inventory
(hannah and caroline and me, part thirteen)


some words don't have much of a chance, do they? some words are so soaked in negative connotation, they have little chance of ever bringing a smile to our face when we utter them. there are good words. pizza? mmm. i am smiling. football? a little bit of warm just traveled from the tips of my toes to the tops of my ears. beach? yes, wave, you may crash on top of me. and then there are bad words. homework? jeez, dude. don't you know dancing with the stars is on tonight? chores? no, really. i'd love to clean out the cat pan this time. coldplay? christ. and i thought u2 took themselves seriously. inventory? oh, god. not inventory.

the birmingham/tuscaloosa market of pet supplies "plus" has been sold to a group from michigan. this group already owns and operates four other psp's and will be looking to put their stamp on us sooner rather than later. to do so, they'll, of course, need to have an accurate inventory on their books to know what we have and what we need to get to start shaping our stores in the same mold that their stores have found success. that inventory is tonight. ugh. i'd tell you that i was excited, if by excited i meant that i was going to be forced to listen to the new coldplay album (again). i am working myself up for it to be far worse than it will be just as i do with everything. i don't even have to do much, if any, of the actual counting. i will just have to help clean up the store after the rgis inventory company destroys it doing their thing. inventory is just one of the pains in the neck that i never got to experience until i found my way to retail. it's a necessary evil. one that i can't avoid. one that i might as well suck it up and find a better attitude about. t-minus nine hours 'til go time. here's to finding a fake smile for my face.

as i (and we are) am wont to do, i'll use any real life excuse to get into the figurative part of my brain. spending time with (my side of the, for once) family will help accomplish that mission with ease. the last month has been a heckuva month for taking inventory on what i do and what i don't have when it comes to family. beginning the weekend of my and sarah's sixth anniversary, we had good times and normal times and not-so-good times with almost every important character in our family's story. good times with rebecca and emma. good times with sarah's grandfather and aunt and uncle. really good times with brian. normal (in a good way) times with sarah's mom and joseph. normal times (in a normal way) with my mom and ken. normal times (in a not-so-good way) with dad. back to good times with my grandmother and my aunt and my uncle and their loving family. not-so-good times with hannah. wonderful times with hannah. normal (in a good way) to wonderful times with the baby, baby girl. normal (in a good way) to great times with the wife. and that about covers it. pretty vague, huh? i guess so. sorry about that. i find that some of these posts find their way into being conversations in and of themselves. some of these posts find their way into being intended to start conversations somewhere way down the road. this is one of those posts. and therefore, probably not very interesting altogether.

inventory is a pretty ugly word, in my mind, most every time i use it. sure, there are good reports, reports that make you comfortable that you are doing a pretty good job at whatever facet of life that you are taking a scientific look at. but there are always bad reports too. reminders of, whether i am talking about my store or my story, there is a lot of room for improvement. goals that i can attain if i add a little extra effort. aisles that can look a little sharper and be a little more up to date. lives that can be touched in a deeper, more meaningful way.

inventory is an ugly word but a necessary word if i am being truthful about never wanting to be stagnant and always wanting to grow. to get better. to be better. to want better.

i hate inventory.

if i was going to buy cocaine, i don't think i'd get it from jimmy johns


"why would he do something like that?"
"what was he thinking?"
"doesn't he understand what kind of opportunity he has?"
"how many chances can one guy be given?"
"why, jimmy?"

i don't know.

these and other questions have been asked since news broke that failed university of alabama mega-recruit, jimmy johns, was caught selling cocaine to the entire tuscaloosa police department tuesday. the first thing that i wondered was probably racist, but i wondered this. i wonder if a (alleged) partially literate, athletically gifted, black athlete really thinks in terms of chances when it seems as if no one has ever told him there is a limit to how many he actually gets. that was my initial, (most likely) racist thought. after stewing over it, i should and could just as easily drop the "black" from my question and the thought remains the same. it's not just black athletes that get preferential treatment. depending on what school is recruiting you, depending on what need you could fill for some pro sports team, it doesn't matter if you are black, white, american, european, etc. for someone, some school or some organization to rationalize long lists of misdeeds away if you can still benefit their cause at hand. could be football, could be basketball. could be baseball. wrestling. soccer. all of it is relative to who deems what important.

in this state, football is important. you don't have to follow alabama football closely to know johns' story. mr. football in mississippi comes to bama with all the promise in the world. he's going to be the next this or the next that. blah. blah. blah. turns out he had a pretty serious attitude problem and didn't get along very well with coaches/authority figures. he wasn't going to get a solid chance at playing quarterback, so he pouted. he couldn't take control of the running back position because he was never really a running back. and so, this spring, nick saban put him where the team needed help most. linebacker. don't worry about learning plays or schemes, jimmy. don't worry about blocking for your quarterback. see the ball. go get the ball. just hit somebody. and by all accounts, he could hit people pretty good. one ex-teammate said of johns that he was the most "talented" football player he had ever been around. and this came from a guy that played in the sec for four years. unfortunately, he didn't have a lick of sense. he had less of an education. and he didn't seem like he trusted anyone enough to listen when they told him he was making poor and selfish choices.

as it relates to the team, bama may have just rid itself, passive-aggressively, of it's last shula-era troublemaker. let's face it. jimmy john's was not going to be an all-sec performer. he would have been a serviceable back-up and he'd be really good at jumping up and down when he came on the field to get the crowd jacked, but the tide is not losing a special piece to the gameday puzzle.

his story, though, and those like his remain fascinating to someone that doesn't live in that world. the world where rules don't apply to you. or in extreme cases, rules are rewritten for you because you are just that damn good at one sport or another. it must be an amazing ride while it lasts. you can totally see how someone, especially some young person, that comes from limited means and education could get sucked into the make-believe world of big fame, big money and little accountability.

but what happens when the machine spits you out? where will this guy or guys like him be in five years? it's not like alabama football fans will care. who will? it's an interesting question. one that, honestly, i am glad that i never had to answer because i was too nonathletic (read: white). lord knows how many stupid temptations i succumbed to ten or so years ago that had nothing to do with the sports that i have always loved a little too much.

turns out jimmy johns wasn't much better at selling cocaine than he was at living up to his football "potential". here's hoping things get better for him after he gets out of jail.

and here's betting that they won't.

trending back towards the trivial
(that is, if you consider someone dying trivial)


"i could listen to george carlin for an hour and it would make me happy for a week." (hey! like a good worship service. mmm. a good worship service.)

there were many positive things said about george carlin in the wake of his passing yesterday. comedians loved the man. considered him a god of their craft. and there is no better judge of the way that someone lived their life than the regard that is bestowed (or not) upon them by their peers. carlin considered himself detached from the rest of the human race. the better for him to look at us with a finely tuned eye and skewer most of the things that we hold dear. race, religion, politics, sports. nothing was taboo. no subject was too sensitive to tackle. at his best, he was the voice inside all of our heads saying all of the things that we are too scared to say ourselves. at his worst, at least he was still trying.

there aren't many outlets in life that allow a person to be brutally honest, no matter the weather. and that's a shame. it's a shame that what set carlin apart from the rest of the world was that, while on stage, he let it all hang out. his inner monologue was on full, profane display for all of us to hear and see. and what did we do in the face of all this, this...honesty? we laughed. we laughed because we could and can pretend that he was talking about everyone but us and we knew what he was saying was spot-on. either we laughed or we "acted" like we were offended because he cussed a lot. "what right does he have to say that?" "you don't know me."

yeah, whatever.

in my life, there are things that make sense and there are things that don't. no big revelation there. i am the same as everyone else. one of the things that doesn't make sense anymore, though, is how, for the most part, we are so unwilling to make efforts at being self-aware. how we are so unwilling to be honest with each other. sure, it might sting initially, but wouldn't it be worth it? i am not looking down at anyone. i am looking in the mirror.

this lack of honesty. this lack of awareness. this "you people are too stupid to realize i am making fun of you" was george carlin's schtick. and it was funny.

and it's also pretty sad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YphEUa5LPjM

thanks for making me laugh and think, george

father's day
(part two)
((jesus christ! can't you just talk about the braves?))


i've touched on the idea of "how well do you ever really know someone" on this site before. the conclusion that i've always come to is pretty simple. you don't. maybe with a couple exceptions, you don't really know anybody. what you know and who you know of someone is nothing more than what any person decides to share with the rest of the world. snippets here. a couple "secrets" there. but nothing too personal. nothing too private. nothing too scary. nothing more than you need to know. it's obviously easier to digest that way. how's the weather? what did you have for lunch? what are you doing this weekend? did you hear chipper hurt himself running too hard again? who gives a shit? really? what does any of it matter? nothing, of course. and everything all at the same time.

for it's the slips from this norm when they happen that enlighten us to someone's true character. i can only imagine the first time a portion of the youth group at huffman heard me unleash my very blue tongue. "what did he just say???" "i think he said motherfucker." "can a youth director say that?" um. i don't know. let's go ask l12." but from that moment, from that slip, everything changed, right? no longer would i play the role of the closest example these young persons had to christ. i would just be kevin. human just like them. walking in the same direction. maybe a little further down the road. but we'd be working with each other along the way. i wouldn't be any better than them. they wouldn't be any worse for wear. it was what it was. now, this is just one example. the longer i was at huffman, the more slips there were. and the more the young people got to know me, the farther the cat got out of the bag that maybe this guy wasn't the best influence our money could buy. maybe we shouldn't really condone halo nights and family guy. that arc of my story ran it's course, and, as you all know, i moved on to something else. failing (depending on your definition of fail) fabulously with chris perry in huntsville.

which brings us back to today's main and surely elementary conflict. we are incredibly complex individuals, every one of us. each of us has incredibly varied experiences and adventures that define who we are on any given day. our lives make for good stories, sure, but each of our lives contain a complex metanarrative, a story about a story, that will never allow another human being to accurately define us. we, as fallible people, may have gone through similar situations, but every metanarrative is different. just like a snowflake. and this is why the "you don't know me" defense is so hard to crack. to one end, if you have offended a person to the point where they have to play the "you don't know me" card, technically, you should stop. because they are right. you are wrong. they played the ace up their sleeve. game over. it's infuriating, but it's true.

so now comes the tricky part. because some relationships carry such emotional weight and impact, certain things are bound to happen even if a particular character's arc has run it's course in your story. for example, let's pretend (remember, this is just pretend.) my father and i stopped talking for some reason unbeknownst to the both of us. a decision is made. a line is drawn. his character is pulled away from having an active role in the story of my life. in a perfect world, i would move on. find some other relationship to fill the void that remains from the energy i used to pour into actively loving and relating to him. in a perfect world, i would move on and find someone else. or several people. however many it takes to fill those shoes. in my metanarrative, though, i don't replace the void with something tangible. i replace it with a new story. one that i am making up in my head as i go along. in my complex and parallel life that is tangential to my real world, my father is still a character that is very real and very impactful in how i think about the world and how i react to real life situations.

do i know my (pretend) father anymore? well, no. of course not. i don't even talk to him. how could i know him? but knowing him in reality doesn't stop me from defining him. and the same goes for a number of people in my life that aren't really there but are still located in the synapses of my brain that make me feel something for them. even if, from the outside looking in, it seems completely retarded to do so. if we are still pretending to talk about my father, we might as well understand that the things i say about him here could just as well be written as a fictional story by someone that never knew the man. my and my brother's experiences have helped to shape the character in my head. but let's be honest. nowadays, it's just a character.

the fact of the matter is that i never really knew the man. his own story got in the way. scratch that. his own metanarrative got in the way. to make his real life better, some players that tried out for his story didn't make the cut. others did. once those roles were defined, the real-life story moved on from there and there was nothing i could do to stop it. i didn't get it at the time. and i don't want to get it now. i don't want to get my feelings hurt when "fictional" people throw themselves back into my real life in a way that is contrary to how i've romanticized them in my head. they don't know any better. they can't see the "big picture", because it's not their big picture.

i am no philosopher. i don't want to be. the more i think about stuff like this, the more i can totally see why we just talk about the weather. our head would explode if we started to talk about things that were worth half a shit.

it doesn't make me feel any better about what happened on this site wednesday. one "fictional" character getting bent out of shape because i was hard on another "fictional" character. the metanarrative butted heads with real life and edits were made because of it. seems kind of silly. i guess it's ok, though. it's another lesson that i hope i'll be able to articulate better as a father than i have as a son or a brother.

your goals in life, hannah and caroline? be true to yourself, whatever that ends up meaning to the both of you. be as honest as you goddamn possibly can with everyone, beginning at a very young age. love others as god loves you. and try to live the real story of your life and your metanarrative on as close to the same line as you possibly can.

good luck.

father's day
(oh, shit. where is he going with this???)


i thought about posting on father's day, but my emotions toward the day and my man in question would do a disservice to the warmth and happiness that rise to the surface for many on the day someone set aside to celebrate the bond between father and son/daughter. i can still be happy for all of those that are able to rejoice in their current relationship with their dad. that's the way it should be. i can wish things were different for those that mourn the relationship that was taken from them much too early due to tragic circumstances. and i can be happy about being a "daddy", myself. thus, i thought it was appropriate for me to wait a couple days before i mused on the impact that my father currently has on my and my family's life.

i guess the easiest way to put it is that my relationship with my and my brother's father has become nothing more than a cautionary tale. kind of sad to think about it in those terms, isn't it? it is what it is. take it or leave it. it was easy to be reminded of the failure of effort on both sides last week when brian was in town. we talked a little about dad. but we weren't as much angry as we were resigned to that which had been laid in front of us to swallow. both us of had made efforts to contact him in the month or so leading up to brian's visit (me, for caroline's baptism. brian for some legal advice.). we were both ignored for whatever reason. after all, whatever the reason for us not being worth a phone call or e-mail back, it had to have been our fault, right? of course it was. there was some solidarity to be taken out of the rejection and we did wallow in that for a short period of time. but i think brian and i, both, are mature enough now to not let our hurt feelings ruin what was otherwise a splendid time together.

this much is now true. it would be really easy, from a jilted son and brother's point of view, to bash everything that is ... (edit.) ... i am not that petty.

or am i?

so, i will choose to learn what lesson i can from the cautionary tale. mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be (edit). alright. sounds reasonable. where he runs, i'll stay. where he forgets, i'll remember. when he ignores, i'll pay attention. cool. can do.

soon enough, my daughters will redefine for me what father's day should mean going forward. they'll pick up on the cheesy commercials and think they should make me a card or buy me a tie (wouldn't that be silly?). they might make us all go out to eat. do the laundry for me. cut the grass. treat me like a king for one day even though i am more deserving of something far less. and all of these nasty thoughts and emotions that i still carry with me will be transported to some place in the way back of my mind and i won't think about them nearly as often as i do. i won't think about, in spite of everything petty i said (er, edited) above, that i still love my father very much. i still wish and wonder every day if today will be the day that we can push aside what is in our way and be father and son again. that, one of these days, before he gets too old and i get too disinterested, we could go back to an alabama football game or throw a ball around in the backyard or talk about how stupid it is that we have lost years on top of years of time because my ass and his ass are both too stubborn to fall on our swords. i still wish for him to understand that brian is the most interesting person he's never met and spend the rest of his days mending that fence.

who knows. maybe one day, we will have our luke/vader on the deck of the death star moment. a moment when we peel off the broken pieces, look at each other, say we are sorry and move on. maybe that will happen. odds say that it won't, but i will stand at the ready for the chance that it might. danny (who, i swear to you, used to be brian) from ahX is right. "hate is baggage". i'd love to throw mine over the side and into the ocean. let someone else deal with it. i want to. but, i can't.

not yet.

(sorry this doesn't make any sense anymore. i have removed words that were hurtful to someone i've never had a beef with. if you are interested in the version that was posted earlier today, just shoot me an email. chances are you are not that interested.)

gosh. is that it?


we talked about it in every group today, how vbs seems to have flown by this year. i am sure part of my feeling that way has to do with my missing a couple days, but it does feel like just yesterday that i was making my return to the hallowed halls of the education building, circa vacaction bible school week.

it was, indeed, good to be back. the numbers of kids were significantly down from the last time i was helping, but no more down, percentage-wise, than any other ministry of the church i would guess. the number of "church" kids involved in the proceedings was frighteningly low and hopefully will be taken into account as a (if not the) major issue as the church looks to replace our recently departed associate pastor. numbers shouldn't tell the whole story of vbs, though. they should just play a bit part. and from where i was sitting in the storytelling room, it seems like that notion held true. the kids that were lucky enough to participate this year didn't have to suffer from second-class anything. the overall theme was fun and well-organized by tanya and her team. the centers, as reported by the kids that came through our room, were all entertaining and educational at the same time. the sets in the sanctuary were amazing. and the adult and youth help all seemed genuinely happy to be a part of the "beach party". it was nothing short of a quality week. exceptional quality. considering how few of our actual membership were present this week, weeks like this week remark, with a very sharp tongue, the potential that a (even an incredibly shrinking) church our size still holds if we ever decided on a common goal more pointed than "making and growing disciples". here's hoping that may, still, be in the cards for us.

of course, the highlight of my week was my room, but it wasn't because i was so awesome and lived up to my own lofty expectations. it was that the folks that breathed life into the room, every single one of them, were young persons of huffman past that came back for (at least) one very specific reason. vacation bible school. for the memories that still remain from their own vbs's. to memories that were forged while throwing rubber balls at mouth-y 5th graders. to memories of red light, green light. to memories of syncopated bible verses. to holding crying children in their laps. to thoughts of what vacation bible school does mean. to thoughts of what vacation bible school should mean. to thoughts of what vacation bible school will mean. some of these memories? shallow. some of them? deep. all of them? important. and critical to laying a foundation somewhere deep inside a kid that will remind them somewhere down the road that there is a freaking god out there, somewhere, that loves them immensely.

thank you to all of my help. you guys and gals know how special you all are to me. i know that vbs isn't the end all. it's just a seed, planted and waiting to be nourished. but it's a good and worthy seed. and it's a good and worthy waste of all of our time.

halloween carnival, joseph?

"you have plenty to write about this week"
(wrong again)


i guess sarah put my thoughts into the right perspective when she said to me as we were driving away from the church sunday, "today was set up to be awkward." she was right. it hasn't even been two weeks since julie found out that she was moving. the sunday after she did, it was announced from the pulpit that she would be forced (er, asked) to preach "one last time" for us on her getaway day. there were presentations to be made. tears to be shed. people to be thanked. and all of it was entirely genuine. even the testimony at the end was genuine, if not ill-advised. so, i won't spend too much time on what i thought was right and what i thought was wrong with the service. it never was going to be a worship service. it was always going to be a ceremony. and that's fine. i should've prepared for that going in. it was stupid of me to think that it would've been any different than it was. maybe if i had lowered the bar ahead of time as i am so often wont to do, my reaction shots that were obvious (as they always are) from the choir loft would not have been so (again, genuinely) demonstrative. curse you, expectations. you foiled me again.

on to more important things. brian o'kelley made his way to birmingham sunday after lunch. brian made his way home to continue his effort to make right with his past. to reconcile debts and deeds that could, very well, have been forgotten for good. that would have been the easy way to do it. he's got a good job. he's got a new life with new friends that don't have anything to do with what he may, technically, owe to the cities of birmingham, irondale and homewood. in the city that has seen his literal and metaphorical awakening, that shit is just water under the bridge. a good story that he could share at aa or na and be patted on the back because he found his way to that meeting with the good news that he's clean and headed in a new and positive direction. all of those debts and deeds could have been forgotten. depending on certain statutes of limitation, they may have eventually been forgiven. who knows...hmm...yes, who knows? who could i ask something pertaining to "the law"? who do i know that is in the presence of lawyers every day of his work week and could find me an answer to that question that i ponder about statutes of limitation? ah, fuck. i don't really know anyone like that. (you don't count, donna. the pointedness wouldn't be funny if there was a true answer to my rhetorical question.) not anymore. i digress. running away was no longer an option for brian. for him to have the freedom that a reinstated driver's license might afford him, certain things had to be taken care of. he is here to take care of them. he is way more brave than me.

i make my return to vacation bible school (along with some good, experienced help) tomorrow. (joseph shared the way he saw things with the vbs'ers this morning.) i am excited to be amongst the fold again. it wasn't that long ago that we oversaw massive dodgeball wars followed by the clapping of that day's scripture. it wasn't that long ago, but, boy, was that a long time ago. we stick to the script now, which is probably for the best. we will, to be sure, do what we can to infect the proceedings with some fun that might not come with your regular, run-of-the-mill retelling of the story of jesus and thomas. we'll walk the halls and sneer at those that haven't seen us around these parts in a while. we'll glare at the folks that thought things were better off with us gone. we'll walk with a gait that suggests something more dubious to our presence. something that suggests we are here to begin taking back what is just as rightfully ours as those that we have all but left behind. and we'll refer to ourselves constantly in the third-person plural because a collective is more intimidating than one man. a (figurative) body, even the parts that sometimes make us sick, carries more weight than an individual that may or may not hold a grudge.

actually, i won't do that at all. i'll be nice as i always am. and i'll show the kids why vbs should be a highlight of their summer and not a momentary and unwanted pause between xbox360 and the beach. i'll just kick it with them like in the old days. that should be fun enough.

so long, julie. thanks for the book.

"i don't want to be a light that hangs around your wrist"
(so long and thanks for the memories)


well, there goes the neighborhood. this news broke around lunchtime yesterday. john smoltz is done for (at the very least) the season. i won't spend much time romanticizing and waxing nostalgic about his awesomeness. a lot of that will go on today on other sites. it's not that i didn't like smoltz. i loved him being a brave. but i was never a "smoltz guy". i am a hudson guy. and before that, i was a maddux guy. but i will miss him and what he brought to the table for my braves. it does piss me off a little bit that, since the news broke yesterday, reporters, players and commentators (hell, even smoltz himself) have been coming out of the woodwork talking of how they "saw this coming", that they've known he's been in constant pain since the spring. would've been nice to share some of that info with the fans so we didn't get our hopes up. oh well.

good-bye, john smoltz. hope the surgery goes well. i am sure we'll see you on the fox saturday afternoon broadcasts sooner rather than later.

oh, and the season is now officially over.

this is what it looks like when i unleash the fury

dateline: pinson, al (photo: jacob sutton)

a picture's worth a thousand words, huh? we'll see about that. the little blur just to the right of kevin williams standing on first at the ready (with his hands on his hips, no less) to take off as soon as i make contact with the slowly-pitched softball? the blur is what's left of a screaming liner i've driven between the shortstop and third-baseman. at least, that's how i would tell the story to someone that didn't see it with their own eyes. truth be told, there are all sorts of things wrong with this picture. my weight-transfer is all off-balance as you can tell by the look of my falling backwards in the box. my uppercut of a swing is the tell-tale sign of why the hit was a grounder through a hole in the infield and not a laser over the left-fielder's head. my head is already worried about where the ball is headed rather than staying down on the pitch. but...since jacob captures the fact that every muscle above my ankle is clenched and working toward the common goal of getting my ass on base, it still looks pretty cool.

this is the vantage point of humc softball's fans, and this is a nice way to think of hannah remembering her daddy's athletic exploits. a picture, frozen in time, that alludes to what-used-to-be my athleticism slowly, but surely giving way to mornings-after where "i feel a lot more sore than i ought to."

not that i am "old" yet. and this is not going to turn into an ode about "what used to be." i am completely happy that i still have the want and the ability to go play outside like i did when i was eight years-old. i was just flipping around the internet this afternoon, caught this, and felt pretty good about this moment.

on a number of varying levels, this moment defines a lot about what is happy in my life. being on a field. family in tow. friends that i share a dugout with. balls. strikes. grown men taking a recreational game of softball way too seriously. dirt. scowls. shouts of praise. groans (and curses) of regret. competition. camaraderie. good-lookin' jerseys. knee-high socks. sunsets. winning.

i was able to go to church this morning for the first time in a few weeks. during the sunday school hour, my senior pastor walked into our class and shared a different kind of "moment" with us. he told us it was ok to grieve the unexpected loss of julie and that we, as a group that was somewhat close to julie, would not be forgotten as the church moved forward. he may have meant every single word he said, but he was still full of shit. because he is either too naive to see the same writing on the wall that i see or is lying to himself (and us) by refusing to look in that wall's direction. i am not sure which would be worse. what followed was a worship service where, outside of communion, bill cosby was the highlight (and the main attraction for those keeping score at home. it's been a bad month.). i would try and explain the interjection of old-school stand-up into our service to you, but it wouldn't make it any less ridiculous.

you know what, though? i am not going to let it ruin my afternoon. nope. i won't let that or the rain that got in the way of my necessary yard-work ruin the sign from god (or my normal internet surfing routine) that i should focus on the moment captured in the above photo and all the pleasant things it brings to mind.

now, if you'll excuse me, my head has an afternoon appointment with a brick wall.