Random thoughts

1.   Nobody has even tried to answer the logic puzzle, the one that caused Ashlei to punch me in the arm and accuse pretty much everything in the entire universe of being stupid.  But I didn’t just make it up; there is a real answer, and the clues are enough to figure out the answer.   

2.  In the interest of helping you figure out your taxes, I have prepared a full financial report concerning the Sam Woelk BMW Acquisition Fund With Occasional Token Gifts for Poor People:

Beginning balance, Jan 1, 2010:     $0.00

Total Revenue for 2010:       $0.00

Gross Profit for 2010:   -$250.00

Capitalization distribution:  $0.00

Disbursements from Stocks:       $0.00

Cash infusions From Fund Director’s personal bank account to meet negative equity demands:  $250.00

Ending balance:     $0.00

Your tax-deductible giving:  $0.00

See?  Wouldn’t it be nice if you saw a big fat number there at the bottom, something like $5,000.00?  Wouldn’t it be nice to plug that number into your taxes and watch the money you get back just skyrocket, wouldn’t you rather be giving money to a worthy cause than paying for the Federal government to be subsidizing studies on how bumblebees have sex? 

Well, I have dissolved the Sam Woelk BMW Acquisition Fund With Occasional Token Gifts for Poor People due to my bad experience with the actual acquisition of a BMW. 

But lucky for your April 2012 tax filing, I am now formally announcing the: 

Sam Woelk Porsche Acquisition Fund With Occasional Token Gifts for Poor People

Don’t hesitate to give to this worthy benevolent organization with the full knowledge that all donations are completely tax deductible in the likely event that you are not audited by the IRS.

3.  We are back to work, and I am happy.  I am one of those rare people who really enjoys his job.  I wake up, go to work, do my thing, and am at peace.

It doesn’t pay like a lot of professions, but I like it, and I feel so so blessed that this is so.

One thing about my job is that we regularly have rather large breaks.  Our Christmas break was 4 weeks this year, and that’s too much, when you want to go to work.

4.  We are looking for something for Abbey.  As you know, Anna does gymnastics, and she really likes that a lot.  Momma takes her to the gym two or three times a week.  Abbey doesn’t go, and she notices this.  She asks, occasionally, if she can do gymnastics again.  This is a difficult question to answer.  I’d be happy to say yes, except for how obvious it was that she wasn’t good at all last time.  I don’t want her to feel the separation of watching her sister excel, while she flounders.  So I am trying to figure out something else that she might enjoy, because it bothers her a little that Anna has gymnastics, and she just has to take walks with me.

Of course, they both do piano, but she doesn’t enjoy that.  I am pretty sure that she will enjoy it eventually–she loves music–but it hasn’t happened just yet.

So, what else could she do?  I’m not sure, and I’m still trying to figure it out.  I’d be happy for any suggestions.  Nobody told me how complicated parenthood would be.

P90X: Is it for me?

Since I’ve been doing P90X, I’ve received plenty of questions from concerned people.

Many want to know how hard it is.  Many want to know if I’m crazy.  But mostly, they want to know whether P90X works.

So I am here to answer all the questions. 

Question #1:  How hard is it?

P90X is hosted by a man named Tony.  Tony has been visiting me in my basement for months now.  He has the kind of muscles that I would like to have, by which I mean they are visible.  He is upbeat, friendly, relentlessly encouraging, and sadistic.  People have different reactions to Tony: Anna likes Tony, Abbey likes Tony, Ashlei doesn’t like Tony.  At times, it looks as if Tony is wearing make-up, which is creepy, but other than that, I like him okay.

 The very first workout that you do is called chest and back.  In this workout, you switch back and forth between push-ups and pull-ups, 24 times, and Tony cheerfully expects you to suffer.  In my zeal, pre-first workout, I bought a contraption to help me do pull-ups, rather than just using that part of the workout to lie on my back.  (Come to think of it, I could use the push-up part of the workout to lie on my back as well)  The pull-up contraption fits nicely into an open door space, and it hangs from the trim at the top. It has multiple handles to facilitate a wide variety of pull-up motions.

What it doesn’t do is actually help me do the pull-ups.

If you paid attention in high school biology, you will recall that there are different types of bodies.  If you have a endomorphic body, you are what we politely call “big-boned,” which means that your doctor will spend a lot of time making you feel guilty about your diet, and then you will get diabetes and die.  If you have an ectomorphic body, then you have visible bones stretching out of random places in your skin, and you do not do well in high winds, and you will get scurvy and die.  And if you have a mesomorphic body, then you look like Tony on P90X, with nice muscles bulging in a proper and aesthetically pleasing way, and you will not die. Endomorphs and ectomorphs hate mesomorphs, but they also envy them.

Endomorphs cannot do pull-ups, because they have too much weight.  Ectomorphs cannot do pull-ups because they have too little muscle.  Mesomorphs can do pull-ups until the cows come home.  It’s just like Goldilocks . . . this body is too big, this body is too small, this body is just right. 

God, in his infinite wisdom, gave you one of these three bodies.  He gave me the ectomorphic body, which means that I step carefully over sewer grates in the road so that I don’t fall in.  A large portion of my body weight can be attributed to hair.  I will never have nice muscles bulging in a proper and aesthetically pleasing way, the way that Tony has his muscles.  Mostly, I have one muscle, and I store it under my bed at home so that it doesn’t get damaged.

Back to P90X.  Tony starts out by doing 70 pull-ups in about 50 seconds, and while he is doing these pull-ups he is talking continuously, encouraging me to keep up.  Instead of keeping up, I do three pull-ups in the same 50 seconds, all while emitting grunting howls.  My third pull-up doesn’t really count, because I try, and make  several more grunting noises, but my body doesn’t actually move upward, not at all.  Then I fall to the ground.  As I lay there, quivering, Tony is giving me some pop psychology encouragement about no-pain-no-gain, and do-your-best-forget-the-rest, and losers-eat-cheesecake, and I can feel my bicep trying to exit my body through my armpit, because it knows that Tony is just getting warmed up.  It wants to go hide back under the bed.  But it can’t, because Tony is already doing push-ups so fast that his body is creating a breeze, and he is again encouraging me to keep up. 

So I roll over and do a push-up. 

Yes, P90X is hard. 

Question #2:  Are you crazy?

No.

Question #3:  Do you see results?

Well, I have to be honest here.  In addition to telling you to do these gobs of exercises, one after another, Tony also advocates a rather strict diet.  His guidelines are as follows:  No dairy.  No carbs.  No red meat.  No pork or chicken or seafood.  No sugars.  No MSG.  No salt. No caffeine.  No butter, margarine, grease, vegetable oil, corn oil, unsaturated fats, or lard.  No desserts.  This eliminates pretty much everything in the traditional food pyramid, and so you are left with manmade food products, such as Meth or Twinkies or hard liquor. 

 I’ve been continuing on with my regular diet instead, so my results are not typical.  Here are my results:

I can get all the way through the chest and back video without throwing up.  I can get all the way through the cardio video without throwing up.  I can get all the way through the leg video without throwing up.  I can get all the way through the yoga video without throwing up.  I can get all the way through the arm video without throwing up. 

I’m not saying that I actually do any of the different things that Tony and his friends do when I watch the videos, but I do not throw up.

Bonus question #4:  IS P90X good for family togetherness?

Yes.  Anna can now do 5 pull-ups, all by herself.  Abbey stands by me and offers encouragement and pats me on the back when I am doing push-ups.  Ashlei gets alone time.  It’s good all the way around.

So, a ringing endorsement for Tony and his video workouts from hell! 

Public service announcement:  If you choose, after reading this non-advertisement, to purchase and use the P90X workouts, I (firstly) do not receive any monetary benefit from said purchase, and (secondly) am not liable for the injury that you will incur.

Of Logic and Beyond

Some of you will remember that last week, I was determined to teach my wife logic.  This was part of a concerted effort to help her to understand the male mind, which would foster harmony and balance in the relationship, and as other people observed the perfect communication between us, they would seek out the secrets of our enlightened rapport, which would cause a slow but inevitable chain reaction, sweeping across the globe and bringing world peace.

Well, the first logic lesson went poorly.  I started out with a simple little question, a riddle, to expose Ashlei to some of the simple powers of a logical mind, to begin to understand things that to an illogic mind will always seem shrouded in mystery, to whet her appetite for the cold and spartan (yet somehow fulfilling) beauty of always being right about stuff.

Here is the riddle:

A man goes into a bar, has a beer, and says to the bartender, “I bet you can’t guess the ages of my three daughters.”

The bartender says, “Give me a few clues, and I’ll figure it out.”

The man says, “The sum of their ages is eighteen.”

“That’s not enough information.”

“Well, the age of one of them is the number out on the front of your bar.”

The bartender goes out and looks at the front of his bar, and comes back in and says, “Still not enough information.”

The man says, “Okay, my youngest daughter loves chocolate ice cream.”

The bartender says, “Aha,” and tells him the ages of all three daughters.

What are the their ages?

 

We never got past this small introductory riddle.  Ashlei first of all said it was impossible, and then, she said it was stupid, and then she said the drunk guy was stupid, and then she said I was stupid.  After that, logic was not a prominent part of our conversation, and I decided that the second logic lesson would never take place.  All in all, she spent half the time trying to understand me than I spent last year trying to understand her, which makes my position (logically) twice as righteous as hers.

But who’s keeping track?  I want to talk about something else, which is taking walks.

You see, I have two daughters.  They are very different.  Anna is doing the gymnastics thing, twice a week.  She is constantly climbing trees.  Sometimes, when I am doing P90X, she will do it with me.  She is very active.  Abbey is not so much any of that.  She doesn’t do the gymnastics thing.  She doesn’t climb trees.  She sits and watches while I do P90X, but she doesn’t ever like to do active anything.

So last fall, Tuesday and Thursday, when Anna started going to gymnastics, I told Abbey that we were going to take walks.  She was not for the idea.  She wanted to sit around, read a book, watch something on TV, eat some candy, play Sorry, something like that.  But I said no, we were going to take a walk.  I told her why, too.  I told her that she didn’t get enough exercise, and she was going to get some while Anna was at gymnastics.

Finally she said okay, got her shoes on, and off we went.  We live in a pleasant neighborhood.  There are sidewalks, and lots of grass and trees, not many cars, and it’s a great neighborhood for a walk.  She held my hand the entire time.  She asked me to carry her several times, but I said no.

And she talked the entire time.  I didn’t have to respond very often, although occasionally she asked me a question.  No, mostly, she was talking.

Four months have passed. We’ve taken walks when it was eighty degrees and sunny at 5:30 in the evening, and then in December, we’ve taken walks when it was twenty degrees and the stars were out at 5:30 in the evening.  We’ve stared at certain trees, we’ve gone down into a certain little gully full of autumn leaves and thrown them into the air.  We’ve talked to people; Abbey talks to everybody.  We’ve tasted the grass because that’s what cows eat.  We’ve jumped over the cracks in the sidewalk.  We’ve laughed and laughed about things that weren’t so very funny.  We’ve watched the fog of our breath.  We’ve blown dandelion seed heads and watched the seeds float on the wind, and we’ve eaten yellow dandelion flowers.  We’ve looked at bunnies, and we’ve watched them run away from us.  We’ve stopped at certain houses and stared at Christmas decorations.  We’ve stomped on mole tunnels.  We’ve counted bird’s nests in the bare trees.  I’ve gone many miles while she patters along beside me, talking almost the entire time.

There is one house with a statue of a girl in the front yard.  It’s about four feet high, one of those stylized Greek looking things with flowing robes.  It is made out of concrete.  Abbey loves this statue, and we always stop so that she can give the girl a hug.  “I love you, statue,” she says, every time.

The new year comes.  We come back from visiting Ashlei’s family, and settle back into our routines.  Anna goes off to gymnastics, and Abbey goes and gets dressed and off we go.  She still doesn’t like walks–she tells me this before we go–but what I notice most is that she submits, and her attitude brightens, and the world is thus a pleasant place for her.

We will come back to the house, and she’ll stand close to me while I make dinner, or she’ll sit next to me while I read, or I’ll go outside and sit on the back deck, and she’ll come out and say, “Daddy, I want to sit on your lap.”

I’ll say okay, and she flops onto me–Abbey is never graceful–and then she grabs my hands and pulls them across and over until I am holding her, and the weight of her body rises as I breathe.  She will then, occasionally, fall silent.

But not for long.

New Year’s Resolutions

It’s time to talk about new year’s resolutions.

Some of you may recall that last year, my resolutions were related on trying to understand women.  I am happy to report that I have mastered this subject, and am now searching for another subject to master.

Actually, that’s not quite correct.  I originally wanted to understand them, but after trying for a solid ten or so minutes, I gave up on that resolved myself to just put up with them, not understand them.  This really means the exact same thing.  For example, lets imagine that the wife says that she needs to go to some store and pay some woman $40.00 to put paint on her fingernails.  The obvious logical response for a man, when his wife says something like that, would be to laugh uproariously and then ground the wife and take away her credit cards.  This type of response will severely curtail his opportunities to propagate the species.

But:  consider if the man understands the woman.  He will know how important this idiocy is to the feminine mind, and so he will say fine, and he’ll watch violent movies on TV while she’s gone.  And if the man doesn’t understand her but is resolved to put up with her then he’ll say fine, and he’ll watch violent movies on TV while she’s gone.

Or, lets say that you are going to visit the in-laws.  You men know how many shoes you will bring: two.  One for each foot.  Now, ask me how many shoes my wife has here in Norman, while we visit her parents.  How many?  Twelve.  She has twelve shoes.  She doesn’t have twelve feet, now, does she?  And we’re not going to any parties.  We’re not going to any weddings, or funerals, or anywhere.  Why does she need twelve shoes here in Norman Oklahoma?  If I could understand, I would be at peace.  And I can’t understand, but I am still at peace concerning this shoe profusion, because I have accepted the irrationality of the feminine.

So men, you don’t have to understand them.  Stop trying; it’s impossible.  I did, and all to no avail.  No, all you have to do relax, breathe, take your Prozac, and have some more Prozac, and say fine, and if you still feel negative emotions, then . . .  more Prozac.

However, for 2011, I have  a much better new year’s resolution.

See, men can’t understand women because they (women) are illogical and irrational.  By definition, it is impossible to understand something that is ununderstandable.

However, with therapy and lessons in logic, I think we can overcome their shortcomings, and my resolution this year is to help women understand men.  I am primarily discussing my wife here, although other women are free to ask me for help if they would like to improve themselves.

I really don’t think this will be all that difficult of a project.  Ashlei is eager to get started, so my first order of business is a 17-lesson logic class, complete with lectures, homework, power point presentations, and tests.  After that, we’ll have classes in other important logical and reasoning topics:

Cars with overlarge engines that can go much faster than is legal

Violent movies without acting or romantic intrigue

Bodily noises/scratching

Really, that’s about it.  If you women can manage to wrap your estrogen warped minds around logic, cars, violence, and farts, then you should have no problem at all understanding men.  In fact, the more I think about it, the more sure I am that if you women can’t understand men, it’s entirely your fault.

So come on, ladies, let’s quit worrying about what color our fingernails should be, and let’s start dealing with some more important issues!

And with that, happy new year.