the nerd life

"spider-man: homecoming"

so the boy watched his first grown-up action movie yesterday: "spider-man: homecoming."

as we left, his mama joked that she couldn't believe she was allowing her son to watch a comic book movie in the company of his father and his best nerd wing man.

it was a fun sunday afternoon: we did it up with jumbo pop corn and cookie dough candy, caught the previews — "star wars: the last jedi" and "thor: ragnarok" — and took a selfie in front of the movie poster.

and the movie?

a big hit for the boy, who managed to have the adult-ish language wash over him, since the script used its modest profanity matter-of-factly and not gratuitously. (his one question was to a bit of comic relief, where the punchline was "porn," which daddy sidestepped.) the action sequences were suspenseful and stirring but not scary, which was just the thing his young imagination craves.

(side-note 1: he said to me today that he especially liked that the superhero was a real kid. it's funny how i'm finding relateability is a big thing for the kids.)

(side-note 2: speaking of which, remind me to write about how important "dora the explorer' is to his sister.)

(side-note 3: my buddy brad, in texting me about watching the movie, referred to the hero as "'pider-man," which i think is what the boy called the web slinger when he was but a toddler. i guess i must have told brad that.)

in addition to daddy's relief that the "parental guidance reviewer" was pretty much spot-on, i was just very much pleased at what a terrific comic book movie it was. while i pretty much revere "spider-man 2" as probably my favorite superhero movie for its inspiration and imagery, i enjoyed this one for its heart. it was simply a well-made confection of fun, action and character.

i was just glad we all had a great time. good Lord willing, this will be the first of many father-son movie moments.

the kids

yesterday, the boy learned to play scrabble.

from the twitters:

boy, playing his first scrabble game, smiles at his tiles: "i can spell 'fart'"

today, he scored 182, including a 44-point "quiz."

nice thing is he gets to practice his spelling and his math, what with the double-letter and triple-word scores and the like, not to mention just keeping score.

the girl, apparently, continues her infatuation with music from the 1980s. today, i heard her singing snippets of steve perry's solo effort, "oh, sherry."

add that to her love of naked eyes' version of "always something there to remind me," cyndi lauper's "true colors" and on and on, and it's an interesting phenomenon to witness. maybe that will be her inspiration for the 80s revival she'll kick off in her rise to pop stardom.

up

it's hard letting go of things i can't control.

jump!

so about a year after month-long, twice-weekly winter and spring swim lessons, the kids finally seem to have gotten the hang of it.

i'm not sure if it's the age or having daily swim lessons for about six weeks that did it, but the splashing and flailing and stiffening into panicked anchors seem to have given way to a rudimentary freestyle, complete with actual strokes and kicking.

all we need is a membership to someplace with an indoor pool and maybe we can improve. (and maybe daddy and mommy can regain some of our lost fitness.)

so happy to see progress, though. and thankful. for this and many other things.

wired

finished my second cup of coffee around noon today. should have left plenty of time to cycle out. tired. 

a year in

office, late, a year ago

officially, this shot was from my last day at the newspaper; unofficially, i still had another office to clean out — and that would take another couple of days.

i've had a year to live with a choice and been blessed to have the luxury of time to grapple with it.

what have i learned?

first, that i had faith enough to make a leap.

second, that i lacked the wisdom to know that it would take a long time to land.

i mean, i knew in those first couple of weeks that things wouldn't be easy, but i didn't have the faintest idea that things wouldn't be easy for a year.

third, every time i think my faith has been stretched to its limit, i find that it stretches a little more.

fourth, i've had a lot of people placed in my path. their sharing of their journey has helped sustain me. (shout-out to lauren and chuck, who showed me the lifeline that's kept us going.)

but my wonderful, wonderful family — my beautiful, brilliant and patient wife, my joyful children, my prayerful, hopeful mom and dad (from both sides), and my cheering sibs — have been the rock which has kept me steady through it all.

friend along the way.

looking for work is hard. it is full of leads to nowhere and hopes raised and dashed. it makes you question your ability and your worth. it's also forced me to weigh the pursuit of my chosen profession against the need to have a steady paycheck in a different field.

i've been saying for about nine months now that if you'd have told me a year ago i'd be doing whatever it was i was doing that day, i'd have said you were crazy.

well, if nothing else, i've learned that i'm capable of doing all kinds of things. hopefully, i'll soon settle into something that i can do for a long, long time.

thank you, Lord, for leading me and my loved ones this far; i pray we may continue to follow you in faith to where we are supposed to go.

threats

had to make good on one yesterday. it cost us the last two days of tennis camp.

i'd stupidly warned the boy that if he didn't stop putting his racquet in his sister's face, he was done with tennis.

a few minutes later, he did it again.

"that's it," i said, and reached back for the racquet. "we're done."

i was mad because i made a stupid threat and i was mad that i let myself react to horseplay i glimpsed in the rearview mirror. and i was mad until i fell asleep.

i let my tiredness and impatience and frustration at the typical thoughtlessness of a 7-year-old trip me up and make a rash decision to follow through on a hastily made threat.

he'd already gotten a month's worth of lessons, but now he's not going to finish.

boys are boys and they're hard-headed, easily distracted and don't listen. i'm the grown-up.

apparently, we both learned a hard lesson yesterday evening.

last year

i had no idea what the day would bring. a lot has happened since.

birthday

with our two of his ten. lucky guy.

a few days late, but, yeah. that's 81 years in the books; thank you, Lord, for the gift of him and bless him with many more.

(meantime, i helped him fill out a new job application. wants to keep practicing medicine. good.)

caprice

the finished product

barely two years later, the thing the boy clamored for on his visit to disney went out with the trash.

dismantled and abandoned, it was victim of a young boy's curiosity and loss of novelty. it was a fine toy for adventures of the imagination until it got taken apart. 

so long, custom lightsaber. 

whoops

missed again. i liked that in today's reading "sarah laughed" at the Lord's promise. 

also this morning prayed that the Lord help me to receive his grace. 

pride. what a maddening thing.