Sunday, February 28, 2010

Thursday, February 25, 2010

why didn't someone tell me this?


what does it tell you about kevin o'kelley that you didn't already know if i told you the above story kind of made me sad when i read it today?

it tells you that i had a two year subscription to wwf: the magazine that i paid for with my own allowance when i was a kid.

that is all.

Friday, February 19, 2010

hannah and caroline and me
(part thirty-three)


this much was always going to be true. the girls were going to be fine.

from the preparatory trips to wal-mart to the arrangements made with marie to the time with kay-kay and jane to the getting them up and ready for school, things were going to seem smooth to the girls. we wouldn't have had it any other way, right?

aside from the occasional, "where's mommy, daddy?...airplane???", caroline got along quite magnificently without her favorite parent. she didn't hit me in the face this week. not once. she let me get her ready for school. she let me put her to bed. she let me take care of her when she threw up fruit snacks on us both this morning. we shared popcorn this evening. and now, the week without mommy is over for her. in the morning, we'll go pick up sarah from the airport and everything will be back to normal.

or will it?

hannah's got a couple more hours left. we negotiated her terms early in the week. she would sleep with me in my bed the two nights i didn't have to get up and be at the store, tuesday and tonight. having that carrot on the end of the stick to dangle and threaten to take away was the only ace in the hole that i had, but, luckily for us all, i never had to play it. i told her this morning that my report to mommy would be one of glowing pride, because she was everything that a big sister needed to be this week. she followed directions. she helped when i asked her to. she got to bed at decent times. she was fairly easy to get up and moving in the mornings. she was concerned this afternoon when i told her that caroline had been sick earlier in the day. she was everything that a big sister needed to be this week. and more.

i'd like to think that i know what i am doing as a parent. after all, i have six-plus whole years (right???) of experience under my belt. i know the way to the emergency room. i know how to operate a thermometer. obviously, i can make adjustments to my schedule on the fly. also obviously, i can also clean up vomit with the best of them. i bought saltines. chicken noodle soup. no ginger ale, but caroline was never going to drink ginger ale anyway. i can use my debit card at any assortment of food-making establishments. i can make a baby bun. i can comb wet, curly, knotted up hair. i can read (bedtime stories). i can be patient with a two year old that wants to dress herself. i can be reserved and kind to a six year old that is asking (figuratively) for me to knock her teeth out. i'd like to think that i know what i am doing as a parent.

as a matter of fact, i have no idea.

when i've been confronted with these "mommy days out" scenarios before, it's been with an anxious and angry, at times, temperament. "i didn't sign up to be a single parent" is what i would mutter under my breath. selfishly, i would wish for the time to zoom by and not take in what an awesome and memorable experience these trips that mommy was taking could be for the bond between a father and his daughters.

i have fallen quite nicely into the cliched role of "goofy dad that doesn't really know anything".

poor kevin. he's such a jackass. they are going to chew him up and spit him out.

maybe. maybe not.

i may not know anything about being a parent, but i know this. this week was easy. i mean, easy. not a complaint will come from me about it all. why is that? why did it feel so different than the other times? why was i so much more easy going and ready for the challenge?

well, the easy answer would be the cancer. my life flashed before my eyes, i realized that i wasn't promised another day with them, much less the opportunity to walk them down the aisle, much less the opportunity for them to come visit me in some nursing home in fifty years. i got the cancer and it completely changed me and now i am not such a douchebag.

maybe. maybe not.

what i know is very little. what i figure is that the cancer plays into my new found confidence and go-get-em-tude. but i also figure that something else is changing inside of me for the better, something that comes from somewhere else that i have decided to let in for the first time in a while.

hannah and caroline are not the best kids ever. they probably piss you off when i let them run around the gym on wednesday nights. they probably are going to cuss in front of you at some point of their lives and you are going to think i am terrible. they are probably going be arrested in ten years because some boy convinced them that egging a house was cool. they are going to be their share of heathen. and when they are, i'll get mad and pretend like it is their fault and not my own.

but in spite of all that, they damn sure will be loved. if nothing else this week, i really loved my girls. i loved every second i was with them. i want to believe that they could feel it. that out of that love, we shared something that we couldn't quite touch that made us want to be better for each other.

i am ready for mommy to be home. my teammate has been missed. the girls are super-ready for her to be home too.

i am going to remember this week for as long as i live. i became a parent this week. a real one. not because of what i did or didn't do. not because of what i know, because i still don't know shit.

this week, there was something very unconditional about what was going on.

and that's what it's all about.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

the redemption of jordan schafer


it would make my world, MY WORLD, if jordan schafer batted .450 during the spring and forced matt diaz and stupid melky f. cabrera to the bench for opening day.

according to the linked story, it was the fourth game of the 2009 season that jordan hurt himself. game four! for two months, he was left to flail and fail by his manager that "all the players love" (yeah, i am sure schafer adores him) before finally being removed from the big leagues, demoted back into the obscurity of the minors to get himself "right". well, you can't get right if you can't get healthy, and schafer couldn't get right without surgery.

now healthy and swinging without pain, schafer will resume yet another climb back up the hill to the majors. he has more sheer talent in his rocket of a left arm than diaz and cabrera have combined.

here's hoping that schafer makes them remember why he was the "chosen one" long before julio heyward and here's hoping he never gives bobby cox any of the credit when he does.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

i should have seen this coming
("it worked")


of all LOST's storytelling devices (the traditional flashback, the mind-bending "future-back" or flashforward and now the brilliant flash-"sideways"), i think the current, flashsideways is the most intriguing. quite frankly, the more thought i've given it, the more i feel i should have known this was how it was going to end all along.

on a show that has given us as much depth, mythology and as many headaches as LOST, was it ever going to be as simple as the castaways thought? was it really going to be as easy as them being rescued, a boat (or freighter) out of nowhere coming to pick them up and take them back to the lives they all left behind? of course not! and so, with this season, we are being presented two different but very real timelines, two timelines that i imagine will ultimately be reconciled early on in the series finale, the show coming to an end in a two hour magnum opus that sees what is left of our heroes coming to terms, consciously, with their plan having "worked". worked, but maybe in vastly different ways than they would have imagined when daniel farraday initially presented to them his plan of devastative-redemption.

at least, that's my guess...i am sure i am wrong.

make no mistake. i firmly believe we as viewers were given a preview to how it will all end when juliet (or if you are sawyer...JUULLIETTTTT!!!!) told her love through miles from the grave that "it worked". of course it did. farraday was too brilliant for it not to, right? but as the producers hinted in a series premiere exit interview a couple weeks back, and i am paraphrasing, "the plan may or may not have worked. but if it did, the castaways certainly were only thinking of how it would affect them. if you reboot a timeline, surely there will be unintended consequences and after-effects." or, something along those lines.

what makes this storytelling conceit so fascinating is that we've all been there, right? if we have lived enough life, we have hit what, for us, felt like rock bottom. we lost our job. we lost a friend. we lost a parent. we lost a kidney. our life or someone we loved was forced to fight a battle with a disease they didn't ask for. we told a lie that we couldn't take back. we lost touch with our parents. something happened somewhere in the cosmos that turned our life down a path that we didn't want or didn't need, but we didn't have the power to fix it ourselves.

or,... maybe we did and could change it all, but we just needed a little help. a little nudge. the confidence from someone or some...thing that "you can do this". what if, at that rock bottom point in our lives, some version of daniel farraday presented themself to you. he was a genius. you trusted his plan. he knew it would work so, in turn, we wondered if we, too, knew it would work. he warned us that he couldn't predict how it would work. he tells us that there are risks. you would have to give up certain things to find your ultimate reward, your finding yourself away from your darkest hour, but you would get away from this one thing and you would be able to start anew with a second chance...at something.

would you do it? would you take it? would you take your dad back? your kidney? your job? your friend? your dog? your dream? even if it meant you might not remember the path that you had forged for yourself since that black moment? since you were shipwrecked on your own private "island"? i would bet you'd have made the best of your situation since then. i would bet that, in moments, you would have felt like your lowest point had somehow made you a better person. a wiser person. a more educated master of your world. but, if you could go back ("kate!!! we have to go BACK!!!"), would you?

keep moving forward? or not.

two steps forward. or two steps back.

our castaway heroes (or, at least our hero jack) let their daniel farraday convince them that they could do something that would prevent their plane from ever crashing on "this island". jack ran the risk of not remembering his kate. they all ran the risk of forgetting everything that they had become since they found their way to this place, this purgatory, this whatever it ends up being. they were presented with a plan, and they took it. they pushed the reset button.

and "it worked."

my hope is that, by the end of the season and series, jack will find happiness. whether it was the producers want or not, he is the only character i find myself hoping makes it out redeemed and "alive".

why is the flashsideways so incredible to me? because it presents "what might have been" and makes us ask the question, "is this really better than what we left behind?" as the story of LOST works its way to an endpoint, i am sure we will be served with the fact that there are pros and cons to both timelines. just like there are with any choice we make on our own journeys.

we can choose to make a difference or not.

we can change or not.

we can "limbo" or not.

we can be comfortable or not.

each way we go, there will be good days and there will be bad.

which way serves the greater good? which way serves the most people the most satisfaction?

where do we find happiness?

how do we find it?

do we do what we always have done?

are we happy with what we've always got?

do we "limbo" or find comfort in the limbo?

is this all there is?

can we find more?

do i drive out in the snow or do i stay home?

why am i scared?

there aren't any monsters in the closet.

or, are there?

should i look?

or should i wait?

why wait?

...

Thursday, February 11, 2010

johnny damon to the braves?


say it ain't so.

i guess it's baseball season now, huh? at least, we are getting close.

in time, you will start seeing this site taking a break from all the alabama hoopla and focus in on the braves. the primary reasons? there are four storylines that i will be following as a braves fairweather fan this year, and none of them have anything to do with melky cabrera. three of them have to do with "youth" and "the future" and "potential" and the same kind of hullabaloo that i gave you with 2008 bama recruiting class.

oh, shit. i can already see this is going to be annoying as hell.

maybe. but here is the thing. why is national signing day so wonderful for every school in the country? because no matter what anyone says, you can sculpt an argument around your school's recruiting class being the best and/or most efficient/effective in the history of college football and no one can truly disprove your claim. on signing day, it's ALL about potential. not one of the high school seniors has ever played a down in college, but you can take his grainy, youtube, high school highlight video and extrapolate it into a theory of why you are looking at the next herschel walker. people might tell you that you are wrong. people might say you are stupid. people might accuse you of indulging in too much of the crack rock, but what do they know? they haven't seen anything on the field that would disprove your "herschel walker theory", so you can sit on your couch satisfied with the thought that tomorrow will bring greater things as a result of this year's signing day haul. all that being said, i sincerely hope auburn's top five class ends up ringing in a new and improved era for their team. a college football season that marches towards an iron bowl with significant meaning for both teams is a better and more enjoyable college football season, in my opinion. auburn being good incites more faux "hate". auburn being good will bring more satisfaction when alabama kicks that ass. national signing day is great because it is ALL about potential.

same with spring training. you can think that the royals will suck in 2010. you can think the pirates may never win another game. and you may think that the red sox should be really good with their starting rotation that includes three potential number one guys. you can think a whole lot, but you can't prove shit, because every team is resting comfortably at 0-0.

i say that to say this. heading into spring training, i think there are four stories that will stir my salsa heading into april. i rank their importance, bottom to top.

4) the redemption of jordan schafer - i documented here on HACAM that i believe bobby cox ruined schafer last year. he was hurt early. still forced to trot out and work through his major league growing pains on the biggest stage and couldn't get his body and mind right after the first week of the season. i hate bobby cox for this, and i will always hate bobby cox for this. schafer may not be called up until september, but i will track him every step of the way and hope that he makes nate mcclouth expendable sooner rather than later.

3) is tommy hanson a number one starter? - he won't start opening day, but that's not the point. he scratched the surface of his potential after the braves waited too long to call him up last year. he'll be pitching, consistently, against the other team's second or third or maybe fourth best pitcher every time he takes the mound. he, in theory, should win those games, win eighteen all told and set himself up as the future of the braves rotation for years. we will see if that happens.

2) the return of my love - tim hudson will be back and pitching on opening day. stay safe, my dear. let me know if you need anything. ANYTHING.

1) is jason heyward julio jones? - we'll will get more into this soon. for those of you that follow this blog, though, and have any interest in the braves, you know what i am talking about here. more to come on the existential importance of jason heyward.

do note that not one of my storylines worries about the braves chances at winning the division. i would love it if it happened. but the braves didn't add roy halladay to an already stacked team. the phillies did. it's wild card or bust, in my mind, when setting a realistic goal for the season.

pitchers and catchers report soon.

roll braves.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

from the ridiculous to the pissed off


i dropped my new mytouch yesterday for the first time. here is why...

we've had an ongoing debate, issue, etc. concerning the parking lot and pick-up, drop-off situation at the church/children's place (daycare) for seemingly forever. there are many concerns, some of them valid. some of them petty. some of them nonsense.

the major, valid concern is the safety of the children (and their adults) that are coming into and out of the church. during the busiest portions of the morning and evening, the majority of our 125 children and accompanying parents are trafficking through the parking lot at the same time. our parking lot is not set up well for this amount of foot/car traffic. we have a drive-thru portico that the church spent a bunch of money on several years ago that takes up most of the what little extra space we do have and protects lucky folks from the rain on those occasional and annoying dreary days. yesterday, in fact, was one of those days.

so, what to do about all the congestion?

the temptation forever has been for parents to pull up to the curb next to the chapel to take their children in. this serves two purposes for the parents. one, they don't have to cross the parking lot/thru-way and their children are not at risk by said crossing. two, as sarah has mentioned, there is something psychologically appealing to saving the ten-to-twenty step difference between a parking space and the curb when you are running late or short on time.

however...

this presents problems. people get blocked in. the traffic curb-side interrupts with the traffic in the parking spaces to make the already narrow thru-lane even more narrow, thus decreasing the sightlines and making that thru-lane even more dangerous.

if you aren't lucky enough to get a curb side (non) space, you get pissed off at the people who do. if it is raining and that curb (non) space just so happens to also win you a lottery ticket underneath the portico, then people are going to be super-put-out at you, because, inevitably, your kid is going to have crapped his or her pants when you go in to pick them up and your car is going to be underneath the portico for thirty minutes while my ass is getting wet stuffing two obstinate children into the back seat of my soaking wet car.

deep breath.

we've tried to solution-storm. really...we have. we've painted the curb yellow. don't you see the yellow curb??? that means you aren't supposed to park here! obviously, that hasn't worked. we've put up "no parking" signs. you see??? it says "no parking". that means you aren't supposed to park here. obviously, that hasn't worked. we've purchased traffic cones to try and block the way to the yellow-painted curbs protected by the "no parking" signs. obviously, that hasn't worked.

so, what are you going to do about the situation?

there has been a thought that says, "why don't we just rope/block that entire front section of parking lot off, making it "walk only". kind of makes sense in theory, but...

don't you then just push the congestion down to the lower lot making it just as potentially unsafe as your current situation?

um, yeah. probably.

long story, short. there's not a good solution...yet.

personally, i don't give a rip. i never got pissed off at the people that parked by the curb even if it didn't make total sense to me. then again, maybe i am just never in a hurry. the only time that i ever felt or feel annoyed at the "problem" is if i am not lucky enough on a storming-ass day to win the portico lottery, but, even then, i am not pissed at the person that won the lottery. i am just pissed that i didn't win it!

which brings us back to yesterday morning. same situation as i've described above. all of the above factors are in play. it is raining, but, for some reason, the traffic cones have been used as a barrier to prevent ANYONE from winning the portico lottery.

yesterday morning, this pissed me off.

we have this daycare that is borderline amazing at this point. we've just installed a security system that everyone is in love with. we have a waiting list for the first time in years. we have teachers that are happy. children that are happy. parents that, for the most part, are happy. and we spent this money years ago for a portico that, for a few lucky kids and parents on rainy days, could possibly keep them from getting drenched, and we are flipping blocking it off?!?!?!

we pull up to drop off caroline yesterday morning, and i see this and it drives me crazy. what is the message, exactly, that we are trying to send? i have my phone in my hand. i open my door and put the phone on my side, but it doesn't click into place on my belt. i walk, with purpose, over to realign the cones so that the next person that drives up will feel like their day is made because they just won the portico lottery, maybe for the first time ever on the occasional rainy day. i lean over and feel the phone slip out of the holster, but i am not enough of a ninja to do anything about it. it hits the ground. the protective shell bursts open. the naked phone lands, face up, on the surface. i have two small nicks on the back of my brand new phone. sarah reminds me that, with the shell on, i will never see them. she is right, though i am no less pissed off.

it is sequences such as these that we encounter every day. the moon and stars and sun and parking cones all line up so that my phone gets jacked up, or you get stuck in traffic, or you are late getting to work, or someone that is pissed off at their crummy life yells at you because they can't really yell at their boss. sequences such as these land punches to our midsections every day and it's our job to deal with it. catch our breath and swing back at the day.

but, what if something could have happened to change the end result of the sequence? what if we didn't care so much about where people parked at the church that we wasted money on cones? what if i had actually clipped my phone into place? what if it didn't rain? what if every decision we made was proactive and not reactive?

"what if?", indeed.

"we try to make the limbo as tolerable as possible."

yep.

my phone is fine. until another sequence of events presents itself seven months down the road that leads to my phone finding its way into the toilet of the girls' bathroom. we'll see how i choose to handle that then.

every day we make choices that lead to a realization for someone, somewhere that something is amiss with our world. we come to these realizations far more often than we realize that our world is someway, somehow a beautiful place.

"to love someone is to know the song of their heart."

obviously, that didn't work.

keep moving forward.

"limbo" goes into labor tomorrow morning.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

"they have to say something deeply profound about nothing less than the meaning of life itself in order to make this thing work"


no pressure, right?

when did season five come to an end after properly introducing us losties to jacob and revealing that he had a nemesis we now know as the man in black? end of may, last year?

so, we are sitting at eight months since the mythology of the show changed or evolved in such a way that implied our beloved characters may be nothing more than pawns in a magical, mysterious game of redemption chess.

jacob vs. mib.

good vs. evil.

free will vs pre-destination.

who will win?

what's the prize?

"where are we?"

how will it end?

i can't tell you what i want to happen, because, really, i don't know. i suppose, at the very least, i just want to be entertained. i imagine now that i am so invested and so totally in love with this show that the very least is going to be accomplished in spades.

for me, once a tv show becomes more than just that, once it becomes an experience, then i am all in. and i've been all in with LOST for a while now.

i am sure i'll have more to say or to ponder tomorrow, after the initial shock and (hopefully) awe wears off. i'll try and post some unfiltered thoughts before i go searching online to hear and process what "everyone else" made of the premiere.

to those that aren't with "us", have fun watching the singing competition or playing yahtzee or whatever you'll be doing tonight. i am sure it will be every bit as rewarding as waiting eight months for two hours of television, only for those two hours to skip by like they were 30 minutes. ugh. it's going to be over before i know it.

then the countdown will be back to seven days again.