mixed emotions

i've had lou reed's "perfect day" stuck in my head all day...

...more specifically, the scene in trainspotting that it plays over. the scene sees our hero, mark renton, looking for "one fucking hit" and finding it in the desolate apartment of his dealer. the hit, predictably, brings more bad than good and mark's catatonic, eventual trip to the emergency room is soundtracked to the soothing sounds of the monotone reed. as the audience easily soaks in the irony of the lyrics, we are left to wonder if reed's alleged ode to heroin is meant to frame the druggie's experience as a baby step toward enlightenment and away from his addiction or quite verily what our protagonist was searching for. 

the angle of today's post has shifted a little in the wake of yesterday's storms. while not nearly as extensive or widespread and the fatalities far fewer, the tornado that ripped through tarrant/center point/clay/trussville hit closer to my literal and proverbial home than did the tragic and horrifying storms of last april. the sheer number of fatalities from 8 months ago is still terrifying, but the fact of my matter was that i knew very few, if any, of those that were directly impacted by the storm. the same could not be said yesterday morning. the vast majority of my friends either had some degree of damage on their property or were less than a stone's throw from where the tornado touched down. facebook, over 36 hours later, is still haunting to pull up. what new picture or video will bring us in closer touch with how quickly things and life can be taken away and crumbled into perspective and life lessons?

in turn, my family and i were one of the many "lucky ones", having only lost power for half an hour and cable for half a day, far smaller inconveniences compared to those whose houses are now shells of their former selves if they are even standing at all. i imagine the damage sustained by fellow church members, alone, could keep our congregation busy for weeks. stretch that out to include immediate families and friends, it could be months. 

before yesterday morning, i thought of today's post being one loathsome in self-pity. for months now, i've kept most of my fears to myself, because, surely, every one around me has got to be sick of my baby-ass whining about having had cancer. but the fears remained. after my scan last january, i let myself not worry about peeing blood for two or three months. around the beginning of summer, i started again talking myself into the idea of something growing inside me. by fall, i was sure of it. by today, you couldn't have convinced me otherwise. 

i said all the right things. 

"i don't have any reason to think anything is wrong." 

"i don't believe they'll find anything new or problematic." 

"why would they? they always told me mine was the best kind of cancer if you had to have it." (really, how ridiculous does that sound, even it turns out to be statistically accurate???)

"i am going to be just fine. of course i am." 

i said all the right things even if i didn't believe any of it. 

and so i've been imagining myself in my own version of the trainspotting overdose scene. was mark renton kevin o'kelley looking for that one last hit yet another scan (really, i've wished i could have one every day for the last six months) as a baby step towards my own personal enlightenment or was i secretly hoping that something would turn up so i could prove everyone that offered me comfort wrong or so all of my worrying wouldn't have been for naught. 

honestly, i don't know. 

i'd like to tell you without a shadow of a doubt that my worries were the manifestation of the figurative devil on one shoulder whispering nightmarish somethings into my ear easily shoo-ed away by the angel on the other side constantly reminding me how wonderful my life is. 

some days it was that simple. some days, it's not. 

and then the tornado ripped through my community, ripping me away from myself and my fears long enough to make my own self-pity look self-pathetic. 

i didn't write before my scan, because writing about me seemed pointless. 

i chose to write after, because good news is easier to digest than the complexities of paralyzing anxiety. 

i write today because today is a huge day for me, my unofficial new year's day. 

i am pained today because 2012 is already a year to forget for many that will be picking up the literal pieces of their homes for days, weeks, and months. 

cancer and her collateral damage is, was, and will always be a motherfucker. 

so, too, is life itself. here one minute, gone the next. a collection of things that can surely be swept away while we are sleeping.

i saw inside my body today. i saw a healthy kidney and other organs. i saw that i don't have to worry about peeing blood tonight, tomorrow, or the next many days. that's a nice thing. 

i saw the heart of my community yesterday and today, too. humans, untouched by the storm, caring for humans punched by it. 

tomorrow i move on with my body and my home intact and ready to roll. 

i pray for the motivation to help those that aren't so sure tonight because tornadoes are, were, and will always be motherfuckers. 

the final scene of trainspotting sees mark renton stealing from his friends one final time, walking towards the cameras with a wickedly narcissistic grin breaking across his face like a sunrise...

"...the truth is that i am bad person. but that's gonna change - i'm going to change....now i am cleaning up and i'm moving on, going straight and choosing life. i'm looking forward to it already. i'm gonna be just like you. the job, the family, the fucking big television. the washing machine, the car, the compact disc, the electric tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure wear, luggage, three piece suit, diy, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die."

i've got a lot of mark renton in me. fatalist. masochist. narcissist. every man. no man. 

i hope i've got a lot of kevin o'kelley in me, too, whatever that ends up meaning to my girls, my community, and the world around me. 

perspective is, was, and always will be a motherfucker. 

i've had a proper dose of it the last couple of days. 

i've also realized reasons to celebrate random catchings of breaks. 

happy new year. 

this is the sound of settling


so, i am two weeks into 2012, one week out from having my yearly scan, and i am nowhere near adjusted to what it means or doesn't mean to not be lay leader at the church anymore. as i wrote a couple weeks ago in my resolutions look-back, there was a great deal of fluidity, with regards to my effort that is, that came with the position anyway. after we get past the scan, we'll evaluate my view of that experience more fully.

there are a couple things happening right now at the church, though, that i am pretty excited about.

wait. what?

first things first.

i didn't have a great opportunity or the right amount of time to analyze here at HACAJAM the cancellation of wednesday night dinners this spring. to reopen that can of worms, given where we arrived as of tomorrow, would be counterproductive, but a short visit back will offer some context. according to our budget, wednesday nights had been bleeding money for a few years. our food costs were through the roof. our attendance, both for the dinner itself and the programming that followed, was in decline. knowing that our cook, ms. ellen, was retiring from the church in may of 2011, the church used the opportunity to effort in taking a qualitative look at what our congregation thought of the current wednesday night structure.

do you come?

why do you come?

do you like it when you come?

why don't you come?

would you come again?

what can we change to entice you to come?

how much would we have to pay you?

these and other questions were asked and the response was fairly tepid. the consensus seemed to be that there was a small minority that were going to be agitated if wednesday nights as we knew them went away. out of "financial concerns", there would be an even smaller minority that were going to be agitated if they didn't. and the majority of the church didn't seem to care all that much.

and so, programming decided we would move towards a discussion group model. dinners within those groups choosing to meet on wednesday would be handled by the groups, themselves. otherwise. no dinner. no corporate fellowship opportunity. the church would do that for 6-12 weeks. we'd see how it went.

from everything i heard (i did not participate in the first wave of options), those that participated in the discussion groups enjoyed their experience.

but, still, something seemed to be missing.

a facebook thread happened that may or may not have played any role in the eventual return of wednesday night dinners. other conversations happened. a (paid) volunteer emerged. an idea was pitched. accepted. more discussion groups were planned and arranged outside and around the renewal of something our church had done for a long time.

yada, yada, yada. wednesday night dinner, version "we take reservations now and only prepare for a specific number", begins tomorrow night.

for me, i am extremely excited. i hope i am not excited merely because i am comfortable with something "that we've always done", and i am not sure what led to the setting of the time at 5:00, making it super difficult for any working members of the church to get there. i am not sure if i want to know. right now, i just don't care. given the time obstacle, the fact that 59 reservations were made anyway announces loud and clear that there is a need being filled by the mid-week dinner at church opportunity. there being several different discussion group options after dinner is a plus, too. here's hoping the facilitators in those groups will be open to new folks showing up a week late if there are, indeed, folks looking for an after dinner conversation. and here's hoping that tomorrow night is the beginning of something new and fun and exciting that our church can build from and not feel obligated to.

that's possible, you know? we just have to think about it.

to the second thing at humc that i am loving right now.

wait? "loving"???

the best kept secret at our church is happening on sunday nights at 6:30. do you know what it is? chances are you don't, since there were only 8 of us there last week.

for the first time that i can remember, we have a sermon post-mortem discussion group!

oh, how i have longed for something to excite me about worship.

don't get me wrong. it's not worship. not yet (although we are still trying to work on that issue).

what is the primary take-away from your sunday morning worship experience? sure, you may have really enjoyed the communion service one week. or you may have really enjoyed the choir's anthem or the hymn selection on another. or maybe some crazy person wowed you with justin bieber and popcorn during children's moment and you couldn't help but be happy for the rest of the afternoon. chances are, though, that the thing you look forward to and remember the most is the morning's message. at humc, for what feels like hundreds of years now, the message is what has fueled the service. two liturgical readings bookend the choir's weekly showpiece, the pastor gets up, and goes to feeding his "sheep". either you take away something from the sermon or you don't, but the sermon is the show. everything else is pregame.

for years, as is the case with you i am sure, many of my sunday after-church lunches will involve my family and friends' take on the sermon. did it move me? annoy me? did he/she sweat too much? read too much? use his/her serious voice too much? tell too many jokes? try to be too cute too much? knock it out of the park? did i even pay attention? something else?

as far as i can remember, we've never had a discussion group built around exploring what was said versus how it was said versus what we heard versus what does it all mean? and now that we have it, i have zero idea why we haven't had ten of these groups happening for years! the group that gathered sunday was a wonderful cross-section of what our church currently offers. several different age groups and social groups and life-experiences were represented, all bringing their own unique take-away from how they received the morning's message to the table.

the beautiful part for me was that it removed most of what has come to annoy me with our worship service in general, the execution, and asked me to place more emphasis on what i process and look forward to talking about later on in the day with a group that i am certain will have different takes than me.

for one sunday night, i had fun at church, and it had nothing to do with limbo or the weeds, which, to be honest, i wasn't sure was going to happen again.

for one night, i looked forward to coming back the next week to see if the experience was a fluke or something that i could actively begin recruiting people towards.

for one night, not only did i leave with a figurative smile on my face, but i also left looking forward to coming back on wednesday, to have dinner with friends and family and my church and to go to yet another discussion group worth my time.  

what is going on around here?

i don't know, man. but i like it. i like being excited about something huffman is offering. something that isn't a once a year, stand-alone event. i like being super-pissed when i hear about people visiting and choosing to join other churches because i know that we could and should offer something every bit as relevant as they can.

if. we. so. choose.

so, why don't we choose?

for one night, i did.

to many more.

the only national championship preview that matters
(to me)


this is the day.

44 days following the beat-down of their outclassed, out-talented, and out-coached bitter rivals, the university of alabama plays for its second national title in three years.

i am ready.

i could bore you with a data/stats/analytics driven breakdown of what happened on november 5th versus what i think will happen tonight, but every name-that-sports-website has paid someone(s) to do that already. what's funny about that is you won't find a much bigger fan of data/stats/analytics than me. but, in this case, in how i feel things are going to shake down and shake out tonight, i don't really think it matters.

why?

it's all psychological. nick saban, in a recent interview, called out espn's tom rinaldi on the shaky notion that it's more difficult to beat a team twice in one season. in college football, there isn't enough quantifiable data to show any sort of realistic trends that would support the idea. think about it for a second. how many college football rematches in years past can you think of right now? one? two? three at the most? how did those turn out? do you think it matters how those rematches played out versus who is going to win the game tonight in even the teensiest, weensiest little bit? i don't.

the idea that it's more difficult to defeat another football team twice in one season is ridiculous, because the idea, in and of itself, is a media driven narrative. now, i will honor the thought that college athletes watch television. i will also honor and respect the thought that college-aged anyones can and are swayed by what they see on television, what people say about them, and what they hear they can and can't do. but, do i believe that even if the college athlete at lsu totally buys into the narrative and is totally anxious at his team's chances of beating alabama means any one thing once the game kicks off? i do not.

in football, there are three factors that i believe play the most realizable determinants in a football game. talent. coaching. execution.

who has the most talent? 

it's all in the eye of the beholder. if you are judging talent based on how many football players playing in tonight's game will play at the next level next year, espn's todd mcshay gives alabama the slight edge at 12-10. i think that's a fair assessment, and considering how the close the prediction is, i am willing to cede talent level in tonight's game as a push.

who has the better coaching?

again, which statistic would you like to rip to prove your case? nick saban has 2 national titles to les miles' one. les miles has beaten nick saban coached teams 3 times to two losses. neither group of coaches could defeat the other in regulation as recently as two months ago. although alabama fans would never admit it out loud, i am willing to say to you, today, that les miles has method to his mad hatted-ness and knows what he is doing, coaching-wise. if he does not, he has surrounded himself with a staff and coordinators that do. i am calling this a push, too.

who will execute more efficiently?

the question that will solve the riddle of this game. each team has a plan, their plan. each team, i suppose, firmly believes that if they execute their plan more effectively than their opponent, they will emerge the victor. those beliefs can be founded and supported by the respective successes of each team over the course of the 2011-12 college football season. they cannot, however, be supported by the outcome on november 5th, which, in my humble opinion, is where things get interesting.

i said as much in this post written on dec. 6.  to my eyes, alabama won the run of play on november 5th. what do i mean by run of play? it's something that i've talked about a lot, but something that i think still gets lost in translation because the majority in this country irrationally hates and does not watch soccer. their reasons being that the game is "boring".  ignorance is as ignorance does. winning you over on soccer can be another post for another day. while run of play is a fairly subjective term, the feeling of which team in any given contest is better is the most personal and objective of feelings. if i am the judge and the jury, which team does my gut tell me is the better team whilst watching any athletic competition? most often, the teams that win the run of play win also on the scoreboard. their style, technique, efficiency and execution supports their bid for goals/points/run in a more honest way than their opponent. the end result, the majority of the time, will fall in line with your gut telling you, "yep. they were the better team."

but not all the time.

november 5th in tuscaloosa was one of those rare exceptions to the rule. alabama ran the ball more effectively. alabama passed the ball more effectively. alabama defended the run more effectively. alabama defended the pass more effectively. for 53-57 minutes of the game, lsu, this team that is on the precipice of being crowned as one of the top five teams in the history of college football, was beaten. soundly. and i think they knew it. the most damning piece of evidence being the frustration of their heisman trophy finalist that led to the clothesline of dre kirkpatrick. teams winning the run of play do not react in frustration. teams that can feel they are not the better team do.

what i believe we will see play out tonight is more of the same. i believe alabama will have the best player on the football field in trent richardson. i believe alabama's defense, given 44 days to prepare for an offense they completely stifled two months ago, will contain lsu more effectively than lsu will contain trent richardson. i believe the want for revenge is a stronger motivator than is the want for recognition. and i believe that alabama's achilles heel in the first match-up, their quarterback, will be less terrible tonight than he was on november 5th. and make no mistake, aj was far less than average.

what i hope to see is alabama win by two touchdowns and turning the story the media is writing of this greatest team ever into a punchline. whether or not will happen remains to be seen.

if alabama wins, i do not care if it plays out the way i have seen it here.

if alabama loses, i will come back in a few days and try and analyze how wrong i was.

either way, i will entertain myself.

roll tide.

death and taxes


i can't remember how i old i was when i became aware that death was, you know, a thing. that happened. like, to everybody. like, whether we liked it or not.

i can't remember how old i was when i became aware that death was a thing, but i know for a fact that it wasn't when i was eight years-old. in the past six months, hannah has been dealt developmentally inappropriate emotional blows as she has now lost both of great grandfathers on her mommy's side.

now, whether this means she is worried about it happening to her or not, it scares me for her. she's an anxious, anxious, little girl anyway. if you are a follower of this blog or have been in the last couple of years, you know that she gets her anxiety quite honestly. not just from her daddy that worries constantly about everything, but her mommy is pretty good at worrying, too. she's just better at not crying at the end of wall-e and letting everyone in the house, children included, that in that moment at the end of wall-e she's he's scared of dying.

hannah worries and worries and worries about everything. the henson's house was broken into last year. now she worries about our house being broken into constantly.

"why didn't you lock the door, daddy."

"do robbers come at night?"

"do robbers come when you're at home?"

"do robbers come when you're in your car?"

she worries about being blown away in tornadoes. part of our nightly routine, every night, includes her asking me, "is it supposed to storm tonight?"

we constantly see her staring into space contemplating what we can only assume is the meaning of the universe. she'll snap out of the zone and ask a pointed question.

"do you believe in hell, daddy?"

no, baby, i don't.

"do you believe in seton?"

who's seton, baby?

"seton, you know."

do you mean satan?

"yeah, satan."

now, whether the god/heaven/hell questions have anything to do with her great grandfathers, i don't really know.

what i do know is her asking about heaven and hell freaks me out. the only thing existential i gave any thought to in second grade, from what i remember, was how my existence would be a whole lot less fun if i didn't play with my g.i. joe's some more.

in third grade, i memorized the books of the bible.

in fourth grade, shit, i don't remember anything from the fourth grade. can anyone tell me who my fourth grade teacher was at going? there is a reward in it for you if you can.

in fifth grade, i thought about girls. a fucking lot. girls and dodgeball. and football. and baseball. and more girls. and that girl i kissed behind the dumpster at our apartments. and g.i. joes. and nerf basketball.

not death.

we were at chili's last night talking about the arrangements for sarah's grandfather. hannah was working on her coloring page, and i think sarah and i, both, were operating under the delusion that hannah wasn't paying attention to us. of course, she was.

"did granddaddy die."

fuck.

i pulled her close to me and told her that we were waiting for a good time to tell her. she laid her head on the table and got sad, her little brain processing the news at the same time she was being annoyed at us that we had been holding something from her.

i made sure to tell her that she could ask us anything that she wanted. the worst thing she could do, i told her, was hold it all in.

for the next fifteen or twenty minutes, we talked about the events that led to lamar's passing. she took it all in.  she didn't get terribly upset. after we told her that she could certainly attend the viewing and funeral if she wanted to, we changed the subject.

she and sarah are in georgia tonight. sarah told me that she didn't avoid the presented body. what goes through and eight year-old's mind when she sees an empty vehicle that was very much alive just three short weeks ago and now lays frozen in time forever in front of her.

god only knows.

there is a part of me that hopes this is a memory that doesn't stick in her craw. something that five or ten years from now she recalls as clearly as i do fourth grade.

being aware that death is, you know, a thing doesn't seem fair for her to worry about.

not yet.

if this is added to her list of nightmares, i beg that i am more patient with this one than i am with the robbers or the storms or the things that go bump in the night ones. with those, i am now impatient. i forcefully implore her to recognize how ridiculous the notion of me not taking care of her truly is, and i tell her to go back to sleep...or else. this method is every bit as effective, of course, as it is someone telling me that "everything is going to be alright." when i am violently shaking in fear in the floor of my bathroom in the middle of one of my deathdreams.

what will i do if and when she wakes me up in the middle of the night and her question has nothing to do with the weather but is something along the lines of, "am i going to die, daddy?"

i have no clue. maybe i'll just offer her some ice cream at 2 a.m. and hope it induces nightmares i feel more qualified to speak on.

jesus.

you're a brave girl, hannah. i love you.