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.)