The Zoey Blog

Watch Out For That Door

2012-01-31T09:20:00.001-05:00

We heard the yell, “Mummy, and then heard the thumping of feet across the carpeted floor. We then heard the thump of a fleet but frightened little body running into a closed door in the darkness. The thud of her collapsing to the floor was the saddest part.

Poor little thing. She had a bad dream, bolted from her bed, and wasn’t awake enough to manage the responsibility that comes with running scared in the dark. Mummy scooped her up and escorted her to the bathroom, then back into her room after a short sojourn in her parents bed. So at 5am both June and Zoey’s long day began.

Sick Girl...Sad Dad

2012-01-30T18:09:00.005-05:00

Is it just me or does every Dad feel completely awful when his child is sick? I'm unnerved to the tenth degree, which then unnerves me even further still at the prospect of a real health crisis. A fever slays me...what will I do with something more significant?

When I was ten years old I was hit by a car while riding my bike. It was a bad deal...a heavy accident. I landed in UWO's hospital for over a month. I had lacerations, major lacerations, all over my body, particularly on my head. I broke my fibula and tibia, needed six pins in my lower leg and skin grafting on well over 25% of that same limb. I lay on the side of a busy road while my brother ran for help. From their kitchen my parents heard the wailing sirens of the ambulance. If that happened to Zed I might...well, I don't know the extent to which that might damage me. A fever unsettles me something terrible.

How do you manage your child's sickness? Are you cool and confident, or are you unnerved and anxious? Does it lay waste to Dads more than Moms? Am I a freak?

Nephews and Three Toed Sloths

2012-01-29T12:38:00.003-05:00

Uncle and nephew, in their dangerous hours of unfettered foolishness, have decided that three toed sloths would be terrible travel companions, certainly terrible on game days when you're running late, and they may, perhaps, list "waiting" as one of their best attributes. They would also make terrible hide and seek companions, and would be the absolute worst choice for a pit crew. Since they mostly hang upside down we also thought that maybe climbing down out of their tree to go to the bathroom was a wiser choice than just going upside down.

Shrug...yeah, I dunno...that's the kind of stuff that we talk about.

Lazy Hotel Room Links

2012-01-29T07:57:00.003-05:00

I woke up early when my nephew had a bad dream, and with the TV on (to whisk him back into the unfrightening here and half-light now) I wasn't falling back asleep. So I felt compelled to crack off some live links. You're welcome, unless of course, you don't care, then sorry.

I desperately want this...and this.

I'm down for this.

Do yourself a giant heaping favor and listen to this.

You gotta see this. You don't need to be a sports fan. It left me feeling...I dunno, changed.

This will be how we manage a cottage someday. I'll spend my loot on the land, not the roof over our head.

Kind of awesome.

I'd sell at least one toe, maybe more, for this work space.

New, unique take on the legend of Steve Jobs, and a perspective bender in the context of how we rise to the top.

Hmmm, I could throw an A-Frame design in the cottage shipping container mix, couldn't I? Be nice to have a tiny little upstairs to sneak away to.

Now this is what I call taking your work seriously...my kind of seriously.

This looks like a nice Sunday morning, with one of my most favorite records ever.

With the new popularity of Pinterest, and by so many of your friends whom you never imagined would enjoy a good jaunt through it's aesthetically pleasing pages, it's confirmed. More people are interested in that kind of stuff than they admit.

Weekend in A2

2012-01-28T12:28:00.004-05:00

Back in Ann Arbor for a little lacrosse, and there's a ten year old, wide eyed freak kid with me. It's fun. He did get an earful of Division I lacrosse coaching, which was funny. If he didn't know the 'F' word when he got here, he sure does now. It felt good to step back into Oosterbaan with lacrosse balls bouncing all around and a familiar face, that just happened to be Lacrosse Magazine's Man of the Year, putting his troops through their paces. Of course, Reece lasted about an hour and a half before I spied him playing games on his iTouch. Ten year olds don't exactly have impressive attention spans, and with all those indian rubber balls bouncing around, it was best to either get my nephew a helmet, or sneak out of Oosterbaan.

So as Uncle B tapes up random strangers at his Kinisio Taping Clinic, we're chilling on the Athletic Campus while the snow falls in giant flakes. Some skating at Yost later...some swimming in the hotel pool...surely more iTouch...surely an early bed time.

Nerves of Steel...or Really Strong Aluminum Anyway

2012-01-27T11:15:00.000-05:00

They’ve spirited me away to some attic, storage room type place. There’s a large table and chairs, and of course, it’s well lit, with windows overlooking the library down below, but it doesn’t feel good. I’m supposed to meet a kid up here? I’ve got a weird vibe about this deal. He’s already having a bad day, so I’ve been told, and I’ve driven two hours through wet snow to quite possibly get shrugged off. That’s how my day can roll out sometimes.

I’m always nervous in this moment…in meeting a new kid…in sussing out whether I like him and whether or not he likes me, at least enough to manage any kind of connection or positive result. Sometimes these meetings fall flat… luckily, not very often. It’s pretty rare that it doesn’t work on some level. I’m honest, open, accessible, fallible, obviously not their teacher, or any other oh-so typical adult in their life, and it just seems to fly most times. If this was translated into a batting average I’d be swatting a ridiculous .890 with a Bonds-esque number of home runs and RBIs. If you asked me the details about my swing I’d just shrug. I dunno what the hell my swing looks like…I just see big fat baseballs most days, and on the days that I don’t…well, I don’t beat myself up over it.

Funny how typing, and a good sports analogy can ease my mind and slip me into a groove better suited to winning over the heart, and mind of an angry yoof…that’s right, I said yoof, ‘cause youth sounds too condescendingly professional. I like to keep it real, you know.

You know what else is a strange occurrence in these moments? I think of Zed. I always think of Zed. I get caught up in who I’d want her to meet and talk to. I get reminded how good we’ve got it with her. I find myself making mental notes of all of things that I want to say to her someday, and of all of the mistakes that I want to do my best to avoid. I think of Zed, and it makes me better.

Alright. Where’s this kid? Let’s hear what he’s got to say. I have a feeling that I might be the only person he’s ever met here that’s started out on that foot.

Birthday Cake...Birthday Card...Birthday Suit...Birthday Girl

2012-01-26T21:25:00.007-05:00

Zed reads her birthday cards, or at least feigns interest in reading her birthday cards, and it's just about the cutest thing on the planet. Sure, she tears into presents like any three year old worth her salt does, but all you have to do is remind her to read the card, and she does...and she almost always enjoys it.

Uncle Ian scored the card of the night with a farting dog inside that had Zed giggling as though she were being tickled by fifteen hands. At three years old there's not much out there that's funnier than a fart...except a fart card.

It was a nice, quiet easy, peasy third birthday for Zed. There was presents with Gramma, then dinner, and presents with Uncle Ian, Baachan, and Grandad, then cake, and then craziness. By the end of the night she was completely naked, running around the living room playing a twisted version of soccer...a hybrid soccer/dodgeball combo that had everyone laughing out loud and Zed smiling wide. It was a good birthday, nothing special, nothing crazy, just nice.

It's kind of hard to believe that this little girl is three years old... almost as difficult to believe as a three year old that gets a kick out of birthday cards.

Happy Birthday Zoey Sakura!

2012-01-26T07:34:00.003-05:00

Today is Zoey's birthday. Three years old, and surely smiling the day away like any other. She's the happiest kid alive, and even more so lately. There was a package from her wee, little Brooklyn friend, Elle that came the other day...and Aunt Netta has one on the way. There's an ice cream cake stashed away in the basement freezer...Gramma has a new pile of puzzles for her...Baachan and Grandad are stopping by for dinner tonight...Daddy bought her the most vexingly cute dress for the occasion. It's no big deal, but then of course it is.

Happy Birthday Zoey Sakura!

Dead Fish Etc...

2012-01-25T20:06:00.008-05:00

Tonight was a busy night full of dead fish, cruxating, stinky nattō (なっとう), and questions about Mom's frenulum. It was a curious couple of hours.

What's cruxating, you say? I dunno. You'd have to ask Zoey. She was the one that made the word up while she pushed her little wooden stool around the kitchen. I think it's a form of spazzing out.

What's a frenulum? It's that little thing that connects your tongue to the bottom of your mouth. Zed was quite infatuated with it tonight.

Dead fish? Yup. One of Zed's fish died. Not a surprise since Mom's got this whacky clandestine plan to slowly eradicate her fish, one by one...it's a sordid plan of attrition, and it disgusts me. Not really, but I occasionally like to feign indignation. So now we've lost Lenny and Squiggy, Richard Milhouse Nixon and now an unnamed orange dude. I'm not sure if you can file a complaint with the UN for crimes against common goldfish, but if you could, well, June's pretty much a war criminal right now. It got especially heinous when she tried to flush the fish down the toilet with Zoey's help...that got ugly.

Just in case I've never mentioned it. This is fun.

He Said, She Said

2012-01-24T12:33:00.002-05:00

She said, "my girlfriend..." and he said, "my boyfriend..." and the ease with which that is just tossed into a conversation makes me:

A] Amazed at the trust and comfort that I can sometimes find in these conversations.

B] Happy that life is just life, and love is just love.

3] Hopeful that this is the language that my kids will find commonplace.

I'm regularly floored by the epiphanies of these long days but there are some that are more quietly inspiring than others, like today, when she said, "my girlfriend..." and he said, "my boyfriend..."

Be The Change You Want To See In The World

2012-01-23T20:23:00.010-05:00

In the wake of Joe Paterno's death, and the subsequent memorialization of the man whose epic fail so very few weeks ago rocked the entire sports world, I felt moved to scribble something...Something that mgoblog's Brian Cooke certainly beat me to publishing.

What I was moved to type, rather than the millions of missives focused on the career and dismantling of that man whom the college football universe came to simply and affectionately call JoPa, is not a commentary on his death, but rather on his life, or the illusion that it turned out to be.

When statues cast shadows that remind us to deify the living, the living had better live up to the immense honor and responsibility of being cast in that stone. We can believe now, as debatable as some might have us think it is, that Joe Paterno never existed...at least not the Joe Paterno that we all so eagerly, and prematurely cast in stone. When you've been offered or have assumed a super human role, it makes sense that you be just that, super human...that your decisions be irreproachable, and your actions unassailable. In fact, they must be so. That's not to say that we must deny our most inspiring leaders the fallibility that the vast majority of us enjoy, but it demands that our trust, faith, and affection be honored with truth. When we are denied that truth, we are denied our faith, and too often we are desperate for some. Maybe there never was a JoPa. By the available facts of the ugly matter, I suspect that there wasn't. Seemingly lesser men have made vastly better decisions, have led quiet but miraculously better lives. Seemingly lesser men, without statues, go to work every day and are required to make difficult decisions and get them right...every time.

I was painfully reminded of JoPa's misguided memorialization today because of a seeimingly endless onslaught of awful discussions and decisions that I was forced to manage all day, from the very minute I stepped into the world where I work until long after I was supposed to call the day complete. It began with a dangerous decompressing of a young man who will spend the next year of his life in custody, as I dodged thrown books and epithets, and ended with a difficult discussion with a young, crack-addicted mother...a discussion that will very likely lead to the loss of her infant child. Across those, and every tearful talk in between, I felt the weight of responsibility and of uncomfortable obligation. I have no statue, nary the most humble of followings, and I will never court the curse of any kind of fame. In fact, my version of success stands alone, a solitary definition, and finds little to celebrate in the company of others. I feel the impossible weight of doing the right thing every day. I ask myself each morning if I'm prepared to be the kind of person that I want to be, and I don't get the privilege of answering my own question.

Men who symbolize so much less so often do so much more. Joe Paterno was not the man many made him out to be. There is a statue in Happy Valley that casts an impossibly cold shadow and dozens, if not many more, young men and families will forever rue the day that they believed JoPa to be anything more than a man undeserving of that stone immortality. It's unfair that one of the few things that will last longer than the scars and pain of those young men who were abused under JoPa's watch is a statue immortalizing the man who chose not to honor the one that was bestowed upon him.

Zoey, Her Dad...and Forty-Eight Pages of Giant Peaches and Talking Centipedes

2012-01-22T14:42:00.004-05:00

After Daddy and Zo snuck off for our usual Sunday breakfast...and Mom slaved over a filthy carpet...we did some book shopping and came home a few hours into the morning with a bag full of books and an eagerness to dive into them. We slipped through Peter Pan's Return to Neverland, and some space pirate treasure nonsense, an ABC mystery book and before you could say Fantastic Mr. Fox we were busting into James and the Giant Peach. I had only bought the book to stash away for a day when Zo was older, and perhaps, more interested and capable. She's never shown much of an interest in being read chapter books...until this morning!

We laid on the bed, as sunlight poured through the window, and read forty-eight pages of James and the Giant Peach this afternoon...no less than a dozen or more chapters, and Zo was enraptured. She laid beside me and swallowed page after page whole, she mimicked the dialogue, and pretended that peach juice dripped from the ceiling into her mouth...she giggled at streets full of rushing chocolate, and she smiled enormously at the notion of forty-one pairs of boots on that centipedes feet. Occasionally Mom poked her head in the door, and sometimes jumped onto the bed and helped dramatize Roald Dahl's awesome nonsense, and Zo was transfixed.

Forty -eight pages...we only stopped to watch Tom Brady and the Patriots, and even then, we thought twice about putting it down. Forty-eight pages, and she's not quite three years old. I think we've successfully built a reader.

Precociousness vs. Water

2012-01-22T09:10:00.002-05:00

Sometime yesterday, or during the night previous, Zoey's fish tank leaked. We discovered the near disaster when we were shuffling some things around in her room...her carpeted room. Now there's a bath towel sized water stain on carpet that is less than a year old, and dirty fish water makes for a bad stain. June is confident that we can lift it out, I am loathing fish tanks, and Zoey is hilariously perturbed and simultaneously disturbed by the turn of events. She doesn't like that stain in her room...no sir. That's her space and before all this fishy nonsense, it was pristine, now it is not. She's not happy about it.

She woke up this morning and flew into our bedroom yelling, "Mummy...Daddy...my room was leaking!"

We already knew that.

"We need to fix it."

We're going to...today.

"Let's fix it right now."

Sure thing Fidel.

I don't know how you're going to spend your Sunday morning but ours revolves around fish water, carpet, and someone in pajamas demanding that everything be perfect. It's like we live with Moammar Gadhafi.

Emptying the iPhone

2012-01-21T15:16:00.003-05:00

Zo getting her fun on riding the penny horse at the Lexington Meijer...that's right, one penny per ride - 2011

A quick flip through June's iPhone revealed a treasure trove of unseen photographs and ancient wonders. There were pics of Zo that I'd never seen, some as old as two years ago. I quickly put a dent in her data package and emailed myself no less than sixteen photos. A curious number of them were of Zed riding mall horses...her apparent achilles heal.

Zed enjoying a ride on Quicklsilver at the Birch Run outlets - Fall 2011

Between cameras and cell phones there are an obscene number of photographs that get overlooked. When you pause to consider the staggering number of photos that we actually manage to upload to Flickr, or store on our computers, it's a little embarrassing. At the very least Zed's going to have an exhaustive record of her childhood, in the best case scenario this blog and these ramblings last well into adolescence and young adulthood. Either way, we've got a stellar record of all these awesome, fake horse riding, years.

The Best Adventure of All...

2012-01-19T18:29:00.004-05:00

Dropping the pack and setting the camera on a rock near Bixby Creek Bridge in Big Sur, CA - 1997

Daddy likes adventure...mostly in arguably mild gulps, but abnormal bouts with adventure nonetheless. Kind of like Cameron Lawson and Brett DeWoody and their wild, 350-mile bicycle and packraft journey from Yukutat to Cordov, along Alaska's "Lost Coast." Following bear and wolf tracks, navigating heinous brush and swollen river deltas, engaging in true wilderness under their own power. Sounds awesome. Sounds like it fell out of a Patagonia catalogue.

Back in the late 90's I took some time away from the maddening crowd to do some of the very same sort of unnecessary adventuring. I walked the length of Big Sur, mailing packages of food and supplies ahead of myself. I lived and rock climbed and generally dirtbagged it amid the boulders and ghostly trees in Joshua Tree National Park. A few years later I wandered the Eastern Sierra with a good friend while my nephew Reece was busy being born back home in Canada. I slept in tents, on floors, crossed the country no less than three times, nearly landed smack dab on top of a rattle snake, ran out of money, got stuck in my rain soaked tent for a full 48 hours during nasty El Nino storms. I grew whiskers, got stinky and sunburnt, and acted as a general miscreant for months on end. It was beautiful. In large part I disconnected with giant chunks of society, disappointed friends, missed a wedding or two (Kev and Aimee), and mostly just avoided all normal social interactions in lieu of absolutely abnormal little selfish adventures.

Back then I was embracing a very unique state of mind, certainly one that was not sustainable, but one that was wildly experiential and incredibly life changing. I've never apologized for any of it...mostly because I don't necessarily feel as though I needed to...but do regret a thing or two. I would have liked to have seen my friends Kevin and Aimee get married. I probably could have given friends a heads up that I was leaving for large stretches and not coming back (but I always did come back...eventually)...I could have dragged June along with me to live in a tent in the middle of the desert rather than just wander off for a weeks upon weeks, but I don't think the most important people in her life would have appreciated my dragging her down into those hot and dusty indulgences with me. To a lot of people it's not so awesome...in fact, it was kinda dangerous. I'd change some subtle details of those years but I wouldn't trade a single lesson, or sunrise, blister, or snake inspired freak out for anything. Those things are a big part of how I see the world now.

I don't sit around and wonder what if, like a lot of other people. I don't rue the things that I've lost or never had. I knew what I wanted when I left, and I was even more certain of them when I came home. Some people have referred to those years, and those mild little adventures as my "bum" stage, to which typically I laugh, and occasionally agree. It may have looked like it on the surface, or from a distance, but it's part of my path to here and now, and in this place that we call home now I am happy to have what I have...to wake up to two beautiful girls, and a great career, and purpose and meaning and perspective. Part of all of that got baked into my skin by desert sun, and Pacific sea spray.

I used to walk into Twenty-nine Palms from Joshua Tree National Park to pick up packages that June had mailed me from Japan. At that point in our lives we were just friends...good friends, and certainly two people who knew, even then, that we were somehow connected. I walked those miles under the cool early morning desert sun to pick up letters and surprises from a girl I never knew that I'd marry...whom I never imagined would be the fantastic mother of an equally fantastic daughter...whom I couldn't have anticipated giving me so much, and it took the distance of thousands of miles, oceans, continents, and me falling asleep under a billion bright desert stars to make clear the notion that despite wanting to wander, I didn't want to wander too far away from this girl.

I like adventure...the kind that finds you climbing on rocks in distant deserts, and riding bikes beside crashing ocean waves, and sleeping on cramped Greyhound busses across the endless landscape of a large continent, but my favorite are the kind that leave me sitting here in this couch, in this home that I've made with this girl and this child. So far this adventure is the best one yet...and there's no rattlesnakes.

I Guess I Can Now Introduce Myself...

2012-01-19T17:03:00.009-05:00

Oh my.

A simple, on-going, back and forth e-mail conversation with Bruce, a very good friend of mine and my old boss in the Michigan Athletic Department, found it's way into UM Athletic Director, Dave Brandon's blog.

Our conversation was about this...Denard Robinson being a college student, like any other college student, at the Michigan - Michigan State basketball game this week. For me, it was the best part of the game.

I wonder how many people read Dave Brandon's blog? Ian and I saw Dave Brandon at the Nebraska game but I had no history with the man, or any real reason to interrupt him. I suppose I could introduce myself now.

Two girls...Ten Years Between Them

2012-01-18T19:14:00.003-05:00

There are ten years between Zoey and her cousin Avery...but they're buddies...good buddies. Some people say that they look alike, but I'm not so sure about that. They both have blonde hair, and will certainly both be tall girls, but the more overwhelming simlarities might end there. They're not sisters but they can act like it sometimes. It's sweet.

Avery's birthday is in December...Zo's is in January...and despite the fact that they're not sisters it doesn't feel a bit strange that they share a birthday cake. Two beautiful girls, one cake...ten years between them. Two dads ready to lock them in the house come high school.

Never a Wasted Breath...Well, Almost Never

2012-01-17T19:32:00.002-05:00

No one told me that this parenting thing would require endless amounts of "reminding." It's not that Zoey wasn't hearing what we were trying to say to her, it's just that she forgets...or gets too caught up...or perhaps hasn't quite analyzed a situation as we'd hope...She listens fine, mostly.

Occasionally we need to sit down and talk...like Mom and Zo did tonight, on the stairs, about the stairs...about that very act of listening. We talk about listening a lot, mostly so that we don't have to scream about it. We mostly choose not to scream around here. We don't want this to be a loud and screaming kind of house. So tonight when Zo wasn't quite remembering the lessons of her very short past, Mom sat down with her on the stairs to talk about it.

No one told us that we'd be doing all that "reminding" and so sometimes it feels like it's incessant, but the benefits of all talking is a girl that doesn't need all that much of it by comparison. We're kind of spoiled. Still, sometimes it feels like we're sitting on the stairs a lot. We're not.

A Series of Unfortunate Events...

2012-01-15T21:38:00.004-05:00

I've been drinking tea...that's right, tea. I don't know the reason why. I just started drinking Red Rooibos tea like some kind of Red Rooibos junkie. And then I went and re-arranged Zo's room today. That's right, I moved my daughter's furniture around in an effort to feng-shui her butt back into post-8am waking. I don't know the first thing about feng-shui, but then I don't know $#!% about tea either and that's not stopping me. It's all got me wondering when I turned into a Mom? In defense of my masculinity, I didn't do the laundry, lifted nary a finger to do the dishes, and somehow avoided bath time with Zed. It all works out.

Much Better Late Than Never

2012-01-15T18:03:00.003-05:00

I should be writing about how we enjoyed a fairly impromptu family Christmas this weekend...yep, this weekend, but can't seem to muster the most appropriate words. It was fun, and felt much more like Christmas, for me at least, than my actual Christmas. We missed our friend Dustin's birthday party, bonspiel to be specific, but soaked up a perfectly spontaneous holiday-ending get together. We bowled (girls vs. boys)...we ate a ridiculous amount of food...and, of course, we opened presents. There was football on the television, and snow on the ground, and although Christmas came late, it came.

The Rules of Horse Grooming According to Zoey

2012-01-13T15:28:00.006-05:00

Zoey: Gramma, can you help me put barretts in my horse's hair?

Gramma: Horses don't wear barretts.

Zoey: (authoritatively) This one does.

While Zed and Gramma were discussing the finer points of horse grooming...Gramma from experience, Zoey from her imagination...the topic of barrets in horses manes came up and Zed quickly set her Gramma straight. Although it may not be oh-so typical to use hair barrettes in a horse's mane, as far as Zo is concerned, its standard practice. Just like wearing your toque at the kitchen table. Take that rule book.

What She Should Be...

2012-01-11T23:35:00.003-05:00

I know that I posted this before, a long time ago, but I just re-visited it, and it struck just as powerfully now as it did then. I hope Zo can grow up this strong...can juggle this much perspective...I hope Zoey never needs to apologize to the little girl that she once was...that she still is. I wish, as a father, that I could ever have this much impact on her as Maya del Valle may have here with a million young women. Wow...that's some powerful poetry.

Brubeck From Woo to You...and Me

2012-01-11T21:52:00.005-05:00

I'm kind of a closet jazz geek. My good friend Ally posted this Dave Brubeck link today and then I binged on Brubeck for the next three hours straight. I've got a serious Wynton Marsalis addiction, and I could probably cue up about three Josh Redman albums up one right after the other. Whenever we're in New York my favorite part is how I can just twist the radio dial and every third station is blowing the best jazz within a thousand miles. When we were living in Brooklyn that summer there was a lot of jazz. Here, at home, it slips into my days and weeks whenever the sun goes down. When the sun is shining I find myself listening to a hundred other things, but when the sky gets dark, and especially if I'm driving some long, lonely bit of road...the horns softly blow, and the smile softly grows, and I could drive all night... which on a completely unrelated note reminds me of one of the best Springsteen songs ever.

Everyone's a closet geek for something...everyone. Let it out, indulge it...kick that closet door wide open. I've got me some more good ones but that's for an entirely other post.

Thanks Woo. You filled my head with horns today and that was wicked nice.

The Next Natalie Coughlin...Day 1

2012-01-10T21:45:00.003-05:00

Today was Zo's first swimming lesson, and as we were hoping (translation: expected) that she was awesome...all smiles, super excited to be there...listening...following instructions...staying cool while the little boy in her class was busy freaking out. She never once looked for Mom or Dad, in fact, she could have cared less that we were even in the building. She blew bubbles, and patiently waited for her turn. She was brilliant, and we are embarrassingly, sickeningly proud. Step one toward learning how to avoid sinking! The Olympics are a cool goal but we're really just focused on that not sinking part.

My Friend Jason...

2012-01-09T22:19:00.004-05:00

This is what I like about my friend Jason...He is becoming himself more and more everyday. There are no more influences. He has no desire to impress or find approval. He is his own man, and does what he chooses. He hasn't the hubris to hide his affections away, or pretend to be something that he's not. He likes storms and wants to chase them, and doesn't care if you know about it, or what you think about it. He hasn't always been that way. His sensitivity, and uniqueness used to be the worst kept secret of his entire group of age old friends. Problem was the people that it was a secret to were the ones he thought that he was closest to. These days he blogs about being a father. He feels no embarrassment about doting on his girls or about slathering his son with love. He's a man, a 100% unabashed, unapologetic man, and a good one at that.

Why am I writing this? I dunno. I just read a blog post in which he pledged his lifelong dream to chase storms and it was much more than a testosterone fueled, dangerous adventure type deal...it was sweet. How emasculating is it for me to call a friend's sentiments sweet? Very, but they are. So many of us give up hope on our dreams, and rarely share them with anyone for fear of being mocked, or being found foolish. Not Jason, he wants to chase storms. I think I wanna go with him. I think my point in typing all of this is that I think that Jason is helping to reshape exactly what a man is supposed to be, regardless of who's watching, or judging, and I wish I had more of that to bask in everyday. Ignoring all of the other voices so that you can hear your own more clearly is an impressive thing.

The Dreams That You Dream Of...

2012-01-08T20:50:00.005-05:00

I want a life that feels the way Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole sounds. I want it to be lyrically accurate too...ukulele and everything. I figure all it takes is a good measure of magic, and the most sincere, genuine heart I can muster. That's my intention for the coming year. I want it to feel that song in my every waking moment...as the soundtrack to my sleeping. I don't just want an ordinary life. I want a beautiful one. I want to start sowing the seeds of the most surreal years that we can muster. I don't know where I'll start...in my own house, perhaps, with my own daughter and wife. I hope that I manage it awkwardly already, but I want to be much more deliberate about it. I can start with my relationships with others...I can galvanize them, and make known the depth of my affections. I can bring home flowers and spend more time outside. I can soak the girls that live here with an inexhaustible amount of love and patience and respect. I can be better. I can start with that.

It's gonna be a good year.

Sunday at the Beach

2012-01-08T16:43:00.008-05:00

Zedder exploring the Canatara Park and the beach - January 2012

Beach days are our favorite...especially in January...especially with a bright and precocious almost-three year old skipping in and out of all that sunshine. Especially when we've got our camera with us, and especially when strangers offer to take our photo.

Strangers take good pictures - Our first family shot of 2012.

Saturday Morning

2012-01-07T08:25:00.003-05:00

Zed's asleep. June's stirring in the kitchen. I should be showered and ready to get out of town. I'm not. I will be soon. We're going to pick up some packages today, hit Ikea so that the basement gets a little more useful, and then I'm going to get a ladder and crawl onto the roof to seal a chimney I couldn't care less about sealing. I'm going to try to listen to music in the car today, if Zoey lets me....you know, it interrupts her talking and that's just not something she's willing to tolerate. I'm going to think of something to do tomorrow. It would be nice if any of the people that we knew on this planet ever called our house, like ever, because I'm so totally done with trying to pull them into something interesting to do.

I'm particularly pre-occupied with wondering why bands and artists must play their shows on random week nights rather than weekends because I can't go see you at the Lager House in Detroit on a Wednesday night because I have to drive an hour and a half in the cold darkness first thing Thursday morning to listen to a kid cry about how he got kicked out of his house the night before. That doesn't sound fun, and so neither does your stupid mid-week show. It's a painful pre-occupation I've been enjoying for the past few years. I don't know why it's resurfaced this morning but it has, so there you have it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to wash my hard to reach places leisurely, and in quiet solitude. Then I'm going to wake Zoey up, and then I'm going to go to another country and tease people that look funny. I'm also going to eat swedish meatballs and drink Lingenberry juice, and maybe drape my wife with public displays of affection while also behaving badly in that same public space, you know, so that she doesn't get spoiled. I hope you have a good Saturday. I'm going to go about mine gently, with a steaming hot cup of awesome in my hand to remind me that life can taste as good as it feels.

We Almost Lost Detroit...

2012-01-06T23:23:00.004-05:00

It's Friday night, and, yes, you're welcome. Here's Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. singing the classic Gil-Scott Heron number at one of my most favorite music venues in North America, West Hollywood's, Troubadour. If you do nothing else at 3am when you get home drunk and starving for some awesomeness, watch this. You can thank me later. I can wait.

Then knock yourself out by scanning this list of the greatest cover songs of all time...that's right drunk boy...ALL TIME. Again, you can thank me at your convenience.

Practice Makes Perfect...or Painful, Either/Or

2012-01-05T20:35:00.003-05:00

Zed and I headed back to the rink today for another go at skating...or hockey as Zo calls it. She used to have almost no affinity for any sport really. She cheered for Michigan no matter who was playing, or what they were playing, and she tended to call everything football, but ask her now and she'll squeal about how much she loves hockey.

She's getting the hang of it...slowly, and sometimes I forget that she's not yet three years old. She's doing good. She's having fun. What more could we be expecting? At one point she fell and quickly busted into making snow angels so all hope is not lost, she's still easily distracted.

We might still be able to avoid spending almost every winter weekend on dark, snowy roads, and in cold, crowded arenas. Snow angels are hope...scant hope, but hope.

Hey...Why Does She Get To Wear a Helmet at the Dinner Table!?

2012-01-04T19:39:00.004-05:00

Someone is pretty smitten with her new hockey helmet...so much so that she needed to wear it at the dinner table. And of course, why wouldn't you need a helmet at dinner? Don't be ridiculous, it makes perfect sense. Do we always indulge our daughter in such a manner...uhmm, yeah, probably too much. Still...who says helmets aren't for dinner? Close minded communist types I bet...and druids...probably druids for sure. Maybe even anarchists...wait, no, not anarchists, but druids for sure, I bet.

Sugar Bowl Comparisons and Tolerant Roommates

2012-01-04T19:32:00.002-05:00

I'm not always the best man that I can be, and sometimes I'm even ashamed of myself. I can swing for the fences on issues that deserves bunts, or better yet, base-on-balls, but there is no Superman cape, as my friend Bill so reminded me today, and I shouldn't beat myself, or others up over anything.

Today I slipped into a frustrating day on two or three hours of sleep, a resurgence of what I thought was my rapidly retreating cold, and a sick little girl with the runniest nose of all time. I was snappy, and even sh!%ty to my wife, and muttered enough nonsense to myself that even Zoey told me to, "stop being so frustrated." So I stopped...or I tried to. In response to a text message from June I apologized for being a turd, and I apologized to Zo for something similar, and then got busy trying to remind myself that I'm as fallible as the next guy, perhaps even more so because I'm so loose with my lips and rants. It's just a plain fact of life that sometimes you look like Michigan did beating Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl...like crap. I still came home to a patient, loving and I don't know why, but forgiving wife, and spent the day with a testy but still beautiful daughter, and the sun was shining all the while. Sometimes you win even when you shouldn't.

The Smallest Bit of Wisdom and the Biggest Lesson Learned

2012-01-04T18:35:00.004-05:00

Zed visiting her favorite sheep before moving on to some pretty impressive turkey appreciation.

Today we visited the Animal Farm and Zed was pretty desperate to feed the ponies and their donkey pals some apples. Before we got to them, however, we stopped to visit the sheep, and then some turkeys and ducks and chickens. At one point one of the turkeys approached us and got very close. Off-handedly I said how ugly I thought he was. Zo got pretty offended and looked up to chastise me.

"He's not ugly Daddy," she said emphatically. "I think he's beautiful."

"Beautiful," I retorted.

"Yeah Daddy, he's beautiful. I like his feathers, they're pretty."

"What about his face. His face isn't very pretty," I said.

"It doesn't matter Daddy," she sweetly cooed. "He's still beautiful."

Lesson learned. Thanks Zo.

A First Time For Everything

2012-01-03T18:53:00.010-05:00

After 770 days of breathing her own oxygen and eating from things other than an umbilical cord, Zoey Sakura skates. She is two years and eleven months old with wickedly strong ankles.

It's a sorta sweet story that starts with her Uncle B scoring her first pair of skates from the same wood stove warmed, and oh-so welcoming skate sharpening shed as her Dad and himself had. When we were children we remembered driving into town so that Dad could get his skates sharpened at Frank Dymock's. Back then we didn't know who Frank was, just that his shop was a converted garage, and that it glowed with heat and kindness.

Franks shop had walls full of pucks nailed flat to the wood, racks of hockey sticks and dozens of old skates scattered amoungst the wooden duck decoys that he carved when business was slow...but it was never slow. We got excited to watch the sparks fly when Frank turned his back and got busy sharpening Dad's skates, and we were always a little confused when he took money from the visitors before us but never from my Dad. Eventually his hands gently held all of our skates and worked them through that giant old sharpener, and of course, my brother and I never once paid for the service either. Customers would come and go, some would pay...maybe most, and some would not. We never did.

As we grew from boys into young men we learned that Dad never paid for Frank's services across the span of his life. It turns out that Frank had watched my father grow from the wily little street urchin that he was to a sturdy little hockey player and then a man with his own little urchins. It made sense then that the new little twin urchins didn't pay either, and he watched those twins grow into sturdy little hockey players too. About the only money that ever changed hands was for a last minute stick, perhaps, or some tape. To say that Frank was the kindest keeper of the game would be falling short of the role he played in our lives and a lot of other lives.

By the time Junior hockey rolled around all you needed to do was throw your skates on an old hockey stick in the dressing room and one of the trainers or managers would run the skates over to Frank's shop for their daily or weekly tune ups. I never once fed that old broken Louisville through the blades of my skates. I took them to Frank myself, if only just to walk into that warm shop, and chat with the man whom I was quickly starting to understand was a legend. I don't know how old Frank is, I only know that his shop is warm, and his kindness is even warmer. There were stories that he once played against Gordie Howe, and that he learned his lessons the hard way and found the fastest path back to his hometown that he could. Maybe they were true, and maybe they weren't? It didn't much matter. Frank was a legend to us regardless. All of my friends had similar stories...Johnny T, Kenny, dozens of us. Frank watched generation after generation of small town hockey players grow up into fathers that brought their own children back to that warm garage. During those raucous junior contests it wasn't unusual to look up into the crowd and see Frank standing there watching "his boys". It distracted you and made you wonder who was stoking the stove while he was gone?

Last year Uncle B walked into Frank's shop and told him that his brother had a daughter now...that I was finally back, close to home, and that I wanted her to start skating. He asked Brad what her name was, and then asked how I was doing, and what exactly I was doing...information for his own blossoming family tree of boys and men who he watched grow up. Brad told him all the details...some he already knew, and some he didn't. After taking it all in he smiled and asked Zoey's age and shoe size. Brad told him and then Frank rummaged through a few racks of used skates, searching for the right size and fit, and as Brad tells it, the best pair. He emerged from the dusty piles of well worn memories with Zoey's first pair of skates. A good looking pair of used Bauer Callengers, size 8. They would turn out to be skates that would never find their way back into a used pile ever again...a shelf in Dad's office perhaps, but never another pile of old skates. And so, after thirty-six years Frank put another pair of skates on yet another DeWagner, and perhaps the first Partridge...for certain the first little child with Yamaya genes... and now her Dad's heart may just be warmer than that old skate shop ever was.

Thanks Uncle B...and thanks Frank, for everything.

Happy New Year From Zed and Co.

2012-01-01T16:55:00.002-05:00

Wishing you all the most amazing 2012 you can imagine. Our intention is to knock it flat on it's @$%, and walk away smiling. We have every indication to believe that the next year is going to bring us some sturdy good times.

Thanks for everything that everyone did for and with us in 2011, and apologies to the people we didn't spend enough time with last year, or that we wished we managed to enjoy more. Let's fix that in twenty 12.

Mucho love and affection, and all of the mushy, sappy crap we can muster. If you're reading this there's a good chance we love you more than any silly blog post can articulate.

Merry Christmas...on Film

2012-01-01T16:11:00.004-05:00

Zo helping to make Grandad's infamous shortbread cookies...a near famous family recipe.

With half the parenting team literally out of commission this Christmas we ended up with less photos than we might normally have had if both of us were fully functioning, healthy human beings. Still, we snapped a few...

Zed's Aunt Netta was home from the wide wet West, and Zo milked the most from her Christmas visit...or perhaps it was quite the opposite, Aunt Netta was milking the most out of her excited niece?

Best present of the entire holiday season? It would be a contentious issue but it's all about perspective...from her parents...this friggin' hat! From Zoey's perspective...maybe her new dump truck.

My vote is with the hat.

The Places That Shape You...

2011-12-30T13:08:00.003-05:00

It's been over a decade since I woke up to this...the last light at Andrew Molera State Park in Big Sur, CA. Those were magical months of beach and empty roads and dirty feet. My life had never been that simple and has never been since. I don't know why we've waited so long to go back there...in fact, June's never been. Big Sur is one of those life changer places, and the more time that you can spend there, the more changes you can feel happening inside of you. I want to take Zoey there...to laugh and run and play in the sequoias, and scavenge shells and driftwood from the beach. To meet the dozens of people who have managed to halt time by running away to such an isolated place. That would be a summer to write stories about, to snap photos of, and to melt into, forgetting where is was you came from. A year would be nice, but a summer would do. I'd take two weeks and a promise to return too. I'd take any bit of it.

We;re already trying to figure out what this summer will bring, and of course, the next. We have a particular focus on the next. It will be the last before Zoey starts school. It had better be a biggie. We'd like to launch her into public education with a unique perspective. Big Sur could provide that. We've thought of returning to Brooklyn, of going to Japan, and of just wandering, but wherever we go it'll be the kind of thing that shakes a kid's perspectives as they scoot on into fifteen years of monotonous education. At some point we've decided that we'll sneak Zo out for an entire year...that twelve year old time frame sits right with us, just on the precipice of high school. Maybe it'll be Molera then? There are worse ways to spend your eighth grade year than wandering through the sequoias and pretending as though you've surfed your whole life.

Post-Christmas Enlightenment via The Flu

2011-12-30T08:49:00.003-05:00

I feel better when I watch kid shows, or when I re-connect with an old John Hughes movie. When I'm not feeling so good I run to the old stand-bys, the things that assure me that there's a safe place to play where nothing bad ever happens, and right always triumphs over wrong, and good people stay good people, and bad people get what's coming to them. In that safe place of comic strips and Cosby Show metaphors I can re-group and fool myself into feeling better.

Yeah, call it phony. You know what else is phony? When you tuck your kid into bed and kiss him goodnight like he's going to get tucked in and kissed goodnight forever, like everyone in the world gets a kiss goodnight from someone who's looking out for them. Not true. Not even close to being true.

Life isn't supposed to be Family Ties, or just like the funny pages. The real-world Dennis the Menace went to Vietnam and was estranged from his father; his mother had an affair with her boss. In the real world Theo Huxtable became addicted to crack, and in case you didn't notice, no one in Family Circus ever got laid off when the auto industry tanked. Life isn't as fair as Mr. Belding was.

I've decided that its okay to hide in Saturday morning detention with a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal, if it means finding hope and hanging on. I read books I read when I was a kid. I watch the Disney Channel. I pretend that Jake Ryan and Samantha Baker really existed, and that maybe I was best friends with Lloyd Dobblar, and then I don't feel quite so sick, or half as stressed, and nowhere near as fatalistic as life might make me. What? Some people use drugs, or drink. I download bittorrents of Return to Witch Mountain.

BTW...you should read this blog post here. Holy Mother of Judd Nelson it's awesome!

The Case of The Curious Missing Photographs

2011-12-29T14:25:00.002-05:00

It seems that photos that I post on Flickr aren't necessarily staying up there once they're uploaded...hence some of the dead photo links. It's frustrating and I apologize for the crappy presentation, but emails are sent and questions have been asked. Let's wait and see what comes of it.

What I Missed...

2011-12-28T13:57:00.002-05:00

I wasn't eager to miss out of fully one half of what Christmas usually is by being too sick to manage anything short of a deathly looking appearance at Camp Partridge, but all the holiday spirit on the planet doesn't get you out of bed when the sweats won't stop and your head wants to explode. So I missed everyone, and missed Zoey leading some table caroling of Jingle Bells, and I will forever be absent from the Christmas memories of 2011. Boo flu...and suck it universe. Sometimes you're a fickle $%&# and I'll remember this.

On a brighter note...that's a nice looking bunch of people isn't it? Yeah it is.

Ba Humbug and all that Sickly Christmas Stuff

2011-12-27T23:31:00.004-05:00

Laying down and listening to Fleet Foxes...feeling oh-so bad...sick. Just finished watching Serendipity in an empty house. Feeling lonely and awful and missing my girls as they enjoy family while I baste in my own poor health. TO add insult to injury, I was desperately hoping to add copious amounts of sweet and sincere musings to Zed's blog over these past few days and here I am wallowing more than blogging. Boo to me.

I can't help but sigh and feel fortunate despite the universe's best attempt to render me silent. My Mom even texted me tonight to tell me that "Slapshot" was on television, as if a little Paul Newman and all the vile hockey humor of my youth could make me feel better. That was sweet. Her own version of chicken soup, I suppose, and from such a distance as to render her helpless, but she tried anyway.

I wish I had the energy to type on and on about Zed's Christmas. Sadly, I don't. She had fun, lots of fun, and it was such a sweet thing to watch her, but this Christmas felt less like Christmas and more like hanging on to health just long enough to watch it escape. I think I learned a bit of a valuable lesson. It's a fleeting thing, Christmas is...so fleeting that it can pass you by if you're not paying the most absolute kind of diligent attention to it. I was not, and it makes me a little sad...or a lot. Of course, it's easy to feel a little sad when you're sick and home alone, and the wind is whipping outside. It's easy to feel bad if you want to.

I think what's most disappointing about the holiday so far is that I don't quite feel as though I've been the very best me that I could have been, and that isn't the kind of thing that's returnable. I feel like I might have given everyone I know an ugly sweater, or socks, perhaps...yes, maybe socks. Sometimes I think that the very best thing I have to give is my enthusiasm...my eagerness for everything, and this year a virus stole almost all of that. Ugh.

I promise to make up for it. I do. I've got time, a few days before school is back, and if I can wrestle some decent health out of the remainder of this week I promise to make amends. Strangely, this isn't the first holiday I find myself wishing for a do-over. I think that I love Christmas even if I'm not so very good at it. History has me failing in a fairly epic sense traditionally. I don't want to do that anymore. I think Zed had a great Christmas, but I feel as though I owe June and everyone else a much better effort. Flat on your back is no way to say I love you, unless of course, you're a teenage girl with no self-esteem or fatherly guidance. Let me shake this deathly feeling and take another run at the holiday. I'll do better next time around.

Is there a doctor in the house?

2011-12-26T13:19:00.004-05:00

If you're down for spending Boxing Day in bed, sick as $%&! then I'm your guy. I went down for the count somewhere around 11pm last night...head rapidly getting stuffed up, cough starting, aching...snoring. Then I woke and it felt as though my head were made of glass. Merry Christmas to me. To be fair, I did throw up a pseudo-prayer to the universe that if I were to get full on sick, as I was feeling I might, that it hold off until after Christmas...it did. I can't complain.

The sun is shining, and the weather looks stellar. Good thing I'm flat on my back feeling desperate for a play day. With luck it clears up, I throw it to the holiday season, the sun stays shining, and I burn through the rest of the Christmas break like a champ. Without luck...who knows.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas and all the goodness your fun saturated heart could take. I felt less fun than I did fortunate. I'm a lucky guy, and don't I know it. Boy, do I ever know it.

I'm gonna go now...feel lucky and crappy all at the same time. Be good.

Merry Christmas and All That Sappy Crap

2011-12-25T08:01:00.003-05:00

Last night I noticed that I hadn't posted a thing since Tuesday, which means;

a) I've been busy

b) I didn't care to

c) I had nothing to say

d) I'd been abducted by meth addicted Elvis impersonators

It was none of the above. I just kinda forgot to. I got all enraptured by the holiday season and stuff and before I knew it Christmas was here. Now I'm feeling much too sweet and sentimental to scribble anything that doesn't just absolutely embarrass me. I'll just say this, before I'm tossing smiling Zed photos about in the next 24 hours, the people that read this rubbish...that make it a point to stop here and care even just a little bit about these musings and this little girl mean an awful lot to me...the Dustin and Kellys, the Heather,Avery, and Brads, MaryAnns, the Aimee and Betzies...the Beths and Johns, and Kaylen and Birdys...It's funny that a blog can do that, can divide people into groups, can define relationships, but this one has.

Merry Christmas everyone, and using Robert Hunter's words, "I'll just say I love you which I never said before..."

The Tallest Man on Earth

2011-12-22T20:32:00.002-05:00

This Swedish fella that plays his guitar and croons under the minker, The Tallest Man on Earth, is something way good. I like this guy, a lot. I'd never heard of said fella until I stumbled into him over at Meg's blog...now I'm kinda hooked. Merry Christmas me!

Check him out. He's really good. Consider it a stocking stuffer....from me to you...from Meg.

Look How Old Someone is Looking...

2011-12-22T20:13:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I can't believe how big she's getting, how much older she looks. She's not even three years old yet! She's beautiful, but I'd like a little more time to think of her as a baby. In so many photos now we're catching glimpses of the big girl that she's going to be. Sigh..."she's gonna break hearts," people will say...but she already has, mine. I can't believe it's almost been three years since we first saw her purple little cranky face. There's nothing purple about it now, and it's only infrequently cranky these days. She's mostly just stunning now. Daddy's got himself a looker, I think.

Zed Likes Hockey...Well, Sorta

2011-12-22T19:15:00.003-05:00

My friend John has a daughter that likes to watch hockey with him. I have a daughter that likes to hang out with Dad while he watches hockey, which is different than actually watching hockey. She also likes to call it football...or baseball sometimes. She likes wearing hockey helmets, but she's never been on skates in her life...not yet anyway. She calls every team Michigan, especially the blue teams, and if you ask her she usually wants the white team to win, regardless of who the white team is. She's my favorite sorta-hockey fan ever.

Holy Mother of Mickey Dolenz...I Ate This Crazy Half Pound of Regret!

2011-12-21T19:24:00.005-05:00

Today I went out for lunch with one of my favorite girls, a girl who's struggled a lot and still smiles wider than anyone I know. Her birthday is December 24th, and since mine was just last week we slipped away for lunch with a woman who has worked hard to keep us tied together, Donna. We were celebrating birthdays, and Christmas, and how well she's been doing.

I shouldn't really be involved with her anymore. She's no longer attached to any school, and I really could never justify sneaking parts of my week to make sure that she's okay, but we connected very early on...two years ago...and I think that I just might be the only male in her life. I couldn't stop helping her out if I tried. I've written about her before, and she's since stolen a giant chunk of my subconscious, and the quiet hopes and philosophical questions that go hand in hand with such a connection. Today she lit up at the notion of lunch, and called me as early as 8am to make sure that it was still on and that I was coming. Her smile tripled at the sight of that nonsensical hot dog I was about to eat.

I still feel full from that half pound of hot dog...well, that and the grace that comes with knowing someone so strong and so resilient, with a smile that wide.

Christmas Lesson #5 - Don't Buy Crap Other People Might Be Inclined to Buy You

2011-12-20T23:21:00.003-05:00

As we count down to Christmas, we can also count down the top five lessons learned from our most timely Christmas mistakes ever made.

Here's a tough lesson to have to swallow. If you buy stuff...namely, tools...specifically, tools that are 65% off when you stumble into them...and other people have bought you those same things...namely tools...specifically, tools that weren't 65% off. Well, you've just screwed yourself and them. Merry Christmas.

Stay tuned for Christmas Lesson #4 tomorrow.

Merry Christmas to Me...The Gifter That Keeps on Giving

2011-12-19T19:19:00.003-05:00

Do you buy yourself a Christmas present or am I the only one that gets that selfish? I just bought a new pair of winter duck boots, all LL Bean style, without the cost, shipping, or half-crappy color schemes...mine are straight up black on black with some schweet tan laces and Joe Fresh knows hoe to get it right, I think. That's right, Joe Fresh, them folks have been getting things right for awhile now. They certainly inspired me to spend some loot on myself.

So fess up...there's no way that I'm the only one splurging on myself pre-Christmas. Admit it, ease my guilt.

For the Dudes...

2011-12-18T18:23:00.009-05:00

We're just one week away from Christmas and I bet you're stuck for more than a few gift ideas. We all are. Let Zed and me help. Here are some awesome ideas for the deserving dude in your life...

Bean Boots...enough said.

Even guys get dry hands, and this stuff is stellar. Rub it on your hands, goood...rub your hands all over your shirt and smell like a %&#damn champ, even better. Buy him some Sabon hand creme and help him smell half decent.

Half the guys I know eschew scarves, toques, and gloves. Why? Not cool? That's stupid. Looks feminine? Hardly. Buy them a real wool scarf, and a real wool toque and watch them never go without again. It's much too cold to try to be too cool.

Even dudes write things down...or they should, like anniversaries, birthdays, what time they're supposed to have their daughters at gymnastics. Buy him a Muji notebook and then hope he uses it for more than the measurements for the living room trim work. Wait, that's good too.

Sure, he thinks he can grill like a champ, but the truth is, he cooks things too fast, everything tastes like gas, or something that isn't meat or asparagus, and he needs the lesson in patience anyway. Buy him a Weber Charcoal Grill and then eat better, and keep him out of the kitchen for longer stretches.

If he's anywhere between the ages of 25 and 45 there's a good chance that this band changed his life. Snatch up PJ 20 and he'll be happy to spend a night in watching movies. More than happy.

Socks matter. Quit letting him get away with murder (gym socks) and inspire him to pay some attention to his feet, 'cause God knows he's never going to get a foot scrape, and at least Woolrich can help you keep those ugly kickers under handsome wraps.

The problem with buying a jersey from his favorite team is that when his favorite player gets busted for his third DUI in two months he'll never want to wear it again. Buy him a ridiculously stylish and classic jersey from Ebbets Flannels, and don't be ashamed of your husband ever again...well, your husband in a jersey anyway.

Absolutely nothing says I love you like Christmas Day with the Knicks...or Lakers... and not pretending to be happy about entertaining your cousins kids at your Grandma's house while your Dad is asleep in his recliner. You can always open the gift (socks) that your Aunt buys you every year on Boxing Day.

Six packs aren't very original but they are the indisputable king of fall back gifts. Hey...stuck is stuck, and beer says love just fine. Grab him a sixer of Magic Hat #9 and congratulate yourself when it's his favorite present under the crowded tree.

Tis the Season...

2011-12-17T21:23:00.003-05:00

We sang Jingle Bells all the way home from Grandad and Baachan's house, and at one point Zed stopped, giggled, and exclaimed, "I don't know why I'm smiling so much!" At which point June sighed, and I swooned, and we started singing again. Tis the season, I guess.

The Kindest Collection of Superstars Ever Assembled on the Planet Earth

2011-12-17T20:56:00.006-05:00

Monopolized by Johnny Teeter, and fine with it - December 16th, 2011 @ Alibi Roadhouse, London, ON

While Zed enjoyed the company of Grandad and Baachan last night, June dragged me kicking and screaming to London where we celebrated 40 years on this planet with the absolute best people I know. It's not an understatement when I say such a bold thing. The group of 15 or 20 people that met us in the city were just flat out impressive...people I absolutely adore, from old, old friends, to new, smile-inducing ones... to the absolutely brilliant and the positively charming. What a collection, and I got to speak to only half of them, and the other half deserved as much if not more attention. It was a nice night...one of the nicest, and easiest I've known. I've somehow gathered up some pretty incredible people in 40 years.

Son of Leonard...

2011-12-15T21:20:00.002-05:00

Today was the first time I'd ever heard Adam Cohen and damn...Leonard's son is amazing. Most impressive might have been his take on his life and career up to this point. It was humility times forty. I like this dude...maybe you will too!

Buddy looks just like his Dad...sounds just like his Dad...has reeled me in just like his Dad...and now I'm jonesing to see Adam Cohen live.

In case you've never seen the concert footage of Adam's Dad performing at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 here it is. The crowd was unruly, dangerous even, and in the performance of a lifetime Cohen calmed 600,000 people, tunring them all into quiet, eager fireflies, begging for more. It's worth the watch.

To say that music soothes the savage beast would be a woefully inarticulate gesture. It's bridges impossible divides. It claims unclaimed souls. It eases us into the rhythm of each other, and in the end it jsut might be more religious than religion itself. Ask any musician, they'll tell you. It might just be notes and words, but it's where the soul stirs, and where peace resides when it can be found no where else. I've got friends -- Scitter, Dustin, Johnny, Coop -- who are defined by music as anything else in their lives. Show me something else as powerful as that. Show me another instant full of as much grace and eloquence as Leonard Cohen at the Isle of Wight in 1970 and I'll eat a Hammond organ.

What was already a good day got better when I discovered Leonard's son.

From me to You...with love, or at the very least, cautious affection

2011-12-15T20:53:00.004-05:00

Sure it's my birthday, but this is how it's gonna work...I'm giving you a gift. That's right. I'm giving something to you to say thank you for filling my inbox with so many kind words all day.

Go to PASTE Magazine's website and scoop up their Christmas Sampler...40 FREE tracks of awesomeness. Go ahead. I want you to have it. DOn't say I never got you anything.

Today I turned Zetterberg...

2011-12-15T06:47:00.004-05:00

I woke up and felt no different, which is kind of a bummer. On your fortieth birthday I thought I might see rainbows and unicorns...maybe wake up taller. Nope. So I'm gonna shower, eat, then go to work and hope nothing wonky or disturbing happens. Maybe I won't answer my phone all day? I probably can't do that.

Wow. I'm forty years old. That just sounds funny. I think I'm going to refer to it as turning Zetterberg from now on.

My Name Is...

2011-12-14T23:26:00.003-05:00

Zoey singing loudly at the grocery store...

Random woman: Are you caroling?

Zo: No (looking fairly incredulous)! I'm Zoey," and she continues singing.

This parenting stuff is fun!

The Reason Why...

2011-12-14T21:16:00.004-05:00

Photo pinched from sweetfineday

I loosened this photo up from sweetfineday and then slapped it down here because it felt like everything I ever wanted, or close to it. I sometimes (most times) have a difficult time telling people what I believe in as it relates to what I do...you know, the very important whys and hows of what it is that I wake up every day and leave my beautiful family to get all muddy doing...and this photo feels a lot like the reason why.

I started out in community recreation, then camp, and then I slipped into Boys and Girls Clubs, and then into some more community work...some advocacy, outreach, blah be blah blah...and then the Y, and now schools, but this photo feels most like where it all started...looks an awful lot like the foundation of this house I'm forever renovating. In the beginning it was about kids, then about older kids, then about kids struggling to get by, and finally about kids who just aren't getting by at all. I used to shoot hoops with kids, and sometimes there was as much talking as there was shooting, and that's when I first realized that all it takes is someone who won't quit, who gives you a voice, and will always listen to it. All it takes is all it really takes in any other part of your life...just show up. Early on if I just showed up, and had a basketball in my hands, well, that worked best. Sometimes you don't even want to talk about things...you just want to shoot.

Anyway, I kinda had to needed to post that pic because that's it...that's the reason, that's the feeling I get, that's the simplicity of it all. That's it, right there. I miss dark gymnasiums, hardwood floors, dusty sunlight and exposed brick...but most of all I miss that feeling of doing nothing important when you know shot and word counts. For me it started out just like this, and for the rest of my life the sound of a bouncing basketball will have a totally different meaning than it might for you.

This is what all that looked like

A Pirate Looks at Forty

2011-12-14T16:47:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow I turn forty years old, and I should probably write something all eloquent and introspective but I just don't have it in me. It'll feel pretty much like today did, and today felt pretty much like yesterday. Let's just say I'm lucky, and happy, and leave it at that. I've achieved and failed and fallen and got back up and in the end there are scars but I like 'em all. I've got stories, and I've got enthusiasm in spades, and I couldn't ask for a more stellar supporting cast. In a lot of ways I feel like I've stolen a little Magnum PI mojo in my life, and gotten away with enough to make Higgins scream bloody murder.

Our Sleeping Scientist

2011-12-14T06:56:00.004-05:00

The first thing out of Zed's mouth when I crawled in under her covers and cuddled up with her this morning...

"Daddy, tell me what volcanos do."

So I did...then I asked her what she dreamed about last night...

"I dreamed about bees and flowers. The bees were taking pollen from the flowers and flying it to other flowers."

That sounds like a pretty good dream, I thought.

"It was a good dream Daddy. Those are smart bees."

Hmmm, and a smart little girl too, I think.

I Think It's About Forgiveness...

2011-12-13T19:50:00.005-05:00

I won't get rich. I might never get even a speck of recognition. It's a safe bet to say that I might never learn all of my lessons, but when it's all said and done I hope that I can say that I was a good man...that I was better than I could have been, than I might have been under different circumstances. I want to know that I found something valuable in my life, and that perspective, whether learned or found, or endured, was what defined me in the end. Tonight, out of the blue, I was thinking about my parents, and about those things that have defined their lives and I found myself upset. It's a terrible thing to have to redefine yourself after love, and to endure loss. It's a tragic thing to watch yourself dismantled by another, and when my parents marriage fell apart it was a tragedy for everyone. For us boys, sure, but we were young, and would have a lifetime to piece that all back together, but for my Mom and Dad, there were just too many pieces on the ground, and who could even know where to begin. They certainly didn't.

It just struck me that I'd been thinking about that loss in very personal terms for nearly thirty years now, when all I ever really lost was normalcy. They lost everything. Sometimes we can't see our own selfishness because it's right there under our feet...it's what we've been standing on to prop us up for so long. I suppose it's true what they say...when you're young you don't know a damned thing. If you're lucky you get older and you figure it out. Tonight I realized that just like Don Henley said, " it's about forgiveness," and it's most certainly not about me.

How can a %$&@!ing Eagles song turn you into such an introspective fool? I dunno, but it did. I think about the things that I do for a living now, and the things that I've lived through, and suddenly "all the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again." There's the heart of the matter, and it seems that for most of my life I've missed it. I can't really fathom what my Mom and Dad went through...what anyone goes through that endures such a thing. June's father once watched his own life collapse just as my own parents did. It's an awful thing, an unfair unravelling of everything you thought that you were, and everything that you believed in. It's something I don't ever want to manage...something I'm not sure I'm built for. Just the thought of it brings me to tears and suddenly I'm reminded how all my hurt and confusion paled in comparison to theirs. I think about just what's at stake in all of it and my heart crumbles into a thousand tiny little pieces. How you survive that is something I can barely comprehend.

I'm thankful for my life and job every day. It reminds me to think about others, to consider everything, to make no judgements, to do my best to empathize, and to understand...and even after all that practice, it's still hard sometimes. What reassures me is how we have no comprehension of what another person is going through, or of how they do it. What I'm regularly reminded of is how fragile and unprotected from the elements we are, but that in the end, for the most part, we survive...we manage. It strikes me every day how hard life is...how difficult it can be for some people to face themselves, and the day, and the things that they'd never expected to have to endure. No one expects to fall apart and no one is prepared to rebuild, but we do...and if you're not the one weighed down with the task, then you don't understand it. Suddenly tonight I'm thinking about my parents, and June's Dad and I feel humble to think about what they've managed emotionally, and what I've been so $%#&ing blind to all of these young and selfish years. In the end I think it's about forgiveness...yourself, others, life, luck...in the end it's about everything but yourself. I never understood that until right now, and I've got Don f#$%ing Henley to thank for that. Man, life throws curves. I didn't see that one coming.

Walking and talking...then suddenly not talking.

2011-12-13T19:34:00.004-05:00

Zed and I have gotten into a nice little habit of loading up in the wagon, all bundled up, and heading out after supper on a Christmas lights adventure of mediocre ambition...of course, it's something of a mild adventure, very tame...but an adventure nevertheless. Typically Zed talks, and talks, and talks, and between the two of us the wind and city sounds can't get a word in edgewise. Tonight, when my observations went unanswered I turned to find a sleeping little girl...warm and toasty beyond belief...and sawing logs like a damn lumber jack. We probably could have walked longer but I turned the wagon around and headed for home. It was only 7pm, and now I can't help but feel a little robbed. Those walks are some serious daddy/daughter time. Tonight I have to be satisfied that she was both so, so tired, and so, so comfy with Dad, that sleep came easy. Still, it would have been nice to yap for awhile longer. She might be the only person that can match my typically inexhaustible enthusiasm for, well, everything.

Nightmares are for chumps...

2011-12-13T06:33:00.003-05:00

First we heard the low whimpering of an abruptly awoken little girl...the "I want Mummy," cry...and a full on thump and bump and the sprinting of tiny feet headed for the door. A screw-this run to get away from whatever bad dream was haunting her early this morning. I nearly giggled if it wasn't so sad. Children and bad dreams are always just about the saddest thing on the planet...but children deciding to say, "#$%& it, I'm outta here"...kinda hilarious.

Good decision Zo. I like your style.

Can't See The Forest For The Trees?

2011-12-11T18:10:00.003-05:00

Zo wanted her room turned into Central Park, so...

Not a bad attempt at a tree. I gotta say that I'm quite proud. It's not every day that you build a tree out of cardboard and paint samples. The scary part is that I'm only going to get better at this. That's right...the scary part. Keep your hands and fingers a safe distance away from my carpet knife and scissors. I've got some trees to build.

I Think Someone Needs Some Friends...

2011-12-11T08:03:00.003-05:00

Zed's quickly turned into a litttle girl that needs some friends. She's almost three years old, and has absolutely no social issues. She's made a few acquaintances...girls from gymnastics, from swimming, from the park etc...but she doesn't really have any consistent and sturdy friendships.

A trip to Old Navy yesterday shed some light on the issue when she wanted to play with the mannequins, but then who wouldn't? They're practically perfect company. Dressed nicely... no strong opinions...always hiding in the place you left them whrn you're playing hide and seek...

I think it's time to amp up the social activities.

A One Girl, One Act Wonder...

2011-12-10T23:22:00.003-05:00

"Ladies and gentlemen...we're going to do a play about animals. Come sit down and let's hear a story about all of these fun animals. C'mon. Come sit down over here."

That was Zoey taking the stage in the Children's Section of the Barnes & Noble this afternoon. She got everyone's attention and then rather than wait for it, she started right in at performing a one girl play using only the animals painted on the walls to help her deliver the goods.

"Ladies and gentlemen..." Where'd she get that? What have we created?

Links and more links, and then some more links after that.

2011-12-07T23:39:00.005-05:00

Is it even possible to have too many lists of innocuous links? I'll offer an emphatic "no" and then get on with leaving all those delectable links...Mmmm, links. Enjoy.

Second best blog of all time.

OMG...doing this with Zed!

Heaven?

YES...someday...someday...someday.

That's right...it's a Death Star cookie jar. How many ways are there to say bad ass? Just wondering.

Girl schmirl...I think I want to read this.

There's no friggin' way I'm giving you $45 for this but I want it.

Oh my $%^#ing God.

I would very much like to have this.

This girl is amazing. We have about six of her stuffed dudes, and a wall hanging or two. If you like owls (and who doesn't) you'll love Katie. We do.

His name is Taco....seriously. I'm a big fan already and he's not even in Ann Arbor yet. Taco...awesome.

When I was a kid I thought soccer was lame...not after watching this.

Recommendations via Johnny All-You-Can-Teet...Cuff the Duke

2011-12-07T21:46:00.005-05:00

Last Saturday night I needed some musical recommendations, you know, for sustenance...and there are only a few people I'd want to breath even just a whisper of musical recommendations to me, and Johnny Teeterlikealady is one of them...so is Kickflip Cooper...just plain old regular Cooper, and regular old Cooper's sister, Woo...but on this particular occasion it was Johnny Teeforthetillerman doing the recommending, and he summarily told me to listen to Cuff the Duke...so I did. And you should to if you know what's good for you. I heard that if you don't you go straight to Hell...that's just what I heard.

Here's some more to save your soul and avoid an eternity of hellfire...and even more just for good measure.

Maybe You Would Have Been Something I'd Be Good At...

2011-12-07T20:55:00.002-05:00

Ever wonder what might have happened had friendships or connections worked out and you had stayed in touch, or you had figured out the value of something right when you should have rather than decades later? Ever not regret a single minute that you've invested in someone? I think life's a little bit of both. Maybe the big secret is finding someone that you'd be good at, and then hoping that maybe they're good at you. Find that and you're set. I'm set.

Lesson Learned

2011-12-06T22:47:00.004-05:00

Last week she showed up to school drunk again...at eight o'clock in the morning...drunk...and I could feel the fissure in my fragile heart crack open wide...wide enough for all of my hope to spill out and splatter on the floor alongside her vomit. I handed her a tissue, found her some water and a dark room to fall apart in. She refused to talk to me...she wanted nothing to do with me, so I left. I didn't get out of the parking lot before feeling like the worst person on the planet. I wasn't going to give up on her that easy. I wasn't going to wait for the police to come and pick her up for the third day in a row. I didn't want to leave her with teachers and support staff who knew nothing about her summer, nothing about the voices in her head, nothing about just how unhappy she was. I turned the car around, walked back into the school and made sure she knew that I wasn't going to walk away from her like that.

She called me a #$%&ing a$s#o!@ and for a brief moment I felt like one. She fell asleep in a half darkened room, and I lingered by the open door, setting up shop on the floor and doing as much paperwork as I could while she slept. When she woke we talked...and talked...and talked. I apologized to her for leaving, and it was hard to keep my emotions in check. I nearly came undone with embarrassment. Then we talked about her sister, and my daughter, and Dad's, and then boys...that's right, we talked about boys, and she picked my brain, and I tried to plant some important seeds, and we laughed that it had come to such nonsense. By the early afternoon Mom had came to get her and suddenly every door closed tight, every open window slammed shut, and the girl that showed up drunk at 8am three days in a row re-appeared and broke my heart all over again.

I had to write it all down here because I learned something important about myself. I'll never just simply walk away from anything ever again. Sometimes you have to know when you've become something much less than yourself, and you need to do something about it. All she wanted was for someone to believe that she was worth it, and for a brief moment I didn't. There are a lot of moments in my life that I'm not proud of and I wasn't interested in collecting any more...and then I did.

Everyone wants someone to chase them. Everyone wants to be worthy of a fight. Thanks S...and for some crazy reason you think that I'm the one helping you.

Art Therapy

2011-12-06T21:59:00.006-05:00

When the going gets rough, the rough get painful artwork inscribed on their bodies. I've been busy at work, and it was nice to sneak away last night and get some long overdue, barely contemplated, lightly considered tattoo work done. Sure it's permanent, and yup, it should be a big decision, but it's just skin, and a night just thinking about the needle that's burying itself into you was a near therapeutic experience. I knew what I wanted (whimsy) and knew who I wanted to do it (Mel Wayland) and so that's what I got.

It's just the outline, and it'll get some colour, attention to detail, and filler artwork in early January, but the roughed out ink on my right arm pulls a grin out of me each and every time I catch a glimpse of it. I never expected to find something spilling out from under my sleeve, but I have to admit I'm digging it beyond expectations...far beyond expectations and it's nowhere near done.

Why an octopus, and maybe more importantly, why the balloons? Is that a kraken gripping those balloons and drifting upward? Well, yes it is, but why? It's a good question that might get something of a shallow answer...I liked the idea of it. I'd been dreaming up the kraken idea for awhile. I liked the notion of eight tentacles, all capable of juggling a different task, something very like my every day. The balloons were just pure whimsy. I like the idea of the giant sea monster drifting up into the clouds...a rather imposing looking creature clinging desperately to the simple toys of a child...a flying octopus? Awesome. Of course, there's more to it than that...the three balloons symbolize our family, June, Zoey and myself, and they will make sense of the balloon I will someday add to my inside forearm when we have our second child. That's right, I said second child. He/she is not a reality yet, but we've come to the conclusion that there's an inevitability to the broadening of our family, and we want very badly for Zo to have a sibling. So there it is, breathed out into our shared air now. If the best energy of the entire universe is on our side in any way, shape, or form, there'll be another little nail in my heart before next winter. Funny that there was an element of family planning involved in this tattoo design...perhaps not your average process but average is overrated.

The whole thing makes me feel good..strong...purged almost...and when it comes to the idea of wearing your heart on your sleeve, well, you might just as well take that term literally as any other way.

Here's a copy of Mel's original sketch, from the artwork that I sent her.

Sweetfineblogpost

2011-12-03T06:44:00.002-05:00

"We want time to slow down, but she wants time to speed up, always looking towards the next holiday, the next birthday."

That was the sentence...the line that sent me spinning for my own blog, eager for keys to punch. That was the solitary line in Jenna and Mark's recent blog post over at Sweetfineday. I've casually nodded in their direction before, maybe gushed over how beautiful their family is, and then came to the go-figure conclusion since they're very much super creative and boldly living a very deliberate life there in Brooklyn. Go figure that I wanna read more about them. They're interesting people. I'm kind of a quiet, regular dropper-in at Sweetfineday...like it were some corner coffee shop on Court Street in Carroll Gardens...you know, Zo and I would strike out for our morning walk downtown and back, and of course we'd stop and grab some steaming beans, an apple juice, and maybe some secret treat that Mom would find out about later, or not at all...and we'd run into Jenna, or Mark, and girls, and briefly catch up, as though we'd been long, lost friends, when really we were just city friends...morning stroll friends...same coffee shop all summer friends...because there's a difference, you know...there is. Ask anyone who lives in the shadow of Manhattan...there are city friends, morning stroll friends...coffee shop friends, and they're different than over-to-the-house-for-dinner friends. They just are. Anyway...that's how Sweetfineday feels.

The sentence, oh yes, the sentence...sorry. I read it, swooned a little (or a lot) and wanted so desperately to post it here. With it Jenna was making reference to her rapidly growing girl, her pre-teen, almost old enough to confuse you completely daughter, but not quite, not yet. I thought the line was beautiful...and accurate. Isn't that such a defining part of our lives? Slowing down and speeding up...or perhaps speeding up and then slowing down? Zoey wants to go, go, go, and we mostly want to go and stop, go and stop, go and stop...much different from our previous go,go, go...a sure sign that we're growing up ourselves.

In the summer I fell more into Zed's rhythm, and it felt like a billion dollars. With no work to anchor myself to it was full out go, go, go every day, from morning to bed time and it was exhausting, and exhilarating, and practically perfect. It felt pre-teen...child-like...comfortable. Somehow I think we need to find that in our everyday. For most of us we dedicate our waking hours to other people, and we forget about the pre-teen that's still inside of us somewhere. We catch glimpses of it. I see it in Grandad when his wheels are turning and he's inventing something out of the pieces of what seems to be nothing. I see it in Baachan when she stitches something up out of the scraps, and in Grandma when her and Zo are playing. It's there...that urge to go, go, go...we just do a fantastic jump of reining it in. Maybe we should let it out a little more often...you know, drop the reins and watch her drop into a full run. We all grow older, but we don't have to grow up.

BTW...how paralyzingly insightful, and beautiful is Jenna's post? SO sweet I felt nauseous.

America the Beautiful

2011-12-02T00:08:00.003-05:00

Tonight while watching a PBS documentary about Yellowstone Zoey perked up and said...

"Is that a park in America Daddy?

Uhmmm, yup (generous pause)...America? How'd you know that?

Dismissive shrug.

Yellowstone National park was created by a collapsing volcano so...maybe somewhere in her crazy volcano obsessing she'd heard that...or, of course, maybe not.

America? Just what is this kid reading?

This Morning I'd Like To Be Here...

2011-12-01T06:45:00.002-05:00

Paris, at night, covered in snow...just let me me grab a hat and my coat.

If only it was that easy. Of all the superpowers on the planet, aside from healing the sick and living as long as I damn well wanted to, I'd like to be able to snap my fingers and disappear, only to reappear wherever the heck I wanted to. Snap...Paris.

I'd have no plan, nothing in particular to do. I'd wander, and keep to myself. I'd waste an entire day and then slide back home to June and Zo...just a day, eight or nine hours, that's it. Or maybe my snap could transport us all? That'd be nice. Ooooh, maybe my snap could not only instantly transport us to places but all Narnia-like what seems like days is really only seconds back home. We could keep our jobs and make sure the garbage gets out, and never, ever give away our little secret.

Yes, Paris in the snow this morning would be nice. No worries, I'll be back before you finish reading this.

Once...upon a time...

2011-11-29T19:35:00.002-05:00

Tonight, while re-charging with the Pearl Jam Ten vinyl re-issue, Zoey latched on to the lyrics to "Once." From the kitchen we heard her mimic Eddie's gravelly, strained, "once...upon a time..." and then she faltered with the rest of the words. Half a lyric is pretty good though, especially a Pearl Jam lyric. Proud moment for her parents.

Dads and Daughters

2011-11-28T21:11:00.006-05:00

Today I had a pretty amazing girl tearfully, and after a little hesitation, tell me that she wished her Dad was more like me...and that Zoey was a lucky girl, and it was hard to keep the tears away. Girls aren't supposed to wish other men were their Dad's. That's not the way it works, and I'd like to think that Dad's wouldn't be able to bare hearing such a thing, but girls do think it, and Dad's do bare it, and none of it makes any sense to me except to say that it was a nice thing for her to say, and that it meant a lot to me, despite my best efforts to deflect, and also that I think that this girl deserves the best Dad you could find...she does. I like her a lot.

How is a sixteen year old girl jealous of Zed? Maybe you could say that she's a lucky girl, Zed, I mean, but I'd say that I'm infinitely more lucky.

Some Awesomeness for You On This Cold, Wet Monday Night

2011-11-28T21:00:00.000-05:00

I may have posted a different version of this before but I have to again because of it's sheer awesomeness. Tegan and Sara...The Boss...giant heaving sigh, and perhaps a swoon even.

"I ain't nuthin; but tired...I ain't nuthin' but tired and bored with myself..." Maybe one of the best lyrics ever written.

Enjoy.

Find Yourself a Kid With a Conscience and You're All Set

2011-11-27T15:29:00.009-05:00

Yesterday we watched the Michigan-Ohio State game from my cousin Jason's house. Jason and his wife, Christina, are the proud parents of newborn twins...just seven weeks old, but born prematurely. They have only been home for two of those weeks. The boys are Quinn and Cooper, and they're amazing little wiggling bundles of miracle. It was a a bit of a chore getting Mummy to stop holding the boys, and she even took the opportunity to snap photos of the guys so that Christina and Jay have a cool, professional quality record of the boys first year.

Zed and I were playing and watching the football game when she decided to jump from the ottoman onto Mom's lap, paying little attention to the fact that Mom had Cooper in her arms. It was an abrupt shock and she just nearly missed landing on the six pound wonder. She was just as abruptly spoken to about her carelessness around the babies. She'd been talked to about being careful all morning and then, as any two year old might, she had forgotten the message. Our stern words, mostly Daddy's, upset her so much that the tears poured down her cheeks and she was fairly inconsolable for a moment or two. She tends to be hard on herself, and she doesn't handle her own mistakes or miscues with much aplomb. Being spoken to or reprimanded really upsets her.

That was yesterday, and then out of the blue today...

Zed: When we were at the baby's house and I got in trouble it was because I tried to jump onto Mummy's lap and I almost hit the baby, you said.

Daddy:That's right. Are you still thinking about that?

Zed: Yeah, I am.

Daddy:How did that make you feel Zoey?

Zed: I was embarrassed that I did that.

Embarrassed? I looked at Mummy just to make sure that she heard what I did and her eyes are full of tears. Go and find yourself a kid with a conscience if you want to be reminded how important every little thing that you say and do are.

Family and Friends, but Mostly Friends

2011-11-27T08:41:00.004-05:00

For some odd, unknown reason I'm left fairly speechless about my Uncle Dwayne turning 50 years old, and about the birthday party that fell together for him last night...about the family that were there, the people that I love, and it's strange that somehow I can find no words. I can always find the words. I got to spend the night with people that matter a great deal to me, maybe perhaps, beyond measure, and that is why I stumble to find the proper perspective to wrap around the few photographs I have of the night.

Five or six hours were filled with long, laughter girded conversations with cousin's and Uncles and Aunts (wait, why does it seem like I have to capitalize Uncle and Aunt but not the word cousin? That's even stranger than my loss of language). Zed played with Sammer, and Avery and Reece. I steadied myself with Scott and Colleen, and Brad and Jason and Mark, and I might have wandered outside of a ten foot circle five times in all of those hours. People found me, because they were looking for me, and you're a fool if you can't feel the value of that right there in in your chest, or hold it in your hand. My family is very likely no different from any other family but I think that in many ways it is. There is a genuine love and affection between people who so often in other families find no reason to find faith in each other. So often, cousins are related almost because their parents are, and for no other reason. That doesn't demand any kind of connection or ignite any kind of love unless it's forced. Ours is never forced. I love these people and they love me, and I care about what they're doing, and they care about what I'm doing, and that might be more unique than even we realize. I'm not connected to these people because our parents are brothers and sisters. I very likely would have found them as friends regardless.

It used to be that we thought that my Grandmother, the matriarch of this large and close family, was the one who tied everything together but I think all these years after she has been gone that we were wrong. Everything is tied together by love, and not a single person is responsible for that, each and every single one of us is, and that's something we just hadn't considered. Still, somewhere Grammafufu would be proud...beaming, in fact...as her children and grandchildren and great grandchildren laughed and played and even bumped bellies, because there are no divine rules that say that we should, that urge us to find faith in each other, and that congregate us simply because in photos we kind of look the same. We find each other so engulfed in smiles and laughter and we snap photos and touch each other on the elbows and thump one another's backs and steal hugs and stories because we love each other, and even if any of us ever achieved anything great in our lives...if Grammafufu ever did, it might be that all of this trumps it. I dunno. I don't have the words, but looking back three paragraphs, I guess I did.

Happy Birthday Uncle Lumpy. You've marinated for fifty years in a pretty authentic kind of love. That's worth celebrating every year, not just every fifty.

Go Blue! Beat Ohio!

2011-11-27T00:34:00.004-05:00

Spent the day with friends, parents of newborn twins, and Zed sang "The Victors" while Daddy had at least seven near fatal heart attacks and the Wolverines finally beat the Buckeyes after seven painful tries. Sigh...such a good day. Such a good, good day.

BTW...shouldn't we all have a friend like that crazy dude in the photo? In case you were wondering, the answer is yes.

Could the Room Be Any Bigger?

2011-11-26T09:05:00.002-05:00

How strange is this? I’m sitting on the stage steps in an empty 400 seat auditorium, waiting to speak about God knows what for three hours, and I’m starting to wonder if this wasn’t the worst place to explore my theory of not needing notes. I make extensive, ridiculously detailed notes for this stuff, and then I never…NEVER…follow them. I typically never even touch them, not even a glance. So on this auspicious occasion I chose t not bother. I’m second guessing that decision.

This room is huge…HUGE…I can’t help but wonder if they have any clue who I am, where I’m from, what kind of an idiot I am. Somehow I feel as though I’m pulling the wool over a lot of people’s eyes. They can’t possibly be here to listen to my ramblings, but it strikes me awkwardly that they are, so now I’m required to deliver. It's a weird world.

The plan is to talk about what I do… the unique approach I take to do it (or so I’ve been told) and the experiences I’ve had that help to shed some valuable light on some of the more unique situations. I had hoped to talk about homeless kids, Hells Angels, Crips and Bloods…for real Crips and Bloods, addicts, and everyday people, actually all of them everyday people, with some very strange exceptions. That’s what I had intended to do. I might end up flubbing all of it and jabbering on about how nervous I am. I’ll surely forget everything I ever had any intention of saying, and walk away from the afternoon in shame. Or there exists the faint possibility that I whack a homerun and take my time trotting around the bases. I know I have the swing to do it, but what I tell myself is that it’s just not that simple. Maybe I’ll bunt? You know, lay one down the line...a creeper. Somehow manage to get on base.

This stuff always feels strange, never gets easy.

This is the lie that I tell myself. It’s just a conversation between people, one or one hundred, or six hundred. It’s just an intimate talk about some really incredible stuff, and that all I have to do is be myself. If I’m myself then that’s more than enough for everyone…and I can talk, boy, can I talk..for hours if someone lets me, and strangely, these people are letting me. That’s what I say to myself. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Today its not working, not at all. This isn’t intimate, this very likely won’t be just a simple conversation, and it feels as though I need some practice swings that I won’t get. I suppose that this is where muscle memory, figuratively, comes in.

What the #$%& do I have to say that’s all that unique and interesting? I mean it when I casually joke that all I do is show up. That’s a hard sell to a lot of people who believe otherwise, who demand that it takes much more than that. I’d say crap to that. It doesn’t take a whole lot more…experience maybe…perspective based on that experience…but the foundation of what I’m talking about today is nothing more than the boundless power of compassion. That’s it. There is no them, there is only us. That's it.

Wish me luck. You can even pity me, that'd be fine too.

Stars and Strangers

2011-11-24T13:26:00.004-05:00

I was reminded this morning why I tend to have a greater than average faith in the planet. There are good people, the right kind of people, everywhere...littered throughout days and weeks and years, but like the stars in the sky you're only gonna see them if you look up.

Look up from your busy life every once in awhile. It can be a pretty encouraging sight.

Digging Through The Old Shoe Box

2011-11-24T12:38:00.004-05:00

I was flipping through old photos and stumbled on this one. The wildly attractive girl under my left arm is my wife, still wildly attractive, still enough of the "right kind of girl" to make me feel as though I somehow won the lottery. Zoey's Mom...good sister...good daughter...incredible wife...friend. Some of us are born with horseshoes wedged deep in their nether regions and I'm one of those guys. They say that the sun doesn't shine on the same dogs @#$ every day but it's shone brightly on mine for a long damn time...as long as I can remember. I love this pic...love it. That's us with friends at Michigan Stadium, sun beating down, happy and healthy with an entire life ahead of us...kids, houses, jobs...who'd have thought that the sun would still be shining so brightly after all these years? Its ridiculous how fortunate we are...ridiculous.

I may have been 'undecided' about a lot of things in college, but not about the girl under my arm right there.

Christmas Shopping at the Dinner Table

2011-11-23T21:36:00.006-05:00

This brief Daddy-Daughter exchange is from yesterday evening during dinner.

Dad: What should we get Mummy for Christmas Zo?

Zed: A toque.

Dad: A toque?

Zed: Yup...a brown one.

Dad: A brown toque? Really?

Zed: (said both impatiently and emphatically) Yes Daddy, a brown toque!

Dad: That's it?

Zed: Yes, Daddy. That's it.

It looks like June is getting a brown toque for Christmas, and that's it.

Super Zed...Faster Than a Speeding Bullet etc...Leaping Tall Buildings etc...

2011-11-22T19:07:00.009-05:00

I couldn't get home fast enough today to put my evil photography plan into action. Somewhere between two towns this morning I thought it would be fun to dress Zed up like a superhero, slap together a cheesy looking fake sky, and start snapping what would surely amount to bad photos. It worked...sort of.

Zed was a difficult model to work with...very restless and squirmy...very eager to do anything but what I was hoping she'd do...but regardless, we still managed to have fun, and get some absolutely ridiculous shots. I think the stupidity of it all, and the horrid lack of professionalism throughout the entire session made it all even better.

We had a t-shirt for a cape...much, much too big tights...and pink underwear. We made a cloud out of paper, and used an old blue sheet for sky. I'm sure we could have been more successful had, you know, Zo been more than two and half years old, and if Dad knew what the heck he was doing. Instead, we got an intimate portrait of a Dad trying really hard to snap fun photos of his pseudo-superhero daughter, rather than the cool superhero photos we had hoped for. Shrug...

Zed had fun, and despite wanting to quit almost as soon as I started, I eventually got my act together and managed to enjoy the chaos. It's nearly impossible to give a two and half year old semi-superhero instructions, even when you sit her down and talk slowly. She does what she wants to do...perhaps that's her humble super power? She's a good listener, just a bad follow througher. She's kind of got her own agenda.

When it was all said and done, we enjoyed ourselves, and somehow managed to cook dinner all at the same time. Talented, I know...I might get all the credit for that kind of juggling, but Zed's immutable cuteness wins the trophy. She's a superhero alright...capable of melting Daddy's heart in a single bound.

Of course, this was all part of Cool School, Zed's winter version of camp. We've got a lot on the schedule, but doing ridiculous things is right at the top. Of course, we could be doing educational things, you know, taking advantage of Grandma's hard work all day...numbers, letters, physics, all that stuff...but nope, we're doing our own thing separate from all that JK preparation garbage. We're having fun, and that alone might be the best lesson of all. Why else would we bother to get out of bed in the morning? To learn our alphabet? No. To fly like a superhero? Heck yeah!

Tegan and Sara...and Me

2011-11-22T18:30:00.005-05:00

So, so, so, so desperate to see this. I've got kind of a nefarious crush on both girls and then add the unabashed feeling that I could listen to their music for thirteen years straight...well, it's embarrassing. This one I need to see...as in need with nine e's. You should see it too.

Of Course, I Could Be Wrong

2011-11-21T17:38:00.003-05:00

Just as I get myself all convinced that Fall is over, it isn't. Nuthin' but blue skies and sunshine all day. I'll take it.

Of course, I'm wrong about a lot of things...like the NBA lockout coming to an end, that Michigan State sucks, that i would never need tools, that I'd stop eating potato chips, and that Hootie and the Blowfish were timeless. This is one time I'm happy to be wrong.

Text Messages That Suggest That Our Daughter is Linguistically Superior To Us

2011-11-20T07:50:00.006-05:00

The last message that I received on my phone yesterday as I crossed a river into the land of obscene consumerism was typical of a random one on one interaction with Zoey. The text message from June read:

Me: What are you doing Zed?

Zo: I'm admiring your camera.

Me: Huh?

Zo: I'm just admiring your camera.

She's so typically saying things like this that you forget to write them down. Admiring. Who uses the word admiring? Apparently Zo does.

Hail To The Victors Valiant...Hail to the Conquering Heroes

2011-11-19T22:39:00.005-05:00

A day at The Big House with Ian...stellar Uncle...best friend...and in Nebraska's first visit to Ann Arbor since 1962 the Wolverines laid a sturdy beating down. The game finished 45-17 and it was an awesome afternoon. Equal parts re-charged and tuckered out. Enjoying yourself this much is tiring.

There's No Place Like Home...There's No Place Like Home...

2011-11-18T21:19:00.003-05:00

In less than twelve hours I'll find myself embraced by one of my most favorite places on the planet. I'll park my car, find a nice place to brace myself for an afternoon of swoon. It's Michigan-Nebraska tomorrow at noon, and I'm hoping to find myself sunburnt and filled with peace and energy before the blue sky fades to grey...long before there are stars, and a sliver of moon.

Don't ask me what kind of largesse and magic it is that fills me with such comfort and satisfaction each and every time I wander back to Ann Arbor. I couldn't exactly tell you...but I know that it happens, and that I feel it to the very bottom of me, and I don't think I could ever wander too far from that.

Tomorrow I'll re-charge the battery and come back a different guy. Tonight I'll sleep like a kid at Christmas.

If you don't have a place like that in your life...wow, get one.

Just you and me...and random thoughts of good friends

2011-11-18T20:51:00.005-05:00

Tonight June was abducted by an embarrassingly love-struck twelve year old girl, and dragged to a Cody Simpson concert. It's frightfully true, and paralyzingly sweet. So it was just Zed and her doting Dad, and in hours reminiscent of Camp Zed adventures, we made an astonishing couple.

We made pigs in blankets together for dinner...we visited with Uncle Ian...we bathed and roasted real marshmallows by a fake fire...We read books and played in the cardboard castle that we made in the summer. We were insufferably and oh-so sincerely sweet to each other...almost as sweet as Aunt June and Avery were tonight.

Now it's just me and that fake fire still...sitting and thinking, and typing. I'm a good Dad and it's the absolute pride and purpose of my minutes and hours and days. I'm frightfully dismantled by this little girl...desperately, oh-so desperately smitten. I love these Dad and Daughter moments..."just you and me," as Zed would say all summer. Yup, that's right Bub...just you and me.

Oddly tonight I randomly thought of my friends Dustin and Kelly, and thought almost immediately how disgustingly impressive they'll be at all of this gobbly gunk someday. Kelly will have a melting point that's oh so sweetly low, but Dustin will be a puddle of fatherly pride and fallibility. Dunno why I thought that tonight, I just did. It's strange how soft and malleable this Daddy thing makes you...not hardly locker room tough at all. You get all Hallmark and whispy while the rest of the world goes on thinking they've got you pegged and that you're perhaps the same old guy...you're not. A light breeze of emotion could topple you.

I love this Daddy business, and I like thinking about my friends who will be equally as liquified by it. It warms be a whole lot more than this YouTube fire.

Can Movies Be Mandatory?

2011-11-17T22:14:00.003-05:00

Must, must, must see this movie. Critics have been losing their $%#! about it. "To call The Descendants perfect would be a kind of insult," gushed a New York Times review, "a betrayal of its commitment to, and celebration of, human imperfection."

Must, must, must...

Augustus McCrae, Ray Lamontagne, and Michigan Football

2011-11-17T20:52:00.005-05:00

“It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living. I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.”
― Augustus McCrea, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

I've wanted to post all week but it's been a busy and uncomfortable four days. With one suicide and three attempts, I've been struggling to keep things in perspective and in balance, and by ignoring everything but myself, my family, and my work, it was manageable. Even now, I haven't much to type. I'm fairly spellbound by ACC football that I couldn't care a whole lot less about, and the strange comfort of Ray Lamontagne's Jolene...makes me want to throw on a flannel jacket, pack an old army duffel and buy a Greyhound ticket. It wouldn't be the first time, but I've got enough history behind me to know that escape like that doesn't do much but stack up what's bothering you like the snow drifts that pile high in Walmart parking lots long after the temperatures have risen above zero. Some desert sunsets would be nice right about now though.

Zed keeps me philosophizing how things can go so terribly wrong in people's lives. Each time I look at her everything seems so implausibly right...nearly impossible to go wrong, but it's a fine line we all walk. It doesn't take much to throw the fragile balance of our lives off. Right now Zed makes me hopeful, but we're all hopeful at some point, aren't we? Sure we are.

I've been around enough of this stuff now to know that there are no explanations, there is no understanding. Like Hunter Thompson once said, "The edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over it." It just may be impossible to nail it down any better than the good doctor did. There's not much to understand about any of this.

This afternoon I found myself running for familiar ground, on the phone with the Athletic Dept. at Michigan trying to score tickets to the long since sold out football game with Nebraska this weekend. I must have sounded desperate because a good, old friend found them for me. She's always been nothing but stellar and I doubt she knows the times that her goodness has saved my sanity. The company of 100,000 people will surely erase portions of this hectic week. If not, I'm in trouble. And Ian's home...Uncle Ian's home from the great, empty wilderness, and so I've got a good friend to pull me from this trance too. It'll be just fine.

Whenever this kind of haze settles in all around me I always think of the choices that we make in our lives...some as simple as what kind of damn car to drive, and some as big as what home to spend the rest of our lives paying off...but still for others it's about what they chose to do with their days, and where they choose to do it. I chose this. I chose these people, and these kids, in this familiar place, in and all around where I grew up. I didn't necessarily expect it to fall that way, but it has, and I suspect that choosing to live here, in this place of occasional strain and sorrow, matters more than dying somewhere that doesn't matter quite as much. I dunno. I only know that I chose this, and sometimes it harder than other things that I could do. This week it was harder.

Tiny Picasso and the Fish That Wasn't...or Maybe Was?

2011-11-13T22:42:00.010-05:00

So while Mom was cooking dinner, and Dad was watching the Chicago Bears dismantle the Lions, Zoey was in her room drawing on her chalk board...like some kind of goddangma #$%&ing Picasso!

She says it's a fish...we both saw a little girl with her hair in her face...whatever you want to call the work of this 2.9 year old, it's brilliant. We were stunned. Zo just kept right on sketching, and then eventually wiped it off. How dismissive the casual genius can be.

Wow. Just wow. Is it just me or is this something that should solicit swoons. Maybe all that sketching with Daddy left some kind of subtle imprint? Or maybe not, I mean, after all, it could just be a fish.

Never Too Much of a Good Thing (especially when Derek Trucks is involved)

2011-11-13T22:28:00.008-05:00

Not listening to the Tedeschi Trucks Band? Then we can't be friends. I'm not even kidding...not even a little bit.

Like anyone, I get songs stuck in my head, and I can't get this one out. I've been singing it (badly) to myself for months. Had a chance to see the band in Cleveland and went to Las Vegas instead, mostly 'cause I can be an ignorant twit sometimes. I've been promising myself more modest shows...more small acts, more of chasing my more intimate musical affections. The Tedeschi Trucks Band is one of those acts. This girl too.

Our Version of Church

2011-11-13T16:40:00.004-05:00

Zed likes the book store. Daddy likes the book store. Mummy likes the book store. Who doesn't like the book store? It's one of the few stores that you can go to and not feel guilty when you walk out with nothing. Everyone hangs out at the book store, and everyone only actually gets out their wallet and buys something every now and then. Zoey bought this.

Now Zed's best friend, Woody, has a girlfriend, or so it seems. They were looking pretty tight in the car on the way home. Of course, it was a bit of a forced marriage, but a marriage nonetheless. An arrangement made by Zoey, and despite our best efforts to convince her that Jessie would be very upset with both her and Woody, she was insistent on forcing the relationship. Shrug...

We rarely buy books at the book store anymore. We grab endless stacks of awesome, barely touched books at second hand stores and used book shops whenever we can. Whoever pays the retail price on books has much more cash to burn than we do. Who spends $20 on a book for a three year old? Some kind of rich bugger, that's for sure. Zed's got a ridiculous little library started and I'd bet there isn't $150 wrapped up in it, although we're still not victims of the school book fair yet, or the Scholastic catalogues. When those suckers start we're cooked.

BTW...that book in the first photo is indeed Here Comes The Poo Bus. Once again...shrug.

My Saturday Morning Gift To You

2011-11-12T11:10:00.003-05:00

As I was stumbling through a slow but crowded morning, and needing some energy, I found this story. Now I'm giving it to you because it's incredible. Don't just read it. Think about it.

You're welcome.

When Bowling Beats Basketball, and Other Stories of Heinous Depravity

2011-11-12T00:00:00.008-05:00

It took over an hour to cross the border tonight. Over an hour. So rather than make the 7pm tip-off at Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor, we went bowling. That's right, I said bowling, and it was fun. It was really fun. We ate greasy, cheesy pizza, and drank soda, and jammed french fries in our faces, all while Reece single handedly ruined the smooth contours of lane #7 at Port Huron Lanes, and while June polished the gutters at the same establishment. Zoey was having freak out worthy fun the whole time, Avery was eating plasticized cheese from a cup, and Daddy was rolling strikes. It was wicked fun. We got pictures to prove it (BTW, why doesn't prove have two o's...proove...it should).

It was a full moon so that might explain all of the nonsense that didn't allow us to make it to the game, but who cares, to quote Reece directly...we had fun anyway, 'cause you know what? No one else really cares. It was Ferris State...the people who attend Ferris State don't even care. What I'm slowly learning is that I typically don't give two rats @$$&s about any of it. I gave at the office...all day long...from now on I don't care after hours....period. Bowling is good enough for Jeffrey Lebowski and half of Port Huron's lower socio-economic class, so it's good enough for me. Besides, it was Zoey's first time bowling, and strangely enough, Reece's first time too...Michigan basketball matters nil. Tonight I ate awesome gross pizza with four people I love, all while wearing ugly, bacteria laden rented shoes and jamming our fingers into colorful orbs of public filth. It was way more fun than Crisler Arena typically is.

I learned a lot tonight. First, that I don't really give all that much of a crap about half the things I pretend to. Second, Reece can bowl his lane ruining, eight soda drinking arse off. Avery is pretty much Zoey's favorite person on the planet intermittently, and June couldn't bowl a 50 if it was to save her right foot. All that, and if one more person tells me to get a Nexus pass, like they've ever in their life crossed the 49th parallel more than my sad soul, I'll punch them in the face. The ferry has no Nexus line, AND I prefer it when I don't have to give everything but my blood type to a foreign nation just for the privilege of bolstering their economy and finding cheap beer. That's all.

More pics here.

Gone Fishin'...but not very far.

2011-11-09T22:11:00.008-05:00

Daddy and Zed doing a little impromptu living room stairs fishing.

Tonight we took a break from the world, Zoey and I, and went fishing. Sure, it was only in our living room, and yeah, it was for magnetic alphabet letters but so what? She loved it. I conned her into working on her alphabet and letter recognition a little more, and we laughed out loud for nearly an hour. Don't ask me where the idea came from 'cause I don't know. June and Zed were pretending to fish and then I thought, "why not really fish?" Of course, I meant that in the strictest crafty/creative sense, and before you know it. Living room fishing was born, perhaps the most covert form of education we've yet embraced.

Not only did we get to work on her alphabet but on that illusive patience too...

Naturally, she slayed the game, nailing almost all of her letters, upper and lower case, and of course, she got a little too excited for her own good and so the game needed to be put on hiatus until tomorrow (apparently letter fishing is a #$%&ing awesome game), but we had a tonne of fun created just about the best, most dynamic and physical letter learning exercise ever (probably not ever, but close enough). All I could think of was my friends who have little boys who might be stoked to go fishing for letters. It must have occupied Zed for a full 45 minutes.

All we used were some Ikea magnets, your standard, run-of-the-mill, generic, all-purpose stick...driftwood if you're really into aesthetics...some string, and Dollar Store refrigerator alphabet magnets...that's it. And you know what all that gets you? It's gets you awesome, that's what.

More pics here.

A Crass Calculus

2011-11-08T17:01:00.013-05:00

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

I never regretted walking away from sports. I missed things. I missed people, and places, and I missed the void that they filled in my life. I missed the stories, but I never regretted walking away from a world that I felt the first rumblings of betrayal from nearly fifteen years ago. I sat in the press box at Michigan Stadium, with people I cared very deeply for, in spite of the short amount of time we had known each other. They were good people. The Aimee and Kevins, the Jenns, and the Naylas and Marcs, the BJs and Bruces...and the gifts of friendship that fell in my lap just because I walked into the Hartwig Building almost every day...the Sues and Taras, Gregs and Schneidzes (that feels hilarious to type), and the Betzies and Helens and Weisses. In a tiny, crowded office, at the back of a tiny, crowded second floor of a tiny crowded building, I found friendship with strangers and all because of at least one common denominator...sports. I miss that, but at a certain point the sporting world that I had loved, and worshipped, and idealized started to dissolve...ego and arrogance, self-importance and self-preservation...the weight of business becoming an anchor to my idealism. Over the twenty-something years of my young life I had successfully idealized sports to the point that it would nearly impossible for them not to eventually disappoint. Never venture to meet your heroes, someone once said. Get close enough to something you idealize and you'll surely be disappointed.

I moved on to bigger (in my own mind) and better things. I learned how to help people and I found my place doing just that. I stumbled headlong from a press box into a Boys and Girls Club gymnasium, and I discovered the truth in the notion of finding your destiny. I was never meant to work in a press box. I would never have expected that I'd work on street corners and alleys, and in gyms and YMCAs. I thought I'd work in stadiums. Now I'm happy to work in the crowded hallways of high schools. I found my place, but I do miss sports. I don't regret leaving them behind, but I miss them. I don't bemoan sidestepping the ugly arrogance of sidelines and press boxes.

As the weekend passed and the week began, and more and more came out of State College about the Penn State Football scandal...a tsunami of unexpected and unbelievable accusations and events, I felt the sad rush of sickness that accompanies such things, but much worse, I felt an uncomfortably intimate understanding of the business of college football. If you think that the scope of the Penn State scandal is small then you're mistaken. It's not. It's huge. If you think that the victims of the alleged abuse didn't rank second in consideration to the monster, in this case literally, that is Penn State football then you'd be mistaken. Its the boldest indictment of our sporting culture since anyone can remember. In it's every twist and turn there are people that matter more than other people, and that's just not the truth. There are ideas and belief systems worth upholding at any price, and that's just not right.

I work with young men and women who have survived similar abuses and the failures of our adult systems are astonishing, perhaps even harder to comprehend on some levels than the human failures of their abusers. We rarely take care of one another. We seldom place others first. It's that very reason why I have a job, and why I regularly deflect the compliments I so randomly receive. I do nothing out of the ordinary save honor myself as a human being in direct kinship with other human beings. There is no greater responsibility or success than that. We're all capable of doing the right thing every time we are faced with it...at our own expense and in honor of ourselves and others. The press box I left fifteen years ago was not propped up by those ideals. It often pretended to be, but it wasn't. I have good friendships from those years, and know good, no, I know great people, because of the string and colored cardboard dangling press passes that bound us all together, but institutionally, as a culture, I leave no love behind. As a brand, and as an ideal, I love Michigan. As a social, cultural, and economical reality, I loathe it. The big business of sports has in large part ripped the very soul from the games themselves, and compromised even the seemingly best of people.

The Penn State scandal could have happened in Ann Arbor or anywhere. The reality of sports in this 21st century is that it believes itself to be (and is regularly reminded that it is) bigger than anything else...including helpless victims and moral obligation. I don't regret walking away from sports fifteen years ago. I only regret allowing myself to idealize them in such vacant terms for so long. The equations that allow sports to become bigger than justice and humanity are difficult to comprehend, and I was unwilling to study that math. In hindsight it's ironic. I was a terrible math student but I was able to do that crass calculus. In the end I passed that exam, and I never once looked back and wondered what would have happened had I chose not to walk away. It's funny, very few of those friends I met on those sidelines and in those press boxes, or in that tiny, crowded office remained in sports...very few. I guess they were just as good at that particular kind of math as I was.

What's happening at Penn State leaves me speechless, just not surprised. It's an awfully ugly culture that we embrace, and so willfully ignore it's shortcomings. It's easy to blame individuals and read all of the editorials and features demanding justice and admonishing the people involved, but very few of us will put the culture that allowed this and the billion other transgressions that occur regularly in our sporting world on trial. The system is beyond broken, and I am in large part beyond pulling back into the fold, at least not as blindly as I once was, marching to fight songs that glorified people and ideas that were realistically unwilling to fight for anything but their own survival and prosperity. It's a crass calculus indeed, and for once in my life I understood the math without any help. I don't regret walking away, I'm proud of it.

It's a Jungle Out There...

2011-11-06T20:59:00.005-05:00

Zed went shopping today, and added her own special flair to the enterprise. Imagine the other shopper's surprise when they discovered that they were spending their hard earned money in close proximity to a genuine tiger? Luckily Animal Control wasn't required, or credit cards.