Eric Holen

Late this afternoon, Payton had to learn one of life’s tough lessons. My regret is that she had to learn it from Yvette and me.

This past weekend, I had the joy of babysitting Payton, a beautiful 3 year old, for a few hours. Larissa, her mom, dropped her off at the house early Saturday morning and then Payton and I ran some errands. We took Potter, my youngest dog, to the veterinarian, we got the oil changed in the SUV, and then we went to the playground down the street.

Larissa had ensured that Payton had everything she and I needed for the time we would spend together. That included among other things, a package of cheese crackers. Unfortunately, that package of cheese crackers slipped out of Payton’s bag and was left sitting on the rear seat in our SUV.

This afternoon, as we were leaving work late, Yvette noticed the package of crackers on the rear seat. She grabbed the crackers and exclaimed, “Look what I got!”

I responded, “But they belong to Payton”.

That didn’t faze Yvette because as she tore open Payton’s package of crackers and pulled the first one out she said, “Well she will learn a tough lesson about leaving her things lying around.”

While 1 Samuel 17 tells the story about David and Goliath, this is not that story. This is the story of David vs. Eric.

This past weekend, Marianne and Matt, my sister and brother-in-law, gave birth to a beautiful boy. I won’t bore you with all of the details. However, they gave him the middle name of David.

There are eight children in my family. I am the oldest, while David, my only brother, is the second youngest.

While I haven’t asked Marianne and Matt, I am sure they will tell me that their new son has a biblical name and wasn’t named after my little brother. Still, the newest member of our family does bear my brother’s name.

The name David appears in the Bible more times than I care to count. In fact, Wikipedia reports that 73 of the 150 Psalms in the Bible are attributed to David.

Eric doesn’t appear in the Book of Psalms or the Bible at all. I knew because I searched on YouVersion and the website timed out trying to find me.

So while Marianne and Matt brought a beautiful child into this world and gave him a strong first name, which is also biblical, in my opinion they could have tried a little harder on the middle name.

Congratulations to my sister, her husband, their new son and the entire family. I wish I was there to celebrate with them and to hold my newest nephew, David.

As a disclaimer, Yvette forbade me to tweet this story, but she didn’t say anything about not writing a blog post.

Earlier today, Yvette took her mom and me on a shopping trip to Kohl’s and Wal-Mart so that she could buy some new blouses and a pair of shoes for work. She asked me, before going to Wal-Mart, if I was hungry to which I answered that I could wait. However, at the time, I didn’t know it would stretch into over a 2 hours of clothes shopping.

When we finished, both Yvette’s mom and I were very hungry. So to avoid that “what do you want” I headed to the closest place, Cracker Barrel. We had a great meal, with Yvette going for the low carb burger (no bun).

At the end of the meal, she mentioned that she wanted to find some low calorie smoothies for the house as a snack. As we headed to H-E-B for grocery shopping, with our bellies relatively full, I brought up smoothies and asked if she wanted to check out the new Blizz Frozen Yogurt.

You would have thought it was Christmas. Yvette jumped on the idea, saying we could grocery shop after a little dessert.

Blizz has something like 10 different flavors of frozen yogurt with almost 30 different toppings. You grab your cup (medium or large), fill it with some yogurt and then add your toppings.

I had some cappuccino yogurt with a small slash of caramel Twix. Yvette had some yogurt, at least I think there was yogurt, and then something like 15 out of the available toppings.

About halfway through her cup, she gave up. It was too much, too cold, and too sweet.

As we were walking out, she told her mom and me that it was my fault. I should not have let her add that many toppings. Now feeling a little miserable, she cancelled the grocery shopping so we could go home.

We have been happily married for over 14 years. I will accept that it was my fault for allowing her to add too many toppings today. However, in the future, I still won’t open my mouth when I think she is having a little too much. That’s how happy marriages stay that way.

For the last three months, and with little deviation, Yvette and I have gotten up early four days a week. Yvette so that she can work out with her torturer trainer Kaci at Elite BodyWorks three days a week and me so that I can go to Plum Fit, the gym next door those same three days and an extra day together.

Yet despite our schedule, due in large by Yvette’s choice and to support her health, her favorite words each and every morning are “5 more minutes”.

It doesn’t matter if I try to get her up at 5:00 am as soon as the first alarm goes off or at 5:30 am when we are running dangerously close to her being late to her trainer. She always asks for additional time.

I wouldn’t mind giving her the 5 more minutes if as soon as she got up, we could be heading for the door. However, this is how her morning goes.

After a few series of snoozes on the alarm clock and at least one 5 more minutes, she will wake up, but not get up. She’ll reach over to scratch Potter, our youngest dog, who she insists is keeping her in bed. Then she strolls to the bathroom and then back out to start getting ready. Finally, she strolls out to the garage so we can speed off to the gym and her trainer.

Meanwhile, during her “wake up” routine I have let the dogs out, started the coffee, finished packing the lunches, filled the dogs’ food and water bowls, and gotten dressed.

I try to push her out of the house as fast as she will move so that I can run my 5K in the gym. When we are behind schedule, I fall back to my dumbbell routine.

I think, at least in Yvette’s mind, a perfect world would be where she could get up between 8:00 and 9:00 am every day.

Despite my coaching, prodding and pushing to get her out of bed each morning, I am thankful that the two of us support each other and our health.

Actually, according to my Sprint EVO 4G mobile phone, I visit the South Terrace At Auburn apartments in Durham, North Carolina at least once a week.

This started sometime around June 11 when I noticed that my phone was running an hour fast.  I rebooted my phone, and it returned to normal time.  Then, a couple days later, it did it again.  This time I changed the phones settings to use a specific time and not update automatically.

It was a few days later that I noticed my phone’s weather application had me in Durham.  Then I noticed that Google Latitude and Google Maps would also place me in Durham.  It didn’t matter if I had my GPS and/or WiFi active.

Each time phone has me “visit” Durham, it’s to the exact same place, at the rear of the South Terrace At Auburn apartment complex.

Today, when I went to check-in someplace, I had to wait for my phone to bring me back to Central Texas.

So the next time my phone has me in Durham, can anyone suggest something other to visit than the apartments?