The official name is the “Families Striding to Help Families 5K Walk”. It was held on Saturday, October 22nd, amid clear, but crisp weather. I walked with my son, David. Or, I walked and he was carried on my shoulders for about 90% of it. David isn’t much of a walker when it comes to getting somewhere in a reasonable amount of time. He’s more a mosier. Plus, he loves cars and, when we began to trail the pack, he was more interested in the police cruiser that was behind us shadowing the group for safety reasons. Still, though, he began the walk on his feet and finished the walk on his feet. That’s certainly something.

Thanks to the generosity of my fellow employees at Zoran, as well as a couple of personal friends, I was able to donate $472 to the cause. Not a bad haul. Hopefully, Lisa and Dawn will be able to release the official overall tally soon.

Being a “1st Annual” event, the walk was not glitch-free. First off, the route was not 5K, or 3.1 miles. It was 5.3 miles. The runners who left early were none too pleased by that particular surprise. My shoulders weren’t too happy, either. Still, it’s somewhat minor as glitches go.

The biggest issue, personally, is the increasing lack of trust that I can put in my niece, Mindy. She’s a teenager, which, in some ways, should be enough of an explanation. But, I’m still disappointed.

Without getting too much into past events, she’s become increasingly unreliable over the past few weeks. First, she volunteered to help with the special ed. soccer program. Weeks have passed and she hasn’t gone to a single event. Even worse for me, though, are the excuses. I’m not sure if she truly believes that I’m stupid, but continuously blaming my answering machine for missed calls doesn’t work when I’m awake and at home at the times of the alleged calls. Plus, my answering machine has no problems getting all the other calls to my house.

Frankly, after she and her boyfriend had volunteered some weeks ago to man the bounce houses at the event, my wife and I had written her off. Particularly when he didn’t get a phone call from her on Friday night. After Cheryl left early Saturday morning to help organize the event, I got a call from Mindy telling me that she’d be there and that she tried calling the night before. Thing is, even though she and her boyfriend did go to the event, reliable accounts seems to list them as missing part way through the event. They got bored and took off, it seems.

I’m not sure how to react to all of this. I do know that if I had acted this way when I was her age, my parents would have given me quite a tonguelashing for not following through on my word. Mindy’s parents take a more “hands-off” approach to childrearing, though, which may also help explain a few things.

So, anyway, there it is. A day of accomplishments and disappointments. I hope things get better.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 24th, 2005 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.