Neanderpundit

There are people who were born to delegate, and it shows. There are people who delegate, and it’s because they haven’t the ability to do the jobs they delegate. And then there are people like me.

See, I grew up with a father who taught me this lesson: Never send a man to do a job you’re afraid to do, or too lazy to do, or you find distasteful.

SO all my life, when there was something nasty to do, or something annoying that needed done, I never even said a thing, I just did it. It was hard developing this habit, but i did, and now it’s hard to stop. Consequently, I’ve slung a lot of shit. Gutted a lot of hogs. Changed a lot of brakes. Crawled on my hands and knees through tons of hot steaming coal to fix recalcitrant machinery.

So one of the hardest things for me to do, is to send someone to a tough job. THis is as true of mmy job as it is my country. I hate that young kids are defending us, and I wish I could go myself, but I have other responsibilities. One of them is to train my replacement.

Because- as most who know me understand- there are not a lot of people like me, and we are in pretty high demand. Not many want to put up with the abuse.

So I’m having to learn to delegate, and it galls me, because I’m never as happy with a job that I do not do, but it’s time.

One side hate and one is hope

I am speaking with an old and dear friend about the job of raising children, and she reminds me how much f a balancing act it is. don’t spoil her, don’t deprive her. Don’t protect her from everything, don’t let her hurt herself too badly. Don’t make her afraid of everything, don’t prevent her from developing healthy fears. The balance between the appropriate freedom and the appropriate control is tough.
There’s also the damage you can do if you do fuck things up.

So i keep walking this line. I have a great guide in the Ogwife, who, unlike me, grew up in a large enough family with a HUGE extended family that she has seen all phases of parenting, and knows what to do and what not to do, for the most part.

I have done a lot of tough jobs, and raising a child is no different, though the end result is far more rewarding.

smells a certain way. Likewise the inside of a deer. The guts of a pheasant have a specific aroma, and field dressing a rabbit is something nobody will ever forget, who has done it.

One of the things you don’t get, being removed from the production of your own food, is that the internal smells of animals being butchered share their aroma with the farts you have when you eat their flesh. Turkey farts smell like turkey innnards. Deer farts have that same distinctive aroma as a freshly field dressed deer.

In Africa, while I was hunting, one of our guides ripped off a particularly noisy and noisome fart, and it only took a second to remember where I’d smelled that smell before- in an emergency room, where a colleague at the steel mills was having his intestines reattached to one another and reinserted in his body cavity after having had them gouged partially out by heavy machinery.

Anyway, in camp, everyone else waved their hands and laughed at the rank smell, holding their noses and smiling, but I was a little chilled, despite the summer’s heat. I looked at the guide, and he uncharacteristically looked away from me. He knew; I knew.