Fall 2004 h.s. tennis, Whitney a senior, Laurel a sophomore 

Bravery and industry on the tennis and investment brokerage trails

As the "early 50's" set firmly in, the balance of two jobs and parenting two older teen daughters and tennis and golf and running and basketball and pool and sheepshead and TV and sleep can be a precarious one (sleep the consistent loser, though that monicker is also well-associated with most athletic endeavors in a different but equally dominant sense).

Making ends meet has multiple meanings (though if more folks would have paid attention when I mentioned managed futures and affordable housing tax credits when the dot.com fever was at full pitch, we'd ALL be better off today for it).

It's hard to feel like you're right about most things most of the time, but too frequently pay a penalty for it. For somebody who wants two often opposing things -- to be right and to be liked -- life itself can seem a perpetual conflict of interest. But I suppose it's that way for lots of folks... the dynamics may even have parallels in our country's international situations, i.e. enmity can be engendered simply from what one has or knows relative to somebody else, on either a personal or a multinational level, regardless of whether there's any iota of anything wrong WITH that having or knowing.

But enough whining. The kids are OK, in fact better than that in terms of talent and initiative and ambition, particularly relative to where I was at their ages (maybe that's not saying much). The fact that I can participate as actively as I do in as many sporting events instead of just spectating should make me feel good relative to what I saw as the norm in the preceding generation.

But it sure ain't perfect.