also

josh martin exhibit at taylor books.

yesterday, the boy spied the cd jewel boxes that have been in my jeep since i got it.

whatever is in there is probably the last line-up from some road trip before the children or some such thing.

so there was music there that was at least 10 years old.

he asked what the boxes were in the center console and i explained that discs were how we carried music around.

he asked if we could listen to one.

i removed the "painted by memory" cd that was in the player and full of heartache and angst and instead popped in something peppier that i figured would appeal to him.

in went "welcome interstate managers" by fountains of wayne.

and once the power chords hit from "mexican wine," the boy was hooked: "daddy, i love this music."

great, i thought. i'd just doomed him to loving nerd rock, the whitest white boy music there is.

(not really. he also cut loose with some early hip-hop from us3 the day before, which made for a nice kitchen jam with his sister and me while i washed dishes.)

as we made our way through the backroads of south charleston, he asked, "daddy, when i'm bigger, can you get me a phone with ear plugs so i can listen to music all the time? i love music."

the potential for tuning out the family notwithstanding, i'm glad he appreciates tunes of all kinds.

end of summer

an unimagined dream 20 years ago.

for all intents and purposes, anyway.

almost on cue, today dawned gray and wet, the curtain of rain seems to be drawn between another summer and another fall.

and i'm another year older.

it's been about 20 years since i was walking our dogs in the backyard of my parents' house and lamenting the passing of time and my life waiting to begin, thinking i was over the hill at 30.

if i only knew i hadn't even begun my ascent yet and that all my struggles with where my vocation lay was actually my carefully packing for the journey ahead. i had to pick up a lot of things that would be useful to where i was headed.

and now i'm living a life i would have never imagined back then.

i'm noting the passage of time, but with less dread as much as appreciation for what the present offers.

peaceful coexistence

welp. i'll say this: we don't suck. actually, if our play is any indication, we might be pretty good.

to borrow a fine sports cliche, my mountaineers gave the crimson tide everything they could handle before their battering ram running game and stable of all-star athletes finally wore us down.

believe me, we had our chances, but a dropped ball here, a bad snap there and we never get to close the gap to less than 10.

played like hell, though, most of the time. minus the miscues and we might just win it. again: at least we didn't get our asses beat.

but what i'm mostly writing about here is that there is something to focusing on what really matters in life — and it isn't football.

when kick-off came and went and i realized the pre-game radio* show i was listening to wasn't leading straight into the ballgame**, i freaked a little. which was the cherry on top of my freaking about the game in the first place.

i mean, i was home. the boy had been roused from the nap he'd been put down for by his sister who arrived from shopping with mama and who had neither a nap nor lunch.

and i was trying to get some lunch into the kid while mama went to return a damaged backpack to the store for an exchange.

i was anxious about the game but didn't want to commit to devoting my afternoon to it.

i thought i was just being myself. and i sure didn't think it was showing.  

but apparently, this dilemma was making me jittery in a way that made kris nervous.

fanatic.

"you're always like this during football season," she said, which made me feel like the caricature of the football addict who abandons his wife every fall.

she convinced me not to mow the lawn in the high heat and humidity and tried to get me to retreat to the den so i could watch/listen to the game away from the rising craziness of our sleep-deprived offspring.

in what must have been an epiphany moment, i chose instead to put up the laptop on which i was going to keep a little online game thread conversation going, as well as the smartphone.

after finally finding our radio affiliate here in town, i turned it down lower than the sound of our noisy children and sorted laundry. at least something would get done while i nursed my angst.

and when i brushed off my little girl's request for help decorating her cardboard box rocket ship, kris called me on it. i checked myself.

i got down on the floor and helped my baby pull off all the stickers she wanted. her contentment and simple devotion to her little project banished any resentment i could have held from being distracted from my precious ballgame.

when supper time came, i turned off the radio, comfortable in the three-point halftime deficit we were in. we had a tasty cooked broccoli slaw, ripe homegrown tomatoes and leftover roast chicken for a lovely, relaxed repast.

all i had to listen for was announcer tony caridi in the other room. if his voice rose, it was good, or at least the promise of good. he came through loud and clear a few times and that was good enough for me.

as it was, we never erased that deficit from the half, but i was saved the anxiety of watching the prize continually kicked from our grasp.

i left the living room radio off after our meal. i just made regular trips to the den to listen on our possessions before finally settling in for the closing minutes of the game. we had our chances. teams that take advantage of them win; ours didn't.

but if we could give mighty alabama a game, well, maybe this season won't be as bad as others predicted.

and if i can remember to keep that in perspective to the things that are really important — things like being a good father and husband and helpmate — it won't matter all that much anyway.

* radio has become my go-to medium for following live games that i'm not attending, btw. it's a lot less demanding on my attention than the screen, be it a broadcast or livestream. and don't get me started on watching sports that i care about in a restaurant. i've learned my lesson on that.

** in a convoluted sharing of talent, charleston's west virginia radio corporation and metronews sandwiches its pre- and post-game shows around wvu game play-by-play broadcasts from mountaineer sports network from img. it's inconvenient and weird.

a view to a kill

all week long, i was full of hope and belief in the run-up to west virginia's big game tomorrow and i still am.

it's just that now, well, stuff like this making no bones about the depth of talent alabama has stocked up and the power with which they can run over their opponents, well, it has me ... concerned.

concerned enough that maybe i don't want to watch anywhere and maybe should just be listening on the radio like i always do for away games. it kind of puts me at a remove in not being forced to watch things happen, especially if they are bad, but still allows me to be with them. 

lately, i've been following the smoking musket's game threads, where commenters post their feelings/observations as the game goes on. puts me at a further remove, but also in the minds of fellow fans without the game taking an emotional toll on me.

in order to not waste my time and emotional energy, i'll probably do some combination of mowing the lawn and listening to the radio and following the musket and take my lumps. or rejoice at the improbable. we'll see.

let's go.

two of a kind

temperamental artist.

right now wondering about a boy who alternates between being bright and sweet to acting purposefully dense and mean.

seriously, his split personalities make themselves manifest sometimes within the span of an hour, if not a few minutes. i don't know if it's real psychosis or just his being a bratty 4-year-old.

his going from composing clever rhymes and creating smart drawings to throwing a fit because we're upset that he decided to drop an entire load in his pants while lying in bed for a nap has baffled and exasperated his mom and me.

and then he's going to turn 5. and then 6. and what then? he'd better be farther ahead of the game by then, that's for damn sure.

now she looks more like a little girl. she likes to be called "boo."

meantime, while tiny in stature, his sister stands in stark contrast to the maddening inconsistency of her brother.

she remains sweet and easy-going and loving. (she will also fight back, which i appreciate.)

in her wee voice, she expresses gratitude for the tiniest things.

her hair has finally grown long enough to put into little pony tails. her mom had secured them with her own hair bands but wanted to get the child some that better fit the smallness of the locks.

she bought a bag of brightly colored, kid-sized bands at the drug emporium. they were inexpensive, but you'd have thought mommy had procured a stash of rare jewels.

"thank you for buying my pony tails," she told her mama.

always grateful for the little things this one is.

to be fair, her brother also expresses gratitude, usually for big things, like beach trips or afternoons at a museum.

i suppose i'm being harsh on the boy; after all, he is mostly a good, smart kid. it's just that when he's acting up — man, it makes things rough on everybody.

i have to hope and pray that this does get under control — and that the girl continues to be the blessing she is becoming for us.

and this

me and the missus, we have a thing going on pic.twitter.com/wTt0pR5YiB
— some asian guy (@grumpnet) August 26, 2014

this happened, for example

blackwater falls

we went sight-seeing on the way home after a weekend business trip to beautiful canaan valley resort for the west virginia press association annual convention. our paper took the top prize for the tenth year in a row. we were nervous, but jazzed.

my buddy billy with the general excellence award.

meanwhile ...

... although it appears i've only written twice this month, i've actually written three more times.

once in my paper journal because ... well, because it's personal.

once for this guy at the paper.

and once to write a fan post for the smoking musket, my favorite west virginia university sports aggregator blog.

life and work has otherwise kept things hopping.

diversion

I counted 70+ SWAT officers. Guns trained on crowds. Insanity. pic.twitter.com/stev2G6v4b
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 13, 2014

i'm writing this now before i bury my head in football stories.

something is happening near st. louis in the wake of a fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager.

in response to rallies protesting the young man's death, the ferguson police department has responded as illustrated above.

the situation has escalated as the evening has progressed and i fear there may be a loss of more lives if cooler heads don't prevail — on both sides.

i can't bear to watch this unfold.

Happening now in #Ferguson https://t.co/D6tpUWeRhf
— Antonio French (@AntonioFrench) August 14, 2014

less and less babies

@DisneyPixar boy got his courage up to ask for "toy story 3" today pic.twitter.com/RC7tuDi3NU
— some asian guy (@grumpnet) August 4, 2014

so the babies became less like babies today.

the boy, who has a very acute sensitivity to conflict in his movies, decided yesterday that he was no longer afraid of the confrontation between the sisters in "frozen" and was ready to watch it.

(previously, he really was only interested in the movie's ubiquitous hit song but not in the clash of siblings leading up to it. "i don't like this," he always said at the start of the movie, whereupon we would have to reassure him everything was going to be ok. and that's if we decided we were going to watch the movie at all, thanks to his qualms about it.)

then today, when presented with the chance to watch a movie while mama was out on a freelance gig,  he asked to watch the sad and dark "toy story 3" — if he could hide behind me during the scary parts.

i could only guess that watching disney dvds during the travel portions of the beach trip exposed him to a) a lot of "toy story 2" and b) a lot of advertising on said discs for the franchise's third installment.

anyway, he has screwed up the courage necessary to soldier forth through uncomfortable scenes for the chance to enjoy an otherwise entertaining movie. not sure what this represents, but it feels a little like growing up.

and then there's the little girl who began climbing out of toddlerhood toward little girlhood this afternoon.

the third pic in the set is where she tells kris, "i can do it, mom." so out of our arms they start to climb.

it's all happening very quickly now, isn't it?