OK, so now I feel like an ass….

You know, I was bitchin about my lot in life earlier….and you know what I say….God will show you something…

From whoisthemonkey.com, I found this:

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[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.”

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God Bless Dick Hoyt and his son Rick.  I need to take a lesson from them.

What an amazing story, what an amazing bond these two have.  I have sat here and bawled and watched this video.  Leslie walked by, I told her about it and tears welled in her eyes too.  Not sad, just awestruck.

It’s amazing what the power of CAN will do.

I am going to go hug my kids now……

Is it REALLY wrong to sell your kids?????

I seem to be lacking in the parent-that-kids-mind department.  And I seem to be having such a harder time with this than oh….ANYONE ELSE!

When THAT handbook is written, you know, the REAL parenting handbook (cause Dr. Spock doesn’t know my kids!) it needs to be written that they will make you feel like a subhuman at any given moment.  And as said parent, you gotta take it.  right?  RIGHT?

When do I get to tell my kid, “Hey!  I didn’t raise you to talk to me like that!” or “Hey! I deserve a little more respect than the trash can.”

I know that kids need to develop their own personalities.  I know that they need to push for their independence and make their own mistakes.  I remember all of this….it wasn’t THAT long ago that I was a teenager….shut it, Shae! 

I am proud of my kids, how the act on the outside, meaning when they aren’t home, they are angels, they are well mannered, they eat with utensils, they pick up after themselves….

They come home and it takes an act of Congress to get them to pick their shoes up off the floor.  I would almost bet my right arm, as I arrive home today, the daughter will be on the internet, the son at a friends or in the pool.  The kitchen will look like the dishwasher blew up and the front bathroom will have the Haz Mat team swarming it.  To some, this is funny stuff. 

To me and the Whirly Girl, this will become a Battle Royale.

See, I have divorce guilt.  LOTS of divorce guilt.  In divorcing the Respondent (dick!), he forced me to sell our home.  And since then, I have spent thousands of dollars and lots of “yes son”, “yes daughter” trying to make up for it.  If I could have toughed it out…oh, who am I joking….I did it 5 years longer than everyone told me to.  But the kids don’t know the goings on.  They don’t know the fights (well, they know the loud ones, not the other ones).  They don’t know why I did what I did and being that I am an adult, I won’t tell them.  I don’t want to color their preception of their dad….he does a bang up job of that on.his.own.

So, I shoved money, trips, dinners out, shoes, clothes…..EVERYTHING at it in the summer that we moved.  And I fear I have created monsters…..ungrateful, demanding, surly monsters.

I want to know why it is that a child can say something to a parent that will cut them to the quick.  And as a parent, why I can’t or won’t fight back.  The Daughter can do this….so can the Son, but the Daughter seems to do so with great glee and gusto.  To my face and then behind my back, but just within earshot….

I haven’t gotten the Driver’s License for the Daughter, for several reasons:  (1) I procrastinate, (2) I don’t know if she is responsible enough for it, (3) she just started a new job and has not saved for her insurance.

Am I the only parent in the world that doesn’t just give a license, car, all the gas and insurance to a teenager and say “here, have a good time.” 

I feel taken advantage of by both of them and then I feel horrible when I put my foot down.  I will provide the basics of grooming for both of them, but when the daughters shampoo is THREE times the costs of what I use, is that my responsibilty or hers?  If she wants to use some kind of toothpaste other than the Crest that we have ALL used FOREVER…me or her? 

When the son snaps a DVD in half and has to replace it to Blockbuster, me or him?  Or when he doesn’t take the trash out so he doesn’t get his allowance, how bad should I feel?  I don’t understand how hard it is to get all the legos off the floor BEFORE you go to bed, so no one else steps on them in the dark.  And I don’t understand why when I tell you “No”, you immediately want to call gramma or daddy. 

When did I become the bad guy and/or alternately the pushover?  grrrrr!!!!!

So, here I sit, wondering what I have in store for me when I get home.  Wondering how much more time I have to instill some sense of responsibility in my oldest before she leaves.  I am wondering how much I am messing this up with both of them.

Are they gong to have good memories of me when they are older?  Are they going to remember how hard I worked to show them I loved them?  To provide for them?

Or are they going to remember that mommy was a psycho with an intense cleaning habit?!?

Why don’t I get more time, a crystal ball and a damn handbook….

This mommy crap is hard!!!!