fin

just the end of the month. contemplating the end of the road i'm on or whether there's a fork in it. 

and

pizza girl

after about a year of claiming she liked pizza and eating only the crusts, a switch was turned for the girl yesterday.

she asked for a slice of her brother's pizza and proceeded to eat from the pointed end covered in cheese and tomato sauce. she finished the piece and asked for another. and another. and another. the girl ate half her brother's pizza and a side of chicken fingers.

she may develop a palate yet.

postscript

franken-faucet.

after last may's all-day plumbing affair, i conceded defeat, acknowledging i was going to have to shell out for a new bathroom fixture.

well, thank inertia or stubbornness, after the hot water tap proved hard to turn for a time last week, i figured i'd give replacement another shot. this time, i was armed with the knowledge that a) the nut holding the stem cartridge in place was of one piece and that the corrosion around it only made it seem like a combination of washers and nuts and 2) liquid wrench and a few hammer taps does wonders at loosening stuck nuts.

i was not only able to complete the task in maybe half an hour, but also re-attach the broken handle to the cold water tap. (i re-epoxied the four pieces last weekend.) knowing that the nut wasn't multiple pieces went a long way in giving me the confidence to jimmy it back and forth to free it from its 15-plus years seat on the sink.

now all i need is a new aerator for the spout and it'll be as good as new. (the cheap replacement cartridges from china don't leak nearly as badly as i thought they did; they may actually be drip-free. by the time they wear out, maybe we'll be able to afford a new fixture.)

meantime, if the epoxy holds, we've got a smooth and easy-turning pair of knobs for the bathroom. we're about a roof, a re-wiring and a light fixture and ceiling repair away from a presentable house. (the rest is paint and purging. all we need is a new mattress and a storage bed.) by and by.

also

by the book

as the boy's birthday weekend continues, two things i noticed.

first was helping him put together his lego set. where i used to do the instruction reading and organizing and assembling, now i just organize, supervise and maintain quality control (double-checking touchy or sensitive attachment points, etc.)

with a fresh from the box set, he'll follow to the letter. (kudos to lego, btw, for creating manuals that pretty much require no words.) he's an enthusiastic assembler and hardly prone to the bouts of impatience/frustration here that marked his toddler years. (it's different for his own off-the-instruction-book creations; if things fall apart, things can get kinda dicey.)

parts inventory

second was the simple grasp of counting. his grip on the tens is a mite tenuous, but one through ten, he's golden. instruction manual call for six of the same part? i watched him hunt and collect each one from the pile: "one, two, three, four, five ... where's six? got it. six."

so different from the boy he was just a year ago. and worlds away from the beautiful grab-bag of mystery behavior from three years ago. he's reached the age of obnoxiousness and butt and poop humor, but he's still a pretty sweet boy trying to strike that balance between doing what he wants and winning approval. i hope we can provide the guidance he needs.

adventure boy

well, ok then

the official backyard picnic table measurement

so ... when all was said and done, yeah, we got a nice bit of snow. it started out light and dry and fluffy, but as the temperatures got into the upper 20s, i could sense some of the dryness coming out of it. it's gonna be a wet mess over the next couple of days. we'll see if this run of having power continues.

waiting

One of the most powerful winter storms in history is targeting the East Coast. Latest: https://t.co/s9NeIkz4FY pic.twitter.com/xVTvEU2k41

— Slate (@Slate) January 22, 2016

it's a good thing the hour of the Lord's second coming is indeed unknown to man, judging by the handwringing and quiet anxiety that are accompanying this next great snowstorm. heading out to pick up my heart meds, i was asked to pick up a 12-pack of extra toilet paper and, “for giggles,” two gallons of water. “just in case.”

these things normally don’t worry me, as the forecasts usually overstate the threat and we wind up with a mere fraction of predicted accumulation. maybe it’s the steady drumbeat of warning that finally got to me, or the knowledge that heavy, wet snow and freezing temperatures mean power outages and no heat, but i finally caved and bought a pack of firewood. just in case.

sideporch provision

witness

the kids had been in bed for about an hour when a door opened. had to be the boy, right? not yet sleeping? driving his parents crazy?

nope. it's the girl. she sees me looking into the hall as she steps into the bathroom. she returns to the doorway, sweeps the light switch and heads back in. on, then off. back to doorway to sweep the switch again, more carefully.

a minute or two passes. flush. she heads out the door, slightly beaming. i tuck her back into bed, praising the big girl who didn't start crying when she had to go potty. she just got up and went. even her eyes were smiling when i kissed her goodnight again.

(no point deduction for not washing her hands; wasn't going to spoil the moment.)

little milestones. (plus, she's tall enough now to reach the light switch. when the hell did that happen?)

eeny meeny

kids have apparently learned this:

eeny meeny miney moe

catch a lion's toe

if he hollers, let him go

eeny meeny miney moe

they know they've lost the rhythm somewhere, but their momentum carries them forward regardless. they don't stumble and puzzle and torture themselves as grownups would trying to figure out the missing words.

ballerina

and apparently it is at age three that pop music begins to penetrate a child's brain. where i learned the bar-kays' "soul finger," my daughter has actually learned the chorus to bruno mars' "uptown funk" and taylor swift's "bad blood."

i've heard her absently singing "bad blood" to herself in the house, but having "uptown funk" come up on the radio last weekend really got her jazzed.

don't believe me/just watch
don't belive me/just watch

she'd repeat the signature line even though mars doesn't actually repeat it until the end of the song. but, wow, there's some conviction there. this one's going to have dreams of becoming a performer. heaven help us.

what we left behind

Did you make it to work today? Show us your #SnowDaySelfie! pic.twitter.com/TjrX6AxNA0

— Charley West (@charleywest) March 3, 2014

birthday boy

v.i.p.

outgoing biz editor

working at work

office view: looking up from up the street

we had windows. and light — literally and figuratively. we bore our responsibility with a nimble blend of seriousness and purpose, levity and joy.

motto

we put our paper together with teamwork, efficiency and pluck because we had to. "outgunned, but never out-worked" was our ethos. and for an amazing 10-year run, our little paper was the best in the state — missing 11 straight last year by three measly points.

when they moved us to the other side of the hall after the merger, i remained so as to have the seclusion needed to work on a redesign unperturbed. renovations were to be done on our side so the combined newsroom could move in.

long story short, everything has pretty much been curtailed and i got moved across the hall last friday. for the time being, i'm the last person to leave the old newsroom. and now it's empty. today, i moved in to my new digs.

new view out

ever the sentimentalist, as is my wont, i am loathe to say goodbye and i mourn the passage of time. luckily, my moments in this place should be full enough that there won't be room to brood.

good Lord willing, we will be back in the light before we know it.

last person to leave the newsroom

night lights

turned off the lights tonight. hoping they come back on again soon.

wvu-ku reax

faces

babes

watching these two watch their documentary saturday, i was struck that just a few years ago, their faces were monochromatic, digitized 3-d ultrasound images from their mother's womb.

and now, look at them. attentive. curious. inspired.

i'm not sure i could want for more. thank you, Lord, for the gift of them. may their mother and i care and nurture them into their full flower. bless the work of our hands. amen.

inspiration

on a gray, lazy, after-school friday, we plopped down to decompress in front of this on the tube.

toward the end, the boy says, "it's great that we're watching this movie."

"i'm sure," i said, thinking that was all to his thought.

his sister was curious. "why?"

"because now i've got ideas for more things to build," he said.

always thinking, this one. (and shame on daddy for not being the reporter his daughter is.)

dude

radical, dude.

keep meaning to write this. the boy picked up the term "dude" last summer. i think it began on our disney trip.

he's come to the conclusion that using it — complete with an exaggerated surfer accent — is how teenagers talk. 

this may explain why a skateboard suddenly appeared on his christmas wish list late in the season. (possible confusion with scooter?)

he has also added a posh english accent to his vocal repertoire in the past few weeks. he only seems to use it in this construction: "i'm famous from china." where any part of that sentence derives is beyond me. 

(i will take the blame for exposing him to my own british accent on occasion. i read two story books to him and his sister after the baby's christmas program. i was singing a "thomas the tank engine" halloween song using it and they seemed to find it so funny that i kept it up through story time. mea culpa.)

commemoration

morons

so here are a few things that happened this week that were neat:

west virginia u's hoops coach swung by espn's sportscenter to talk basketball after reeling off three straight road wins:

ICYMI: @CoachHuggs was live on SportsCenter this morning with Kevin Negandhi and Seth Greenberg to talk some hoops. https://t.co/gFsgmJcNq3

— WVU Men's Basketball (@WVUhoops) January 5, 2016

and our wvu beat reporter wrote a piece on the anniversary of the mountaineers' signing its homegrown athletic director:

.@WVUADLyons reflects on first year as #WVU athletic director https://t.co/f8ksDugamb by @mikecasazza pic.twitter.com/zW7I8522f9

— Gazette-Mail (@wvgazettemail) January 5, 2016

and my kids gave me cards.

the front of this one read, "happy birthday, birthday bivr ❤️❤️❤️" where "bivr" was the boy's effort to spell "brother," as we both have january birthdays.

card from the boy

translated, it says "i love how you make me smile. happy birthday, dad." he also drew himself giving me a fist bump.

i kind of made a little fuss about it and was touched to hear him read it to me as i lay in bed. kris told me he wrote the whole thing on his own, no asking for help. i was so proud and pleased.

this kind of deflated his baby sister, who refused to give me her card before disappearing into her room. i think she either created a new one or modified what she'd already made.

card from the girl

as she read it to me, it said "happy birthday, daddy." i made sure i fussed over her lovely card, too.

for all the craziness going on at work, their sweet efforts — and those of my family, friends and colleagues — made for a pretty good celebration.

today's reading was, well, a benediction:

Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only-begotten Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.
In this is love:
not that we have loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.

1 jn 4:7-10

amen and amen. 

spurt

lego star wars

where the boy's brain-rewiring used to be accompanied by bewildering fits of atrocious behavior, the "tells" of his growth seem to have modulated into periods of less manic, though nonetheless exasperating, lost focus.

"not thinking" is probably the best way to put it: haphazard shoe-tying, chasing random distractions instead of requested tasks, "accidentally" hurting his sister by not considering the consequences of his physical antics, and on and on and on.

kid stuff, i know. he'll grow out of it. but still ... wow. 

kris, though, has noticed a physical signal that correlates with his behavior — the boy's face starts breaking out. his hormones seem to really make their presence felt as the little monkey hits yet another growth spurt.

what used to be apparently mental re-calibration is now integrated with his whole being: mind and body metamorphosing at the same time. so in his loopiness and gangliness, he is becoming (hopefully) brighter and taller. Lord, what a stew he is.

toyland

christmas 2015

there's a wistful melancholy in the last line of victor herbert's "toyland" that seems to best capture my annual brush with the holiday blues: "once you pass its borders, you can ne'er return again."

for all its overwhelming hustle and bustle, the quiet that remains once the stores are all closed come christmas eve, finally allowing for a simple, hallowed calm and bright to settle in, is my favorite part of the season. it becomes all about friendship and love during those blessed hours.

that it's balled up, bagged and hauled to the curb so perfunctorily and as a matter of course in the popular culture once dec. 25 has passed seems to be such an abrupt, unceremonious yanking of the plug, especially in light of its gaudily hyped, four-week runup to the big day.

new year 2016

if it were up to me, i'd take down the tree after the feast of the three kings. while it's not a gentle, parachute landing, you get close to a week's cushion of christmastide, which beats nothing. for me, though, it takes our local santo nino novena and about a month of weaning myself off holiday music to finally get over the end of the season.

i'm enjoying my children's stay in toyland, even as their older acquaintances are reveling in the triumphant apostasy of their faith in old saint nick. so sad for them that in their rush to grow up, they unwittingly close the gates of childhood innocence behind them. having partaken of the apple, they now leave eden.

i sighed today when i hung up a favorite pink windbreaker that the girl used to wear. it had to have been at least a year since was able to fit in it.

kris asked if i ever wanted the kids to grow up. of course i do. good Lord willing, they'll come to be adults— with all the drama and complexity that comes with it — faster than we'll believe possible. as a guy who hates goodbyes, though, i just want to hold on to this simple, innocent part of their lives as long as i can.

happy new year

hopes for a healthy, happy 2016

we didn't get to break out any bubbly until after noon today. such is life with children. best wishes to you, wherever you may be.

the new year's reading for the solemnity of the blessed virgin makes for a good invocation to start things off:

The LORD said to Moses:
“Speak to Aaron and his sons and tell them:
This is how you shall bless the Israelites.
Say to them:
The LORD bless you and keep you!
The LORD let his face shine upon
you, and be gracious to you!
The LORD look upon you kindly and
give you peace!
So shall they invoke my name upon the Israelites,
and I will bless them.”

nm 6:22-27