I'm pretty sure we are violating some child labor

Mark Wein said:
for me, my grandparents on my mothers side were born in the 1890s and on my fathers side not too long after. The only one still alive during my lifetime was my fathers mother, and she passed away when I was very young too. My parents were much older when I was born and for them the idea was that they didn't want us to live the lives they had growing up through the depression...my dad was a self taught engineer who worked with his father-in-law for a while as a plumber among a host of other jobs but I was expected to go to school like my brother and be a lawyer or engineer or something white collar and "useful". I never saw my mother after about my 6th birthday and she never worked and was a mess of addiction and mental illness. My step mother actually did encourage music for me...she had played trumpet semi-professionally in the 1950's and there was always music around our house when we still lived in New York. She actually stood up for me in High School when my dad wanted to take me out of band and take my instruments away to force me to study more and improve my grades. When I did get into USC to go to college since it was for music and not a "real career" my dad pulled my funding....we didn't speak much for years after that. In the years before he passed our relationship improved and I don't have any regrets but it did affect me quite a bit.

One reason why I guess I post too much stuff about my own kids is that besides being very proud of them I also want them to have a childhood and a relationship with their family that I never had.
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I hear you. I was really close with my maternal grandparents, but they lived in London and Dublin, and after we moved to Canada, I really only ever saw them during the summers. Mom was a single workaholic, so I pretty much raised myself from age 9 or 10 on. I was cooking all of my own meals at that age, and usually home alone.

Probably explains some of my life chances, not that I'm unhappy with them. I inherited the workaholic drive, so one of the things that I'm actually really grateful for about cancer is that it's really slowed me down and given me lots of time home alone with my children.
 
It's good you have your kid working the machine, because you'd have trouble playing guitar if you lost a finger.

:thu:
 
Flamencology said:
I hear you. I was really close with my maternal grandparents, but they lived in London and Dublin, and after we moved to Canada, I really only ever saw them during the summers. Mom was a single workaholic, so I pretty much raised myself from age 9 or 10 on. I was cooking all of my own meals at that age, and usually home alone.

Probably explains some of my life chances, not that I'm unhappy with them. I inherited the workaholic drive, so one of the things that I'm actually really grateful for about cancer is that it's really slowed me down and given me lots of time home alone with my children.
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You've been way more productive in the shorter amount of time that you've been around than I was before I was 35 or so. I wasted my 20's bitter about the various hands I had been dealt instead of doing anything productive about them. My 30's were spent being incredibly lucky meeting and marrying Mrs W and my 40's have been about making up for lost time. Now I try to make each day count more even if it's in small ways and while I complain a lot on the forum I'm really more positive IRL these days. Everything on my plate can be dealt with sooner or later. Its all a matter of remembering to swim each day before I sink.
 
Very cool to see young'uns doing something constructive instead of playin' vid games
or spending too much time on FB.

At my age, I feel fortunate to still have my pa around...he's 93 and still kickin' hard.
I learned a lot about woodworking from him, as well as how to do some mechanic work,
and how to run a farm without the benefit of irrigation (dry land farming).
 
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so I dropped my son off at school this morning and its science fair week...his project was about how electromagnets work. His mom found the project online but he understood it and could demonstrate and explain it. Apparently he's getting some sort of ribbon in Thursday nights science fair for his grade but they almost disqualified him because they didn't think that a first grader could understand could do a project like this and it must just be the parents doing it for him. Luckily his teacher had him demo the experiment in class last week and stood up for him with the judges.
 
Last bit of kid bragging:

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Third place in the school science fair for his grade this morning. Kinda got robbed I think :mad:
 
Mark Wein said:
Last bit of kid bragging:

Third place in the school science fair for his grade this morning. Kinda got robbed I think :mad:
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You have every right to be proud.

Robbed indeed. What does a kid need to do to get first or second, have his parents do it for him?

That's alright... Later, when he's acing a science test, first and second place won't have any extra help from home!
 
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