Tradition?

Christmas dinner is something that has been long neglected in our home. It wasn't on purpose that we started this tradition, in fact it was quite by accident…

Prosciutto, anchovy and onion pizza.

About four years ago I had a wonderful holiday meal planned for Christmas Day. We got up, opened stockings and presents with the kids, played with new toys and games and watched many new DVDs. It was great! Great until one of the kids piped in with "When's dinner?"

Dinner? Oh yeah! I should get working on that. I turned to look at the clock for the time and much to my surprise, it was 5:30!

Well, there went that nicely planned meal! Everyone knows you don't start cooking a turkey at 5:30 p.m.! You'd be eating dinner at 9:00! We threw a few things together and had a regular meal that year along with a good laugh. It seems ever since, and never on purpose, the same thing has happened. I'll have a nice meal planned and before you know it, the day is gone and so are my fancy holiday meal plans! Thank goodness for frozen pizza and Lean Cuisines, right?

Would You Like Fries With That?

My sister Emily has as her FB status  “My daughter just informed me she wants to be the COSTCO smiley face person when she grows up.” Such lofty goals for a 9 year-old, no?  😉

It made me think of some of the things my kids have said they want to be when they grow up.  When they were all very little they wanted to be a teacher, “just like daddy!” To them, there was no better job!  HA.  HA.  HA.  Teaching has its benefits, yes, but mostly it sucks!  You definitely don’t go into this profession for the money.  Now that they are older their goals have changed.  I don’t often take D shopping with me any more because he has been overusing the “I’m borrrrrrrrrred…” anthem and he is not yet an age where I feel comfortable letting him go over to the electronics department to play video games the likes of which we don’t have at home or to the magazine aisle to read up on Selena Gomez like his big brother S does; but when I do, he likes to tell me that “When I grow up I’m going to work at Target so I can give you all the things that you want for free, right mom?” To which I reply that he must actually be the owner to be able to do that, not just a checker or stock boy.  I also tell him I can’t wait because I could drop some serious change (and by change I mean thousands) in Target if I had the money and he’d better hurry up!

S has told me that he wants to work at McDonald’s.  And not just as a burger flipper or fry cook, he wants to own one so he can eat there whenever he wants.  He loves it when we take road trips because he knows he’ll be eating there at least twice on the way down and twice back.  I let him know that even though that’s a good goal, to own a McDonald’s, he still has to go to college.  To my amazement, he’s cool with that.

B has different goals in mind.  He still wants to be a teacher because it’s what his dad does, but he also wants to be a scientist or something in the military.  It would be hard for me, really hard, if one of my sons were to choose a life in the military; but of all of them I think B would be the most successful.  It would be an honor if he did, because it truly is the most selfless job there is, even more than a career in education.  Even Honey agrees that a government job is in the future for him!

The future scares me.  It seems like job security for anybody has gone out the window and I’m just not sure the economy is ever going to recover.  At least, not anytime soon.  With that in mind, I hope whatever careers my children choose that they will be happy in their profession.  I think of how hard my husband works, the endless hours, the meager pay, the constant messing with of benefits and increased demands that are placed on teachers, and it just is ugly.  Really, really ugly.  If he didn’t love what he does, how much worse would that be?  Too much to bear.  I often think of what else he would do if he had to change jobs so we could have more money coming in.  Our family’s needs are rapidly increasing but our income is on a slow but steady decline… and I just don’t know that there is another job out there he would be happy enough in to  make it worthwhile.

So today I am grateful for my husband’s job.  And I am grateful that I have extremely intelligent children with a thirst for knowledge, teachers who challenge them, and that our family places a premium on education.  I’m also grateful for people whose talents lie elsewhere.  I’m extremely grateful for blue collar workers and people who work in the service industries.  If I didn’t have a mechanic who loved his job, or a friend who loves cutting & styling hair, what would I do?  If the police in my neighborhood weren’t passionate about upholding the law, how would I know I am safe?  What if nobody was there to check me in at the doctor’s?  Somebody needs to man the registers, grow and pick the food we eat, and make the clothes we wear.

This is just a small sampling of differently-educated jobs out there, but my point is that not everybody needs a Master’s degree, or even a BA for their job – but education and training in what they do is.