new year's eve

writing by streaming video firelight with sangria, 2015.

it's tradition, this annual writing in my journaling notebook. sometimes it's the only entry i put in it all year. i know for sure i skipped the opportunity to write some doozies this year.

pic.twitter.com/jNNCGDlry9

— Thrillist (@Thrillist) December 30, 2015

long story short, while i began this year's accounting with a mental list of grievances mostly based on material complaints, kris' words to me before bed in response to my hopes for a better year were, "this was a good year."

and i wound up recounting that, yeah, for all the things that really matter — life, health, family, faith — it really was.

(in addition to being a huge part of all that, kris also helped me knock off a couple of resolutions that i always made but never really get a handle on when it came to finances.)

so ... this freed me to add a couple of less, shall we say, corporeal resolutions for 2016. here we go:

1. exercise
2. de-clutter
3. pray/meditate
4. be humble/be brave/be patient
5. let go; let God

i thank the Lord for the love with which i am surrounded and the many blessings with which i've been bestowed. i pray for continued watch and protection and blessing upon those many whom i love. and that we may learn to accept His will and strive to draw ever nearer to Him.

for all these i pray, amen and amen. thanks be to God.

a blessed and happy 2016 to all.

this christmas

support

there have been worse years, for sure. this one, though, has been the most disturbing, professionally. i'm just now wrapping my brain around the idea that i still need to wrap my brain around the whole thing.

two things this christmas kind of gave me a little more perspective.

the first is the thing that gets me through all my crises — the knowledge that i have family and friends who love me and keep me in their prayers.

spending a few hours at mom and dad's last night, helping prepare supper (just cutting up some shrimp and scallions and a lemon to garnish mom's pancit palabok) and hearing a house full of boisterous, laughing children, my sister and wife chattering away and lo-fi christmas music playing in the background reminded me how blessed i am to remain surrounded in love.

(that i can count on the same from my in-laws almost seems unfair save for the knowledge that i recognize in it the great generosity and goodness of the Lord.)

the second, oddly enough, was found in a box of donuts. long story short, a departing reporter brought in a couple of boxes on his last day. i'd had my lunch and was feeling the pressure of helping do some fronts for a handful of papers over this holiday week. (pile this on top of the general unease regarding the state of the publication and the industry as a whole, i suppose, not to mention some scaled-back expectations following the announcement of the big merger this summer.)

anyway, i was in a pre-holiday funk of worry and disappointment, ready to get to work after my meal when i absently took a bite out of my dessert, a boston cream-filled donut. the sweet, creamy, chocolate-tinged first bite of a fresh pastry hit me with a revelation: i can enjoy the luxury of a free treat from a friend in a warm, dry office at a place where i am gainfully employed and am not only given the opportunity to do good work, but recognized for producing good work. all uncertainties aside, i still have a good job. i am also in the position where i might be able to make a difference in my employer's future.

there are people in much worse circumstances than my own. lonely. ailing. unemployed. untrained. no, i am richly blessed. every time i open my eyes, i open a gift: the chance to live my life. my life.

amen, amen and amen. thanks be to God, alleluia, alleluia.

applebee's

container of mashed potatoes

true story. kris and i have a funny relationship with applebee's. the two times we received applebee's gift cards, we discovered we were expecting a baby.

kris got a card as a christmas gift last week and immediately dropped it on the floor. i vowed to sleep on the couch until we actually spent it — which we did tonight. i hope that's it for now.

(for the record, she got us each a steak dinner with mashed potatoes and steamed veggies. we split buffalo chicken nuggets. i'm full.)

not the baby

baby just went to the bathroom on her own. no crying. no daddy getting up to carry her little self to the potty and carrying her back.

she just woke up, crawled out of bed, opened the door, turned on the bathroom light and went. 

it was just this weekend that she awoke crying, wanting to go, just as i was falling asleep. exasperated after carrying her in, i told her she was big enough to walk on her own. 

following her in the dim light, i was struck by how tall she looked — not at all like the tiny, wobbly toddler she was even a year ago. all this time carrying her, she still felt like a baby. 

sigh. i'm gonna miss her sleepy head buried in my neck and her little arms wrapped around my shoulders. my baby girl. 

tragic trash

oreo balls. was really hard not to go costanza on these.

when i was a single man — hell, when kris and i were childless — i generated about half a bag of trash every week.

at the zenith of our diaper years, we were up to four heavy bags weekly.

as a recovering pack rat, there's been many and many an item i've been loathe to part with (donate) let alone discard. (unless it's destroyed, i usually believe things can be rehabilitated. so sue me.)

so it made me sad yesterday when a shift in the dish-drying rack caused one of my favorite, cheap, ikea wine glasses to tip and break against the side of the sink. right at the joint of the stem and the bowl. it was a such a sad, delicate "ting" to hear just as the stem and base clattered into the adjoining basin. sigh.

contrast that with the awful thudding of a tray full of baked treats hitting the floor — the result of me not carefully removing a milk jug from the fridge — which was laden with the despair of a night's work lost and sudden, awful regret.

kris was fit to be tied. she scooped up the lot in an agitated sweep and tried to salvage what was caught in the foil before stuffing the lot of lemon bars down the disposal and — as i cried "nooo!" — wadding up the oreo balls and chucking them into the trash.

her storm quickly passed, but it wasn't until later that she decreed we would never speak of this incident again. (you can see how well i listen.)

(on a less emotionally charged note, i also got rid of our old programmable thermostat. our furnace guy called it a piece of junk, said it might also been a contributing factor in our misbehaving hvac system. been meaning to change the thing for a while, especially since kris and i stopped working the same shifts. finally gave me a reason to install the new, old-style honeywell i'd bought and had in the closet for a couple of years. seems to be working like a charm.)

'the best afternoon ever'

digital christmas mood

the boy said this after we read a chapter out of hoffmann and sendak's "nutcracker" before bed tonight.

previous to this, he and his sister watched about two hours of depression-era christmas cartoons by max fleischer, p.a. powers and the like on amazon prime whilst eating "picnic dinner" of fishsticks. (mommy and daddy pretty much had made their dinner of office party leftover hot corn dip and various chips, along with brandy-spiked mulled cider.)

and previous to that, on this cold, gray day, as mommy and daddy decompressed from a tense morning, he succeeded not only in convincing us to turn off all the lights in the dimness of the late afternoon and turn on all the christmas lights, but to fire up something called "fireplace for your home" on the flatscreen.

to complete the mood, he asked for music; specifically, "peanuts christmas," as he called it, which daddy was already thinking about streaming on the spotify once he saw in what direction the day was turning. (it was either this or the contemplative "sing we christmas" by chanticleer.) it frightens me a little that the boy is already wanting to control aesthetic environments. or makes me proud. whatever.

he had just welcomed home his mom from an office christmas lunch after he himself came home early from school just ahead of christmas vacation. his teachers had kindly sent their students home with a stocking filled with a paint set, coloring book and and story book, which was must have been a terrific treat for their students, especially those whose stockings will probably be a little light this year.

flakes in baby's hair

the weather had turned colder after a chilly start to the morning and the first crystalline flakes of the season were in the air. the babies were so psyched trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues and lashes. finally, it was feeling like christmas.

the day began with a visit from our heating/cooling guys to check our furnace — just cleaned off some soot and the damn thing was working fine —and what we thought would be the simple replacement of a breaker in the fusebox became about two hours of searching for the junction/wiring that was shorting out the middle of the house. (also confirmed that our roof is in really bad shape.) another visit awaits to track down that short.

daddy didn't help matters that morning as he spilled an entire tray of lemon bars and oreo balls onto the floor while taking out milk with which to make an omelet for brunch. mommy had worked for hours, staying up late, to prep treats for her office party. i think she was going to kill me before breaking down in tears. can't remember i'd ever felt so low for such a klutzy maneuver.

all this goes into saying the hubbub and bustle of the holidays has finally come home to roost. the anxiety of work will be on hold more or less for the next two weeks. gatherings are set right up through christmas weekend. i may be finally letting my guard down to take in a little bit of the spirit. to that, i say "amen."

goodbye, wugga

wugga and darth vader, february 2015

well, after about a year since its curious construction, the boy has abandoned wugga.

"wugga" is the name he used for star wars' wee jedi master, yoda. well, it was until today.

kris and i may never learn how the lad came upon this odd epithet, although my guess is that it's the result of one of his linguistic tics, where the wiring for the "y" and "w" sounds got crossed and his tongue tripped over the "d" and into "g." (kinda the way he still occasionally hitches the glottal "g" into the "l" of his name.)

weird thing was, if you spoke of "yoda," the boy knew who you were talking about and he was perfectly capable of saying the character's name. and he'd say it if you corrected him. but if he were drawing a picture of the guy or saw him in a book or video, he'd say it was "wugga."

anyway, he was pointing out to his sister some of the christmas merchandise the circulars are hawking in advance of the new star wars movie that comes out tomorrow. that's when i heard him clearly name one of the characters in the toy or game or whatever she was asking about.

"that's yoda."

i suppose it's only natural that he would have conformed to the little guy's proper name as the hype built around the movie's release. i mean, if it's making its way into the conversations in a newsroom ostensibly populated with grownups, then it has to be on the thoughts and lips of the world's kindergartners and grade-schoolers.

so of course, he's going to have to use yoda's name correctly; otherwise, his friends won't know who the hell he's talking about.

still, though, i sigh. it's just another thread to his preschool-hood snipped. our youngling is taking his further steps toward becoming a jedi.

ebb & flow

the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

in a week in which i and my publication suffered professional setbacks in a number of ways, i managed to find solace and satisfaction in personal accomplishments re the boy.

making bunny ears

the first was one of those life skills things: tying one's shoes.

he'd been warned that after christmas, the teachers would no longer tie kindergartners' shoes, so we figured a crash course over break would be necessary.

but just for shits and giggles, i figured tuesday i'd take him to the bright lights of the kitchen so he could better see his black laces. also had him change his posture, from sitting on his ass to kneeling on one knee, again, so he could bend over better to see what he was doing and his leg would be more perpendicular to to the floor.

rather than the one loop and lace pass-under some learn or most adults use, i made it easier for him to visualize what he was doing through the same way i taught myself as a kid: after making the half-knot "criss-cross" (the term he's learned), make two "bunny ears" and cris-cross them.

the fine-motor dexterity he'd lacked even a few months ago to pull that one bunny ear under the criss-cross appears to have kicked in. they're not the tightest knots, but when double-knotted appear to have been serviceable. (next thing he needs to learn is how to un-tie a double-knotted shoe.)

he's managed this for four days, so that's all right.

(in less a less obvious and more personal accomplishment, he's managed to wake up with a dry overnight pull-up the past week, as well. it's weird.)

pirate elf

additionally, the boy on wednesday managed to write and illustrate a christmas story, starring himself as an elf, who saves a wayward gingerbread man. (inspired, i think, by a 1930s cartoon about a disobedient grizzly bear cub's encounter with old man winter.) while not entirely original, it made for a fun read.

interesting also to see something like his development of empathy.

we celebrated his sister's birthday early since it happens on a school night next week. we went out to chuck e. cheese and played lots of games and ate pizza. mama made a yellow cake with chocolate icing and decorated the house on our return. (we took two cars.)

paint set

long story short, it appeared all the gifts had been opened, the last being a "dora and friends" paint set. knowing his sister wanted a talking dora doll with a smartphone, the boy begins talking up the paint set. "this is much better than a talking dora," he says, almost like damage control.

while the girl wound up actually getting a "surprise" package with the doll, kris was touched by the boy's efforts to buck up his sister's spirits. never mind that it's two weeks until christmas; it was kinda perceptive of the monkey to consider his sister might be disappointed at not receiving the gift she's been wishing for.

funny. as i write, i recognize the work-related stuff can be rectified. we dust ourselves off and try again the next day.

the milestones our children pass as they grow? burn that into your memory. these are things the accumulation of which add up to a functioning adult person. the lad's growing before our very eyes. and this is going to be part of his record. just dropping breadcrumbs as fast as i can.

monday

tomorrow is another day to try again

— Sharon Lyn (@sharonlyn9) December 7, 2015

on a chilly, gray, drizzly day, disappointing news just seems like par for the course. expected, but nonetheless disappointing. will begin rebuilding the dike tomorrow. (borrowed tweet from a friend.)

thanksgiving break

turkey day spread

i know it's weird to judge the quality of a road trip on the food, but, well, i'm weird.

we made three visits to the golden arches on our 72-hour sojourn — literally breakfast, lunch (heading south) and dinner (heading north).

part of it was dad hankering for his go-to road breakfast, the egg mcmuffin, and the rest of it is the babies' addiction to happy meal toys. the two are acutely aware of the restaurant chain's logo and can spy the company's spokesclown in the most obscure locations. (luckily, they are both in a good fast food eating phase, having polished off their plain hamburgers with great dispatch.)

in a rare trifecta, all three of my mcdonald's meals were satisfying and tasty: a bacon egg and cheese bagel with a side of hash browns in palm coast, fla., a sublime quarter pounder with cheese via drive-through in jupiter, fla., and a big mac meal — good distribution of sauce and pickles, there — with a disappointingly cold apple pie on the return trip through palm coast.

home of the golden arches

driving all night to arrive a day ahead went a long way to keeping my body clock mostly in-sync. mom's idea to lunch just before hitting west palm paid off ahead of a late-ish thanksgiving eve lasagna supper.

mom's lasagne did not disappoint; coupled with an industrial-sized package of garlic texas toast and a tasty cabernet sauvignon from auntie joy made for a great meal. a couple of stolen kit kats and a macaroon from auntie pamy was a nice way to top things off.

while preparations of turkey day dinner sides was going on, the evening's entertainment was watching "ratatouille" with dad, pj and the baby. the rest of the kids pretty much just camped upstairs with their tablets and games. after we said our goodbyes for the night, the boy passed out at the hotel almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. (he and his sister were so pooped, they overslept the children's "fun run" the next morning as part of the city's annual turkey day 5k trot.)

hammock time (15-minutes' worth)

even the hotel's complimentary breakfast bar was good — sausage patties, scrambled eggs and apples. i returned to the lobby for coffee and fresh belgian waffles.  (the house coffee was really good, btw.) lunch was simple: walmart chicken salad and croissants. snuck in a 20-minute nap before taking the kids out of everyone's hair with a trip to the local park out on the intercoastal waterway.

unlike our usual modus operandi of arriving thanksgiving morning with a messed-up eating schedule wherein our first meal in town is a heavy brunch that makes a late afternoon feast an exercise in unjoyful eating, the normal pace of a discrete breakfast and lunch allowed for a welcome, well-paced, early evening meal. i got to sample everything, including four kinds of pie. if we wouldn't have run out of corn, it would have been a pluperfect meal. (i also had a dinner encore of turkey and mashed potatoes to finish off some leftover green beans and the savory skin. plus a sliver of pie.)

dad, pj and i watched the end of the afternoon football game and "from russia with love." this was followed by the requisite "show" put on by the kids. (for some reason, these lengthy gatherings always leads to some theatrical production by the tween kids and their younger cousins/friends. it's been this way since i was a boy. my kids took part in a haunted house scripted by pj's eldest girl. it even had a ghoulish backstory of an entire family that met their demise in all manner of awful ways. the boy played a ghost named "charles." he couldn't keep a straight face.)

(also, playing "school" remains a popular activity for the older cousins and their younger cohorts. again, even in this digital age, some things never change.)

breakfast the next day was pretty much the same. lunch was an amazing sliced ham sandwich on my sister-in-laws's garlic twist rolls followed up with leftover lasagne. i had gluten-free cherry pie, and slivers of pecan and pumpkin pie for dessert.

(btw, the west virginia children heard their very first bona fide ice cream truck and ran out to the street to meet it. unfortunately, they were too late. the boy spent probably a solid minute staring up the street, hoping to spy it.)

big walker mountain tunnel

a protracted photo session with the children and grandparents preceded the long goodbye. a return visit to palm coast for mickey d's and gas, another fueling in st. george, s.c., and one in fort chiswell, va., as well as a potty break at the north carolina-virginia border were our only stops. the whole trip back took about 13 hours.

this marked the first marathon road trip in which neither the boy nor the girl broke into an extended crying jag in the midst of their sleep from leg pains or the like from sitting so long. and everyone pottied when they were told and no one required any special stops.

i tried my damnedest to not be a total, tired prick to my wife as she dealt with the vagaries of long-distance family road trips. and, really, the fact that she's subjecting herself to concentrated doses of our brand of crazy is reason enough to go into these excursions endeavoring to make them as pleasant for her especially as possible.

but this one was nice. (and i write this knowing there is many and many a poor soul out there — and even among my friends — hungry not only for a decent meal, but for a loving relationship with family and friends.) Lord knows how many more of these gatherings we'll get. in the meantime, i'll just be grateful for the ones we can have. and for this and more, i'll give thanks. amen and amen.

astronomy

moon over georgia

"hey, daddy. remember how the moon followed us to beckley, then to florida? now it's following us back to beckley." — the boy, on i-95, north of jacksonville, friday night

thanks

as ever, the perfect dinner, served with love and care. a houseful of children sreaming and scheming. siblings, parents, spouse gathered around a table. a moment. all was well. for all these things and more, i am most grateful. thank you, Lord.

the road

i let a florida driver's dirtbag maneuvering suck me into dirtbag retaliation. i hate that. and i hate the cultural animus that leads to that kind of behavior. 

these people

monkeys

the boy and the girl are becoming people.

while i'm holding on with all my might to their preschoolhood, they keep growing.

their personalities are emerging. they're entering new phases.

the boy is by turns obnoxious and sweet; the girl is growing out of being my baby to occasionally acting like one. 

he is becoming more and more all-boy, full of imagination and fantasy and conspiracy. and tall. how the hell is he getting so tall?

(also, he already says he doesn't want to be a grownup; he wants to be a kid forever and never leave home. he suspects something is up — and he doesn't think he'll like it.) 

despite our best efforts to not push gender roles on her — inasmuch as we ever exerted effort — the girl is indeed quite fond of pink and frills and pretty things. and twirling. she's trending toward ballet. or figure skating. or both. maybe she'll eat more than once a day.

(after three years of being a sweet confection, she is now a seasoned stew coming to a boil.)

they are both full of drama.

the boy loves halloween

he strives for perfection and is absolutely crushed by correction; she is out to do everything her "big brovvy" can do. they've each got distinctive drawing styles.

they're also picking up some sass and backtalk from exposure to other, less disciplined kids. such is life. we're learning a new stage of admonishment beyond potty training and more toward learning societal norms and niceties. we're trying to teach respectfulness.

this is all moving very, very quickly. these are but snapshots of lives constantly in motion. not sure i'll ever be able to create a whole panoramic picture of their progress. we'll just buckle in and hold on.

shout-out

i have friends who keep blogs. some better than others. i'm just flogging a nice summation on childhood at this stage from my former colleague, rebecca, whose little girl turned 5 today.

i like

character

that i'm still a hero to my boy.

fall back

all saints day. downtown.

so daylight saving time ended last night.

the boy arose twice before 5 a.m. but he also lay quietly in bed the two times i sent him back. he didn't sleep, but i was glad that he didn't raise a ruckus as he did when he was three. hard times then.

it got dark before 6. it was depressing in the same way that the onset of fall and kurt weill's "september song" used to make me mourn the passing of time. i hadn't felt this way in years.

maybe the way that the children are quickly growing is making me more acutely aware of the days growing short for many things. i'd best cherish these days of lap-sized kids while i still can.

boo

little monster

after living a life where his ghosts and ghouls originate from disney and nickelodeon cartoons, the boy only took a few weeks in kindergarten to learn about vampires and zombies. 

he knows vampires drink blood and zombies eat brains. that's it. so far, they've yet to haunt his dreams or his closet. 

he seems to have embraced the fun frights of halloween in a way i never did as a child. looks like he's gonna be even more a typical american boy than i was. 

lines and circles

watching the boy sound out words is akin to watching struggle rewarded time and time and time again.

the emergence of his satisfied, triumphant little smile when he unlocks a word must be what comes across an apprentice safecracker's face each time a tumbler falls on a combination dial.

i'm really digging in both pride and amazement how he's becoming this enthusiastic explorer for learning.

dream media

weird couple of nights thanks to eyeballing social media before bed.

i responded to a tweet from my friend tony.

@Candace07 I hate Twitter

— Tony Dobies (@DOBIEST) October 28, 2015

later that night, i hadn't been asleep more than an hour when i was abruptly awoken by a dream in which he had tweeted something in a bit of a contentious social media discussion on singer ani difranco. i didn't sleep for another four hours.

then last night, i was winding down after the exasperating west virginia u-texas christian game when i came upon a post by another friend, steve, who's a long-time social media expert and a professor at louisiana state.

Earworms are keeping me awake this week, so I decided to share them with you: https://t.co/SxHW9kwIgE

— Steve Buttry (@stevebuttry) October 30, 2015

i offered comment after reading his blog post on the vagaries of his cancer treatment and wished him well in his fight.

while i managed to get a better night's sleep, i still found myself awakened in the hour or so before dawn by a dream in which i plunged, flume-like, onto the submerged lake ponchartrain causeway in louisiana. it was crazy, because i was just barreling along, plumes of water spraying from either side, somehow, miraculously, staying on the world's longest bridge over water. 

i suppose the fact that i was not submerged and possibly a mere twitch away from taking my vehicle totally underwater was enough to startle me awake.

i guess i'd better be careful who i respond to on the social media before i go to sleep.

fluid dynamics

coffee me

a thought that normally occurs while i'm in the throes of a fever or headcold or respiratory ailment, is that basically our bodies are just so much soup — a conglomeration of liquids, lipids and proteins that is optimal only within a few degrees of 98.6 fahrenheit. any deviation from said temperature puts us in worlds of lethargy, fog or delirium.

i remember this because i'm at the end of a long day helping kris with not one, but two school halloween parties. (she was basically a madwoman this week, btw, as she prepared games and treats for our kids and those of others, in addition to her gig helping at the the girl's preschool and the all-day hootenanny that is child-rearing. definitely a medal-winning performance all around on her part. seriously.)

the morning after our burg's designated trick-or-treat night and, despite my better judgement, following my beloved, maddening west virginia mountaineers' self-immolation in forth worth versus texas christian university for the remainder of the evening, i was still pretty punked after arising first for about an hour at 5 a.m., then again 7:30.

i knew i had a long day ahead assisting my lovely wife at her various school functions. yes, my egg and smoothie breakfast was nourishing and healthful, but i knew there was no way in hell i was going to make it through a morning helping preschoolers without a travel mug of coffee.

and for the better part of three hours, i nursed that puppy through three classes of face painting. sip after sip after sip gave me the liquid courage and creativity i needed to converse with parents, set up a space, and enthusiastically paint tigers, kitties, rainbows and hearts on the cherubic faces of about a dozen wee bairns.

it got me to thinking about how frequently i use various beverages as crutches to not only help me get through my day, but through awkward social situations. other times, they're exactly as advertised, enhancers of gatherings with friends and family — libations to loosen the metaphorical necktie or creep you into the coming day's consciousness.

yes, we are soup, but not so precisely measured that we can't stand to be a little more liquid.

also

five hours in, and i'm still waiting for sleep. fml. 

last night was the first in weeks that i hadn't taken a sleep aid. i figured as tired as i was tonight, i'd drop right off. 

now i'm trying to convince myself that four hours of sleep before the kids wake up will be enough to operate on for a full day. 

i'm not yet at the point where i'm bargaining with God for an hour of restful sleep, but i'm just waiting for it. 

and there's our sunday paper hitting the lawn. 

bubbles

the boy has yet to drink a carbonated beverage. the second the liquid passes his lips, he begins wiping off his tongue. 

the babe

eye spy

what i thought was regression, kris points out likely parallels to the boy's bouts of terrible behavior preceding developmental progress of some sort. stands to reason that the girl would be, too. oh, my baby girl isn't going to be a baby much longer.

sleepless

three antacid tablets and two sleeping pills in, and i'm tired, but not sleepy. lots on my mind, apparently. 

baby girl

ballgame

my baby went to her first real west virginia u game this weekend and did it up right.

she had a burger and shake on friday, chips, crackers, cold cuts, cake and a hot dog at two different tailgates — and play cornhole — saturday before the game, and get a happy meal for supper afterward. 

in addition to getting to play with auntie joy, she got to meet wvu's celebrity president, watch a west virginia country superstar perform "country roads," and watch the induction of a legendary football coach into the athletic department's hall of fame. 

while mama doesn't appreciate the physical toll it took on her baby by way of fatigue and crankiness, the girl seemed to really enjoy the experience. 

done

workday, mid-morning.

when the going gets tough, the tough get going. i don't have any more patience or absolution for those who won't.

potpourri

friday in the park.

too busy/tired to string thoughts together this month, it seems.

the babies are being babies. growing like the proverbial weeds. 

the girl, who i'd have put on the budding genius track this summer, seems to have fallen prey to the 3-year-old's bugaboo of reverting to baby talk to accompany her late penchant for tantrums and crying fits, which i am just not going to abide. 

dunno if it's the discovery of the attention paid to babies or that she's playing down to the level of her more problematic pre-school classmates, but i'm being a real ass about admonishing her to act like a big girl. 

the boy has learned a special type of peer pressure in kindergarten. the warning we continually sounded during his potty-training backsliding this summer  was that if he continued to wait until it was too late, he was going to wet himself in class and everyone was going to know. 

well, in addition to the nicety of having a restroom in the class for convenience and ease of access as soon as he feels the need, he has apparently watched accidents befall his classmates — and he does not want to be that guy. social awareness!

took the kids to the playground after school friday. mommy and i watched them at a short distance from the park benches. i remarked that it used to be that i hovered over their every move on the various and sundry pieces of play equipment and wondered judgmentally why other parents didn't do the same. 

now we just want to catch a breather  while they charge breathlessly headlong into their active imaginings. 

here's where we turn around and they're grown. 

summer night

neighborhood kids playing outside til the last light of sun goes out. been a long time. 

revamp

spoke to the man himself today. 

bandwidths

i wore three wristbands this summer. two were for fun; the other after a brush with death. 

'congratulations, daddy'

"you got your job back."

day 1

the day is a blur, but the joy was clear.

a collection of quotes and notes is going to have to suffice to document the boy's first day:

"can i put my arm around him?"

— the girl, as we took pictures

"this is the greatest day ever. ... no one in the neighborhood even knows i'm starting kindergarten."

— the boy, as we drove up the street

"hold my hand ... squeeze it tight."

— the boy, reaching out to his sister in the car

"i'm so excited."

— the boy, as we walked to the school

and after we dropped him off:

• he held my hand until we got near his classroom. then he dropped it. 
• driving away, it was strange having just three in the car. the girl chattered a bit but there was no nonstop narrative of his observations. 
• entering the house, it was quiet. no great galumphing of feet and noise. just tiny baby footfalls. 

and afterward, as reported from kris: 

Mark it: 10:01 am. (Baby) just said, 'mommy, i miss (the boy).'

weepy

marvel #1

don't know why this feels like a milestone. it's just kindergarten, after all.

maybe it's because, with a six-hour school day, he'll officially be on the treadmill he'll be walking for the next 13 years.

and my boy's days will belong to the public school system from here on out instead of me and him. i'll have to let that one go.

he and his sister haven't quite grasped that they won't be spending their days together anymore, either. one or the other or both believe they'll be sharing the same space somehow.

my sweet baby girl has left in his lunchbox a little picture she drew of him so he'd think of her on his first day. he already says he's going to miss us.

they even sang songs with each other about his starting kindergarten. (it was a familiar tune that i can't remember just now.) addendum 14 august 2015: "kindergarten, here we come," to tune of "there's a tavern in the town."

he's really excited. he's got new shoes from his uncle and a new shirt from his lola. (it's black with silvery silk screens of rockets and space shuttles.)

we'll see if this charismatic pied piper sway his mom says he holds over his peers is for real or if he's just been a big fish in a little pond.

we'll also see if his sensitivity to slights and meanness and jealousies can roll off his back and he can talk himself back up or have a high enough opinion of himself that he'll be protected by confidence.

so many questions. so many concerns.

but for now, i'll settle for his learning to tie his shoes and properly clean himself after using the potty.

in a blink

cousins

this was probably the fastest beach trip i can remember. doesn't feel like a week went by, but i can remember almost every moment, which at the time seemed like it had its own eternity. not sure if i sat still long enough to savor them.

i can remember sitting in an inner tube with the boy. zipping down a water slide with the girl. helping mom and dad into and out of cars. commiserating with my sibs. kissing my wife good morning and good night.

i think it was because it was such a sprint from moment to moment, always looking forward (work situation notwithstanding) that it was difficult to exist in any one moment to embrace and wonder in it. it wasn't impossible, as i did allow myself to recognize and bask in the contented enjoyment of being father to two young children, but by that same token, their hands and feet move as fast as their minds, so i had a lot of anticipating to do.

this is the collection of memories that the kids are gathering. the girl is finally learning to enjoy being the center of attention, as well as exercise her considerable charms. and our animated cartoon of a boy is the perfect age for every promise of adventure, be it pirate dinner theatre or action figure scenarios with batman and the incredible hulk.

the trip began and ended with a visit to the weirdly managed wytheville, va., mcdonalds, where the kids, oddly enough, got actual girls and boys happy meal toys (the boy got a joker and a batman; the girl got a "monster high" bracelet and magic static sticker mirror). in between was a lavishing of activity, attention and love from the family.

as ever, i am grateful to mom and dad who continue to help make our children's lives richer and filled with the dreams of childhood.

looking back

waiting for supper

picking up on a lost thread re the boy's sensitive nature: we met with our old friends carrie and george and their children for supper. and they got along swimmingly, like a juvenile street gang. carrie's girl, the boy's first real buddy, is now 8 and george's boy, who ours doesn't really remember meeting years ago, is now 6, so there's a bit of separation in terms of temperament and maturity — more so for the former, but even a tad for the latter.

we arrived at the restaurant armed with a pad of paper and crayons, while theirs had their trusty tablets, which our monkeys eventually gravitated to watch. but they remained a self-contained unit at their own corner table, eating their meals and occasionally swinging by to visit ours.

after supper, we reconvened at george's, which allowed the grownups time to chat for a spell about what's been going down at work and the vagaries of parenthood as the kids played in george's boy's bedroom.

eventually, bedtime arrived for george's and carrie's new babies and things wound down. the kids said their goodbyes and we headed home. the boy seemed downcast on the car ride home; apparently, the older kids didn't take their attention away from george's cat when he bade them farewell. i guess he wanted more fussing than their just saying goodbye.

he was like that last month at dad's july 4 birthday dinner when his older cousins who normally dote on him chose to keep company with their classmates who were of their age. as the youngest of the cousins, he couldn't keep up with their play and they weren't much interested in his, so he felt a little stung. i told him he should remember that when he gets older to pay attention to little kids who want to play, too. even at that age, being young isn't all fun and games — as attention span increases, so does cognizance and the desire to maintain it. such is life.

friday afternoon.

also — yesterday's haircuts downtown with mr. ted marked probably the last friday for the boy and me together. with his start of school soon and a potential change in my work schedule to a straight monday through friday, our days of regularly bopping around town on my day off are likely over.

i'm a bit sad, as it was a neat, weekly ritual that i apparently grew to take for granted. i probably didn't recognize it happening, but these little adventures and errands became one of my favorite things about being a dad, these moments sharing time, he and i. i hope he comes to look fondly on them, too.

#blessed

my girl

my boy

my bride

i came home to a cool and dry home. i had supper waiting for me in the fridge. i kissed my beautiful children as they slept. i kissed my beautiful, steadfast, do-it-all bride good night. i poured chilled white wine into a glass. i rubbed my cat's nose. i thanked the good Lord for the life He has given me and asked that i may make of it a pleasing offering to Him. despite upheavals and uncertainties, i know i am blessed with wealth beyond measure.

kooky

mama's modified no-bake cookies. (the last one. mine, all mine.)

the babies made no-bake cookies yesterday, so i complimented them at breakfast for how good they were.

the boy looked a little concerned. "how many did you eat?"

i held up two fingers and reiterated, "two."

he hopped off his seat and ran to the refrigerator just to make sure daddy left some for them. something sad and sweet about that, isn't there?

also, he and his sister watched some real, live hockey today.

watching hockey camp.

-30-

once it began leaking then quickly became official, it didn't take long for word of charley west's demise to spread on the twitters.

hot off the press

reading the reaction from former colleagues and alum from my paper is like sitting in on your own funeral.

me? i'm still in shock. not even sure i should be writing this in such an accessible forum. (with its worldwide following of six whole people — for whom i am grateful, i shall note.)

aside from the shock and the anxiety, really, was the regret that comes from leaving with a whimper, not a bang. like a good mob hit, we never saw it coming.

but when all is said and done, i'm heartbroken. our race is run.

sudden lawn care

back in business.

first time mowing the lawn in more than a month. steady and ill-timed rain, plus a vacation and mower problems led to the delay. kudos and thanks to pile hardware for having this guy ready about 10 days faster than they'd promised.

blast from the past

Meet the new boss. pic.twitter.com/GLUDxwR

— some asian guy (@grumpnet) December 21, 2011

wired

huggy boy. photo by baby.

the boy's emotional wiring must be getting stringed together.

last month, i think just a few days before the disney trip, kris told me he began crying at the end of "monsters inc."

this is a movie he's been watching for at least two years, but for the first time, he actually got wrapped up in the relationship between boo and sully when he had to say goodbye near the end.

"it's a whole new perspective," kris told me the next morning.

then, 10 days after we get back, sends me a text describing the following scene:

.... during what was supposed to be naptime, I hear (him) sobbing in his room and I find him, inconsolable, looking out his window. Why so sad, you ask? Death. I just had to, out of the blue, try to explain death to our 5-year-old. I'm done in and it's 2:38. 

No idea. i ask why he's crying and he turns and says he's thinking about how much he's going to miss kitty when she gets old and 'goes away' and where exactly is she going to go and what happens and is he going to get old and go somewhere, too? Not even kidding. I was stunned. 

I think we should board up his windows. Sitting and staring out the window while thinking is becoming a pastime. God. He's so me. 

this was something that didn't bother me until i was at least 8 or 10. i'm not sure if it's good he's this sensitive or introspective at this age or not, but it's a development i sure wasn't expecting for a while.

when i spoke with her about it the next day, she said he went on about how he didn't ever want to leave our home and that he'd miss us all.

we've got a sensitive temperament on our hands. Lord guide us through this.

gray in the cloud

talking to the phone

i'm going to say that until, oh, about five years ago, there wasn't much that could get past me by way of technology. if it wasn't clear to me, the software designers made their work intuitive enough that if i sat and played along with it long enough, i could figure it out, even if it that way turned out to be inelegant and "the long way around."

(chances were that i'd watch someone employ a shortcut and i'd either repeat what i saw or i'd ask. over time, i would eventually become fluent, or at least functionally literate in its use.)

i had little to fear from tech. it was a miraculous, challenging friend.

well, now things are getting interesting.

i began hearing about something called "the cloud" maybe two or three years ago. it may have started appearing as a featured option on my old macbook after a round of software updates. and it may have been asking me if i wanted to join it. as a suspicious digital user from the get-go, i refused and left it alone.

i found myself having to become acquainted with it thanks to a computer system change at work in which all our production processing would be handled off-site, "in the cloud."

i've since come to learn, in my rudimentary understanding, that all our programs now work from a giant bank of servers that not only provide a platform for our software to run but also (probably more importantly?) offer unlimited storage for our files.

anyway, i'm still wrapping my brain around the concept and now, with a couple of new computers in the house — aka smartphones and a laptop — that are now native to cloud-based computing, i'm having to learn something new.

"Cloud computing" by Sam Johnston - Created by Sam Johnston using OmniGroup's OmniGraffle and Inkscape (includes Computer.svg by Sasa Stefanovic) This vector image was created with Inkscape.. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

some aspects are easy to understand. streaming video, for instance. when we got our first flatscreen television two years ago, we were delighted to learn that the amazon prime service we backed into offered more than just free shipping, but hallelujah, on-demand video through this new tv. this was almost as good as having cable.

not only was kris now able to more easily watch the hulu shows she'd been watching on our aging laptop, but we had an additional source of child-friendly content for our children to watch. (if we'd just go ahead and get the netflix, we'd have the holy trinity of streaming video providers.)

now, though, in an effort to not lard our new-ish computers with files that eat memory — mostly pictures from our phone cameras — i've stepped into the land of cloud-based storage. and here's where things have gotten buggy.

within about a year of getting our first smartphones, i found i was running out of space on my phone for pictures. so, after learning about it from my buddy jake via some work-related use, i downloaded the dropbox app, which gave about 2 gb of free storage.

long story short, i can understand how dropbox pulls photos off my phone and onto its servers. i know where it went and i can be assured enough i have those copies that i can delete the images from my phone's memory to pick up some space.

things would be hunky dory if everything else were that simple.

this spring, i linked our old phones to apple's icloud in advance of our switch to our new phones so as to facilitate the copying of contacts and calendars to our new devices. that was simple enough.

the confusing new iphoto.

i did, however, also buy a data plan thinking it would help alleviate the memory crunch of all those photos we brought over from our backed-up phones.

but it turns out, no, the data plan doesn't do that. and it seems that the icloud storage has nothing to do with the "photostream" that all our phones feed in to.

in addition, saving phone pics into the "icloud photo sharing" album so that i can archive them onto my macbook isn't providing much confidence because of an apparent delay between posting them and actually having them appear on the laptop's photo app.

while i have the security of the dropbox as backup to whatever i've shot, this icloud system bugs me a) for the aforementioned lag/uncertainty that i'm saving anything and 2) the sharing between devices is not working as advertised.

(no. 2 is not a dealbreaker; it's a feature that i stumbled into when i updated the mac's operating system and, unexpectedly, the photo program that comes with it. now i just want it to work.)

my research is indicating that apple's cloud sharing for photos is notoriously slow. i've not seen yet where it's being deemed unreliable.

the p.s. to this confused rant is the confusion with mac's new iphoto program. rather than being able to view photos by way of either albums created by date upon import ("events") or a straight-up compilation of every photo imported into the system, it now offers not one, but two cloud-based compilations, photos saved from the iphone, photos imported into the system (now called "moments"), and the "events" from the previous version of iphoto. (images are no longer imported as "events," apparently.)

just putting this part into words may be helping me sort out what the hell i'm looking at when i see all those options, but for now, i'm still trying to untangle this unfamiliar mess of a program.

when you point your finger when your plans fall through ...

God give us strength.

btw wdw ....

is the reason i even have this blog. i couldn't access my "myspace" blog, so I followed a friend's lead and jotted down my thoughts about this place. it lay fallow for a year ot two, and it has now been almost 8 years. 

early thoughts

so day one at the happiest place on earth is in the books. i didn't do too well. 

i'll blame the fatigue of not sleeping for about 24 hours on a longish drive for my being exceptionally tired and cranky. 

seriously — every setback, regardless of how trivial, was setting me off. (blew up especially well onthe two women in my life, whom i dubbed the " thunder and lightning of tension.")

thoughts to follow later: this joint is shrinking; and it's freighted with the same burden as christmas. 

meantime the boy is consistently being surprised and delighted. 

further updates forthcoming. stay tuned. 

God help us all. 

"insanity is hereditary ..."

haddad riverfront park, 12 june 2015.

... as the joke goes, you get it from your kids.

spent a hot evening on kanawha boulevard and riverfront park ostensibly to celebrate "growler fest" and pick up a free beer jug but settling for good live music and really good ribs.

i don't know why, but i suddenly got a glimpse of why my dad always grew so tense when we would go on vacation.

and i think it goes something like this: we are going outside our comfort zone into less than ideal conditions with limited provisions at our disposal and, somehow, anything that could cause the party to stray past the arbitrary buffer established to mitigate the limited circumstance into which we are putting ourselves merits an immediate and forceful correction so as to avoid complete and utter disaster.

(in other words, when things don't go according to plan, they must be met with lots of shouting.)

i mean, really. it's an afternoon out with the family. why the need for tension? yes, it's hot. yes, it's crowded. yes, you'd just like to sit down, eat ribs, drink beer and listen to music.

yes, it's too bad the water bottles you brought weren't properly sealed in the backpack and leaked down the back of your shirt. and, yes, it's also too bad the children aren't eating the $7 hamburgers mommy bought them. and, also yes, they're not going to comport themselves as pint-sized adults when it's muggy and they want to play in the sandbox and decide after leaving the water with mommy while you went on a walk that they're thirsty and 20 minutes after throwing away $20 worth of food that they're hungry.

the baby listened to mommy and got in the picture.

the conditions you're parachuting yourselves into are not ideal; why would you expect a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old to miraculously shrug off disappointment and inconvenience and suddenly possess laser-like focus and a lasting attention span?

the kids didn't eat. they also didn't release themselves from your grip and go running into the crowd. they didn't cry when you didn't buy bottled water or ice cream. they didn't throw a fit when you wouldn't walk to the end of the street barricade well past the last stand of shiny, parked motorcycles and it was time to go home. they were friendly and listened and obeyed your commands to say "please" and "thank you" and "hello."

you'll soon be going to the happiest place on earth, the vacation kingdom of the world. it's going to be hot. it's going to be crowded. it's going to be filthy with costly and unnecessary souvenir enticements. and it's going to be peopled with folks wanting to make their own personal dreams come true — sometimes at any cost, including that of their dignity.

you're going to need to be ready for that. you might want to remember that at play, as at work, you're going to need to accentuate the positive and, in spite of the heat, stay cool.

outside the box

friday afternoon.

these guys are in that prime age where their thoughts from rising until sleeping are on playing. these thoughts will come to be interrupted by school, homework, crushes, dating, jobs, tests, school, work, dating, marriage, family and home. at least that's what happened to me.

clouds on the sun

bitterness isn't something you're born with. it's more like a gradual staining of your outlook. 

being witness to injustices and scheming gone unpunished or even rewarded time and again can only sour your perspective on the world. 

landlords who pollute neighborhoods with the worst kind of tenants. health insurance companies who will gladly take your premiums yet rig their requirements so as to deny you preventative services — favoring stockholders over clients. news organizations that cry poverty to escape budget cuts even as the ax falls around them — and still have to denigrate or steal stories they get beat on. 

yeah, these are the things that steal joy and can turn a man's heart hard. 

up and at 'em

the babe, before school last week.

i think it was some time last week — or maybe the middle of this? — that the babe finally got the hang of crawling out bed instead of waiting/calling/crying to be carried out as she had been when she had a crib. after three years of high walls, i suppose there was some getting used to.

she'd always been a slow starter, wanting to be held for a long few minutes or ten until she was awake enough to be engaged by her brother or her surroundings. until that moment, she'd be pretty clingy and cranky and wanting to be left alone.

now she emerges from her room, sleepy, not as cranky — i suppose from getting up on her own terms — but still some days wanting to be held. such a baby still.

lessons from disappointment

nut. corrosion. nuts.

in the aggregate, for all the time and effort and money put into it, yesterday was a waste.

from after breakfast until just before supper, i'd been working on repairing a bathroom fixture and when it was all over, i had to concede we needed to replace the whole damn thing.

we'd broken the lovely porcelain cross knob on our faucet long ago and, with the kids gone for a few days, i epoxied the pieces together in what appeared a very strong bond.

while i could have been satisfied with just screwing it in and being done with it, i got ambitious and decided to change a washer to stop what had become a steady drip.

the nut that held the cartridge in place was so stuck and corroded at its base that i began to doubt it was even a separate piece of the fixture. it took a lot of scraping, penetrating oil and tapping with a small hammer to finally jigger it loose.

faucet cartridge kit. from china via gresham's.

i found a plumbing supply place — via the yellow pages, no less — out on the west side that sold aftermarket replacements since the model had long been discontinued. i got a whole kit — two sets of washers, springs, faucet cartridges and nuts — for ten bucks.

i was pumped. all that effort was going to pay off.

after initially trying to just replace the nut, i used the whole assembly — the brass valve in the cartridge had been replace by plastic, so i was leery — and everything looked great.

i replaced the knob and opened the valve leading to the faucet and water came gushing out. oops. forgot to close the faucet. oops. it's stuck. must have put it in backwards. (plus, the positioning in the knob shows the breaks in the porcelain.)

disassemble. reverse cartridge. reassemble. reattach knob. valve on. water gushes. back to square one. i do this about twice more before determining i neglected to ensure the holes in the cartridge aligned to an "off" position, but not before breaking the porcelain knob. the epoxy held, but i created a new break.

then i just want a working faucet. i reassemble everything sans knob and the faucet works. but it still drips. i know when i'm licked. i began looking for a new faucet.

so as much as i wanted to keep the original look and feel of the bath with the lighting and plumbing fixtures, i'm going to have to live with the disappointment that i couldn't make it happen. such is life.

but while i'd say the whole endeavor was a waste, i learned:

• the strength of epoxy glue
• the old time-life do-it-yourself home repair and improvement book series may be the best investment i made back in the 1980s (i don't want to think about if i'd begun investing in mutual funds back in 1986 as my late uncle celio recommended)
• the utility of "liquid wrench" penetrating oil on corroded nuts
• the importance of scraping off said corrosion in the application of oil and tapping the hell out of the nut and jimmying it around with the wrench to loosen it (ie, don't be afraid to apply some force to stuck things)
• that the yellow page are relevant if for no other reason than that if a company has gone to the expense of buying a costly ad in the phone book, they must have some permanence or at least a long-standing establishment and can be trusted
• there's an old-fashioned plumbing supply shop on the west side, gresham's, in a no-frills quonset hut that will be the first place i'll go to instead of lowe's for materials and expertise
• when to give up

three breaks became four.

i'm sure the part about replacing the washer could have been done by an expert in about an hour or two, if for no other reason than s/he'd have no doubt that the nut was meant to come off and would have started right away on loosening it.

i was so worried that somehow it was all of a piece and that i was going to break something — and that i'd imagined replacing a washer about 10 years ago — that i lost about three hours simply from ignorance and doubt.

as much as i'd like to try my hand at replacing a faucet with a new one, the matter of sealing and caulking and and finding parts and pipefitting in the hands of a man who has doubts about his abilities should be enough to dissuade me from the idea.

(now if i had a whole weekend without the kids around, i'd probably be more open to a trial-and-error approach. but the luxury of time is something i just don't have at the moment.)

i'm contracting this one out. as i often say, convenience has a price — and cost. and so does pride.