So yesterday was my daughter's bday. She turned 7 years old. I can't believe my kids are this old already. My middle son just turned 6 a few weeks back. For a 3 week or so period, I had two 6 year olds! I just want the best for them in every facet of their lives. Constantly, I 2nd guess myself as to whether I am handling a particular situation right with them or not. Questions roll thru my head like "Was I too hard on him?", "Should I encourage her more?", "Do I need to set a better example?", "Is that school challenging them?"... It goes on and on. At my worst, I feel that I am letting them down by not doing a good enough job as a parent. At my best, I feel that simply by being concerned and attentive to their needs, I am doing a better than average job as a parent. Time will tell. If i blink and rub my eyes, my kids will be going off to college! Another blink and wifey and I will be in our mid 50s, wondering if we have lead a good life and staring at blankly into the future.
Looking for a way to have more time for myself. the job and family will suck all of the time out of a person until one finds himself staring at some crappy, completely meaningless and unentertaining TV show late at night. Night after night.
Been thinking about my maternal grandfather lately. He stood by his family and his responsibility there through the toughest circumstances. In his 40s he had a good thing going on back in the Mother County, Latvia. Employed as a forester, he had a decent living, a big house for his wife and child (my Mom) and a job that gave him some satisfaction. Then world war 2 happens and he is pushed from his home w/ nothing. Next thing he knows, he and his samll family are in a refugee camp for years, somewhere in Germany. They end up in the USA, starting over in his 50s. Did he run to the bottle? Did he abandon (i.e. divorce) his wife and child for a more carefree, younger woman? Did he simply give up? Nope, he started over, worked his ass off as construction and eventually bought a nice home, his kid was back in school, his wife (my gandma) worked off and on and he lived to see his grandkids. His example gives me strength when I start feeling whiny about my life. When I get too tied up w/ "the Joneses", or how much $$ I make, or how popular my kids are at school or the car I drive or if I am getting enough "quality, personal time" or if I would be happier doing this or doing that. He just did what he had to do, looking forward but focused on the things right in front of him. He was a man. Not my father or my wife's father that are so caught up in the "me" generation and their own needs. Fuck the kids.
Am reading the book, "Just Another Soldier" about a guy's year in the infantry in Iraq. Interesting to get the first hand, unsensationalized and unglorified picture of a war. It is horrifying how many people die and get injuried and have their lives ruined. It is not as simple as good guy vs. bad guy. The people impacted are often just innocent bystanders in the wrong place at the wrong time. I guess that could be said of my grandfather, grandmother and mom as described above...

Gripe time. I am in some sort of funk lately. Seems that I do nothing but work, which is a bore, and follow my 3 kids around. Completely reactionary.

Wifey is all ditracted w/ her own dramas. She is also completely engrosse dw. her 2 sisters and mother. They do nothing except sit, yak-yak, drink and smoke. They talk about nothing and them judge everyone wlse according to their familial world view. She and I never really had anything to talk about but now we rarely even talk at all. I had encouraged her to stop working part time so that she would be less stressed and have more time to focus on our 3 kids. Now it seems that she is spending her etra time in the consorts of her retired mother and part time employed sister. They do whatever the hell they want with their money and time cuz they can. Wifey is starting to behave that way. The kids are barely getting what she said she would deliver. I don't get what I nee and just lip that I she works so hard. Does she even now what the intensity o a 10 hours day with a 2 hours commute is? Can she imagine the stress of having to make career choices that will define one's life and the fortune of our family for the next 30 years? She has never really held a full time job. I certainly appreiciate her taking care of the kids and the house. I have performed all of those tasks, though individually, at one time or another and would not want to do what she does. Yet she has zero concept o what I do, every fucking day. She thinks I go and hang out with friends at the office drinking coffee and shooting the shit all day.

She ight be happier if she finds a reason to divorce me, she'll get the house and the kids of course, and then her other sister can move in (her youngest sister already lives with us) and her Mom too. To top it of, I will end up paying her child support and alimony. Then she will have her circle of sistahs and mother w/o me getting in the way and I'll pay for it all.

I am so fucking bored. When it come to work, I am very uninspired. I see now that I can get rmonetary rewards for my hard work. However, the reward hardly seems worth the sacrifice of time and professional satisfaction. Right now, I want time to enjoy mysel a little. Exercise, spend time out doors hiking or kayaking and finding some sort o hobby and maybe develop a friend or two so i do not have sit in this goddamn houe all o the time.

It is truly pathetic but whenever I really have peronal time, say a few hours or so, I o not know what to do. Worse, I have no one to do anything with. All of my friends are barely friends anymore as I have succeeded in alienating myself from them over the years.

I think that I need to take a little control. Change from reationary to pro-active in my life. I just need to figure out what that means exactly.