things that i will buy if i am lucky enough to make it into the lottery
(hannah and me, part twenty-seven)


as some of you may know, the nba draft is tonight. i have taken all the formal steps to put my name in the hat. i have not signed with an agent, therefore if i do not agree with the basketball philosophy of the team that picks me, i may opt for another year of development with my humc basketball team in the competitive 19 and up division of the birmingham baptist association's basketball league. i cannot remember how many scouts were at the last game of our season in february when i took our shorthanded team on my back and carried them to a near upset of the second best team in the league. the legend of that game has grown significantly (in my mind) and while i have no delusions of unseating oden or durant as one of the top two picks, i would love to play close to home and would have no qualms about playing in atlanta (they have the third pick). if they want to take me 11th, that's cool too. i keep hearing about my lack of "upside", and it's starting to annoy me. sure, i am 30 and most of the other prospects are 10 years younger, but who cares!!! i, today, pronounce 30 the new 20, and offer my services to any team worthy of my skills.


moving on, the most important part of draft night is prioritizing my outlandish material wants depending on my draft slot. here are some highlights as to what new additions casa and family o'kelley can look forward to after i sign on the dotted line.


1) an exact replica of this pool...

this was the pool that we spent most of our time in this weekend. the entire left-hand side of it is no deeper than a foot and a half and hannah had a blast playing, floating and following around older girls. we need this pool.

2) this woman...

before you go thinking anything weird, let me explain. i begged, pleaded with hannah all weekend to come into the ocean with me. for me, personally, i would rather be in the ocean and waves than the pool. it feels more relaxing. when the waves are choppy, you actually have to "work out" just to stay afloat. so i love the ocean. so far, though, hannah is not into it at all. we were able to coax her in to the water only one time the entire trip and you can guess now what the bribe included. mommy told her that if she went into the water with daddy, we could go up to the room and paint her fingernails and toenails (if kimberly is reading this, i know you are laughing). and it worked!!! granted, she kicked, screamed and cried the entire time, but it was worth it to me. so, knowing how well that bribe worked for me and for hannah, i will just buy (or hire) a full time manicurist/pedicurist and keep her on hand at all times for those special moments when hannah's feeling ornery. (also, thanks to google images for not spitting out an asian man/woman when i typed in 'manicurist' and keeping me from having to explain away being racist.)

3) a huge bed...

since hannah and we are satisfied with our beds at home, this king-size bed will be purchased solely to put away until we take a vacation that calls for hannah to sleep with us because marie and rebecca and emma and joseph are taking up all the other beds. one of our lasting memories from the trip will be hannah's refusal to sleep in her section of the bed and burrowing into the sides of her mommy and daddy. kicking her legs. slapping our faces. stealing the cover, etc. maybe putting her in the middle was an error on our parts. maybe. but damn, we gave her plenty of room. nevermind, though, with the new, huge bed, room will no longer be an issue.

4) otterpops. lots and lots of otterpops.

this one's easy and doesn't necessarily relate only to our trip, but hannah loves popsicles. and loved them on the trip. so, my final crazy purchase will be every otterpop i can get my hand on.

if you notice a trend with my outlandish, material wants, you are very keen indeed. i mentioned a couple days ago that it wouldn't take long for the marvelous memories of our very first, real family vacation to rise above the bad ones. i love thinking back and remembering sarah smiling, hannah cracking us up, hannah trying crab claws like a big girl, hannah and emma making rebecca laugh her big, glorious laugh, all-you-can-eating fried shrimp with joseph and talking my way out of walking on the beach (i hate long walks on the beach, whatareyougonnado?).

when you become a parent, though, everything comes back to your kid. sure, i'd buy sarah a new camry and some new sunglasses after coming to terms with my nba team, but i think we would both want to spoil the baby girl first and foremost.

you all can say you knew me back when. when i wasn't an nba superstar. because tonight's the night. oden. durant. o'kelley. it's got a nice ring to it.

sarah, will you hit the snooze button, please?

how do you spell vacation?
(S-E-I-Z-U-R-E)
((hannah and me, part twenty-six))


it's a phone call a parent never wants to receive. one that i surely wasn't aware of how much i didn't want to receive it until i became a parent. a phone call alerting you to your child being in danger. a phone call that comes out of nowhere. a phone call telling you that you need to come...fast.

it's a phone call that i didn't ask for, that no parent does, but i got anyway thursday morning. i dropped off hannah at school that morning and all was fine. normal. routine in every way. we talked about the beach. we talked about it so much that she didn't want to go to school and i didn't want to go to work. i left her thinking the next time i would see her would be around 3:00 and we'd head home to pack up the truck and go. well, it wasn't. at about 10:15, my phone rang and i was busy with a customer so i didn't pick it up. about two minutes later, the same number rang again and i answered the call. on the other end was a frantic interim children's place director telling me that hannah had suffered a seizure on the playground...

WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i was told that she was ok. that she had stopped shaking. that her eyes were no longer in the back of her head. that at this point, she was just without color and scared. and i was out the door.

i have no idea what i told jason and muffley as i headed out of the store and toward hannah. i remember calling heath and telling him i was leaving the store. i remember trying to get in touch with sarah and failing, and i remember trying to process the information i had just received without throwing up all over myself. the two previous times hannah had been rushed to children's were under sarah's watch. one of the times i was in freaking huntsville. this time, it was sarah that was stuck an hour away and nowhere near reachable. it would've helped had i tried calling tuscaloosa instead of the uab numbers i was blowing up, but like i mentioned, my mind was all over the place.

i made it to the church to find hannah in the warm arms of her favorite teacher, ms. malinda. at first glance at both of their faces, i couldn't tell who was more scared. hannah immediately came to me and i got the full story of the events on the playground from malinda and donna and proceeded to take hannah to the doctor. never having done this before and not being able to get in touch with sarah, i called marie and she pointed me toward's children's hospital. i got confirmation from hannah's pediatrician that this was the right call and we were off. the tribute is pretty fast when i push the pedal down hard. all the while, hannah was coming back to her usual self. she knew something weird had happened. she knew that this wasn't how the day was supposed to go. more than anything else, she really just wanted to know if we could go to the beach.

we made it to an empty children's emergency room and almost immediately went back. by this time, it was about 10:50 and hannah was fine. she was checked by a resident and the doctor in charge and given a clean bill of health. she had not been sick prior to whatever happened on the playground. she regained use of her faculties almost immediately. thus, they decided that no further testing would be needed that morning. i was surprised to learn that, evidently, kids hannah's age are allowed one "freebie", however weird that sounds, when it comes to seizures. they told me that it could very easily be a stand-alone event. we are just to watch her. not leave her alone in the bath. not leave her unattended on the monkey bars or anything else high. things that we shouldn't do anyway but that we may have taken for granted had thursday morning not happened.

poor hannah, her little three year-old mind was completely one track. she asked the doctors four separate times, "so, we can't go to the beach?" they assured her and me that we could and we went. for the most part, we had a wonderful time. hannah had a blast and was a very helpful big cousin. she is going to be a marvelous big sister. this morning, as i reflect once again on last thursday morning, it makes me even more disappointed that the last twelve hours of our trip were rendered uncomfortable and awkward due to hurt feelings of some sort.

those last twelve hours are easiest to taste, now, one day removed. for the greater part, though, we had a marvelous time. and those marvelous memories will rise to the surface soon.

the beach was fine. more importantly, hannah is fine. i am crossing my fingers for her that the events of thursday morning are, indeed, stand-alone. i am thankful that somehow, i took care of her that morning in a way that made her mom proud.

it's a phone call that no parent ever wants. a phone call that alerts you that your child is in danger. a phone call that, as a parent, i am sure to have again.

but i don't want it. you're the best, baby girl.

vacation?


so, for the first time since our honeymoon, sarah and i edit: and hannah (and marie and joseph and rebecca and emma) will be taking an extended trip that does not involve a wedding or visiting family. holy cow!!! to say that my head is already at the beach is an understatement, and i told the guys at softball last night that i am certain the trip will be the fastest five days of my life.

obviously, i'll be away from TWALBTMLE for a while, but i think it's a good time to let the last few posts settle.

i'll see you next week with all the tales of hannah and me from the beach that you can stand!!!

D-R-A-M-A-T-I-C
(the anatomy of "the serious voice")


in my head, i've teased and thought about this "children's place post" so much that i think i've burned myself out on it. so, when it comes, it'll come. you'll see it. you won't hear about it anymore. on to my monday morning quarterbacking of yesterday's service...

as i've said before, i've been cleansing my palate for months now, ever since rick announced his impending departure, so that i could start recommitting and reinvesting myself into my church. on father's day, with the official arrival of a new minister, i would step down from the balcony and start stirring the pot. in a literal and figurative way, step down from the balcony sarah and i (and joseph) did yesterday. it was a weird feeling to be quite honest. i don't think we bumped anybody out of their normal seats, but moving from the almost empty balcony to the half-filled lower section was not without anxiety. would people read anything into the move? would anyone even notice? would i feel out of place? to be honest, i don't really know how noticed sarah and i are anymore. there, of course, was a part of me that hoped people would see us and wonder where we've been, but i doubt that was the case. i have kept myself on the periphery of things for so long now that my guess is i've fallen curse to "out of sight, out of mind." no difference, though. that won't be the case for long. i did not feel out of place, which helped my mood. it was nice to be able to hear other folks singing along with us during the hymns and doxology. it was nice that we weren't the only stop the offering plate would have to make on our pew. it was nice to have more than one person to shake hands with during the christian greetings portion of the service. and so, the literal move went fairly smoothly. the figurative one? well, that'll take more time to figure out.

on to the service. the one that would introduce our new "leader". the one that would carry us into the next era of our church. first impressions are everything. for everything that rick lacked, he made a good first impression with his first service. sarah and i talked about how one could literally feel the congregation breathe a huge sigh of relief during rick's first service and know that there would be a chance to heal after charles lee dug a hole for us and threw us in. i'll cover the first impression that was chris denson's first service by looking at the pros and cons. let's start with the cons. like everything post-yesterday, i am going to make an intentional effort to end positive even if there are crappy things to mention.

the cons:

* why is it that we can't get through a whole service anymore without a technical glitch? joe crump, noted techno-wizard and old guy, struggled through the ENTIRE introduction of the denson family with either a faulty microphone, a faulty soundguy, or a little bit of both. granted, chris denson had nothing to do with this, whatsoever, but it makes the church look stupid. not a good start.

* joe crump, also known in some circles as "the only guy that could suck the joy out of the fact that we have a god that loves us so much he sent his son to die for us", tells the congregation and the new pastor that he hopes that rev. denson can be successful in "sustaining the vitality" of the church. WTF? did i miss something? obviously, no one has given joe crump a copy of my last post. being optimistic is one thing. being unaware or not true to your church's situation is another. of course, he might have been talking about sustaining vitality kind of like an emergency room doctor might want to sustain the vitality of a person that had spent the last half-hour underwater but miraculously started breathing again when they got him to the hospital. "ok!!! we've got a pulse, people!!! let's sustain that vitality!" i mean, i guess our church does still have a pulse, right?

* during his sermon, dude cried. those that know me know that i am not a big fan of tears. so, he starts the story with how we are raised by imperfect people and i anticipate him spinning it towards a perfect god, yada, yada, yada. nope. he starts talking about his dad painting a picture for him and feeding the homeless (or the "untouchables"), both of which are awesome, but a little hokey for a first sermon. at least for me. and then he choked up and told his dad thanks. not a huge point against him, but the crying stuck out to me.

* the last con. and this one's kind of a biggie. dude sang. yes, he sang. and he has a beautiful voice. but he sang several, if not all (i kind of tuned out), the verses of he touched me. i got the point. "listen to the words. listen to god." but in the same way rick did not realize that "song of my heart" may have resonated in a negative way due to the poor memories of heartsong, i am not sure rev. denson understood that charles lee left us all feeling like we could use a little less singing and show, and a little more memorizing his sermon. the only thing i kept waiting for during the solo was for the guy to go into the choir loft, sit down at the piano and begin swaying side to side like stevie wonder. thankfully, that didn't happen, but the moment was lacking, again, in awareness, and you could feel how uncomfortable the congregation was at the time. maybe that was the point. if so, though, it was an ill-advised point.

now that i am through drinking my hater-ade, the pros:

* there was only ONE joke. just one. and it was kind of crappy. but that's awesome. you are not funny. and that is just fine. the era of stand-up routine followed by the "serious voice" is over. just a message. a very...

* scripturally-driven and centered message. one of the things that rick suffered from was starting with scripture and then losing himself in all sorts of tangential stories and bad jokes. this meant he had to use "the serious voice" to remind us that we were actually talking about god and kind of lost his audience along the way. at least for one sunday, rev. chris denson's delivery was different. he gave us some context help with the passage and preached on the passage. it was kind of foreign-feeling, but it worked ok.

* speaking of his delivery, it was, in a word, dramatic. where rick usually closed with "the serious voice" yesterday was all "serious voice". beginning to end. dramatic pauses. squinted eyes. eye contact with as many folks as possible. all of it. the new pastor has a very big voice and a good presence (and great hair!!!...a plus in any walk of life) in the pulpit and used both of those to his advantage. what i felt in D-R-A-M-A, though, i was able to forgive for the most part, because i felt like he meant what he was saying. even when he was crying about his dad, i still got the feeling he meant it. maybe he's just a crier. maybe he likes fried green tomatoes and doesn't care who knows, but i did get the impression he was genuine in almost every word and phrase he used yesterday. that, also, could be a huge and positive change from my (and others) perception of the previous two administrations.

if i were grading, i'd give yesterday's first impression a "B-". there was room for improvement but it definitely could have been worse.

there were rumors circulating yesterday that he's never been in a church with a daycare and humc will be his biggest church. both of those things bode poorly for the situation he's inheriting. but it will be several weeks before we know if he's in over his head or not.

i did leave yesterday feeling pretty good about, at the very least, yesterday. the guy seems interested in the challenge. that will help.

and so, i am back on board. for any of you that may read my thoughts here and consider huffman home, i encourage you to leap with me, one last time, into the idea that we can still have a home in huffman ten to fifteen years from now. no one is more cynical than i am. i'll admit that. but i am trying to remember what made me love huffman in the first place. i am going to try and be a part of a movement that will allow hannah to create those same memories here. not clearbranch. or trussville. or somewhere that doesn't seem to suck as bad as we do and have. this isn't a call to arms. it's just a request.

to those of you that i've been lucky enough to be in your lives and share humc with in some capacity, i am going to start annoying you soon.

and asking for your help.

i hope you consider it.

more on the church


sarah stumbled upon this (set date range from 2000 to 2006, click 'find church by name', type huffman and press enter) yesterday evening as she was trolling around the internet and happened to wonder if the folks in our techno-ministry had updated huffman's site in the recent past. we were both surprised to see that someone was at least on the ball enough to update the staff page removing rick and donna and adding rev. denson and lindsey hull, our new part-time children's director. as sarah continued to peruse the site, most of it terribly dated (unless youth choir has re-started at 530 on sunday evening and i had not heard), she clicked on the conference link and followed her interest to the link i provide you above.

i am going to do my best to post my long awaited, long-hyped children's place entry tomorrow before i go in and close the store. but before i did so, i thought it might be of interest to those of you that pay relatively frequent attention to this site (and by product of your interest, you being privy to my internal skepticism about my church's future) to point you in the direction of some cold, hard facts and not just my opinion on the matter.

it does not, in any way, shape or form, take a statistics geek to analyze our charts. 400 fewer members in our fold by the end of 2006 as compared to the end of 2000. 200 fewer in combined worship. and keep in mind that the years in question contain the end of not one, not two, but three alternative worship services "designed" to attract un-churched or de-churched persons. drops in professions of faith and baptisms are seen next, but both of those numbers were pretty weak even back in 2000. the first four charts are bad. real bad. but the most defining chart is the last one. our apportionments. most of you readers are aware of this, but apportionments are the portion of each united methodist church's budget that are pledged towards the conference whole. in other words, apportionments are a church's tithe toward the sum of our conference's parts, god's church and god's kingdom. only once in the six years charted did we even meet half of our pledge and in 2003 (charles lee's only full year), we didn't even reach 15 percent of our goal. as i look at this and reflect on the figures, am i the only one that feels uneasy? we do not, as a church, tone down our stewardship campaign and efforts when it's time to get ready for the next year's budget. but how can we expect our congregation to fully buy in (financially) to what we at huffman are doing if we cannot fully buy in (financially) to what our conference and god's greater kingdom has in store for our monetary gifts? we tell our congregation that what we give of ourselves god will return several fold. we tell our congregation that we should consider god first with our finances because he considers us first in all walks of life. we tell our members to not be afraid to tithe "your ten percent", because god will provide. but we, as a church, are not committed to this idea. if we, on the whole, are not convicted, then why should we be as individuals?

is there a direct link between the failure to meet our apportionment and our congregation fading away at an alarming rate? maybe not directly, but what i see is this. rather than recommitting as a church and saying, "ok. we are going to come at this from another direction. we will give god his first and work from there. we are trusting ourselves to fix this and it is not working. it is time to, literally, give this over to god and ask him for the wisdom to save our church.", we have developed a bunker mentality. instead we are saying, "shit. we are dying off way faster than we are reaching new people. so, let's see how long we can drag this out. we'll cut full-time staff to part-time. we will not readjust our apportionment because we can't afford to. and we will all sit indian-style with our fingers crossed and hope something happens."

that's just not how it works, folks. for all my gloom and doom, if you are inclined to trust the context of scripture, we see that god trusts and puts faith in persons and groups that trust and put faith in him. huffman is not holding up our end of the deal. and we are paying for it.

i am glad i happened upon some numbers that say that in a way that doesn't just come across as me whining.

out with a predictable and awkwardly scheduled whimper


i have yet to devote an entire post to the overall importance of the children's place to the future of huffman united methodist church. while that continues to brew, though, i will point out that our would be/could be fatal flaw reared it's head yet again on rick owen's last sunday.

this morning was "vacation bible school sunday" in name, but in action, it was moreso a glorified sendoff to a friendly pastor that ended up doing very little in his four years served to turn the downward momentum of humc. as mentioned, rick was and is incredibly likeable, which will always play in your favor if you are trying to cover up the fact that funerals over the last four years outnumbered new members (a big chunk of those new members coming via our hispanic congregation that we can't really talk to because they don't speak english) by 25 percent. being likable and funny in the pulpit may mask the fact that we are no closer to reaching our "community" than we were this time six years ago when we brought in charles lee. it may hide that our newly hired (part-time, of course) children's director had no idea (!!!) that vbs was a massive undertaking. but rick being likable will get a sunday school class named in his honor. it will get him a check from the church he is leaving to help with his "moving into your new house" expenses. it will also get the well-past-having-a-clue chair of our staff-parish relations committee to encourage folks to shake rick and pat and donna's hand before going to the fellowship hall to celebrate the "future" of our church because some of our congregation "may not care about vacation bible school".

and there you have it, folks. the telling quote of the day. does it make sense to schedule a reception honoring those leaving your fold in conflict with a pot luck lunch that lifts up children and families that still remain? of course it doesn't, but we stopped making sense a long time ago. in the world of huffman umc, it makes more sense to put on a happy face and tell a pastor (who chose to leave), his wife and a longtime member (that herself was pushed out the door) good bye and good luck, because, goshdarnit, some people might not care about vacation bible school.

and those peope will carry huffman's coffin when we end up folding into wilson'schapel/huffman/st.john's umc in ten years if we continue down this path. i am skeptical that things will ever be better than this. that we can turn our fortunes. but this is the bed we have made. can we all of a sudden change who we are? i doubt that we can. too many people have either left, stopped caring, or resigned themselves to the same thoughts that flood my mind every time i step into our church. we are not a place that we invite friends to. we are too depressing. too old. too boring. too content.

next sunday, a new chapter begins. will it be our last? next sunday, rev. chris denson will begin to understand that he has been sold and sent to a church of distinguished reputation that is now a house of cards. next sunday, i will take my bucket to the deck and start scooping. time will tell if we have the strength the patch the gaping holes.

time will tell if we can make everyone care about vacation bible school. and the children's place. and what terrible stewards of this church we have become.

yeah, but can he shoot?


an interesting story broke this week when projected number two pick in the upcoming nba draft, kevin durant, couldn't benchpress 185 pounds one time. espn.com's insider used this information to sell his point that greg oden should deserve the number one pick even more now. it all seemed kind of silly to me, but it made me happy that tons of folks picked up the "story" and had the same reaction that i did. something along the lines of, "yeah, but he can still shoot, right?" i mean, anyone who paid even a little attention to the ncaa season saw that the most dominant player in college basketball this year was kevin durant, not greg oden. i know. i know. greg oden's wrist was hurt. he's big. he's a center. he has more "upside". and that all may be true. but i know this, if i was starting my own nba team next year and had the number one pick, i would be taking kevin durant. the silliness and the attention paid to the fact that kevin durant can't benchpress 185 got me thinking about how little "tangibles" mean when it comes to sports and life itself sometimes.

there are countless examples (mike mamula, tony mandarich, robert gallery, sebastian telfair, kwame brown, todd van poppel, rick ankiel, among many, many others) in every sport i follow of workout warriors that wow scouts and teams with their sheer physical "tools", but suck when it comes to translating those "tools" to their respective game. i understand that combines and scouting are essential to the process of pro sports in the same way that school is essential to some careers. i wouldn't want medical advice from someone that had decided medical school wasn't necessary in their career development and i wouldn't want to to be a passenger on a flight manned by a pilot that was in the process of teaching him or herself how to fly. but most careers and jobs are not that school specific. and no sports are.

in football, basketball and baseball, does it help to be strong and fast? absolutely. the cream of the crop in most sports are the players that can combine superior physical talent with an abnormal football, basketball or baseball i.q. but can you be good or even great without the superior talent? i don't know. ask ben wallace. terrell owens. joe montana. george brett. dale murphy. bruce bowen. steve largent. rickey henderson. mike piazza. i could go on and on with a list of guys (sorry, girls) that weren't considered the most supreme talent, but went on to all-star to all-pro to hall of fame careers.

in jobs outside of sports, does it help to be "educated"? definitely. sometimes, you have to have that piece of paper to get in the door. but then i think of the field that i am in now, retail, and how little it has to do with education and how much it has to do with people and life experience. and how if i was starting a retail establishment today, my first pick wouldn't be my step-brother who just finished up at dartmouth. it would probably be my brother in florida or my 30 year-old co-worker at psp that has done a lot of drugs. i would pick them because they know how the world works and they know how to make something out of completely nothing. they've seen the bottom of the barrel and decided to scratch and claw their way out of the muck instead of just giving up. are either of my examples "there" yet? i and they would probably say no, but saying that would only add to my point. they would understand that life is a process of ups and downs and that the "tangibles" of life (education, etc.) mean very little when life throws you a curve or a big fucking rock, depending on how bad your situation was/is.

i don't know if this post has much of a flow to it. i think i was just looking for a reason to talk about brian. it's not like portland will rue the day they didn't pick greg oden. he's going to be an all-star even if he's not as good as kevin durant. and some firm in new york isn't going to rue the day they didn't go to a rehab community in florida instead of dartmouth to handpick their next great employee.

i guess my idea can be summed up so. in the nba, any story that doesn't focus on someone's ability to play the game is pretty trivial. in life, any story about a person that doesn't focus on where that person came from to get wherever the hell it is they are today is also missing the point. i like that, for some reason, my life is surrounded with people that society (not to mention their own families) would rather sweep under a rug. and i like that i can speak for them and stand up for them not because they have asked me to or because it improves my resume, but because i think those people are the ones that matter most in the grand scheme of things.

that, and maybe because i am one of those people.

writing through lebron colored glasses
(hannah and me, part twenty-five)


i knew that i wanted to sit down and write this morning, but i didn't really have anything gnawing on my creative nerve. truly, the only thing i can think of this morning is lebron james and how happy i am that i didn't turn the tv off the three separate times i told sarah "cleveland just lost the game" and go to bed. but i do know that it's been a while since i went "hannah and me" on y'all's ass, so i'll just talk about her for a few minutes.

hannah is going through a "phase". i hope it's a phase. i really do, because there are many times in the last month or so when her hard-headedness has left me wanting to find a brick wall to drive my head through. i have been hesitant about talking about it here, though, because i can already feel the eye-rolling and hear the snickering from the parents that may read this and have already dealt with a three year-old and i can't stand the thought of them saying something like "oh, they are just three.", or "you are getting what you deserve.", or "they are acting just like you at that age." all of those things may be true to some degree, but damn if that doesn't simplify things a little too much, right? i have never been a huge fan of painting with a broad brush or generalizing to the "n"th degree. it just makes everything seem too "ecclesiastes" for me. 'there's nothing new under the sun'. 'your own opinions are just variations of opinions of people that came before you.' bullshit. bullshit. bullshit. everything than hannah is doing right now, every way that she is reacting to me and sarah, every button of mine that she is pushing has EVERYTHING to do with me. and her mom. and the teachers she's around at school. and her classmates. and people at church. and she, in a very natural and reactionary way, is developing into her own little person that, oftentimes, is not happy with the direction her world is taking. and when hannah ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

all of this, the newfound attitude and aptitude for displaying said attitude has made me question and account for my role in what is going on. am i doing what's best for her? am i making the right decisions? am i treating other people in a way that she'll see and want to treat other people? most of the time, i think the answer is yes. sometimes it's not. tuesday night at softball (church league, mind you), some dickhead was flapping his lips all game. i mean, all game. and he sucked. so, finally, as he was on third base talking shit and prancing around and off the bag like an idiot, i told kiker that if he left third base again to throw the ball at his head and maybe we, as a team, could teach him an important life lesson. that lesson? don't be a dick. the dick and i (who i am sure came across as a dick too) jawed back and forth. he wouldn't shake my hand after the game and i imagined this scenario in my head this morning while i worked out...i imagined walking up to the fields next week with hannah and coming across the guy and him making a comment or asking me if i was going to raise my daughter to act like i did in the softball game last week. and my immediate imaginary response to his imaginary question was, "if by raise you mean crack on douchebags when she grows up? then yes. yes i am." i then imagined hannah telling maine about softball asking her what a douchebag was. ugh.

clearly, i have some work to do. as a person and most definitely a parent. i mean, i will definitely raise hannah and caroline to be aware of douchebags and be able to call them out in a very clever and articulate way, but i have to be careful in how i raise her to define a douchebag. i can't go painting with a broad brush.

hannah's "phase" has an awful lot to do with me. i know that. she is stubborn because her mommy is stubborn and, dude, i am fucking stubborn. but she is also very, very sweet. quick to hug. quick to smile. quick to talk to complete strangers and quick to make most people around her fall in love with her. i hope there's a little some of me in all that too. and i hope that as she grows out of this phase and into the next, i can help her sweet to rise and her sour to sink.

love you, baby girl.

p.s. - amare may have the tattoo, but lebron is black (basketball) jesus.