Posted by Patrick Corkum on May 12, 2010
I really want to know if I am being ridiculous or not. Yesterday (and many other times), I have peered into the Peanut Butter jar in the hopes of making a delicious peanut butter sandwich. I unscrew the top, look inside and there’s white crusty stuff in the peanut butter jar! See, my darling wife, God bless her, doesn’t want to clean the knife or get a new one when making fluffernutters. She makes them regularly for the kids and always puts the fluff on first. Then, using the same knife, goes for the peanut butter. So, am I nutso for being annoyed? I mean, the incremental cost of washing two knives over 1 is nil since we use a dishwasher. In addition, we have plenty of knives. If we were to run out, I could walk over to the in-laws (10 feet away) and grab one of theirs. But once that fluff gets in the peanut butter jar… it’s all over… start a new jar! So, am I alone in this?
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 30, 2010
This is now the third breakout (out of four) that I have been in with Michael Monroe of Tapestry. It is the second one that he has done with his wife Amy. I LOVE these guys! They are so passionate not only about helping families around them, but helping other ministries. They have so many materials out there to help you do what they do.
This session is the session that I have been most looking forward to as it really relates to where I am right now, knowing that there is a huge need around us (and for us) in the Maryland area. This session is about post-placement support. What is post-placement support? Well, your adoption agency typically helps you through the adoption process and right up until the adoption is finalized. What then? They try to tell you about things that you might encounter, but there is no way to REALLY prepare you.
Adoption comes with problems that are unique to adoption and there is a huge gap out there helping people with these problems. The church does not do a good job, partially because they just don’t know that there is a need and partially because they are not equipped. We have heard so many times that people wish that there was help, they wish there was someone to help them through the post-adoption process (which is life-long).
I can’t wait to watch the video series called Empowered to Connect that they have created with Dr. Karyn Purvis! Check out the videos they created here.
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 28, 2010
As I am flying the plane to Summit VI, I am lucky enough to be flying on a flight with internet access and I get to post what I have been thinking about for a while. People all around me seem to be struggling in their marriages. This breaks my heart. I have heard the D word come up more times than I would like to think.
This past weekend, I was particularly disturbed by an advertisement I saw in the men’s room at one of the golf courses that I played this past weekend. The advertisement was a picture of a young woman dressed in golfing attire smashing a golf club over the head of her presumed husband. Tiger Woods thoughts entered my head. The caption was something like: “Things not turn out as you planned?” The advertisement was for a so-called family-law legal firm trying to sell their divorce services. Now wait… did things not turn out as I planned? They sure didn’t! The criteria for divorce is that things are not working out as planned? WHAT?
Things are not going to work out as you planned; they NEVER do. Now, I am not going to say that divorce is never the right option. What I am going to say is that it is seldom the right option. I by no means have the marriage thing down pat, but I’m not doing so bad, either. The advice I am going to give is not something that I have come up with on my own or something that I think is the end-all-be-all of marriage advice. I do think it holds a lot of water, though.
I hear a common complaint from both men and women about their spouses. I hear, “he just…..”, or “she just…”, or “my needs …”, or “I’m not happy”, and many other things like this. The common reason for the complaints is that the spouse is not holding up their end of the bargain. When you get married, you do not have a “treaty”, so to speak. Rather, we make promises and the only condition assigned to them is being alive. We do not say, “I will love and honor you as long as you make me happy.” No, we simply make promises. However, we set the expectation in our heads that the other person will satisfy some set of needs that we have. When they don’t, people think that all bets are off.
I am not trying to get on a soap box. What I am trying to say is that marriage requires something of us that is difficult. What happens when expectations aren’t being met is that you will often end up shutting down and your spouse ends up with the same exact complaint about you. Here in-lies the problem. This situation is an endless cycle of nobody ever being happy. My suggestion is that instead of focusing on what you are not getting, dedicate yourself to making your spouse happy. I know, this sounds crazy, but try it anyway. Do it not because you hope that they will return the happiness to you, but do it because you promised to love them. Genuinely pursue their happiness with a passion. If you wait for your spouse to make you happy, you are never going to be happy. Find happiness in making your spouse happy and see the difference that it makes in your marriage.
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 23, 2010
Yesterday was PJ’s baseball practice. He plays coach pitch. This is a really strange thing for me as I really don’t get why they just don’t use tees. Maybe they are finding kids hit better when they start this way younger, I don’t know. Anyway, 5-7 year olds are really funny to watch on the baseball field. Their minds are EVERYWHERE! Well, everywhere except baseball. I was watching my son on the field playing first base (really just the kid closest to first). He’s jumping all over the place, throwing pretend baseballs, pretending to catch baseballs that are just far enough away from him that he needs to jump or dive. Who cares about the batter, right? Of course, then you have the kids that are on the bases. The ball is hit….. I said the ball is hit…… ooo… look at the airplane! I think they need a coach for every kid to tell them exactly what to do and when, because they just stand there, oblivious to what is going on.
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 22, 2010
So, I am going golfing this weekend. Typically I stink. No, not from sweating. I have possibly the worse slice known to man. When I hit a golf ball, the ball goes about 150 yards straight down the fairway. It then stops, turns its right turn signal on and takes a sharp right turn. The slice is so bad, that I sometimes am scared that the ball is going to hit me on its return back towards me. Anyway, wish me luck. My goal is to make 2 birdies in the 4 rounds of golf that I am playing.
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 19, 2010
My wife, God bless her heart, has opinions about my physical appearance. Yes, I am sure this comes to you as a surprise! Well, my father recently retired from his job of many, many years and brought me the picture that he had kept in his office of me for the past 15 or so years. I am guessing that it is probably during my Junior year of high school. I am guessing this because of the fact that I was wearing blue jeans (before that I would only wear black). Also, I think that I might have been a little bit thinner in my senior. See picture:
So, it is not the best picture ever taken of me, but it isn’t THAT bad. I am/was a towering 5′ 5″ and in the picture was probably between 115 and 120 pounds. After seeing the strikingly handsome image of me in the picture, she proclaimed, “It’s a good thing that I didn’t meet you in High School. Yes, I am that shallow.” Ouch!
This leaves me in a bit of a predicament. Currently, I am a bit heavy. Okay, the stupid BMI things try to tell me that I am morbidly obese. This is a bit overkill (no pun intended). I can run a 5K faster than my wife who tips the scales around the 3 digit mark, so it isn’t THAT bad. That being said, I definitely need to lose weight. The problem is that my itty-bitty wife doesn’t want me to because she is afraid that I will lose my “cuddliness”. Basically, she is telling me that she would rather me be cuddly than healthy/alive. Okay, she really doesn’t feel that way, but she doesn’t want me to look like I did in High School (really, I think it is the hair she doesn’t like).
So, what is a big man to do? Well, I struck up a bargain with her. We are both science/technology/engineer/math freak (aka STEM freaks). So, I devised a method where we will optimize my health/attractiveness/cuddliness/etc…. What we are going to do, starting today is that I am going to start dropping the pounds by eating well and exercising. Then, on a weekly basis (Monday morning), I am going to blog about where I stand with my weight and fat% as it is reported on my scale. She is then going rate me in those categories that she finds so important (i.e. cuddliness) on her blog (www.theCorkums.com). Let the blogging begin!
As of waking up this morning:
- Weight – 186.6 lbs (which is low because I was like 190.2 just a couple days ago)
- Fat % – 30.9% (my water % is low in the morning which throws this number off)
Please, if I am to do this, I am going to need a whole lotta prayer!
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 17, 2010
Okay, I am going to be a bit more serious in this post for a change. There has been a significant amount of news and discussion around this family who took their adopted child and sent him on a plane with a one-way ticket back to Russia. People are so quick to judge this family and their action. Did they do the right thing? Absolutely not! I cannot condone what they did. However, who was providing them with the needed support?
We in the US are horrible at this thing called community. It is indeed true that it takes a community to raise a child. It is especially true when the child has been adopted and even MORE so if the child was not an infant when adopted. However, in the US, we are a “strong”, “independent” people that cannot show weakness or request help from others. This is just pure hogwash. We are no different than anyone else; we need other people. There are not enough people supporting adoptive parents. I know first hand that raising an adopted child that was not an infant when adopted is hard. It has been much harder than raising my biological children.
The Church needs to step in and support these families. If we as a Church do not step in and support these families with whatever it is that they need, meals, counseling, an ear, anything, then we are as much to blame for these kind of events as the family. We need to stop complaining and step up and make a change. We cannot simply hope that somebody else is going to take action. YOU must take the action and help. And if you need help helping, Melissa, myself, and several others are here to help you!
Via con Dios!
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 16, 2010
No, this post is not about the movie. This post is about my wife. No, I am not calling my wife an ant. My wife has an obsession about ants. If she sees ants in the house, life comes to an abrupt halt. Nothing else matters in that moment except the ants. Here’s the cycle:
- Melissa: AHHHH, ants!
- Melissa: Where are they coming from?
- Melissa: Arghh, how did this crumb get on the ground?
- Stomp to the kitchen to get the ant spray.
- Stomp back to the ants.
- Spray each and every single ant until they are all dead.
- Melissa: PATRICK, there are ants!
- Melissa: When are you going to do something about these ants? <Followed by one of the following>:
- the ant traps I bought aren’t working
- Pops just sprayed, why aren’t they dead?
- we have to get new ant bait.
- <Stomp to closet and get vacuum cleaner>
- <Stomp back to ants and vacuum up the dead ants>
- Melissa: I hate ants! Why are there always ants in the house?
What is it about ants? I mean, if there is a crumb and it is attracting ants, big deal! Shoot, give them a little while and both the crumb and the ants will be gone. I am not saying that I wouldn’t spray ants if there were tons of them or they were being obnoxious, but life does not come to a halt because ants are crawling around. Am I alone on this? Probably.
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 15, 2010
Okay, so I am going to talk about bathrooms. I know…. I am such a guy. Seriously though, I think people who design these things have totally missed the boat. It was much easier 20 years ago to keep them pesky germs off your hands than it is now. When I was in High School, I volunteered at a hospital and I learned the proper technique for washing hands. Today, I go into some bathrooms and I have NO ability to do that. <People say I think about the weirdest things a little too much> The process today:
- Stick your dirty hands under the faucet. The faucet magically comes on and you do not have to touch the knobs.
- Stick your dirty wet hands under the soap dispenser. The foamy soap comes out almost as if it knew something was there to squirt it on.
- Shake off your now-clean hands and stick them under the hand-dryer that also happens to know that you are there and comes on without you touching anything.
- Walk to the door, stand there with your clean-hands and the door magically opens for you. Oh, wait. Let me try that again. Walk to the door, grab the handle with your now clean hands and open the door.
Okay, in what universe does that make sense? Not all bathrooms are like this, I know. Melissa, my darling wife, has pointed out that some bathrooms have new handles that you can use your arm with instead of your hand. Great! Yes, there are some bathrooms that still use paper towels, which are better. However, people think that they are not friendly for the environment (see the end of my post for why I am not so certain about that). With paper towels, you can grab the door handle with the paper-towel and open the door that way. The problem then, of course, is that people who design these bathrooms don’t think about that and don’t give you a place to throw the paper towel away. So, you are now stuck with a fashionable paper towel in your hand until you can find a trash can. Inevitably, or so it seems, you just go back into the bathroom and throw it away there and open the door with you bare hand. Genius!!!!
Okay, now for my short rant on hand dryers. In what universe are hand-blow-dryers environmentally friendly? These things are like 220V 20+ Amp machines! How many paper towels do you have to burn to create enough electricity to blow-dry your hands? Unless these things are super-powered by some mad-awesome solar-electric generators or something like that, how is this environmentally friendly? Okay, rant over for now. Have a nice day!
Posted by Patrick Corkum on April 14, 2010
So, the topic of conversation yesterday was: is it appropriate to talk about your *** life in a blog post. Certainly most of us would agree that there are definitely certain aspects of what goes on in the bedroom, or wherever it happens to take place, that are certainly to be kept between husband and wife. However, I have a big problem with the fact that Christians don’t want to talk about ***. God sure talks about it; try reading His book sometime, I hear it’s a best seller!
So, I ask, why not be open about the husband/wife relationship? Perhaps if we did, the divorce rate among Christians would not be the same as the rest of the population. What if newly-weds or pre-weds (is that a word?) were given a realistic view of marriage before they had their expectations shattered because they were set by TV and movies (and the media at large)?
Don’t worry, you’ll never hear me talk about the *****, or ***, and definitely not ********.
As for my wife, she has decided to “respond” to my post. You men can tell her that *** is not a “perfect end to a perfect day” or “an ultimate fix to a crappy one”. Rather, it is just the end of the day 
. AND, contrary to her opinion, it is definitely a theology post!!!!
