First and Last Post

I read on some advice blog, a blog about blogging, that you should treat every post as your first.  On another advice blog, this one a technical site, it said to treat every blog post as your last.

Unless you are a novice at this, get paid for it, or are just plain crazy, you could be on the verge of ending the whole damn thing.  I know I am.  It takes effort and a certain amount of commitment.  And, to really make it big, even medium, you need to be a whole lot more technologically savvy than I am, and a lot more aggressive than I am, and a lot more willing to be just a pawn in the game here on the innerwebs.  Basically, I don't want a G+ account or a Twitter account or a Discus registration password or a YouTube channel or, for God's sake, a Pintrest page.  I don't want to beg and cajole everyone I know to get four-hundred Facebook friends or thousands of likes on my page.  The frustration of all of this sometimes makes me feel like giving it all up.  Done.

I'm not doing it right, am I?

And, I am pathologically naive.  I thought that if I offered up something interesting and new people, well,  would read it.

On the other hand, the assertion that we should treat every post as our first is extremely valid.  I have said repeatedly that this is a stupidly ass-backwards medium.  When you go to a site for the first time you read the most recent post, maybe scroll down and that's what you get, right off, the most recent thing.  None of the clever and carefully developed nuance of tone or voice, style or look, is recognized or, frankly, even considered.  A new reader doesn't know what your getting at from just one post.  And what if that one post is an ad or review or, say a craft made out of snacks.  That's just not what I am trying to do here.

Because of this, I am constantly linking to old posts and explaining backstory and, well, case in point right here.  Up there at the top of this page I mention that this thing is about childhood and my twins and nonsense and cute stuff.  Until that last sentence, you wouldn't even know I had kids, you could have assumed you were on an advice blog, or that I was some blah-blah-blob-blobbity-blogger with nothing worthwhile to share.

I'm not doing it right, am I?

I don't stay trendy either, or offer reviews of products, or make Star Wars references, or even have a book to offer you or that's in the works.  Nope, I don't have much to offer in this era of rampart consumerism and petty capitalism, although I do like LEGOs.  I don't recommend many products, except, apparently, LEGOs.  I don't really like computers, and loathe smart-phones.  I don't give advice because I don't think my way is the only way, that, and I fail a lot.

I do endorse grand ideals.  I believe in hopes and dreams.  I love wholly and boundlessly.  I think words matter.

I'm not doing it right, am I?


So this is neither my first nor last post, my best or worst post, funniest or saddest, most poignant or grand.  This is the post I'm doing right now, and, it's the one you are reading right now.  I better think quick:

I don't think I need the decoder ring and, alas, there is no magical ring that can make an eight-year-old boy make sense.  I'll leave it as is.


I know that Zack and his team have been hard at work on this and that it is really important to him, but there is more to me putting this here.

It’s hard to explain, but, I think when he reads this, someday, in “future perfect” world, he will be able to remember this precisely.  Part of what I am doing here is supplying the boys with details, tangible evidence of their youth, which, for me, and so many others, is lacking.  Sure, there are pictures and such of me as a kid, but, the real evidence of my own childhood, those precious memories, is circumstantial and questionable and, selfishly subjective. 

Sometimes, a smell will bring back a memory of a fresh plowed field being split by a sharp blade.  The shape of a face recalls an old hardware store; an old corded phone, a girl I longed for in high school; summer lightning in the distance assures me, because my father assured me and calmed my fears.  These are good, strong and sacred memories.  I cannot assure you of their accuracy.

So Z might look at these and remember that time, on the bus – Miss Leslie’s Bus – when he had an idea and was helped by his friends and made this specific thing.   

I think he’ll like seeing it again.   

I know I will.

I'm not doing it right, or, am I?

Focus Pocus

There is this hippie writing technique I picked up somewhere along my psuedo-artistic journey.  It's simple really, before you start your soon-to-be-inspired prose, you light a candle, a "focus candle," and it reminds you to stay on task.  You can pray or incant or breathe or stretch before during or after the lighting of the candle and ...

I am never focused enough to remember to light the stupid focus candle.

I lit it today:

I lit it and then I got the camera and  I took a picture of it and then I downloaded the image and then I inserted the picture above.  Wasn't I supposed to be focused on something?

Here's the kicker, I am supposed to stay focused because I only have a little time today and I can only devote so much of my time and brain to this page of nothingness.  It's energy outlaid with none returning.  (That damn candle is giving me flashbacks to the seventies, man.)

Knowing I only would really have time for one longer, more, uh, developed - better written - uhm, gooder, post this week I got to thinking about what I would put my mind to today; what one thing touched me or moved me or tickled me or soared my soul this week.  This came to mind:

Yep pretty cool, “Nick Peebles Boy Detetive (detective) #28.”  I’ll let you assume that’s his badge number although, I know it is not.    His very hip sunglasses are stashed up in there and, well, I am afraid to look any deeper, it might be booby-trapped.  (If they don't start working on spelling soon ...)

I remembered this image with a chuckle:

It’s a pair of Zack’s underpants dangling out of his drawer.  It’s the first time that’s officially happened and it actually made me laugh outloud.  It conjured up messes and bad habits and smells and so much more yet to come.  And yes, that is a lava lamp – a lot safer than an open flame on a wooden desk very near a stack of old school papers.  (What is that smell?)

This was a top contender as well:

Nick and Zack spent one whole cold rainy evening and the next morning working on this, together, as in a team, a sweet, adorable, heartbreakingly tender, team.  They consulted and collaborated with such ease and goodwill that, well, it sort of surprised me, in a happy sort of way.  It was so inspired that it is still taped up to the wall in the dining-room, for a while now, actually.  Maybe I can take it down now that I have it archived, if you will.

I like trying to remember things here that I feel they might recall later, when they encounter this, what? - memoir, digital scrapbook, blog, although that infers readership.  Drawings and stories and images that might spark memories for them, and me, and perhaps you.

Truth be told, when I got to thinking about what I wanted to do here today, the very first thing I thought of was this:

Nick brought this home from school as a simple pencil on paper sketch.  When he got home, he whipped it out and began adding the color.  It was intensely important to him, I could tell.  I asked him what it was and he told me, “Oh it’s just a coupla pearls in the shells.”  In an azure sea under a turquoise sky, shimmering, happy and hopeful.  Just a coupla pearls...

DAMMIT!

I just reached out to get a pencil to  jot down a thought and ...

... I singed my arm on the stupid “focus candle!”

Once he added the color he relaxed and looked at it.  I still don’t get it.  I don’t know why it was so important to him.  I’m not sure he does either.  It may have been about completion or biology or balance or aesthetics or hope.  Perhaps it was about focus.

I gotta go get the fire extinguisher something.

Sorry I sort of lost focus there after I threw the "focus candle" across the basement.

From Marci's  "... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat.."

"We're a couple of greasy ducks, the happy kind."


I know I like my ducks greasy and happy ...


Just don't get 'em too close to the f***ing focus candle.

"The Plan"

Marci handed me these the other morning.  "Blog Fodder" was all she said, the twinkle of a wink in her eye.  Once you've been encouraged to look for it, the easier it is to find.

 Once you've been encouraged to look for it, the easier it is to find.

I think I was talking about grist for this blogmill, but, that's a pretty deep thought.  Look for kindness and you'll see it everywhere; look for love and you'll notice it abounds.  Have twins and see them everywhere.  Let's take it further - the more you look for truths the more there seem to be, the more you search for answers, the questions make more sense.  What about the opposite?  Yeah, look for hate, hate.  Look for hurt, well, there it is...

Already I am off track, and, I am trying hard to remain on track.  You see, lately I've been questioning the...

Dammit!  I am not sticking to the plan... wait, of course, that's the intro I needed to get me to "the plan" thing I had lined up.  I am that good.

Nick and Zack made these the other night, changed them a little in the morning, but, well, here ya go:

 Zack's is on the left there, his number four is "cior," a playful spelling, Olde French I think, of choir.  "Big Ball/Qqest" is interesting there as number five, the rest is self-explanatory.

In Nick's " Plan for the day," number eight there is slipped up between three and four and, if 'quiet' is spelled thusly, then 'Choir' is "quier."  As perfect a misspelling as I have ever seen.  Nick's plan also involves "Big Ball/quest" not a "Qqest," more a straightforward quest.

What, I know you are dying to ask, is "Big Ball?"

Well, in the interest of your greater understanding of the growth and depth of the marvelous upbringing our boys enjoy - and, to use as explanation in the ER, as in: "they were rolling around in this giant ball thingee, together, uh, well, pretty fast, I'd say... what's that?... oh yes, both of them, together, at the same time, wait, I can show you" - I took some photographic evidence pictures:

Well I feel that the inherent danger and fun is pretty clear here.  I was thinking about something the other day as I watched the boys play so casually on the roof of the shed.  I should've, probably, said something like, I dunno, "be careful up there" or "don't fall off."  But then I got to thinking about my childhood.

We wandered pretty far off out in the country where I grew up.  We played in mucky ponds and gravel pits and abandoned barns.  We climbed insanely high in giant trees and up and down working - not running - stone crushing machinery, and gravel sifters.  We pretended on farm equipment, like harrowers and combines and the like.

In fact, one summer, my older brother stripped the engine and push-bar off a derelict push lawn mower, so it was just the deck and wheels, and rode it down a hill, like a wheeled sled in summer.  And, the race was on.  We all found old mowers, abundant in rural areas, stripped 'em down and we were all riding like idiot gladiators down the hills of humid Ohio like a miniature cavalry. It was insane, fraught with danger - so many sharp, rusted edges I cringe at the thought - and, beyond exhilarating.

What I thought of, as I was about to say be careful was, well, it wasn't necessary.  Boys have to be crazy, insane and dangerous.  In our minds, we were being careful, I mean it was just a short hill, or we didn't climb to the top of the tree.  We knew the limbs got too weak for us, we knew we could only go so fast, we knew the pond had mud a foot thick that trapped your feet when you jumped in it, a foot of water over your head.  We knew and understood our limits, our parameters, and we knew we had to stretch them.

Will my kids get hurt in the Big Ball?  Maybe.

Did I get stuck in the mud?  Yes, but I wiggled out.

Did the tree branch break on me?  Yeah, the ground knocked the breath right out of me, but I learned how big a branch would support me.

Did I run into a disc in a barn and slice my shin?  Sure, it healed, with a few stitches.

Did I fall of that stupid lawnmower at about twenty miles an hour and twist my arm back funny as I rolled about twelve times head-over-heels down the hill?  Yep, it was epic.

You know what?  No one was watching us.  I do not, I repeat, do not, mean to imply that someone should have been, that's not the point.  We had to find our limits, stretch ourselves, be crazy, on our own.

Marci was watching the boys and said, "Do you think they'll get hurt?"

"Yep," I said.  "Just don't watch."

She went inside...


Of course there is a little more to the story.  First, and I relate this with great trepidation, after dinner he boys went out for some more big ball and, just as they were almost out of sight, N said to Z, "Wanna play Mommy again."

"What the heck is Mommy?" I innocently asked.

"It where we both get inside the ball and wait to be borned."

Awkward...

And, as you might have noticed. they deviated from "the plan" because "pirate101" was supposed to be after dinner.  Later Nick pointed this out to Zack and Zack replied:

"Well, you don't always have to stick with the plan."

No, no you don't, boys.  Be as safe as you can, make a plan, and do some serious dumbf***ery.  I got your back...

Juxtapostponed

I was going to do a really slick piece today.  Tense truths and tender lies, about dreams, my own, and how you come to peace with broken ones.

I was going to write about being a stay-at-home-dad, something I rarely do, and should more often.

I had a super clever device that was going to interweave and skillfully juxtapose the two themes, seamlessly.  Something about not being able to dream the dreams we should because we didn't know to dream them.

I was going to quote myself as saying "I'm the stay-at-home-dad I never dreamed of being" and bask again in my smug cleverness.

There was something one of the boys did that I was going to use to help illustrate my clever metaphor but I couldn't find whatever it was.

And then... Bunny T hops showed up:

And his whole freakin' family, his son Willam S. hops, toddler little hops and his wife, titty t. hops (she was in the entertainment industry once from what I gather):

His wild brother Sam S. Hops, who drives a crazy french-horn tuba-charged (it's just funnier) sports-car, showed up:

And a second cousin, Jake J., which is a really cool name, or whatever, who cooks for the whole crew, some vegan crap, I don't know, I didn't really get why he was here:

So, as you can well imagine, I haven't been able to take anything seriously since they arrived.

So I guess I'll get back to that cleverer piece some other time.  I'll juxtapose after The Hops are gone, they really are a lot of fun.

There is just no getting out of the way of silly.


From Marci's "... things you don't expect from the backseat ..."

"Yay, gravity actually helped me."


Savor the moment, Nick, savor the moment ...