Risley Ranch

Babies and Tai Chi

I had a great weekend.  So good, in fact, I didn't want to do any work, blog, twitter or anything else except soak in the sun.

Saturday Joe took his testing for karate.  We've had him enrolled in the local ATA franchise for close to six months now.  He practices twice a week with other 5-6 year olds.  It really is neat to watch him go through the moves, and I'm impressed with the positive, confidence-building and respect-generating nature of the program.  I studied Goju Ru karate in college and loved it.  My karate career ended when I destroyed my little finger in a sparing match and had to have reconstructive surgery on it.  Even so, I'd like to encourage Joe to follow martial arts for its mind-body-soul attributes, as well as the need to learn self-defense.

Also on Saturday, I finished an eight-week course in introductory Tai Chi.  I found the Lawrence Academy of Tai Qi through a reference, and decided to make it part of my "Tao Makeover," which I started back in February of this year.  The instructors -- Trish, Adam, Katie and Travler -- are wonderful folks.  They've been practicing this Taoist martial art for at least 10 years each, and it shows.  They teach a derivative of the Wu style, which is one of the five traditional schools of Tai Chi, all of which originated in China.  You probably think of old people in a park doing slow, long movements in unison when you think of Tai Chi.  It is a "soft" martial art; however, it requires all the things I'm trying to better in my 40-year-old self: balance, concentration, stamina and positive energy.  I'm definitely going to continue the training.

On Sunday we headed into Kansas City for the local March for Babies event.  The March of Dimes is a Barkley client, and one of the many brand-changes we helped them with was changing the name of their signature event from Walk America to March for Babies.

It was a gorgeous sunny day, and thousands of people descended upon the Power and Light district for the 1- or 3-mile walk.  We opted for the 1-mile, which went right past the Barkley building, which was decorated to the hilt to show off our passion for this client.  My hat's off to everyone who helped organize us for this event -- especially the MOD team and Jennifer Cawley, who put in all kinds of time organizing and rallying us.

Technorati Tags: March of Dimes, March for Babies, Tai Chi, Barkley

The innocence of your 6th birthday

Do you remember it?  That complete feeling of happiness.  That sense of being absolutely consumed by the present.  No worries about anything.  I hope that's the way Joe remembers his 6th birthday. 

We celebrated at the Lawrence Gymnastics Academy.  They're great.  It's like "birthday-in-a-box."  You and 15 of your closest, screaming friends get to run around a huge indoor playroom, then eat cake and open presents.

The little boy we adopted five years ago from Guatemala has completely changed my life forever, in ways I never imagined.  But mostly by reminding me that life is meant to be enjoyed.  Happy birthday buddy.

Overheard this morning at my house

...after Joe woke up at 5 a.m., grumpy, and wouldn't go back to sleep:

Mommy:  "Ok Joe, that's enough crying.  You need to get a grip now."

Joe:  "But I don't want a grip."

We laughed.

Sometimes I don't want a grip either.

I can only imagine

Over at our Barkley Online Community, a colleague (Scott Loewen) posted the following passage from Sports Illustrated and a link to this video.  I was so overwhelmed by it I made this comment:

"I don't think I can express in words what I'm feeling from watching this. I've seen motivational speakers (some of them handicaped), read motivational books and watched motivational videos, but that may be the single-most touching thing I've ever seen in 37 years of life. I feel engergized and like a complete failure at the same time. As I sit here in a hotel room in San Antonio, watching my son sleep, I wonder if I would have it in myself to do such a thing for him. Am I man enough? From what cosmic well does this father draw such strength? And how in the world can I ever complain again about anything in my life?"

Strongest Dad in the World
[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans.  Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck. Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars-- all in the same day. Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right? And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester , Mass. , 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. ``He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an institution.'' But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at  Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. “There's nothing going on in his brain.''

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school  organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that. ''Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped, ''Dick says. ``I was sore for two weeks.'' That day changed Rick's life. "Dad,'' he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. "No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially:  In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?'' How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think? Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time'? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of  these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time. "No question about it,'' Rick types, "My dad is the Father of the Century.''

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race.   Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago.''

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston , and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland , Mass. , always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every > weekend, including this Father's Day. That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

"The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''

It's been 20 years...

Since my wife graduated from Mt. Carmel High School in San Diego.  The class of 1986 reunion is this weekend, and we're going.  I'm pumped.  First, because it's the first vacation Amy and I have taken together this year -- alone.  Second, because it's San Diego.  And third, I've never met any of Amy's high-school buddies.  I mean, how fun is that moment going to be when I meet her old boyfriend.

So in tribute to 20 years of adulthood, here are a few pictures of my lovely wife:

A great celebration

The first baby boomers I ever met -- my parents -- turned 60 this past weekend.  Mom on July 1, and Dad on July 2.  So we celebrated the way boomers should celebrate this milestone:  with a party.

The setting was our farm in Western Kansas.  Rather than showing you a plain-old Google Map of the farm, I found this service called Quickmaps, and I was able to make my own map:

It was a great evening.  Thirty to forty friends and family, beer, bar-b-que and very nice weather for July in Kansas.

This is a big year for boomers.  According to the US Census Bureau, nearly 8,000 Americans a day will turn 60 during 2006, including my parents, President Bush, Cher and Sylvester Stallone. 

According to Health News Digest, boomers are facing concerns about their finances, health, and world politics, but they aren’t overly focused on ‘getting old.”  A 60-year-old who expects to live to 100 is only halfway through adulthood. "Baby boomers literally think they're going to die before they get old," says J. Walker Smith, president of Yankelovich Partners, the polling company which found in one study that boomers defined "old age" as starting three years after the average American was dead. They are optimistic about advances in medicine and wellness that will defy today’s actuarial reality. People 60 years old today have an actuarial life expectancy of 82.3, but boomers don't consider themselves bound by the laws of statistics.  (Source: E-Quad News)

There's a lot of focus these days on Gen Y, as there should be, but we can't forget the power Boomers have in our Country, whether it's leading the nation, leading companies, leading cities or leading the economy.

So "Happy Birthday" Mom and Dad, and to the other thousands of boomers celebrating everyday.  I hope you make your lives as meaningful in your seniors years as you've done up to this point.  And if for any reason you want to defer your social security payments to Gen X, let me know.

What a kidney-transplant scar looks like

My mom's a trooper.  She's doing incredibly well as she recovers from her kidney-transplant surgery.  She moves more slowly than normal, she can't lift anything heavy, and her energy level is low, but other than that, she's normal.

She's staying in Denver with our cousin, Rosemary, who is more than an awesome host.  I stayed with them two days last week.  What a fun time.  The one-on-one time with Mom was so good -- it's something I haven't done for some time, I'm sorry to say.  And I got to know our good cousin Rosemary better and get a family history lesson at the same time (more on that later).

Mom was a good sport and let me take a picture of her incision:

It's 8-10 inches long and is located on her right side.  It runs diagonly from her pubic area up to the bottom of her rib cage.  I didn't expect it to be stapled.  Makes it look a little Frankenstien-ish, doesn't it. 

That little hole is where they inserted a tube to drain fluid after surgery.

They did not remove her other kidneys.  They stay in and continue to function, although minimally.  The new kidney sits in a little pocket in her abdomen and works in concert with the other two.  In fact, her surgeon said as soon as they hooked up the new kidney, it pinked-up and began producing urine.  That usually doesn't happen for a couple of days.

The biggest dangers now are rejection and infection; infection because she's on immunosuppressive drugs to help stop rejection.

And boy is she on a lot of drugs:  two immunosuppresives, three different antibiotics, calcium pills, aspirin...she's taking between 10 and 15 pills each day.  The pharmacy bill for month 1:  $2,900, $1700 of which is the two immunosuppresives, Cellcept and Prograf.

A little side note to this story...Mom's brother, who had a kidney transplant 10 years ago, was on a transplant list in Kansas City to receive another kidney because the first had worn out.  Three days after Mom's surgery, he got the call and had his transplant.  He's doing well also.  Definite family karma going on.

I want to thank everyone who has emailed or commented good wishes for Mom.  It's clearly helped in some cosmic way.

Do you yoga?

My son does, now that mommy has shown him how.  Of course, I can't get mommy to do it in her underware.

The family pet

I've been around animals all my life.  Cattle.  Horses.  Pigs.  Geese.  Sheep.  Dogs.  Cats.  Rabbits.  On the farm, our animals were just a part of the life cycle.  But some animals held a bit higher status, and these were the family pets :

• Rosie, our Rhodesian Ridgeback that was run over by the mail lady and survived (yes, a person used to deliver our mail to the box by our house).
• Doc and Dan, a pair of Belgian work horses my Grandpa owned that were tame enough to ride.
• Queenie, the black lab my Grandma gave me for Christmas and lived longer than just about any pet we had (my Dad accidentally ran over her with a tractor one summer).
• Snoopie, a very special cat, that bred like a rabbit.  She gave us new kittens every year to play with.  Animals were not allowed in our house, but Snoopie could occasionally come in, she was that special.
• Brownie, the quarter horse I learned to ride on.
• KC, a Great Pyrenees that I would All-Star Wrestle with because she was so big.
• And within my 18 years on the farm were also sprinkled various pseudo pets, like baby calves and an occasional pig. 

All these pets hold a special place in my heart.  I believe they helped shape me as much as any other component of my environment.  Pets taught me responsibility, compassion and care.  You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat animals.

My wife and son and I don't live on a farm today, but we still have a pet in our lives.  Betty is a Shih Tzu (pronounced Sheed Zu, not Shit Su).  She's not a manly dog and I don't look very manly walking her.  But she is adorable, smart and as much a part of the family as I am.  And I can see how Joe respects her and treats her like a family member too, which is important for his development.

If you don't own a pet, go get one.  No matter what it is, it will make a difference in your life.

A great week

It's been a great week because...
1.  Today is our 11th wedding anniversary.
2.  Our son, Joe, has said some of the sweetest things he's ever said (e.g., "Daddy, please tuck in my shirt...I want to look good for when Mommy gets homes.")
3.  Our PR group has landed a couple of new pieces of business.
4. Our shop is hosting a "creativity symposium," and yesterday I heard Chuck Porter of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, and Joseph Jaffe speak.
5. I'm working with a team of very talented, cool people at our agency to develop an online community for our employees.  It will be a tool for us "to be students of the world," and leverage the talent of all our people, as our goal states.  The project is exciting, but so is working with this team.  They dynamic of this group and the creativity we're all throwing out...it's inspirational.  We've developed a project blog, which we're all contributing to, and to keep our CEO informed, we're podcasting our meetings.
6.  I've started blogging again after a long hiatus.