up in the middle of the night and just slip in beside me.

Most of us are intractable creatures of habit, to the point that it's uncomfortable for us to do certain things in our lives any other way.

I could sleep on what I consider to be Terry's side of the bed, but it would feel weird.

I could also vary the order in which I wash myself when showering, but again, weird.

Granted, to keep your brain sharp as you get older, it's a good thing to vary routines and challenge yourself every day. But I guarantee I will be sleeping on the same side of the bed and making my breakfast the same way until the day I'm 6 feet under.

Some things may not be worth changing.