My child is three. She is sometimes a terrible three. I have had the typical day most parents have. Not enough time, not enough patience, and not enough sleep and then along comes the unrelenting three-year old terrorist. They ask a million questions, talk over you, cause you to ask people to repeat themself a dozen times over the phone. Then you try to engage the three-year old and she pouts, shouts, and hits. This is where the battle of wits begins. There are many options to redirect the behavior. Some people use guilt, consequences (toys), time outs, and spanking. Different strokes for different folks.

I will be the first person to say that I am very strongly against spanking. I do not judge those that spank but I certainly question it. I recently read an article in Parenting Magazine that says several studies show spanking to be less than 50 % effective. Many children that are spanked become spankers. To me the trouble with spanking is that is can be too easy to not know when you have gone too far. You swat a child once and it is effective and the next thing you know you have to spank them harder or more often the next time because it is becoming less effective. This does not apply to all spankers but it certainly applies to some. I also think spanking is a cheap way out. It is a straight line or quick solution but at what cost? Even if the odds are slim that a spanker takes it to far or the spanked childs behavior worsens is it worth the risk at all? Something else to consider is that in American society it is never ever acceptable to strike a person. In some states striking a family member will cost you your right to bear arms but you can hit a stranger and still pack a 38 (that is another argument for another day). If this is the social law or norm then how could it ever be acceptable to spank? This father says it is not. You really hold no ground if your child is quick to start physical altercations in school or adult life if your answer to that hard day where the child would not shut up was to spank them.

I have thought about it. There have been moments where a swat on the butt crossed my mind but I will never act upon the thought. The risk is not worth the reward and beside that how do you look a child in the face and hit them. If you are a smart ass who says you turn them away when you spank them then how do you look at them afterwards. It only hurts you more than it hurts them because you had a weak moment where you could not figure out a way to make the child act better. It is human. I am a young parent and all I can do is my best, along with my wife but it will never involve the most passive form of violence.

There are many websites on the internet that lend advice on dealing with bad behaviors. You can also contact your childs doctor for advice. Please reconsider the quick solution.

I think 2012 will be the year I facilitate a flash mob doing the Electric Slide at the White Houses annual Easter Egg Roll. We would all dress up like Ron Paul wearing a Queer Nation flag. I don’t know who would be more confused the FBI or Ron Paul.

There are some things I will try to give up in 2012 though.  I will try to stop staring neighbors boobs. They are fantastically large, pendulous, and perky. They look great in the summer heaving out of my neighbors sweaty shirt but the truth is I should show him more respect when he is mowing the lawn. He probably is not aware what his man boobs are doing to me.

I may need to give up drunk Face Booking. I get all juiced up on Banana flavored Mad Dog and the next thing you know I have friended  Charlie Sheen and I am attending all night Tiger Blood parties and boinking porn stars. Not good-looking porn stars either but the one that make a home video in their trailer with Ernest Borgnine so they suddenly believe they have a career in films. You Tube is to a movie career what Word Press is the being an established author…wait a minute I resemble that remark.

There are some things I need to get better at in 2012. I need to up my nude ping pong game before the 2014 Olympics. I need to build a spaceship. I need to stop farting in morse code while attending weddings it’s only funny to the groomsmen and my daughter. I need to stop picking my but in public. I need to stop hiding behind the water cooler in the office creating plans to create the perfect Pop Tart. I need to stop dyeing my nasal hair. I need to shave my pet monkey because who doesn’t love a naked monkey. I need to stop snorting Clabber Girl Baking Powder.  I need to give more to my favorite charity Bobs Home For Battered Shrimp and Cream Corn. I need to get better playing the nose flute. Last but not least I need to practice doing my Teebow…Peace Out!!!

In 1998 I left a job I loved and was great at. It was a job where I made a difference. I touched lives and lives touched me. I left that job in 1998 to work on a marriage doomed from day one. The marriage lasted only few short months and ended with me in the middle of a frozen field in middle America daring her to end my life with the tire iron she had already struck me several times with. I walked away broken in my heart and body. I literally had nothing tangible left in my life.  1998 was a good year.

In 1999 my second parents died. Jim and Janet were always there for me when I was growing up. No matter what was happening in my house I knew I could go there and all would be peaceful. Janet had taken care of my like one of her own. I never forgot to visit her years after I moved out of that alley on 17th Street. Even after becoming a police officer I would go visit her and Jim. In 1999 Janet was very sick and was in the hospital. Jim was supposed to go on a fishing trip with my Dad and I. Janet told Jim to make the trip because he could do nothing for him there. He made the trip with us and stayed drunk with sadness and fear the entire week…except  for our last night on the trip. He stayed back at the hotel with my Dad, instead of hitting the bar with the group, and they stayed sober and discussed life. Jim was worried what would happen to his daughter if he and Janet passed. She was an adult but needed her parents for various reasons both in and out of her control. We came home on a Sunday and Janet died that night. We buried Janet on a Wednesday and Jim died that night. We buried Jim a couple of days later. I went to two funerals in a matter of a couple of days and watched their family dwindle away before my eyes. Jim’s oldest son took care of his sister. 1999 was a good year.

In 2003 my wife was  in a horrible car accident. She was hit from behind in front of our house. She needed dozens of stitches inside her head, staples on the outside, and a couple of stitches on top of all that. It was the night before Hurricane Isabel. The hospital sent nearly everyone home due to the storm. I stayed awake that night, the next day as the hurricane pounded our home, and the next day. The day after the storm I had to take her back to the hospital. Rescue was not responding because of a huge after storm backlog. My wife had no idea where she was. I loaded her in the car and tried to keep her upright in her seat as I negotiated roads covered in trees, fences, and other debris. She lost several weeks memory and work. She still does not remember the wreck. The blood in the back seat of our less than one week car was thick as syrup. She very easily could have died. We had a lawsuit on our hands. 2003 was a good year.

In 2004 my wife and I got pregnant. I was through the ceiling with pride and joy. I told everyone and a week later we lost the baby. My wife had people ask her for weeks how the pregnancy was going. We were destroyed and as challenged as a young marriage could be. We soon began a journey through infertility. A young marriage with huge challenges. Both the car accident and miscarriage occurred on consecutive September’s. We still fear September. 2004 was a good year.

In 2005 the baby chase began. We were faced with failures and set backs from every angle. We were both told we had issues that created our shared problem. We rode an emotional rollercoaster all the way into 2007. We lost another baby and we eventually gave up. Those were good years.

Life is not easy and is not always served to you like a great dessert. Sometimes when you drink life’s milk you get a sour taste. In 2008 my wife had an epiphany and told me she wanted one more shot at having a baby. We went through an IVF cycle and got pregnant. A few months in and we were showing signs of losing the baby. The doctor said there was nothing they could do and they told her to go home and rest until the next morning and we would go to the doctor to face the inevitable. We were crestfallen and could not look at each other in the doctor’s office. She was sad and felt guilty and I was crushed for her. At that doctor’s appointment we heard my daughters heartbeat for the first time. I ran outside and called my friend Wayne and then our parents in that order. She would be on bedrest for another 7 to 8 months but in the end Emma was born. 2008 was a great year.

It is easy to remember the bad things in life and dwell on them. Bad times are like rain clouds they cover up the true beauty all around us. As long as you have a breath in your lungs there is the chance tomorrow is going to be a better day. If it were not for my first marriage I would not appreciate my present marriage. If  it were not for Jim and Janet I would not have learned many great life lessons and seen a love so strong that they literally could not live without each other. A shared pursuit filled with pain and doubt strengthens a couple and gives them a child. Life is not easy but it is damn sure worth living. I have had bad days but I have never had a  bad year. I love my wife, my daughter, my life, and you. Remember the good and learn from the bad but never lose sight of the gift of another day.

I have had people ask why I remain so positive all the time. I have my days when I want to throw my milk out of my bowl of Cocoa Puffs onto the nearest avocado head that crosses my path but I try to keep my cool and tasty cereal in check. My attitude is simple. My attitude is a byproduct of my life experiences. Many of my closest friends know about some of my past. From a childhood where I saw violence to a first marriage where I sometimes woke up with my wife straddling my chest and pointing my police Smith and Wesson at my head I have had some hard history to internalize. You will not hear me complain and I always forgive.

My experiences aside, it is the things I have seen that were not mine that had the longest impact on me. There are the easy events that we all have seen like 911, Oklahoma City Bombings, any number of parent on child murders, the random family gets killed in a traffic accident during a major holiday, cancer, AIDS, or any other unfortunately common tragedy that paints our television sets everyday in sadness. While on the police department I saw suicides for every reason from their own infidelity to financial ruin to just plain self-hatred. One thing was always common in suicide….the family left behind was the victim. I worked dozens of SIDS deaths, watched families tear themself apart over the most ridiculous of issues. I have seen people who had what most people would think was everything….everything but true love. True love not only for someone else but for themself.

I believe in one thing above all else: LOVE. Love is everything. Love is all things. Love is the only thing. You must learn to love your self as much as anyone else. If you love yourself you are comfortable in your own skin. If you are comfortable in your own skin half of the issues life brings you are easily dealt with. I am lucky. I found true love in my wife. The sun rises and sets on her. She saved me and reminded me that I have good things to give. I think life is to be lived. Life gets me down sometimes but I remember I am loved and I am in love with two beautiful girls (my daughter the other).

By knowing how lucky I am in life and by knowing how brutal life can be it makes being positive on most days as easy as making cookies. My love for life is not always returned but then again life has no obligation to me. I want to leave a mark on this world. I want to put a smile on your face and give you something to think about. I don’t need to know I did it but it means the world to me to shine good thoughts on others. It is easy to complain, worry but hard to love and strangely enough love feels so much better. I never expect anything from others because it is not for me be repaid for being myself. Rewards on a wall, titles, public acknowledgement means nothing and I do mean nothing (but they are nice and have a place) in most cases but when someone tells you they appreciate you in private……that makes life worth living. I recently had someone send me an email saying that “if someone told me what good has happened since Superfusion (a business transformation) I would tell them it would be meeting Andy Thornhill”….that hits home for me. The words we share are important and should be chosen wisely. When they are misused or directed in a harmful way they should be retracted as soon as possible. Life is worth living. You are worth loving and I truly love you all.

I say I love you because what if I am not here tomorrow? What if you are not here tomorrow? It is important to be caring and thoughtful. It is important to know that you have value. Not just to me but to the world as a whole. We never know what our words do to others. If you speak nicely to a cashier in a 7-11 who is just been treated like crap by the last ten customers you may be increasing her opinion of their self worth. It doesn’t cost anything but it does make a different. We cannot be positive at all time but we can be positive most of the time. Love others and it comes back to you. Be kind and the emotion rewinds its way back to you. Public acts of gratitude are great but it pales in comparison to the act of giving of yourself without the need to know what your words did. Life is a grand gift love it and each other.

After My Mates Got A Big Idea

I work at an office. It is a nice office but an office none the less. I am mostly at my desk and I am sort of out sight out of mind from the other desks. I wonder if that was by design. Office work can be humdrum sometimes. You look at the same desk and same people and same personal trinkets 10 hours a day. I have a great Betty White calender that breaks my monotony. Betty White is the bomb. She is the Golden Girl with the mostest. This year my employer allowed us all to decorate out cubicles for the holidays and I question their judgement. There were no rules applied to this holiday activity. It was an open-ended proposition. Decorate, celebrate diversity, and have fun. A few folks let out their inner Griswold’s.

The Gingerbread Fortress

I appreciate the ambition it takes to come into your office when you are off to build your very own “Cone of Silence” and disguise it as a gingerbread house. My desk was boring…

 …..It started out that we would hang some white lights and maybe some fake snow but then came wall hangings, a train, polar bears, penguins, Alaskan Bush Pilots to fly you through the Christmas auditorium to your work station.  As the week wore on each pod of cubicles seemed to form through own Christmas community.

Grinch of Grocery

A pharmaceutical HolidayEnter Only Bearing GiftsClassic Use of Streamers

 I was very concerned we going too far but then it occurred to me what a wonderful thing was happening. My fellow employees and friends were expressing themselves. They were enjoying the spirit of the season as they saw fit. They were bringing light to the mundane. It is fun. It is good to express. It is good to see someone you have known for over a decade go nuts for a couple of weeks with Holiday cheese. The Holidays are full of stresses but if you look close enough through the Griswold pile you can see the true beauty of the season. Merry Christmas my friends.