Every scar tells a story

I wish I looked as good as this guy, though I could do without the foot-long leg scar.

You might have read today's headline and assumed I was referring to emotional scars. While it's true those types of non-visible scars always have a story, today I'm talking about actual physical scars.

I have four of them on my body, and on those rare occasions when I notice and think about them, they take me back to different times of my life.

There is, for example, the gash on the side of my right leg I got when I was 10 and we were jumping over the bushes at Mike Ostack's house.

As I leapt over those bushes and landed, I grazed against the jagged edge of a rusty old metal garbage can on the other side. It was enough to tear my jeans and the skin underneath, resulting in my first set of stitches (five of them). I think there was also a tetanus shot involved, or at least I hope there was.

Mike was one of my best friends in the world, but within a year he and his family would pack up and move to Stone Mountain, Georgia. I've seen him only a few times since. Nowadays our only communication comes in the form of LinkedIn messages exchanged once a year on his birthday in February.

Life goes on. We all have people who come in and out of our little spheres.

There's also the cut on my chin I got playing football.

Well, to be honest, I wasn't "playing" football. It was during pregame warm-ups my junior year. I was on the scout defensive team as a cornerback. On one play, Dave Engeman, a strong, talented senior guard, pulled around my side and gave me a stiff forearm to the chin strap.

I walked back to the sideline, unbuckled my helmet and felt my chin, only to pull back my hand and see it was covered in blood.

That was a four-stitch cut sewed up by our team doctor in the locker room. He used a topical anesthetic that lasted for maybe two of the four stitches.

I'm not going to lie: It hurt. And later the cut got infected and smelled funky for days.

On the top of my left foot is a gnarly scar I picked up in my friend Matt's basement, sometime between the garbage can and football cuts. We were playing hide and seek in the pitch dark, as we often did, and I somehow managed to rake that bare foot across the sharp metal corner of a dehumidifier unit.

You have to understand, kids: In the 60s, 70s and 80s, consumer products were often made with only functionality in mind and not necessarily safety.

My mom took me to the hospital, and amazingly the staff there decided not to stitch the cut but instead just bandaged it. It eventually healed after several weeks, but I always thought that was the wrong call.

Anyway, the only other prominent physical scar I have is actually two scars, and I don't remember a thing about how I got them.

They were the result of a hernia surgery I underwent at 18 months of age. I've heard stories of how I would cry and cry at night, and no matter what my mom or sisters tried, they couldn't comfort me.

Turns out I had a bilateral hernia. One day they dropped me off at the hospital for the surgery and I had to stay there overnight. My sister Debbie always says it was the saddest thing to see me in a crib in my little cowboy-themed hospital gown as they waved goodbye and left me alone.

All's well that ends well, though, and I'm happy to report I've had no issues since.

I was thinking of leading today's post with a photo of one of my scars. I didn't ultimately do that, but rest assured that if I had, it wouldn't have been the hernia scars...

It's a miracle kids in the generation before mine survived to adulthood

The awesome Secret Sam Spy Case from the mid-1960s

I'm the youngest of four kids, and as I often say, I'm the youngest by far.

There's a 12-year gap between me and my next oldest sibling Mark. My sisters Debbie and Judi were born 14 and nearly 17 years before me, respectively.

As a result, I was in effect an only child growing up. My sibs had all moved out by the time I was 7 or 8, and many of their old 60s-era toys were left in the house for me to play with.

Well, I should say Mark's toys were there for me to play with, because toys back then were very gendered and I wasn't especially interested in anything Judi and Debbie had left behind.

Among the things I inherited from Mark were a wooden hockey stick, a G.I. Joe action figure, a plastic (everything was plastic) space capsule, and best of all, the Secret Sam Spy Case.

The Secret Sam Spy Case was a plastic (of course) briefcase containing a spy pistol with attachable grip, a small camera that took actual photos, and a periscope.

The cool thing was that you could shoot bullets from the gun or take pictures with the camera while they were in the case and the case was closed. There were holes on either side of the case for the gun to shoot its little plastic (again) bullets and for the camera to take a shot of a neighborhood "suspect" without his/her knowledge.

Very neat, but looking back, it's funny to think how different toys in 1965 were from those in 2025. For one thing, the gun. Can you still get toy guns? Probably, but I don't think they're as popular as they were in the 60s or even when I was growing up 10-20 years later.

And a gun that shoots actual hard-plastic bullets? That ain't happening today, but it was fair game during the Johnson Administration. Even in the best-case scenario, these little projectiles stung and would leave a mark on anyone at whom you shot them. Aim high and suddenly your friend was on his way to the hospital to have an eyeball removed.

So many of my siblings' old toys were dangerous. Lots of sharp, metal corners and plug-in gadgets that heated up and presented a serious risk of burns or electrocution.

It's not that toymakers didn't care about kids back then. They cared about them a lot, because kids were obviously their key demographic. It's just that they assumed children would be smart when it came to how they played with these toys.

"Just don't do anything stupid and you'll be fine," was the warning toy companies issued to kids of the day. And for the most part, the kids complied.

The ones who didn't listen ended up getting hurt, but in the vast majority of cases, after a band-aid or even a couple of stitches, they were fine.

Somewhere along the line, though, either kids got dumber or personal injury attorneys got a lot smarter. Maybe both.

All I know is, the Secret Sam Spy Case wouldn't fly today.

And somehow I think we're all a little worse for it.

I can drive 55, but can I live it?

By way of context today, kids, you should know that for a time in the 1970s and 80s, the maximum speed limit on our nation's highways was a uniform 55 miles per hour. And it felt every bit as slow as it sounds.

In 1984, a guy named Sammy Hagar released a song called "I Can't Drive 55," supposedly in response to having received a ticket for going 62mph in a 55 zone.

The gist of the song was, "Go ahead and give me a ticket or throw me in jail or whatever you want to do, but I can't stop myself from going faster than 55."

I don't drive as fast now as I once did, which I attribute to getting a little older and hopefully a bit wiser.

Speaking of getting a little older, we arrive at the point of the post, which is this: Tomorrow I turn 55 years old.

This is not an especially momentous occasion for anyone, least of all me. I'm not a huge birthday guy to begin with, though I do enjoy hearing from my kids and other family and friends wishing me well, making fun of my advancing years, and generally touching base in the course of their otherwise busy days.

This just happens to be one of those birthdays that has some significance to it. When the second digit of your age is a '5,' it means you're halfway between age milestones. In my case, I'm five years from having turned 50 and five years away from a number that sounds particularly imposing: 60.

I don't know why I think this way, though. Those who are 60-plus in my immediate family (my sister Debbie, my brother Mark, my sister-in-law Chris) are all energetic and youthful and fun. They look and act nothing like 60 seemed to me when I was a teenager.

There is evidently much truth to the idea of age just being a number.

Still, I remember clearly when my dad turned 55 in 1984. Despite having always had gray/white hair since I was a baby, it was the first time I thought to myself, "Oh man, he's getting OLD. This is a little scary."

I don't feel that way now, though of course none of us feels a certain age is "old" once we ourselves approach it.

You get to a point where "old person" just means, "anybody older than me."

I think I'm going to go with that approach for now.

In the meantime, while I do drive faster than 55, I'm still sticking to the right two lanes along with all the other geezers. You reckless whippersnappers can feel free to blow past us in the finest Sammy Hagar tradition.

Happy birthday, Dad

My dad and me, circa 1980. Nice bowtie, Scott.

Next month my dad will have been gone for 25 years, which is strange to me.

On one hand, it feels like 25 years since he passed away. So much has happened since that terrible night in October 1999, not the least of which were the births of his last two grandchildren (my daughter Melanie and son Jack). So many milestones missed, so many sporting events I would have loved to watch with him.

At the same time, it doesn't feel like 25 years ago at all. I can still picture him. I can still hear his voice clearly. Heck, I can still smell his post-shower Aqua Velva aftershave! (I am a frequent shower-taker just like he was.)

I think he would be pretty proud to see how his family is doing now. My mom, his wife of 48 years, is gone now, as is my sister and his oldest daughter Judi. But the rest of us are doing OK.

My sister Debbie and brother Mark are the most youthful 69- and 67-year-olds (respectively) you will ever meet. You would have no clue of their chronological ages just by looking at and talking with them. I love them a whole bunch.

Dad's oldest grandkids, Mark Jr. and Jessica, have children of their own and are among the best people I know. They've both lost their moms but soldier on with their wonderful families.

And Terry and I can certainly count ourselves blessed not only by all of our kids but also by the lives we get to lead. Speaking for myself, at least, I don't feel I especially deserve any of it, but I know our situation would have made Dad very happy.

In fact, if he had somehow made it to 95 (the age he would have turned today), I'm sure his life would still revolve around his kids and grandkids, as it did up until the day he died.

This is the point where I'm supposed to tell you to hug the people around you and tell them you love them, but you know that already.

You also know to count your many blessings, but it doesn't hurt to be reminded.

When you're the youngest by a wide margin, you get to hear about the totally separate life your family lived before you came along

I had no idea how to illustrate today's post, so I just went with this great photo of my son Jack taken many moons ago.

Today is my brother Mark's birthday, while this Saturday will be my sister Debbie's birthday. They are awesome siblings, and they deserve to have the best possible birthdays. So happy happy to my big bro and big sis!

I have mentioned here before that I am the youngest of four children. The gap between me and my next sib (Mark) is nearly 13 years. I came along relatively late in the game, as my mom was 37 and my dad 40 when I was born, which was pretty old for new parents in 1969.

You say "mistake." I say "pleasant surprise."

Anyway, this meant I would often hear stories about the days when Mom, Dad and the three kids lived in Park Forest, Illinois, then later in Euclid, Ohio (on good old Pasnow Avenue).

I never lived in either of those places. By the time I was born, we were firmly settled in Wickliffe on Harding Drive, where I lived the first 22 years of my life and where my mom lived for 57 years until she passed away.

The Park Forest and Euclid houses may as well have belonged to another family altogether. I have no connection to them, nor can I relate to the things I'm told happened in them.

It's like my parents and siblings lived a completely different existence in which I played no part at all.

Thus, I can readily relate to our youngest child, Jack. He constantly hears stories about our old house on East 300th Street, where Terry and I lived for the first 11 years of our marriage. All four of Jack's older siblings have memories of that house (though I wonder about Melanie, who wasn't even quite 3 years old when we moved out of the house).

To Jack, it's just a house on a street we often drive down. The other day he told me he has trouble even remembering exactly which house was ours.

And why should he remember? He never lived there. It's a place to which he has no attachment at all.

Yet it's also a place where we as a family – well, six of us anyway – made many lasting memories. It was the first house Terry and I owned, the place to which we brought home four newborns, and the place where we celebrated many other firsts and milestones.

It's a house full of happy memories...memories that necessarily exclude Jack, much like those old homes in Park Forest and Euclid do for me.

The silver lining in all of this? As the youngest, you often get spoiled rotten. You get everything your older sibs never got.

On balance, I still think Jack and I got the better end of the deal. 

Having (considerably) older siblings

This week my brother Mark and sister Debbie have birthdays (Deb's is actually today). They are two years apart, but they have always shared a birthday week.

I will not tell you how old they are, though I will say the age difference between us can be measured in double-digit years.

I will also add that, when I was born in November 1969, my oldest sister Judi was in her junior year of high school and was only 3 1/2 months from turning 17.

While not exactly rare, it is uncommon nowadays for a 17-year-old to have a newborn baby brother. Trust me when I say it was even more uncommon in 1969.

As the story goes, my siblings found out my mom was pregnant not from Mom herself, but from our Aunt Peg. I don't know if Mom was unsure how they would react or what, but I'm told they were all pretty thrilled by the idea of having a little brother or sister.

There was a time when all six of us lived in a 900-square-foot house with no upstairs, no basement, and only one bathroom. I don't remember that time because it all happened during the first two years of my life, but having spent 22 years in that same house myself, I can imagine how chaotic it must have been.

By the time I was in kindergarten, Judi and Mark were both married (he would later join the Air Force and spend several years overseas). And while Debbie technically lived with us, I don't remember seeing her all that much.

I always say I was essentially raised an only child, even though I'm the youngest of four.

As often happens as we age, I'm much closer to Debbie and Mark now than I ever was as a kid (and I was close to Judi before she passed away). We don't see each other as often as I might like, though Debbie cuts my hair every two weeks and, as of this writing, Mark and I were planning to take in a baseball game together this week.

All the same, I hope this is the happiest of birthday weeks for my brother and sister. My much, much older brother and sister.

Here are four things I've learned from 26 on-and-off years of Weight Watchers

My apologies to the marketing folks at Weight Watchers, who have worked hard to rebrand the organization as "WW," presumably to take the emphasis away from weight and present a more holistic approach to health.

It's just that I had to say "Weight Watchers" in the headline because only people who are members know what "WW" means.

I am one of those members. I started "doing Weight Watchers," as people say, way back in 1995 after Terry had been following the plan for a while. She was shedding some post-Elissa baby weight. I was simply trying to get back to some semblance of the slim sprinter I had been less than a decade earlier.

And it worked. It always works, or at least it does for me whenever I make up my mind to be more conscientious about my diet and overall health.

It's just that, for long periods in the intervening quarter-century, I've thrown caution to the wind, eaten whatever I wanted, and gained weight accordingly. And then I've gone back to Weight Watchers and lost it. It's the classic yo-yo cycle.

As my sister Debbie and I have often discussed, our genes are such that we will always have to be mindful of our weight. We're not naturally skinny people, but that doesn't mean we can't be healthy people.

Nowadays I attend the 8 a.m. WW meeting in Mentor every Saturday, and not surprisingly, I'm steadily creeping back toward my goal weight. I dropped 15 pounds in the first two months and am already feeling much better, thank you.

For what it's worth, here are four lessons that WW has taught me, at least one of which might benefit you:

(1) Chill out: This has been the hardest thing for me to learn over the years. I used to live and die by that Saturday morning weigh-in. And now, for whatever reason (the wisdom of years?), I simply don't. Some weeks I lose, some weeks I gain, and some weeks I stay the same. If I do the right things, my weight will eventually take care of itself. I enjoy "calm Scott" much more than "scale-obsessed Scott."

(2) Control what you can control: You hear athletes say this all the time. You can only concern yourself with the things you can influence. There are many things you can't influence. You simply can't control them, but you can control how you plan for and react to them. For example, this is graduation party season. We are invited to several of them. Grad parties aren't traditionally havens of healthy eating, but if I budget a certain amount of WW points before we go, make good choices while I'm there, and eat slowly while enjoying my food, it's really no problem. I can control that outcome.

(3) There is value in community and accountability: I tried doing WW online during the pandemic and the results weren't great. I need that Saturday morning meeting not only to be accountable for my choices over the past week, but also to hear from others who have similar struggles. Putting the time in to go to meetings, even when I would rather stay home, always pays off.

(4) You are more than your health, but that health is still pretty darn important: There are people in your life who want you to be around a long, long time. Even if you don't do it for yourself, consider making healthy choices in gratitude to those who care for you. We all have an expiration date, but we also have within us the power to live a vibrant, energetic, full (and fulfilling) life in the days we've been allotted. Exercise that power.

Saturday in the Park: What is your earliest memory?

Asking people about the very earliest thing they remember in their lives is a tricky business, for at least two reasons:

• What they think is their earliest memory may not actually be their earliest memory. You're going back to toddler-hood here, and I'm not sure your brain's recollection of those times is to be trusted, at least so far as sequencing events goes.
  
  
• What they see as a memory may not have happened at all, but may be something they think happened or that they actually dreamed at some point.

Which is why I'm not entirely sure this really happened, but I believe my earliest memory to have occurred sometime in the latter half of 1972 when I had just turned 3, or maybe slightly earlier. And here's why:

The memory itself is walking out of my room (or my parents' room...wherever it was I was sleeping at the time) very early one morning into our living room, which back then had these hardwood floors. And I remember picking up a copy of the album pictured above, which is "Chicago V" by the band Chicago.

I remember that part distinctly because I thought the cover was so cool. Chicago V came out in July 1972, and I'm guessing my brother Mark would have bought it soon after its release. Or maybe my sister Debbie? Either way, we had a copy.

I can't go back further in time than that, and it was a relatively minor thing that I believe to have happened.

What's your earliest memory, and how confident are you it actually happened and/or that the details in your mind are accurate?

(By the way, "Chicago V" included the classic Chicago song "Saturday in the Park," and today is Saturday and all, so you were getting this post no matter what.)

Canned fruit: A blast from the past

As my wife and I were dealing with COVID recently, my wonderful sister Debbie graciously ordered a whole bunch of groceries and had them delivered to our house so that our family could still, you know, eat while we were laid up.

She quizzed us on some of the items we normally buy, while others she simply selected herself and included them with our order.

An example of the latter was a can of Del Monte Bartlett pears.

I don't remember the last time we bought canned fruit, but those pears were delicious. They also put me in mind of the days back in the late 70s and early 80s when I would come home from school for lunch.

My K-6 elementary school was right at the end of our street. Once the noon bell rang, I would sprint out the door and be home in 2-3 minutes.

When I got there, my mom would (without fail) have a TV tray waiting for me with my already-prepared lunch. As I think back on it, I was unbelievably spoiled by this.

The main course of the lunch varied, but more times than not, there would be a bowl of canned fruit included. It would either be fruit cocktail, peaches, or pairs.

As so often happens when we eat a food we haven't eaten in a long time (or smell something we haven't smelled in years), a rush of memories came flooding back as I ate those pears Debbie ordered. It was suddenly 1979 all over again, and I was sitting in front of the TV watching Card Sharks and happily eating my lunch before going back to school.

By the time I was in sixth grade, a big part of lunch time for me was racing back to school so I could play football at recess with the other guys. Why I didn't just pack a lunch and eat in the school gym, rather than having to wolf down my food at home and sprint back to the playground, I have no idea. It would have been easier.

I suspect that, even then, I knew how good I had it. What a great mom I had.

And man, seriously, what I wouldn't give for a can of cling peaches right about now.

Death and taxes: You learn to live with both

That old saying about death and taxes can take on new meaning the older you get.

Well, the death part does anyway. Taxes are taxes. You may choose to complain about them (which is pretty useless), but you either pay them or go to prison. I choose to pay them.

Just recently Terry and I filed our federal, state, and local/regional tax forms, as we do most years in early to mid-February. We like to get it done early, and for a long time I've used TurboTax to make the job easier. I'm a big fan and recommend it to almost anyone.

As for death, well...it's about as preventable as taxes, and even more useless to rail against.

I don't mean to be Davey Downer here (NOTE: Davey is Debbie's younger brother), but it's coming for all of us. First it gets those you know and love. Then it comes for you.

That's just the way it is.

Have a great day, everyone!

Seriously, though, death doesn't worry me so much. Whenever it's my time, it will be my time. In the overarching scheme of things, the length of my life on this earth doesn't really matter all that much.

But that doesn't mean I don't get a little sad over the reality of it sometimes.

I know people who have experienced far greater loss than me, but I've now lost my mom, my dad, my mother-in-law, and one of my sisters.

That sister, Judi, would have turned 68 years old today.

She seemed so youthful that a 68-year-old Judi is a little hard for me to comprehend. I'm sure she would have made 68 look good, though.

She also would have continued to love and spoil my kids in that way only the best aunts manage to do. My sister Debbie has more than picked up the slack, but I do miss Judi whenever my kids experience any sort of milestone.

Graduations, marriage, first jobs, etc. As our children have experienced these life events over the last 11 1/2 years, they have done so without Aunt Judi there to celebrate with them.

That's the part that hurts the most, I think.

Same for my dad, and more recently, my mom and mom-in-law. I wish they were all still here for so much of this stuff.

Something happens and you think, "Oh, I need to call and tell Mom." And then there's the dull, painful realization that Mom isn't there to take the call anymore.

Part of me gets sad over that, and part of me simply sighs and moves on.

What else can we do? It's either accept it or allow ourselves to be paralyzed by sadness and grief.

Mom wouldn't have wanted that. Nor would Dad, Judi, or mom-in-law Judy.

I'm getting old, I guess.

But for the time being, at least I'm still here. And so are my brother Mark and my sister Debbie.

And that should count for something.

The middle-aged man with the graying hair and the wonderful life

I get sentimental in October.

I have no idea why this is. It's not like October should be any more likely than another month to make me intensely grateful for the things in my life. And there seems little reason for me to become more appreciative of friends and family now vs. other times, though I suppose next week is the 19th anniversary of my father's passing, and later this month is my daughter Chloe's birthday.

It probably has something to do with the coming of fall, the closing of another summer, the change in the weather, and the way all of that makes you take stock of where you stand.

A month from tomorrow I turn 49. Nothing really special about that, other than the fact that it officially begins the countdown to 50. Turning 40 didn't really bother me. We'll see if 50 is another story.

Fifty is a half-century. That's a milestone by any measure, and it's also the point when they start insisting you undergo various invasive and potentially unpleasant medical tests. The underlying message is, "Hey buddy, the bloom is off the rose now. We're going to have to start performing more routine maintenance on you so that we can delay the inevitable as you start to fall apart."

Which is cool. I can deal with that.

I'm also probably more in big-picture mode these days because of my mom. She is 86 years old, and she is enduring all of the physical and mental challenges we associate with that age. She recently spent a few weeks in a long-term care facility after surgery and a hospital stay led to some health complications.

She is back home now, but she isn't alone for long periods of time. My sister Debbie, saint that she is, arranges a schedule for someone to visit her every morning and every evening. Debbie herself pops in more often and calls Mom throughout the day. Meals on Wheels visits, as well.

Mom is almost always cheerful and happy when we visit her, but the reason we all have to visit in the first place is to make sure Mom is OK. Just like she always made sure each of us was OK. She gets confused over which pills to take. She has lapses in memory of which she is aware, and which frustrate her at times. She shows early signs of dementia.

Mom has another surgery scheduled in two weeks to address a cancer-related issue, and none of us knows what the outcome of that will be.

I love her, I love what she has meant to me, and I love her attitude toward just about everything. I want her to be around for a long, long time, and so does she.

We just don't know how long that will be.

So it goes.

There is also my wife, who – if you have visited here with any frequency over the past seven years – you will recognize as the central theme of my writing. It always comes back to Terry, and that is only fitting, because my life always comes back to her.

Terry recently quit her job at the library after nearly two years of working there. She enjoyed it, but too often it got in the way of the things that are most important to her. She missed too many track and cross country meets, too many soccer games, too much of everything for her taste. So she decided it was time to hang it up at the library and go back to being Full Time Mom.

She is awesome at this job, you understand. My goal is always to make sure I have my own life in order so that she can focus on the kids and the house and the day-to-day craziness of our family instead of me.

Yet she still worries about me sometimes, God bless her.

It's what she does. It's what all truly selfless people do. She remains the most generous, most honest, most beautiful, most giving person I know. It's impressive to watch her work.

Part of her caregiving efforts in the near term will focus on Jack, our 12-year-old youngest/fifth child who, I've said many times, has essentially been raising himself.

Jack, like his brother Jared before him, is tall for his age. He's pushing 5-9, which is tall-ish but certainly not freakish for an eighth grader. Except he's not supposed to be an eighth grader yet. He accelerated midway through his second-grade year, so technically he should be in seventh grade right now.

Combine that with the fact that he's a 12-year-old boy and beginning what is likely to be the most hormonal, most chaotic, most confusing time of his life, and you can understand why he might need a little guidance these days.

But he'll be fine. I know that. Terry will see to it.

And I'll be fine, too, though I whine a lot about the fact that my days are so busy. My job is part of that, of course, but there's also the self-imposed burden of school.

I started a master's degree program seven weeks ago. If all goes well, it will take me until the end of 2020 to complete it.

Graduate school – even when it's just online – is tough, as it should be. I'm working toward a Master of Science in Integrated Marketing Communications through West Virginia University, the ancestral home of my people. Go Mountaineers!

It takes a lot of time, and I knew that going in. But I reserve the right to complain about it, even if I have no one to blame but myself.

In the meantime, the other kids are thriving. Elissa, my whirlwind of a 24-year-old oldest daughter, works for a marketing/branding agency and maintains the kind of schedule that makes me tired just looking at it. She's smart, she's organized, and as my mom likes to say repeatedly, is "just so different from what she was when she was little!" I love her.

Chloe, who will turn 22 in a few weeks, is engaged to be married in a couple of years. She is working toward a double major in biomedical engineering and chemistry at the University of Akron, and is back interning at a medical device company. She has a lot going on. She is all-around impressive. I love her.

Jared, my 20-year-old firstborn son, is a sports management major at Cleveland State University. He lives downtown in a nice apartment with a friend, works when he can at the Cleveland Indians Team Shop, and has a sweet internship with the Mentor Ice Breakers, a new professional hockey team not far from our home. He works hard and I don't see much of him these days, but I'm so proud of him. I love him.

And then there's Melanie, my recently-turned-18 high school senior. She drives out to Mentor High School every day for a marketing course that is preparing her for a career in business. Maybe HR. Good choice. She's also an intern like Chloe, working for a metal products company. Melanie is finishing up a 12-year soccer career over the next couple of weeks. I'm going to miss watching her play. She always goes hard. Always. I love her.

I already told you about Jack, but I should have added that I love him.

I love almost everything about my life. I am insanely, wonderfully, absolutely undeservedly blessed.

And as the leaves start to turn and the air gets a little colder, I'm reminded of that again and again.

Being the baby of the family

Today my brother Mark turns 58 years young. This Monday, my sister Debbie will hit the big 60-year milestone.

And if she were still with us, my sister Judi would be 62.

All of which makes me feel comparatively like a spring chicken at age 45.

(NOTE: I suddenly wondered where that phrase "spring chicken" came from, so of course I Googled it. If the Internet at large is to be believed – and honestly, when is that really ever a good idea? – it has something to do with the fact that in olden times they didn't have incubators and the like, so chicks couldn't be raised during the winter. Quoting from one site, "New England growers found that those [chicks] born in the spring brought premium prices in the summer market places. When these Yankee traders tried to pass off old birds as part of the spring crop, smart buyers would protest that the bird was 'no spring chicken.'" So there you go.)

Anyway, I have siblings who are a bit older than I am, so I grew up essentially an only child. Judi got married when I was 2, Mark got married and joined the Air Force round about the time I entered kindergarten, and Debbie was out of the house by the time I was 7.

The result is that while I'm the baby of the family chronologically, I grew up more like a one-and-done kid.

Of course, I was spoiled like the baby should be, as my siblings have always been quick to point out. My response is that Mom and Dad finally got themselves a perfect child on their fourth attempt, so naturally they would want to lavish gifts on that child.

But really, in my formative years, my siblings were more abstract than real.

Mark was stationed first in Greece and then in South Korea, so we only saw him a couple of times a year. Judi came over on the weekends, but it's not like I ever really lived with her. And Deb spent thousands of hours working and eventually running her salon, and to this day I see her only for my every-two-weeks haircut.

My wife is also the baby of her family, and her experience there was much more traditional, as she's much closer in age to her siblings. In old family pictures, she's always the small, shy one, never far from her mother and seemingly rarely smiling.

I'm not sure if that is (or should be) the typical last-child experience. Usually, youngest kids are pretty happy people, in part because, as we said, they're spoiled. And in part because their parents are exhausted by years of child-rearing, so they tend to have fewer rules and relatively few constraints. Life is good for us young'uns!

This is all my twisted way of saying happy birthday today to my big bro Mark and the same to my big sis Deb in a few days. You guys, while perhaps not as perfect as your youngest sibling, still deserve to have a great day.

Which it will be when I call you to sing "Happy Birthday." What birthday is complete without hearing from The Spoiled One in your family?

I need to de-stress but am stressing out over how to do it

Having a family history of heart disease, I have gone to some lengths to try and lessen my risk of dying prematurely from coronary artery disease or similar ailments.

I eat fairly healthy.

I exercise.

I (try to) maintain a healthy weight.

I'm generally a happy person with a reliable network of social support around me.

Those are all boxes I can tick off  on the "prevent a heart attack" checklist.

But that list invariably includes a fifth item on which I fall short: Stress management.

Stress is a killer. Just ask any primary care doctor or cardiologist and they can probably give you examples of patients whose early demise can be traced back to allowing too much stress in their lives.

It's hard for me to say how stressed I am versus the average person. Like I said, I tend to be fairly positive, but I constantly worry about various aspects of my job and family life. Am I on top of everything? Am I doing what I'm supposed to do? How am I going to get everything done that's on my to-do list?

It's fair to say that I do register somewhere on the stress scale, at least enough to the point that managing that stress and its ill effects is something I should, um, worry about.

But how to do it? The options vary.

A lot of books and health blogs tell you to meditate, particularly in the morning. And I should probably try it. But I already get up way too early for my own tastes (4:45 a.m. most days), and even setting the alarm 15 minutes earlier is a deal-breaker for me. So finding time is a problem.

How about massage? Ugh. I know that many people – my wife chief among them – are big fans of massage. She even bought me a gift certificate for Christmas for a free massage from a friend of ours who is very skilled at it.

But...I don't know. I'm just not into having people not named Terry Tennant engage in anything resembling extended physical contact with me. Rather than relax me, I'm afraid massage will just cause me to tense up even worse. So I'm not sure there.

How about reiki? Not familiar with it? Go here for a quick explanation. My sister Debbie is a trained reiki practitioner, so I've got an "in" on this one. Reiki is a really cool Japanese technique that aids in stress reduction and relaxation, both of which I could obviously use. The only downside here, again, is time. Gotta find time to get together with Deb so she could do her reiki magic on me, a service for which I would be willing to pay her. But when? I don't know.

They also tell you that simple deep breathing helps, and I've tried it before. It does work, but it's difficult for me to get into the habit. And it's such an easy fix that part of me doesn't trust it does anything tangible, which just goes to show you I apparently have issues that go far beyond simple meditation or deep relaxation.

Ultimately, what I'll probably die from is a heart attack brought on by years of indecision over how to de-stress. That, in one sentence, describes the paradox of being me. The whole thing just stresses me out...