Cinderella

So, the other day, Eleanor got a chance to go to the Ballet with Nana and Papa. She had a special dress that she wore and had a great time experiencing "Cinderella" Thanks, Ballet Abilene!


The next day, Ele wore her dress to church and afterwards, I got her to pose for me outside. Enjoy the photos. She is my wonderful princess.

Narcissism, Celebrity Apprentice and Me.

Recently, I read a humorous story in Time magazine by Joel Stein (LINK). It got me thinking a little about how self-involved we all are, and what part society plays into this phenomenon. Dr. Pinsky's results indicate that celebrities are more narcissistic than the general population. So, do they influence us to be more narcissistic or do we feed into their narcissism?

This got me thinking about reality shows where, despite the labeling, reality is not displayed. Between behind the scenes manipulations and producer's wrangling of the circumstances and the editing process to play up the drama and tension, I doubt we get much of a sense of the "real" person, even on reality shows. This past week's Celebrity Apprentice (LINK) was a great example of the product of narcissism in celebrities. While I have to give Joan some credit for her turnaround in her behavior toward Clint Black, her initial responses toward ANYONE that she doesn't like are grounds for dismissal if she weren't a celebrity. Her name-calling and visceral personal attacks are unwarranted and immature. Melissa Rivers seems to have been burdened by some past experiences in High School and I agree with her assessment of being blocked out by Annie and Brande, but c'mon..... how personally are you going to take that?

If you can't take losing at least as well as Andrew Dice Clay or Rodman... well, Melissa, you deserve the public lashing you'll take for your behavior. NOW..... back to the narcissism discussion... do my remarks feed back into how we "socialize" our celebrities to make them narcissistic?

Here are the DSM Criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, people (or institutions) who are also "special" or of high status.
4. requires excessive admiration
5. has a sense of entitlement
6. is interpersonally exploitative
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

I think I've witnessed at least 5 of those criteria in ALL of the Celebrity apprentice contestants at one time or another. Freud would have a field day with this crowd. And the king of them all: The Trump. Thanks for a fun, show, boss.

Take the Narcissistic Personality Inventory! Post in my comments how you did!

(I scored 14)

-jeff

In Memoriam: processing the death of a friend.

Meagan Len Holder, 1991-2009, 17 yrs

Last Thursday morning, I was making breakfast for the kids when I got the phone call. One of my kids from Gorman (a youth group I'd worked with)had been in a car wreck. She'd died en route to the hospital, in a medi-flight helicopter. I was not able to really process the information. I thanked Mr. Laminack for calling and letting me know and then I went back to cooking eggs.

Shock

That is the process by which your brain protects you from emotions that threaten to overwhelm you. Learning of the death of a loved ones typically triggers it. Over the course of the day, I began to absorb the enormity of the information. Meagan is dead. I began to go over memories I had of her. To be quite honest, I hadn't seen her for a few years. My contact with her had been limited to a few online chats or instant messages on MySpace. I knew she was excited to be a senior and was looking forward to graduating. To learned she'd been killed in a car accident... wow...

Later that morning, I got a call from her father. Despite the past 4 years of working as a chaplain at the hospital and the hundreds of families I had walked with during the final hours of a loved one's life... I didn't have any words for him. Our conversation was short, he asked me if I would be willing to speak for her at the funeral. I agreed and he said he'd let me know the details as soon as they got her body back from Ft. Worth.

In the midst of all of this, I looked to my oldest daughter, Mary Hannah. 7 years old (almost 8!). In 10 years, she will be 17, on the cusp of adulthood, ready to strike out and blaze her own trail. The following day, Friday, I was sending her with her grandparents to California. They were going to meet up with their cousins for a day at the beach and a few days at Disneyland, the ultimate memory making trip. Nana and Poppa had been planning this for months and although we were initially reluctant (a bit jealous, maybe) to let her know, we knew she would have the time of her life. This day, though, my thoughts were only on picking her up from school and holding on to her with all my strength.

I think losing a child to illness or to some random tragedy is perhaps one of the most difficult things a parent can experience. It feels more acute if you lose a child when they are young, but losing a child at any age, infant to adulthood, just feels wrong.

The funeral was very well attended. It seemed like most of the town of Desdemona, where Meagan was born and grew up, and De Leon, where she attended high school, had turned out. Many of Meagan's friends honored her by duplicating one of her trademarks: boots with the leg of the pants tucked in. Stories were shared and memories affirmed. Meagan will be missed by her friends. She'll be mourned by her family. Nothing will ever be the same for them, but in time, it will be okay again. Death does that. Here are links to her obit: CLICK HERE and to the Eulogy I delivered: CLICK HERE.

After the interment, I was waiting patiently as people came by to shake my hand and thank me for speaking for Meagan on behalf of her family. My phone rang, vibrating impatiently in my pocket. Stepping away from the funeral crowd, I saw it was my daughter calling on Poppa's phone. "DADDY! I'M IN THE OCEAN!" Without waiting for me to say more than, "hi", she shouted at me over the roar of the surf. She's never been to a beach, much less the Pacific. She told me about seaweed as big as she was and sand castles and waves and getting saltwater in her mouth. I managed to get in a few questions and exclamations before she signed off, "I gotta go, Daddy. I can't hold the phone because I'm all WET!" And then she was gone. I was smiling again. Until I turned around and saw the coffin, waiting for the crowd to leave so it could deliver it's lone passenger to her grave.

I walked back over to the Holders and asked, "Are y'all about exhausted? I'll bet you're tired of everyone telling you how sorry they are. No matter how sincere and well meaning they are, there comes a point in your grief where you really just wish everyone would love you from over there." Donald Wayne nodded. Stephanie thanked me for the eulogy and I gave Jeremy a hug. Then I took my own advice and took my leave of the family.

The drive home took an hour or so and I listened to music on my iPod. I called a girl from my Enid youth group who is also 17 and about to graduate because I felt melancholy. We chatted for a few minutes until I lost the cell signal. When I got home, Ethan and Eleanor ran to greet me at the door. "Daddy! You're home!" I wrapped them up in a big bear hug and smiled.

Meagan is still dead.

I'll be okay again soon.

St. Patricks Day poem for ya

The Wish

I caught a little leprechaun,
quite wise and very old and he said to me,
"You have one wish,
would you like my pot of gold?"

"No thank you," was my quick reply,
"But how about another...
A gift that's truly precious
and esteemed above all others?"

He offered then some emeralds,
rubies, sapphires, pearls
and a host of other treasures
that would make your senses whirl!

As I rejected all his list
his bright eyes flashed with fire
and, angrily, he said to me:
"What is it you desire?"

I said:

"A rainbow's far more beautiful
than its' supposed treasure
and the 'rainbow' that I'm wishing for
is priceless beyond measure.

"I'd like to have the dearest friends
a person ever had
to share in all the good times
and help me through the bad...

"To laugh and sing and joke with,
love and appreciate
as we live life's greatest adventure
that would certainly be great!"

"Oh, now I know you're daft!" he said
as he ran off with his pot...
"to waste your wish on something
you have already got!"

~Author Unknown~

retrieved from: This Website

-jeff

Celebrity Apprentice

I'm not a huge fan of the reality show genre, but I took notice of a promo for Celebrity Apprentice. What caught my attention was the personalities represented on the show, most notably Andrew Dice Clay and Jesse James. Clay represents, to me, a very low class form of entertainer. Not only do I dislike his humor, but his personality. So, I was very pleased to see he was the first celeb to be "fired" by Mr. Frump... er... Trump.
Jesse James, on the other hand, is married to Sandra Bullock. That is one point in his favor. Also, although I haven't watched his show, I have been very impressed with him on CA. He seems to have hidden strengths and I am interested to see how he'll do as Project Manager when his time comes.

What I haven't been impressed by on the show is the absolute chaos that ensues from each team during their projects. I am really surprised that they all are so conflictual. Very few of them seem to be able to communicate and almost all of them have self-images that are over-inflated and just waiting to be punctured by the Boss. Seriously, aren't everyday people able to talk in reasonable tones and without all the conflict or do I just live in a fairy tale world? I know that this show is 90% about ratings and entertainment, but I think it is also a remarkable social experiment putting the result of Hollywood-centric personalities in the spotlight.

For those of you who have watched the first few episodes, here are some observations:
1) I like Annie. I think she is quite possibly the best person on the Athena team. Joan Rivers carries her own self-importance as though she is afraid of breaking it.
2) I think that in the end, a female is going to win the overall competition. Team KOTU has too many disparate personalities. Despite his annoying manner and the conflict he created during Episode 2, I think they lost something in terms of creativity when Tom Green was fired last night.
3) I wonder how well the Donald would fare if he was put into his own messed-up reality program. He's done well by society's standards, but he seems to lack the same qualities that he flogs his contestants for not having.

Interesting. I look forward to seeing how the season progresses.

Narrative Exercise

One of my professors recently assigned us the task of externalizing an issue/feeling/hurdle that I am facing at present. We were instructed to describe it in visual or kinesthetic terms.

Diabetes is a constant companion for our family. It influences the activities we can participate in, what food we can eat, the time we can travel, the money we can spend, how we handle our health decisions, sometimes even how much sleep we are able to get each night. Like a cruel taskmaster, just when we began to be comfortable with Ethan’s insulin regimen, Diabetes attacked our daughter, Mary Hannah. Now, we are relearning the initial stages of the disease. Although very similar, Diabetes has manifested itself in very different ways in each of them. This causes anxiety for me and my wife as we have to treat them differently from each other in terms of how often they have to check their blood sugar, how much they can eat, what items they can eat (they have different foods that trigger higher than normal reactions in each of them). Also, Diabetes has also realigned the structure of our family system. Instead of Ethan being the one child getting the most attention because of his condition, with Mary Hannah and Eleanor feeling a bit neglected in terms of attention, now Eleanor is the odd child out, being the only one without a chronic medical condition that demands our vigilance. In our marital relationship, Diabetes sometimes sits between us and keeps us from having time alone because of our anxiety around child care for us to enjoy our alone time. For Ethan, although Diabetes is a dark monster that afflicts him, it is also a friend that made him special and now he shares his uniqueness with his sister. It is a bittersweet turn of events. For Mary Hannah, who has been “normal” up till now, she is dealing not only with the physical changes in her body, but the social ramifications of Diabetes. The unintended consequences of her disease have made her feel “weird” to her friends. She is the subject of intense curiosity and even a little fear from her classmates at school. Diabetes has teamed up with Depression and Anger to torment Mary Hannah when she tries to go to sleep at night and we often end up rocking her to sleep as she cries in our arms. Eleanor has enjoyed a privileged status as the baby of the family, but her coveted attention has shifted and she doesn’t like it. Diabetes laughs at our family and mocks us as we struggle to find normalcy in this difficult situation. Diabetes is an uninvited visitor in our home who refuses to leave. He’s unpacked and is here to stay. He frustrates us and constantly disrupts our daily living. We put up with him and go through the motions of placating him with blood offerings on test strips and ritual torture of daily injections of insulin. However, he has also brought us closer together as a family. We rely on each other to remind each other to check blood sugars, eat responsibly, exercise together and manage this disease.

The picture above is the plastic jar that we deposit used "sharps" or needles after we are finished with them.

By the numbers:
Average number of finger sticks done daily: 5 per kid. That's 10 lancets used. 10 test strips.
Times each month the kids check their sugar (based on 5 per day): 300
Cost per test strip: (before insurance) $1
Syringes used daily: 5-6
Infusion sites changed per month: 3-4
Amount of carbs consumed before having to get stuck again with more insulin: 25 (that is about half a peanut butter sandwich or 15 M&Ms)

Items that must be carried with the kids at all times in their insulin kits:
1) The kit bag containing all the supplies.
2) Calorie King guide to almost every food and how many carbs each contains.
3) Extra syringes
4) IV prep, alcohol swabs to prevent infection when giving injections
5) Writing tool used to keep a record of Blood Glucose and carbs eaten and insulin given.
6) Fast acting, bolus insulin. MH also has to keep her Basal Insulin with her.
7) Emergency Glucagon shot. If BG drops dangerously low and the individual is unable to take fast sugars orally, this shot chemically tells the liver to dump all the glucose it has stored into the bloodstream. It is designed to be injected through clothing into muscle. Extreme measure.
8) Glucometer to measure those pesky blood sugar readings.

-jeff

Weirdo

I remember when we moved back to Texas after spending about 6 years in Europe, moving with the Air Force. Our most recent post was in Kleine Brogel, Belgium. It was 1989 and apparently, the only memorable thing about me was that I'd recently lived in Belgium. So, my nickname at school (for a while at least) was Belgium Waffle (they didn't even say it right, it should have been Belgian Waffle). It took a while to make friends because I was not only the new kid, but I was different. In the DoDD schools, everyone moved around a lot and being the "new" kid in a class wasn't different, it was normal. Being back in the States was quite a paradigm shift for me.

Today, when I picked up Ethan and Mary Hannah from school, MH was glum. Usually, she is running around the front area, playing tag or hide and seek or looking for interesting rocks or something with other kids who wait for rides. Today, she was standing alone and looking pretty obviously miserable.

Me: What's wrong, baby?
MH: Nothing.
Me: Well, when you have a frown like that, it usually means that you're sad about something.
MH: I made a mistake today.
Me: A mistake?
MH: Yeah.
Me: What mistake, honey?
MH: I'm such a weirdo. I was picked to hand out the construction paper and I picked up the markers instead.
Me: Did you go back and get the paper and hand it out?
MH: Yeah, but I felt like a weirdo.
Me: Making a small mistake makes you feel like a weirdo?
MH: Yes, everyone was looking at me all weird.
Me: Did someone call you names because of your mistake?
MH: No.
Me: Help me understand, sweetie. Why did that make you feel like a weirdo?
MH: I don't know. I just felt weird.

Now, all along in this conversation, I knew that something was not as it seemed. MH's ego strength is better than letting a little mistake like that get her down.

Me: Mary Hannah, I'm wondering if there is something else that is making you feel like a weirdo in front of your friends? Maybe something besides handing out paper and markers.
MH: (in a small voice) my diabetes.
Me: It makes you different than everyone else?
MH: Yeah. No one else in my class has diabetes.
Ethan: (trying to be helpful) No one in my class has diabetes. I'm not a weirdo (said in an annoying voice only a younger brother can muster).
MH: (amending) Okay, so my brother has it.
Me: Hush, Ethan. MH, you feel weird because you have diabetes? Do your friends keep asking you questions about it?
MH: Some.
Me: That sets you apart from everyone in a way, doesn't it?
MH: Yeah.
Me: Well, I'm not going to tell you that you won't feel a little weird. That is part of the process, but you won't always feel weird about it. You'll get to a point where it is just normal, everyday stuff for you. So, yeah, you'll feel a bit like you are different from everyone else in this way, but you shouldn't ever feel badly about it. You didn't choose this. If you woke up one morning and decided to wear green stretch pants, a polka-dot shirt and dye your hair orange and spike it and call yourself Ms. Stupendous.... then I think it would be okay to call yourself weird.
MH: (giggles)
Me: But you didn't choose this, it just kind of happened. So, it will make things different for a while, but you shouldn't feel badly about it, k? Feeling a little weird for a while is normal. Feeling bad about it won't help anything.
MH: Okay.
Me: Okay. Give me hugs, baby doll.
MH: (hugging me) Can I have a fudge round for snack?
Me: *sigh*

So... I was sitting here thinking about my baby girl and all the emotional turmoil she's going through and I remembered how I felt different, too. However, our situations are light years apart. I was moving into a new community and had to make a place for myself. Mary Hannah is among established friends and her status has now changed. I had to find a niche and adapt myself to a new location. Mary Hannah has to redefine herself in terms of her disease and reestablish feelings of normalcy with her friends. I don't fault the other kids in her class for any of this at all. In fact, MH was so worried about this whole mess that Amelia and I went with her to class on Friday morning, the day after her first visit to the Pediatric Endocrinologist. We fielded questions about diabetes from the class. They asked some great questions (Can we catch it? Will she ever get better? What will happen to her? Will she die like my grandmother did?) and were great about listening and absorbing the information we gave them. After about 1/2 an hour, we were gathering up our stuff to leave Mrs. Miller's 2nd grade when three of MH's girlfriends jumped up and bear hugged her. That made my day. They are all good kids and I know it is going to be alright. But I'm her daddy. And right now, I feel a little bit like a weirdo, because I can't help my baby.

-jeff