No more free parking for you.

Today after my run I happened to notice a modern artifact on the sidewalk that I hadn't seen before. Let me rephrase that. I happen to notice a modern artifact that I have seen before in other areas of the city. Specially on those where there is limited parking "free" space so you have to pay to have the privilege to park on the street but not on these small part of town where there is not that much traffic, we are close to the University and a community college.

Why would the city want to start charging us?

I asked myself, and I was kind enough to response myself with another question.

Why do you think you can park for free on the street?

Well, I have my theories but I am not going to share them with you. OK if you insist I will.

• Numero 1: There is not enough money in the city to pay for all the bills so they have to place these artifacts on the street so we can help with the bills

• Numbero 2: Some of the neighbors complained of too many cars parked on the street, so this will keep people away from parking all day on the street

• Numero 3: The city figured out that a lot of students and workers were using the streets as a free parking and came up with a plan to charge us all (due to the schools being in the area along with small businesses).

I am inclined to think the third option did it for them I believe it went something like this:

"Myself (the city talking to itself), look at all those cars parked on the street! now if I could only figure out a way to have the owner pay me the small amount of money per hour they are parked there, I will even be willing to give them evenings and weekends for "free", in any case they will be at home on evenings and weekends with the cars in their own garage or street."

Well, I guess they came up with the "perfect" formula. Accordingly to the Downtown Austin Parking website, the price to pay per hour is just 1 dollar. Yes, 1/5 of what you pay for a cafe-latte at a coffee shop, so not a big deal at all (right).

Lets break it down to a simple math:

1 (dollar per hour )
x 8 (hours per day)
= $8
x 1000 (estimated cars parked at any given time on the street)
= $8,000
x 5 (days of the week)
=$40,000
x 4 (weeks per month)
= $160,000
x 12 (months in a year)
= $1,920,000

Interesting number there, but I am sure I am way off and I might be over exaggerating the number so lets round off the number to just 1,000,000 per year for people parking on the street.

But don't take my word for it, another website states that in 2007 (three years before this post) there were more than $100 million in penalties that haven't been paid. I mean common people! pay your fines. They are only $35 bucks a ticket, the city needs you.

I hope that money is being used well and that its able to hire lots of people to clean... the machines, or something. Because the roads - to my point of view- they all look the same.

So what we have learned here? A good business model always works. As long as it is done well it will pass unnoticed to the general public and bring a lot of revenue.

Dear Grocery Store

Dear grocery store,

I come to you in hopes of gathering food and maybe an artifact or two for my children when I come to you, you seem to carry all the elements I need for human survival and for that I am thankful, but I must say that this time it's not me it is you... actually it is more about your cashiers.

Sincerely,

A father of two.

So today I took a trip to the grocery store at around 8:15 PM. Now keep in mind that our kids are usually in bed by 8:30 so I figured that I would gather some stuff and run out of the door as quickly as possible.

Mistake #1 Assume everyone will follow the basic rules that are posted on the parking lot.

We have a HUGE grocery store called HEB and near the main entrance they have reserved about ten parking spaces for parents with children. Think of it as handicap parking for adults with children. There is even a big sign on each parking spot so as soon as you pull into one of this spaces you will be faced with a big sign in front of you that says something like "Parking reserved for parents with children" and it has a drawing of a child sitting on a shopping cart so in case you can't read it at least you can see the drawing and think --humm, maybe they are trying to tell me something... that I need children?-- NO! They are telling you that if you do not have children with you, please find a different parking space so that the parents that have to carry groceries and eight children can park close enough to the carts and the exit/entrace.

But no today, I was able to find one of those parking spots waaaaaaay out there close to the expressway while some one else was two feet from the main entrance placing the contents of their shopping cart on the back seat! unless they had a super child that was able to carry on their arms all those groceries I don't know why they were parked there.

Mistake #2 Assume that your child won't try to touch anything he comes 2 feet away from them.

I have a three year old and one of the things I love the most is seeing him find any item in the store where he can fit his fingers on and stick his little fingers in it, also if he can find cans that he can spread across the floor even better. NOT! or at least I that is what a gentleman was thinking while he was giving me a dirty look because my three year old was about to open a container of refined sugar, he look at me like "You better watch that child or else" trust me I can read minds, I can even read yours right know and I know what you are thinking ;).

Trust me, I don't like when other three year old kids touch stuff at stores and I don't like when my kid tries to touch something that you might place in your mouth in the future so do not worry I am watching him closely.

Mistake #3 Assume that because you are carrying a one year old in one hand, a basked half full of stuff in the other hand while you are trying to control your three year old, that you would be treated like a some sort of hero.

Well I did feel like a hero today, I was amazed at my ability to control all the elements -kids+groceries- for a few minutes I felt like I could conquer anything, the kind of hero you see at the movies... like Shrek! or at least I think I look like one.

First I ran to the closest cashier with the least of people in line, in fact there was only one person! Score... the thing was that something was going on with the cashier and she had to verify some documentation or something from the person who was paying. So I said to myself. No problem lets go to the next one.

So I arrive to the next line where there was only one guy paying and a lady in front of me with probably 20 items (did I mention that it was the "10 or fewer items" line?) so I waited patiently for about 3o seconds and nothing happened. Well say this 30 seconds turned into like 3 minutes. In parent with 2 kids and groceries is like 30 years. while this was happening the line I was in before had already handled 2 more people. You gotta be kidding me! I scream really loud - to myself- very deep inside.

So I move back to the original line with one lady in front of me, excellent! -I say to myself- this cashier has already attended 3 people while I was in a different line, must be some sort of record so she will attend me rather quickly. But I was wrong... o very wrong, the lady in front of me before paying had decided to order some cigarettes, so the cashier had to do the following:

1. Look for the keys to open the cigarettes bin

2. Walk a whole set of 10 steps to the bin

3. Open the bin

4. Turn around and confirm the kind of cigarettes she had to get

5. Put the lock back

6. She couldn't put the lock back

7. Try again to put the lock back

8. Put the lock back

9. Walk another 10 steps back to her original place to fullfill the purchase

Now the client decides to hand a coupon for her cigarettes, so I don't know what was going on but the cashier decides to start removing the imperfections from the coupon, like removing the edges or something.. at that time I decided to move find a different cashier at the other end of the store.

I wont bother you with the details with my final cashier but lets just say that I experienced a similar behavior so I just started to laugh to myself like if I was a little crazy... now that I think about it I think my craziness went up by a few degrees.

So finally made it out of the door with my groceries, one balloon for each child and enough sugar to last a couple of hours.

I made it home at around 8:50 PM so the trip wasn't that long but if any CEO or CFO or owner of any of this chains would like to make a express cashiers line specifically for parents with children, I would be your loyal customer.

Now I must clarify that I do go to the grocery store or the hardware store once in a while with my children and I do enjoy it. I would say this was the first time that I encounter this type of situation. Except the parking stuff, always some young guy or gal would take those parking spots for no reason, leaving the parents to park somewhere else which is not that BIG deal but hey it would be nice if they were respected.

Lesson learned: Respect moms that have to deal with this every single day, or at least every time they have to go to the store, I only have two kids but I can't imagine how much more difficult it would be with three or four or FIVE kids!

Kids will always be kids and parents will always be parents... I hope

It is a given, kids will always be kids and parents will always be parents (yeah took me years to figure that one out) The difficult time comes when -you- the adult need to let your child know when he/she is misbehaving and you need to handle the situation at the moment.

Through the infant years there will be plenty of opportunities to practice the parent/child roles so don't worry about it yet. If you are blessed with a child like ours who constantly loves to challenge our authority and loves to behave in the opposite manner than dad or mom behaves towards him.

Well, today our almost-three-year old decided to throw a tantrum on our bed because we weren't giving him what he wanted, as we understand it (and as the psychologist and professionals tell us) this is a normal behavior from a child because they are not sure of how to express their feelings. Usually at this moment is when your parenting instinct will kick in in high gear and decides to do something about it by trying to correct the child.

I was in the living room so I had to walk a few steps to the bedroom and with a firm voice I had to reassure our little bundle of joy that if his wonderful behavior would continue there were going to be (stingy?)consequences. Promptly he stopped his tantrum and I took the opportunity to request from him to fix the mess he had created. He did comply with my request and after he fixed the mess we walked to the kitchen to get something for him to drink.

Now that I have a few minutes to think about this incident I can think of a few points learned from his behavior.

1. He did eat much earlier during lunch time because he didn't like what we were having to eat so this might have contributed to become irritated easier.

2. Children are able to respond to firm voice better than yelling. I have had my share of yelling when I am desperate and that usually doesn't work as well unless my face is red and fumes are coming out of the top of my head but we will have another post about that.

3. A flow in behavior after a repression seems to work well too. Meaning that after he stop his behavior and fix the mess we promptly moved towards the kitchen to satisfy one of his needs. I believe this enabled him to release some of his own stress, after he had something to drink we followed with some crackers as a snack since we still had a few hours before dinner.

After this incident everyone lived happily ever after... oh no wait, we had a even worse case driving home from the grocery store...sigh