verse

on his right hand billy'd tattooed the word 'love' and on his left hand was the word 'fear' and in which hand he held his fate was never clear — bruce springsteen, "cautious man"

unencumbered

the boy. santo niño procession. sacred heart. 18 jan 2015.

we're doing much, much better now going to mass as a family, btw. it helps that everyone more or less stays quiet — though not necessarily still — during mass. but the biggest difference-maker is that everyone is pretty well potty trained. no clunky diaper bag, no extra pants/underwear/pull-ups in kris' purse. we're going places with just the kids and nothing else. (similar for travel: no pack-and-play and no stroller means more room. period. i can actually see out the back window now.)

that boy

that boy. 23 jan 2015.

this boy. seriously. used to be every time i'd write of some behavioral progress he was making, he'd follow up, oftentimes within the day, with some type of absolutely horrid behavior. (i swear, it nearly got to the point that i'd developed such a superstition to it that i quit documenting his advances.)

boy's getting an eye for detail.

but now ... he's developing an eye for detail. and he possesses an artist's temperament — perfectionism to the extreme, although we're working hard to cultivate patience. (no small feat for two of the most impatient people ever to become parents.) he's sweetly and genuinely grateful for things. he's got a freakish memory. he loves his cousins and music. he also loves to dance. he's become a "star wars" fan — though he's yet to watch any of the movies. he's a drama queen, like his dad. (hoping to God he grows past it.)

thrown toy. 14 april 2012

kris and i are coming to grips with the idea that we probably expected waaay too much out of him as a toddler when it came to things like listening and impulse control. while part of it can be chalked up to being 2 and 3 and simply being a boy, what we've learned about the importance of diet and behavior as a sidelight from researching autoimmune disease triggers explained — in retrospect — so many nightmarish incidents from those touch-and-go years kind of breaks our hearts as to what it put him — all of us — through. to this day, we work to keep him away from gluten, which makes him loopy, and food dye, especially annatto, which turns him into an uncontrollable rage monster.

i'd like think he's past this now. or at least is more emotionally and intellectually equipped to handle it. he's mostly potty-trained, though he'd rather play than pee. he wants to be helpful and feel important. he knows how to say grace. he seems to be on the right path to becoming a good kid. i hope and pray we can help keep him on it. God bless you, my baby boy.

a year in

last call, october 2014.

this time last year, there was a lot of uncertainty about the safety of our water. twelve months later, i can't say all our concerns have been addressed. but y'know, for want of a better term, i just got tired of worrying.

this is a picture of the last bottle of drinking water i used before deciding that with the zero parts per billion of 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol reading i was waiting for having finally been reached, it was time to give up on my refusal to drink the city's tap water.

i'd been rinsing with it to brush my teeth maybe a month or two after i finally started washing with it, but couldn't bring myself to go all in and drink it.

when word came out in mid-summer that agencies found, for all intents and purposes, no mchm in the tap water  (i'll be damned if i can find the story that reported it), the time had come to give in.

it only took two months to make peace with it. so in october, i waded in. i stopped bringing bottles of water to the office just over a month ago and began using the ice and water.

but right now, i'm too tired to make a fuss. i can't sustain the outrage. the water doesn't smell. it doesn't taste bad. i've been told there's no more chemical in it.

patrick street kmart, 9 january 2014.

so the one year anniversary of my boy and me heading out into the twilight to buy a few cases of drinking water has come to pass. if we're lucky, my hope is that the people responsible for allowing the leak to happen will go to jail with a big chunk taken out of their fortunes.

a year of inconvenience, anxiety, anger and resignation has passed like water under the bridge. i suppose because the story isn't all over yet — the "closure" that crime victims seem to speak of — i have no tidy summation for the experience other than saying i want it to end and i want the doubts to be finally dispelled.

area 51

fam.

just one of those days. good to be alive. glad to be loved. cognizant of blessings that i take for granted. hoping i can do right by those i love. thank you, Lord.

daze off

builder of the lego star wars fleet, seen with his sister.

sharing three squares a day with the family for the past three days and just lolling around the house performing a modicum of unhurried housework has provided a mental rest i haven't gotten on days off in a long time.

no long-distance driving, no shopping, no socializing, no pressure. it's been nice. it's given me a chance to just hang out and appreciate my family just a little bit more. i hope they've like their time spent with me, as well.



these babies. they're changing before my eyes. their memories, their reasoning, their temperaments. everything. they're becoming people. and me? i'm just trying to make our memories while i can. thanks for the chance, Lord. a-men!

day one

"i really like our tree. i really don't want it taken away. it's so beautiful." — boy, 1st bout of post-holiday blues pic.twitter.com/Q13B1onYT9
— some asian guy (@grumpnet) January 2, 2015

after the initial thrill of discovering the "neighborhood" or "class reunion" that the facebooks purported to offer, i began drifting away from the bragging and drama and sniping that comes with a lack of filter for what should and should not be shared on an electronic medium.

while keeping up with events and happenings remained important to me, i wanted my information stream to be more about my interests — sports, current events and culture. more and more, i began following the feeds from twitter. 

what i'd once derided as the narcissism of listening for the echo of one's own pronouncements or of regularly announcing the mundane minutiae of daily existence as if it were somehow noteworthy has been honed into a marketing tool for good reportage and thoughtful analysis that i can pick up or ignore. no drama, no clamor for attention. 

such an attitude seems to hold true except for two days of the year: christmas and new years. 

those days seem like party days, where you want a communal experience with your friends and loved ones. 

i must have spent an hour at a time christmas eve and day and new years eve and day exchanging greetings and photographs on the feel-good holidays when your heart is brimming with convivial cheer and seasonal good will. 

it might be the only time my attitude changes where i want to be a part of the drama and drawn in by the embrace of similarly companionable friends and family.

i know it's snobby to pick and choose when i want to draw attention and hold others at a remove. maybe i'm more of a cat person than i ever thought i was.

but if you think about it, the social media is a two-way street. if you can choose to be annoying, i can choose to ignore you. and if the medium is annoying, i can choose to avoid it until it is no longer annoying. (surely it is more profound than that, right?)