As GREEN as the grass is long.

I just bought a cordless electric lawnmower.  I do need a lawnmower technically since I sold my only working lawn mower at this fall's yard sale.  It was a mower I utterly loathed, a mower I sort of inherited by default from my inlaws while they were renting and I had storage space.  The mower was just not my style.  Self-propelled.  Fancy gadgets like speed control and a bagger.  My mowers had always been of the simple $99 variety.  Motor, deck, blade, pull the cord, push the mower...add gas and oil when it seems like a good idea.  Round about a year into the storage of previously discussed mower my old faithful cheapo mower became...injured.  I tried to mow too close to the fire hydrant in our front lawn and snagged the sparkplug wire.  Pulled it clean off.  Sure I made a half-hearted attempt to find a replacement at Ace and Lowe's, but I couldn't find a match.  That's when I fired up the fancy red beast.  It was complicated.  Like a small car with too many buttons and dials.  It confused me.  But it did mow the lawn.  Not much better than its simpler and significantly lower priced cousin, but it did get the job done.  After the initial week I vowed to get my mower fixed.  I justified the use because hey, aren't you supposed to start up and run a motor every so often?  

The next week rolled around and I wheeled big red out of the shed again and got the lawn mowed...then again and again, all the while my mower sitting in the back of the shed collecting dust, and life jackets and a soccer goal...and whatever else got thrown over that way.  It was soon out of sight and out of mind.  One sunny Saturday my inlaws stopped by to visit, unexpectedly, and saw me out back mowing with what my father in law had specifically touted as "the best mower we've ever owned."  They asked how it was mowing for me and all but gave me their blessing to use it whenever I needed to, once I emphatically explained my predicament with my "recently" broken down unit.

To make a long story short, after that encounter I became more cavalier about the use of the red blade.  I figured I would just use it for the remainder of the season and fix my mower over winter, it's what the professionals do.  Seemed like a good plan until one Thursday evening in late October.  On that fateful night I was hurrying to finish mowing the front lawn so I could get inside and out of the cold.  I was mowing the ditch, careful to stay clear of the greedy fire hydrant when in a cloud of dust, dirt, grass and smoke the mower came to a sudden and violent stop.  Silent and still smelling of burnt oil, the mower just sat there and stared up at me.  I was scared to pull it back for fear of the worst.  Had I cut too close and somehow caught a hidden root or underground pipe of some kind.  Was there a rock I hadn't seen?  Nope.  I had lowered the deck in hopes that this might be the last time I had to mow the ditches for the year and had dug up about 4 inches of sod.  The blade of the mower was bent down, unnaturally.  It looked like an athlete who had their knee folded in on itself.  You just knew it's career was over.  I limped it back to the shed, the ditch only half mowed, looking around to see if the event was witnessed by anyone.  Nope.  I was safe.  Now I just needed to figure out what to do when my inlaws decided they were ready for their mower back!  I soon found that the riding lawnmower could get plenty close to the ditches if need be.


As it would turn out, the mower just needed a new blade to be functional again.  It never really mowed all that well after the incedent, but i was just happy I could use it.  We ended up selling that home and moving around Thanksgiving that fall.  The house we bought has no ditches and a relatively small yard so I stored the original mower and that spring fired up old red.  At first it seemed willing to play along.  Having sold our rider with the house it was my only mowing option so it got weekly use.  First the cable that engages the self-propelled mechanism broke, no biggie.  I just unhooked it.  I never really cared for a self-propelled mower anyway.  Next the main plastic housing covering the engine fell off.  No worries, I didn't mind mowing with something that looked and sounded like Mad Max would have used it to trim around the Thunderdome.  Then the wobble started.  Apparently the blade I had put on was not as well balanced as the one I ruined.  Hey, whatever, for an hour I can put up with almost anything.  Then the unthinkable happened...my inlaws bought a house.


I suddenly had to come up with one of two things; a way to repair the now mangled mower, or a new mower that they would like just as much as they had this one.  To make a long story short, I went with the latter.  It cost me more than I would ever personally pay for a lawn mower and forced me to admit the abuse that their mower had endured.  In the end it was a house warming gift and a clear conscious rolled up into one.  Now I could really give this piece of junk the treatment it deserved.  I mowed it hard and put it away wet.  Then, in a spontaneous act of desperation I wheeled it out to the front lawn the day of our community yard sale.  It felt good.  Like finally breaking up with a girl that your parents had warned you was bad news.  

The person who purchased it for a whooping $35 seemed like the type of man who was able to take on a project.  This did leave me with a dilemma though.  There was still a month and a half of mowing to do...


My neighbor was generous enough to lend me his mower.  It worked the way a mower is supposed to.  No wobble, no loose cables, no smoke and no random screaming.  I thought I could make it through the lawn mowing season and look for a mower in the spring, when the sales are in season.  I never expected that I would happen upon a dusty, long forgotten box on the upper "clearance floor" of Lehman's Hardware.  The same store where not even a year earlier I had happened upon a Tilley hat.  Good surprises abound at Lehman's.  After some brief and pleasant negotiation on just how "clearanced" this "one of" piece of lawn technology could be we settled upon a price that was mutually agreeable.  It seems that the store had thought of dabbling in the lawn equipment business briefly but that they had pulled the plug before ever really giving it a shot.  The mower I had found was a relic of that endeavor.  It was the only one they had ordered, and would be the only one they would sell.  That alone makes the whole transaction feel special for some reason.  Like when the used car salesman tells you the story about the little old lady who only drove the car to the market and to the hospital to volunteer, only this story was true.  I got a deal.  


I'm looking forward to mowing my lawn.  Hopefully tonight.  It will be like mowing again for the very first time.  I am doing my part to help the environment too.  I've never really been "Green" before.  Feels a little nerdy, but a cool kind of nerdy.  Like the first kid on the block with an Ipad.  Only this can mulch.

Grandma will finally be at Christmas this year...

My grandmother passed away yesterday morning after many years of declining mental and physical health.  Unfortunately for all of us she was in Florida while the rest of the family was back "home" in Ohio.  She was a wonderful woman and I remember her bright smile and how empty it felt not to have that smile at holidays those first few years they decided not to make the trip back up to see us.  It hurt as a grandchild and it hurt us as a family.  I know she would have wanted to be here if she had the choice.  Now that she has passed I hope she will be able, finally, to see the smiles on her great grandchildrens' faces and feel the love that family brings.  I miss you Grandma.

I know you’re in a far better place but tears started welling up when I saw your face.

A picture taken long ago, at a more simple time in a happier place. 

The smile I remember and the time slows down.  I can smell your perfume I remember the sound of your voice.

I remember you letting me drive when we rode in your red car.  Not too fast and not too far.

I remember the pink candy always filling the dish on the hutch.  We could always take some, but not too much.

I remember the cherry delight always finishing family meals. I remember the first Christmas without you here and how empty that feels.

I remember and I miss you.  But we have all missed you for years now.  Talking on the phone was never enough anyhow.

I wish you could have been with us each Christmas.  You used to love Easter, too.

I wish you could have known your great grandsons; you would have loved fishing with them too.

You were so far away from all of our lives and the love we wanted to share.

There were so many times over so many years that I wish you could have been there.

Now that you are free from the sadness and pain I know you can smile again. 

I know you can be anywhere now.  It makes me feel better somehow.

I hope that you will look down and be a part of our lives, it will be so nice to finally have you there.

Of Heaven and Costa Rica

My older two sons have been asking a lot of good questions lately about Heaven.  They want to know the details.  How it works in plain language.  They want the real life down to Earth explanation of everything;  how old you are when you’re in Heaven, if you get any older while you are in Heaven and things like whether or not you can still see the people who are on Earth when you die, can you talk to people and meet new friends in Heaven, do you fly around or do you walk?…you get the point.  Being that I am a person who truly believes Heaven to be a real place, a place where I plan to spend eternity with those who love God and without the pain and heartaches of this life, I want to give them an answer to their questions that strengthens their faith.  What I am finding is that it may end up strengthening mine in the process. 

I want to give them answers that help them to believe in something that they won’t see until they get there.  Something that they have to just trust is better than they can imagine without having a concise story.  Pop culture has done me no favors in this endeavor. Some say streets of gold, some say rivers of light, sometimes it looks like a city of glass, sometimes big overstuffed clouds cluttered with fat winged babies.  Tough to make a rock solid mental image out of all that.  I get it.  I get the confusion.  I’m thrilled with their questions and the interest they have in God and Heaven and how it all plays out.  It makes me feel like my wife and I are doing something right.  I am terrified however that the answers I might come up with for them will somehow scar them for life.  What if I create a mental image for them of a Heaven they don’t care to visit?  For me the “I’ll just find out when I get there” approach has seemed to work best, but that does nothing for a 5 year-old’s curiosity.  Then I remembered my brief love affair with the mystical far off land of…Costa Rica, and then I got even more concerned with my answers.

I have never been to Costa Rica.  I did however meet a young woman at a training session from Costa Rica a few months back, she was a bright, charming woman with an easy way about her that contrasted boldly against the burnt-out over-stressed drones that we all turn into in the Midwestern United States.  Something about her seemed different, exotic.  So the second day of the seminar a few of us asked her where she was from, originally.  Costa Rica, she told us.  She told of the wonderful climate both meteorological and political.  She told of the diverse wildlife and the diverse culture.  She told about beautiful tropical beaches and also about the mountains and rainforests.  It sounded like a pretty cool place.  Once she explained the low cost of living and the vast opportunities for ex-patriots to make a lavish living on modest means, it sounded downright magical.  I did some research and watched some YouTube travel videos and realized that yes, Costa Rica does seem like a great place to escape to…maybe.  It also has spiders the size of rats and rats the size of small dogs.  There are poisonous snakes in the trees and alligators in the rivers.  It borders some…let’s just say “democratically challenged” neighbors geographically and has more than its fair share of active volcanoes.  Though the landscape is diverse and beautiful, there really is not all that much of it that is developed, be that good bad or otherwise to the standards we are used to here in the US.  It is not the perfect place it looked to be at first blush.  I soon went from being able to see myself taking my family to Costa Rica for an adventurous new life filled with sun, surfing and safari to being glad that I am settled in and safe in Ohio, where family is close and things are familiar.  This brings me back to my explanation of Heaven to the boys. 

 How do I keep them on that high that I felt when I thought I had discovered the perfect place?  

How do I paint the picture in their heads about Heaven that I feel in my heart?  

How do I keep them from picturing the spiders, snakes and volcanoes?  

Ok, that’s Costa Rica and not Heaven, but again, you get the point.  It comes down to having faith that Heaven is wonderful because Jesus told us that it is.  How do you explain faith to a five and seven year old?  The dictionary defines faith as “belief that is not based on proof” and I have explained that to them, I think they might get it.  But when I tell them to just have faith that Heaven is a wonderful place, it feels like a cop out.  Heck, Disney World defines itself as a magical place better in a 60 second TV commercial than I have done with Heaven in an hour.  

The struggle for a good explanation of Heaven continues…it’s really challenging me to define my own belief in what awaits as well.  I am hopeful that the boys will teach me a thing or two by the time this is all said and done.  I’ll keep you posted.

2 Corinthians 5:7 (NIV)   “We live by faith, not by sight.”

Today is International Credit Union Day; celebrate by exercising your freedom to choose!

Freedom of choice is something most of us in the US take for granted.  We have hundreds of different restaurants to choose from.  We have dozens of auto manufactures competing for our garage space.  We even now have multiple Smartphone platforms to choose from to access the thousands of apps out there to spend our time on.   We are used to having choices in everything we do.

Most non-credit union people out there would feel that they have that same freedom of choice when it comes to their banking options, but if they only consider banks to do their banking do they really?  Banks, even under different names and different sizes all offer pretty much the same product, for the same reason…profit.

Banks may call their products by different names or have unique taglines, but they all focus on the same bottom line.  Like fast food burger joints.  One might have arches and another a crown but at the end of dinner they basically sell the same product at basically the same price to basically the same demographic.  Sure, the prize in the kid’s meal changes from time to time but you can always still get fries with that. 

Credit unions are like a Chipotle restaurant stuck in the burger joint mix.  We might not have as vast a menu and there are not as many of us out there, but if you look at the quality of what we offer, you can taste the difference.  The long term effects are far more positive dining at a place that serves fresh, simply prepared food.  The long term effects of dealing with a credit union are positive as well, less debt and increased wealth.  Facts prove it.  Wastelines and wallets don’t lie.

So this year, for ICU Day, celebrate the freedom of choice that credit unions give people.  We allow the members in our markets the freedom to do their banking a different way.  We allow them the freedom to have a vote, and a voice.  They have the freedom to choose among themselves who will lead them on the board.  They have the freedom to be treated as an owner and not just a number.  They have the freedom to choose people over profits.  It is why we do what we do and why October 21^st 2010 will certainly be a day I feel very proud of my credit union and the hard work we do day after day for our members.  Viva para la elección!

Where did all of the good conversation go?

As I walked through the grocery isle with my 18 month old son, discussing coffee and the finer points of its history and social importance in our culture it occurred to me that I need more adult conversation.

Not that I didn’t think that my son was worthy of this important bonding time, I just don’t think at his age he gives a hill of beans that even though darker roast coffee has a richer flavor it is in fact lower in the content of the all important caffeine component, as the caffeine is literally “burnt off” in the roasting process.

It occurred to me that perhaps this conversation, often interrupted by him throwing items out of the cart or randomly pulling them off of the nearest shelves and throwing them into the cart; “no thanks G…we don’t really need any orange marmalade today”, that I don’t have the chance…EVER…to just sit and chat aimlessly anymore about anything to any adult anywhere…

In college there were countless hours spent at coffee shops solving the world’s problems, amidst the occasional bout of studying.   There were the hours spent on a barstool chatting up with good friends about all of the things we would do once we had our degrees in hand.  There was the wonderful time my wife and I used to spend talking about all of the what-ifs ahead of us, before the kids and work zapped every last ounce of energy from us and left us with the ability to barely produce a half-hearted “G’night honey” before rolling over and passing out. 

Yes, life as a 30 something father of 3 just doesn’t include enough opportunity to talk about meaningless topics to adults in meaningful ways.  It’s something that will change, I know.  It is seasonal.  It too shall pass and there will come a time when I will have so much time to chat that I may actually run out of things to talk about…

Unlikely…but hey, so were all of the solutions to the world’s problems…until then, the kids will just have to put up with the occasional lecture about things not pertaining to them... and long drawn out stories about way back in the day, when their daddy was cool and the conversations were plenty.