The Christmas Letter 2012 (As Edited By Family)

Soooo... for those of you who do not appear on my wife's Christmas Card List (this is normally because we don't get a card for you but otherwise is through my omission) we present the edited Christmas card for 2012.  The unedited version was destroyed by progressives who are turning our country into a socialist state.

Well, it has been a good year to be a Becker.  Let’s do it in reverse order.  Mike and Sandy who are enjoying their time as “empty nesters” took Lily and Lola and entered them in the Westchester Kennel Club show.  The dogs did fabulously, with Lily biting several other dogs and Lola, who never stopped her sobbing whine, was given a Blue Ribbon just for leaving.  It was an awesome experience for the dogs and we have high hopes for next year.

Laura is in the midst of her 2nd year at Valparaiso, in what she hopes to be a 4-7 year plan.  She has majored (in no particular order) in Communications, Room Mate Abnormal Psych, Education, Communications, Bread Company Consumption and Business... and Communications... again.  She is currently Facebook official with a nice young man named Jon.  She worked up at Camp Arcadia this summer and worked in the Kitchen and as a server with remarkably little drama.  We are most proud.

Pat GRADUATED! from Truman with a degree in Psych.  It was approximately 117 in Kirksville on the day of the graduation.  The graduation speaker had expertise in human trafficking.  It was a hoot.  After making us very proud Pat decided to think really hard and upset his parents in ways we had not yet imagined and he has proceeded to Lawrence, Kansas to get his masters In Social Work.  A Jayhawk!  Imagine our family shame. He and Kyle have been together for going on 4 years.  Sadly, they both love Lawrence, Kansas.  Maybe it is the liberal politics of Kansas, who knows? Rock Chalk?  You never think it will happen in your family.

JON AND LYDIA GOT MARRIED!  Jon did the nicest thing he could have done for his parents by marrying the beautiful Lydia Schaftenaar and making her Lydia Becker. The setting (Camp Arcadia’s Chapel on the Beach), ceremony,  day and the weekend were all perfect and it was a storybook wedding that even I cannot be cynical or snarky about.  We  are so grateful for the many family and friends who traveled a long way to celebrate with us. Jon and Lydia purchased a house in Shrewsbury and are raising our grandcat, Henry David Thoreau ,and granddog, Schafly.  Henry is evil. Schafly is adorable. The Schaftenaars have graciously allowed us their daughter’s continued presence here and we are hoping they will be frequent visitors.  We couldn’t feel luckier that God brought our families together.

Sadly the first paragraph was a lie and Sandy and I continue in our jobs.  My life has been really tied up in a call committee for a new Pastor at our church (going on two years and people are starting to think that I am the problem) and Sandy really just works a lot during a big chunk of the year.  But is was a great year for us. Perhaps the best ever and as I said at the beginning, a good year to be a Becker. Tragedies touched several families we love this year humbling us and making us ever more grateful for the friends and family who never fail to be there for us and share our sorrows and our joys, but this year a lot more joys.  We go into 2013 feeling blessed with all of you by our sides.

Wishing you a blessed Christmas and 2013!

The Becker family,
Mike, Sandy, Jon,Lydia, Pat and Laura

Kitchen Konfidential

Soooo... I would like to make apologies for my long absence but I really would not mean it.  Much has been going on in the world, Europe verging on collapse, Roberts making a poorly reasoned ruling and avoiding type, Syria... but who really cares?

I am in Michigan on the first real vacation of the year and it is pretty cool.  Weather has been in the low 80’s at the heat of the day and I just thrilled to not be in the Lou.  I know i will return to a dead lawn, garden and (more importantly) blackberry bush and a badly torn up kitchen.  I have for Polish men working in my kitchen under the guidance of a woman who is the charicature of EVERY kitchen designer, supervisor you could ever imagine.  She is like the principal’s secretary in Ferris Bueller with this big smile and bright sing song voice.  

I don’t know how the kitchen thing got started.   In the end I likely have to blame my daughter.  She was home for Christmas break and we were getting ready to go out for our Christmas Eve Day lunch with the family to Blueberry Hill and she set her massive 103 pounds on the kitchen table to put on her shoes (because of course why would you sit on a chair) and the nice kitchen table snapped and buckled.  We cobbled the table back together but in retrospect it was that event which planted the germ of change into my wifes eye. I had held it off for several years with our families abject poverty combined with mentioning anytime it would come up that “my marriage is not strong enough to survive a kitchen remodel.”  I was and I remain pretty certain that it is true but my wife this time basically said that it was a chance she was willing to take.  So much for true love and 29ish years of marriage.

I don’t have any real opinions (or options) in regard to this.  I liked the old kitchen.  I am a Lutheran at heart.  We do not like change.  That too has likely  kept me married for 29ish years and you would think my wife would be more appreciative, respectful,  but... not this time.  It started with her asking me to go “look at” someone else’s kitchen that had just been remodeled.  When we went over the husband was naturally absent (likely having already been banished from the house with the restraining order in the post remodel divorce) and all I could say was, “this is nice”.  They gushed about caninets and sinks and stoves and floors and I said “It just seems like 15 or 20 thousand is a lot to spend on a kitchen.”

The room went silent.  Our host smiled and my wife looked at me like I had just taken a shit in the corner.  Then they both looked at each other and laughed and went on talking like I was not there.  As a great fictional character once said, “so it goes.”
There was about a month of stressed out selections for my wife.  She is...decision impaired.  She would call for my opinion and then be frustrated by my lack of one.  What type of marble, what type of wood floors, what type of counter, what type of oven/range?  Frankly my dear, I did not and do not give a damn.  So we have Aamish cabinets being made in rural Illinois.  Granite from who knows where and wooden floors made of....wood... but what type of wood and what color should they be stained? I did not know and did not care but I had no idea what I was being led into.  I understood it intellectually but did not, could not understand the amount of decisions that were required and the money required and as I stated, we now live with 4 Polish men.  During their brief tenure at our house our kitchen has been de-nuded of it’s former glory and everything else.  New floors have been laid, and stained.  Sconces (I did not know what a sconce was) have been ripped out to expand cabinet area, only to find that they were shielding plumbing, electricity stuff (wires and what not) and other surprises which would have to be relocated.  Ib the process we have lost plumbing, air conditioning and everything is covered with a fine sheen of drywall dust and sawdust.  Awesome.

They had been at it three weeks as of the time we left again for Michigan.  It was originally supposed to only take 3 weeks but do to difficulties which were evidently unforseeable it appears it will continue another 3 weeks.  We will be going home with our two sadly mentally retarded dogs and hopefully the Polish men will be kind to them.  In light of the recent developments and their tenure in my home I am reasonably concerned that I might need to provide them with health care.  Please pray for me. My kitchen will eventually not look like...this.

On Arranged Marriages And My Daughter

Soooo having a 17 year old daughter is an interesting experience. Not a bad experience, just... interesting. In almost every case it has been excellent but there are some issues related to it. Oddly enough she seems somewhat interested in boys and some of them somewhat interested in her. Everyone says this is a natural occurrence but by the time I was her age I was already dating my wife by the time I was her age so I am a little... nervous. That might be the right would.... or perhaps apprehensive. That sounds nicer and more professional. Apprehensive. That is it.

Those of you with younger daughters need to pay attention here. I have two older sons and the fact is... you really do not care about boys. You give them good advice like "marry up" and "improve the gene pool" and you let them go. My oldest appears to have figured it out and my number 2 son Pat is gay so all bets are off there anyway. That is interesting all by itself but that would need to be the subject of another entry.

Two weeks ago I was up in Michigan with 190 Lutheran teen agers. About 80 of them were boys. This teen camp is for sophomores, juniors and seniors and gathers kids from all over the Midwest. 90 percent of them are one variety of Lutheran or another, from two parent families and probably 70 percent go church every weekend. They are nice kids from nice families. Decent breeding, good German Lutheran work ethic. Probably in church every Sunday as God intended.












In light of my apprehensiveness I made a decision that an arranged marriage might be best for my daughter (me). I did not discuss it at length with my wife but made a conscious decision that I care to much about my daughter to leave it up to chance (and hormones) so it would make a great deal of sense for me to "help" her make the correct decision. Teen Week seemed like an ideal time to find the correct boy, from the correct family with the correct prospects. Simple problem, simple solution.

When I am at teen week I get a group of 11 kids with boys and girls but at night I get to stay on the first floor of the camp's Inn with about 30 of the older boys. This would be a logical group to cull a potential husband from. I also get to see how the boys act when they tired, wired, and otherwise and have a chance to view their personal grooming habits and their neatness. The things I will do for my daughter are pretty unbelievable. I give too much. The boys are generally...boys. They are pigs. They do not bathe regularly. They leave clothes and sundries everywhere. They speak faux knowingly and with general contempt for girls and treat authority figures (like me) with even more contempt. Generally through a withering verbal assault on their self image from the second I come into contact with them I keep them under control with the help of a few other old people. Sometimes we do use a taser but that story can be told another day.

There were not a lot of prospects in this group. Several of them were from St. Louis and as such were kind of "old news". I looked them over very carefully for height, weight, intelligence and then had them fill out a 150 question "test" regarding their general attitudes and knowledge of politics, sociology, quantum physics and 9 different questions regarding the various defenses of 7 day creation as a "fact". Along with this I had the nurse examine them for deformities, congenital diseases (ta sacs and sickle cell run rampant in inbred environments like Lutheran Camp).

Then came the one on one interviews. These are primarily taken sometime after 1 A.M. when there is noise coming from their room. I will tend to go in with a large flashlight and two other counselors. We grab the child, put a sack over his head and drag him out to the beach where we lay him with his head to the tide and "question" him. This is a good early test and this year when doing this I was looking forward to tests of fire, water and air (that one involved potentially me needing to make a catapult) but after we drowned the second kid I decided this form of questioning was counterproductive. After all, my daughter is not getting any younger and if I kill all the prospects we are not going to get anywhere.

There is a nice young man in the room next to mind. I have spent several days giving him a lot of shit and he reacted well. Confused at first by this old man whipping on him but bemused. Bemused is a good way to treat me. He has a nice smile. he is earnest. he is going to college to be some kind of engineer or something. I realize that I know and like his sister a great deal and decide this is the guy. I inform my daughter and my wife. Surprisingly they too are interested in the young man as a prospect so I left it to my daughter to close the deal but with all the drama of teen agers she could not get it done. She had another week with the boy after teen week and still could not get it done without her fathers wisdom and encouragement.

At this point I guess it falls on me. I will track down his parents and make the call. I think my opening bid is going to be two camels, three pigs and a couple big sacks of milled flour. That is not a bad dowry my friend. I will keep you posted.