It's really cool when you find yourself not only liking your kids, but admiring them. I have admired my kids on many occasions throughout their lives for all sorts of accomplishments. I used to hang their creations on the refrigerator door, but they've long outgrown that.
I admire Jeri for the bold step of moving across the country and starting a new life in Boston -- and making such an incredible success of it. It's something I could never have done. I was a real wimp and the thought of leaving the comfort of California and moving anywhere scared the bejezus out of me. I had the chance to move to France to be an au pair, and I didn't do that. I had paperwork to join the Peace Corps when it was first starting up and chickened out. Walt had the opportunity to move to Hawaii when Paul was a baby and I talked him out of it because I wanted the kids to be able to know their grandparents, which they couldn't do if we lived far away. I've never lived more than 80 miles from San Francisco, so watching our daughter pack up her truck and drive, by herself, across the country to start a new life in Boston 10 years ago was just amazing and I had such incredible admiration for her.
Tom has built a house. Really. A house! I remember when he was in high school and brought a broken-down truck into the carport, took out the motor and stood there, surrounded by what looked like a bazillion little parts and a "how to" manual and began to rebuild the engine, just like I would build a casserole from a cookbook ("take one screw from pile [a] and add a washer from pile [b]..."). When he got it all done, there were parts left over and he said recently that truck ran like shit, but he built a friggin' truck engine out of a pile of parts. And when he was finished he turned the key in the ignition -- and the damn thing STARTED. I was incredibly impressed.
Around the same time, Paul and I had to put oil in the motor of the car on our way to San Francisco and the two of us stood there with the hood of the car up and a can of oil in our hands, scratching our heads like idiots, too embarrassed to ask somebody where we were supposed to put the oil.
Tom and Laurel bought this fixer-upper of a house (which, being in Santa Barbara, was so expensive we couldn't afford the downpayment, much less the monthly payments on it!). Then they remodeled the house, rebuilt the kitchen, built an apartment to rent over the garage. It's taken them a couple of years, but...my kid build a house! How did he learn how to do that? He's a banker and a computer guy, for Pete's sake. My admiration for his accomplishments knows no bounds.
But this week, I'm kvelling about Ned. Ned and I share a lot of the same interests and so when he does something I am more inclined to understand the complexity of it and to want to figure out "how did he do that?" so I can try it myself, because I actually have a shot at understanding his explanation. (Ned also built a room onto his house, BTW, and that has me as amazed as what Tom has built, but I know I'll never attempt that!)
Our kids have been making videos since they were old enough to pick up our movie camera and aim it at each other. When I posted the Video of the Day two days ago, it was an old video that Ned and Paul had made, originally called "Lawsuit, Lawsuit." I hope some of you watched it. I was impressed once again, not only for the cleverness of it and how well it all worked, but how they used one Lawsuit recording for the music, and stuck in all these clips, but in spots, like where Jeri had flute solos, though there are clips from two different concerts, they matched the recording perfectly. I talked with Ned about this today and he said that's because he is a drummer, so he always hears the drum beat and matches things to the drum beat. But if you ever watch it with the technicality of it in mind, I think you'll be as impressed as I was.
But what he posted today blew. me. away. He now has a new computer, so the world opens up to him and he's as much of a media nut as I am, but light years away in terms of talent and creativity. The musical group he plays with, Preoccupied Pipers (they just record and perform one 20 minute concert a year) has just released a new album, and he took one of the songs out of the album and made a music video. You really have to see it, whether you like that kind of music or not...just see it to appreciate all the work that went into it.
I make videos on my home computer and I know how much work goes into a project like this. I am in total awe of what he produced here. I can't remember how many hours he said he worked on this, but I'm sure he'll add a comment in the guestbook section to remind me.
I know everybody's kids are wonderful and mine are probably no more wonderful than yours, or yours, or yours. But I only have mine to talk about and when I look at some of the things they have accomplished, I just stand back and shake my head ... my kids did that! There isn't a refrigerator in the world big enough.
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