KattyWilly

He’s So Unusual

“You talk of sweeties bashful sweeties
I’ve got one of those
Oh he’s handsome as can be
But he worries me”

During some recent discussions about politics and taxes with my brothers there was discussion about my thought that there may be different views of the future based on whether you have children or not. I was thinking that I am always thinking ahead to a point where I’ve raised my kids and they are out on their own. I want to make sure that the world will also be a nice clean healthy place for them to raise their children.

Halley is talking today about keeping your “eyes on the prize” and lists a few exercises to help with that process.

“I want to think what my goals for my life are in the next five to ten years. I want to set those goals and keep them in mind in all the small things I do today.”

Write down how old you’ll be in 2014. – 56

Write down the town you want to be living in 2014. – Clearwater

Write down who you want to be living with in 2014. – “I’ll be living with someone who cherishes me and wants the best for me.”

Write down what you want more than anything by 2014. – To have watched my two healthy and happy daughters graduate from college ready to take on the world.

The concept of thinking ten years out and making it through college has been the major focus of what I’ve been doing for the last two years. I don’t know that I ever thought that much about ten years out before then. I think that before we used to think about getting old together. Looking back ten years at the graduations of our daughters.

Back to the discussion of politics and taxes for a moment. My brother noted that the native Americans had a concept of the Seventh Generation. When they made decisions they would think about how the things they did today would impact the people that would be here 7 generations from now. Imagine that, thinking about how the things I do may affect not only my children and my children’s children, but seven generations of children.

There are days though that I can barely think past lunch, much less seven generations.  That is one of my struggles to be able to think about the future again, past lunch, past middle school, past high school, past college and to a future for me, as well as one for my kids.

It’s interesting to read the words of someone who has lived through the experience of my daughters, losing a parent at a young age.  I read her words from the persective of the parent, and then from the perspective of my children. It hurts both ways. I’ve talked about this concept before,

“A funny thing happens on your way to adulthood. Suddenly you’ve been alive longer without them than with them.”

I was going to try and pick one of Jeneane’s posts to point to, but couldn’t pick any one over all of the others. So go read all of them. Read them and weep. Just don’t do it at work like I did.

 :`(

“Sony pioneers personal radio to mobile phones”

This is pretty close.  It sounds like it does the streaming part, but the way you select music is limited.  It sounds like an interesting service that tries to figure out what you like and then play that kind of music.  I can’t imagine what it would do with folks that have very eclectic tastes though.  I still want an option that would allow me to make my own playlist, on the fly.  Sort of a Playlist on demand.

Sometimes I think I’ve got it rough being a single parent.  Last night was a tough night trying to get a big homework project done.  By the end of the day I’m exhausted and just want to go away and hide sometimes.  That “Calgon Take Me Away” feeling.

Then I realize that so far we’ve been lucky to have the friends and family that we have to help us along.  Some people don’t have that help.

Via Slashdot here is an article about broadband speed wireless.  This is another component of my Streaming Internet Receiver thingy.  Once there is broadband wireless as available as current cellular coverage I think there will be all kinds of interesting development on the client side for devices to take advantage of that speed.

In the article he mentions doing a variation of exactly what I want to do, “… I tested the reliability of the connection by tuning into a Web radio station’s 128-kbps music stream; over about four hours, I heard two or three dropouts.” 

This is a very early version of media over wireless broadband.  Someday, and it may not be that long, I will be able to use an iPod like device to select from a large store of all the music ever recorded and pick the piece I want to hear and have it start playing.  It may be streamed or it may transfer the bits to my device first so I can play it from there but it will allow me to hear whatever I want where ever I am, for a reasonable price.

I should be doing my taxes, so instead I’m reading the web.  This article I found via Fark caught my eye.  It’s about children’s movies.  One of the things that my daughter used to do when she was little was play make believe with her dolls.  We would over hear her describing the scenario for a particular session with these words, “pretend that this is [some girl’s name] and her mother is dead. I remember questioning her once about why the mom had to be dead and not really getting an answer. I attributed it to the seemingly never ending stream of movies aimed at children where the mother, father or parents are dead or missing for one reason or another. I am acutely aware of these themes now.  Movies like Billboard Dad where the children scheme to find a new mom or wife for their single dad.

“It’s absurd. I don’t feel any repulsion. I don’t know – indifference. The only thing I know is that they’ve torn out my heart. And now I’m like a child of five years old. Now I’ve got to start everything again – becoming an adult all over again. “

Comments from a newly widowed person after the sudden death of his wife in the bombings in Madrid.

“When you bury a person, the pain is that it is the last moment when you have that person next to you and when the ceremony ends you hand that person over to God. You don’t lose them, but you stop having them at your side through everything.”

I’ve felt that pain, and the “feelings of loneliness”.