I must admit that I am not planning on blogging much tonight.  I really have no agenda for this entry and that makes me a little worried that I may float in and out of tangents before I get to a point.  Keep in mind whatever point that is may or may not make whomever is reading this a worse person.  The theme of this blog entry might end up being about how I believe that Miracle Whip is made up of the devil's toe-cheese and a week old trout.  Or I could write at length detailing the day I bumped into the old television newsman Sam Donaldson and freaked out like a teenage girl with Bieber Fever to the point that the uni-browed broadcast journalist started digging through his pockets looking for his can of mace.  People who have suffered through my blogs long enough know all too well that I will end up making 300 different points before I get to something that I want to close with.  This is not my intent tonight.

I guess we will all just have to wait and see what I end up talking about.  It is always dangerous when I blog without really knowing what to say.....so to keep this entry brief I am going to enforce the rule that I can only have two things I can talk about.  Here goes:

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                                                "Dropping Off"

Today at Adams Camp our sweet Noah is taking part in his sleepover night with his fellow campers.  We dropped him off just a few hours ago and he is going to take part in campfire fun.  It is a rarity whenever Noah gets to sleep away from his family as the number of times he has been invited to other sleepovers is very very low.  This is the second year that he has be able to go to this sleepover and he approached it with far less anxiety than last year. Noah just marched in the cabin he was going to be staying at and dropped his stuff off and as me and my wife-o-rama started to walk away he raced back out to hug us goodbye.  He told me not to forget him.  Not a chance buddy.

On the drive away from our drop off I took a quick inventory about how I was feeling.  I was kind of down about the whole thing.  Not because I was worried about how he was going to do overnight without his family.  I know he will rock it like The Crue playing Sturgis.  I was bummed because I started thinking about all the other drop offs that lie ahead of me and my wife in the upcoming years.  It just seems like yesterday that Noah, Riley, and Logan were babies.  Time has raced by and soon we will be dropping our kids off at Jr. High...High School...and God willing college.  They are growing up and becoming less dependant on us every day.

I don't like it. Not one bit. My nature is to smother and protect them and to let them only see the world through my perspective. We had to circle our wagons in our family it is hard for me to trust that they will be alright when I am not always around to season them with my uneven wisdom. Yes, on planet Roedel the sun revolves around me!  One of these days I will get over myself.   Even though today it was just a sleepover it was a reminder that my arrangement with my children is a contract that is based in the premise that one day I will have to let go of them. To let them go and become who they were born to be.  Because I do believe that it is going to take real courage for me to survive all of the times I must be willing to drop off my children at places where they won't need me.  In the meantime I will attempt to love, annoy, and guide each of them as best as I can without trying ruin them.

God give me the strength to let go and not stand in the way of who my children will become.
To let them leave their mark on this world without me standing over their shoulders telling them how.
Help my children experience the fullness of life despite my reluctance to let them go and explore.
God give me the strength to let go and to not stand in their way when it is time to drop them off.
My vocation is not to fix them or to hold on tight to them but to teach them and let them go.
That is going to be very tough for a limited and self-serving guy like me to do...
God give me the strength.  Or at least enough red wine.  Or both.  Both would be nice. 


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                                                           "Bear With Me"


Shortly after dropping Noah off at his sleepover a bear came waltzing right around our cabin this evening.  Now I have seen the propagnda movies like Yogi Bear, Winnie The Pooh or Open Season that are trying to convince me that bears are just a cute little cuddle-monsters who are just in search of a culinary good-time.  That is a bunch of Paddington Poop!  Bears are freaking scary and smelly killers who would not give a second thought to using my delicate figure as a tasty Cheeto tasting amuse busch.  All my cabin neighbors thought it was cute and tried to apparently take pictures of this man-eater as it went from trash can to trash can looking for something to eat.  They thought it was hysterical.  For me, it might as well have been Leatherface just taking an evening stroll around our cabins.  I wonder how cute everyone would have thought it was then??

"Hey Leatherface what's up?"

"Nothing..just taking a walk to clear my mind."

"Cool!  Can I take a picture with you?"

"You bet!  As long as you don't mind me practicing my chainsaw ice-sculpting on you."

This just in...breaking news:

NEWS FLASH:

BEARS ARE NOT FRIENDLY OR CUTE!!! THEY ARE THE COBRA KAI OF THE WOODS AND WE ARE ALL WEARING RALPH MACCHIO MASKS. SO UNLESS YOU ARE FRIENDS WITH A MOUNTAIN LION THAT ANSWERS TO THAT NAME MR. MIYAGI PLEASE DO NOT APPROACH THEM!!

I am sure some of my outdoorsy folks are going to e-slap me and accuse me to overreacting to this event with some sort of "grow a pair" kind of comment.  Let me assure all of you who feel prone to say something like that I have actually grown such a pair and I am not interested in letting a bear have at them like I was The Country Buffet. And the advice of how to handle a bear is to either "play dead" or "get big" is so idiotic that it does not deserve a response from me.

Don't buy into what the media is telling you about bears.  They ain't like this:
 
They're more like this:




God give me the strength to deal with the possibility random bear encounters.
Please allow me to not look delicious to him or worse please don't let me look like a toy.
Surround me with trees that have low branches so someone of my height may climb it.
God give me the strength to at least control my bowels if such an encounter happens.
Because the only thing worse than being mauled by a bear is to do so in soiled britches.
I hope that if I ever see a bear it will be at a circus dancing on a ball or at the zoo sleeping.
God give me the strength to be able to throw my Cockapoo "Monty" at the bear as an offering if I do bump into one.


Goodnight all.  Thanks for all of the kind messages of support for our family while we are up here at our beloved Adams Camp.  It has meant a lot.  Tomorrow morning another day begins and I will be waking up in gratitude for your friendship!  So in tribute to all of you I offer one of my favorite songs that you should watch as you kick off your day.  This song comes from one of my favorite 80's bands called "The Call".  This particular video takes on special meaning to me because of three factors:

1) It takes place in the woods.  A place where I am.

2) The lead singer Michael Been is sporting a furious power beard.  I am currently working on growing my own.

3) It is dedicated to you, my loyal blog reader.


HERE IS TO YOU!!