Archive | July, 2008

Those of you who stop by here regularly may have noticed that I’ve been gone for a while.

My absence wasn’t intentional, but it has been educational.

I’ve spent two weeks learning about plans.

At 12:16 p.m. two Mondays ago, the thread that ran through nearly every plan we’ve made recently came unraveled. MC called me from her obstetrician’s office, where I had been with her just 20 minutes before. Her pregnancy – all 11 weeks of it – was over.

We lost our baby.

And with that, our plans changed.

The hour I planned to spend away from the my office for her routine OB appointment with MC turned into three solid days at home, working to hold things together so she could rest and I could look after the kids.

The Tuesday we planned to spend doing mundane Tuesday things turned into 10 hours at the hospital for a D&C.

The good news of a little brother or sister that we planned to share with our kids on Monday night evaporated.

Beyond those immediate plans, we looked farther down the road.

We planned to move the kids into new rooms. We planned to share our goods news beyond the small circle of family and friends who already knew. I planned to start a separate blog to share our pregnancy stories over the coming months.

We made more plans than I can enumerate here. So many plans.

But there’s risk in making claims against a future that’s not yet here.

If you lean too hard on that hope for days ahead, it hurts when it topples over.

Now that we’re two weeks removed from learning that our pregnancy ended, the emotions aren’t as raw. The dark cloud that was hanging over our house has started to move on. We’re both better able to be present in the incredibly blessed lives we’ve been given.

Through it all, we’ve been prayed for, fed and nurtured in humbling and inspiring ways. Many of you have offered kind words and encouragement on MC’s blog. Your support has been a huge gift to us. THANK YOU!

So, back to plans.

Plans are only as sturdy as the people making them.

With that in mind, it’s comforting to know that the architect of our lives has plans that outlast all others:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

Here’s this week’s edition of Friday Fives.

Five Great Things That Happened This Week:

1. I got the basement dried out.
I told you earlier about the drama with our wet basement. Hauling out the old carpeting and running two dehumidifiers did the trick. Thank heavens.

2. I got to play golf.
A few times a year, I get to play golf for work. The weather was gorgeous and I had three good guys on my team. Playing on the company’s time and dime made the whole thing great.

3. I’ve had some good laughs.
I was trading emails with my brother yesterday, and he threw this 30 Rock quote onto the end of his message:

“Boy, it’s crazy to think we used to settle questions of paternity by dunking a woman in water until she admitted she made it all up. Different time, the ’60s.” – Dr. Leo Spaceman

I’ve probably said this before, but if 30 Rock isn’t on the list of shows you watch, it should be. It’s an incredibly well-written show.

4. I made some progress on a new project.
I’ve had an idea swirling around for a while about another project I’d like to try. I got the ball rolling on it this week. I’ll share it with you in a couple weeks.

5. My sweet son has been using the potty.
I also told you earlier this week about our efforts to get Son potty trained. He has made HUGE progress this week. It’s really fun to watch him have some victory at it.

So there’s Five Great Things That Happened This Week.

That’s certainly not everything that happened. There’s been stress, sadness, worry – all the other junk that comes with life. But why let that stuff command any more attention than it already does?

How has your week been?

I had plans for a good post on Sunday night showing you a picture of rain falling into my kitchen through a window.

A closed window.

And I’m not a contractor, but my instincts tell me that rain is not supposed to pour in through a closed window. So that’s a problem.

Since Sunday’s rain was a real gullywasher, I walked down to the basement to check another spot that gets some moisture during hard rain.

Luckily, that spot was bone dry. But the basement felt a little damp, so I rounded a corner to get the dehumidifier. As I turned the corner, I noticed a stream of water in a place I’d never seen it before – on the floor under the dead center of the house.

I was relieved (I guess that’s the right word) to find out that the water didn’t originate under the center of the house. It was seeping under the wall from a different room.

Then I discovered the big problem.

As I stepped into a storage room, I heard the squish-squish of my shoes on soaked carpet. Every inch of the carpet was wet.

And not just wet – saturated. I’m surprised I didn’t find ducks and lilypads in there.

I took a run at the water with my shop vac and two dehumidifiers, which ran overnight.

When I got home yesterday, exhausted from a long day playing golf (pause for your smart alecky remark) the drying wasn’t working.

So after the kids were in bed, I headed to the basement and started pulling up carpet.

That was the right decision.

As I pulled up the padding, I saw that it was acting like a sponge. Water poured out of it as I carried it out.

There’s no way I would have ever dried that room out with my little dehumidifiers and shop vac.

When I finished up last night, I collapsed into my chair next to Wife.

We had a chuckle about what a pain in the rear old houses can be. And we laughed about how none of what happened Sunday will be cured by the new roof (or The Lexus That Could Have Been) we’ll be getting in a week or so.

Good times.

As of this afternoon, the room is dry.

The old house punched, and I punched back. This round is a draw.

As much trouble as it can be sometimes, we’re still pretty fond of this old house.

Back when Wife was pregnant with Son, everyone had the same reaction when we told them the lump in Wife’s tummy was a boy.

“Oh, you’ll just LOVE having a boy,” they’d say.

And they were right. We LOVE having a boy. He’s funny, smart, sweet and rough.

Just like his Daddy.

But then these people would finish their sentence with, “boys are just so EASY.”

I choose to disagree with that one.

I didn’t think having a boy was the easier option during those very first newborn days where there’s a lot of gauzing and vaselining in the special boy region.

(cold shiver)

And I don’t think having a boy is easier during our current milestone: potty training.

For the past two weeks, we’ve been trying to get the little guy to do his thing on the potty. We’ve had success here and there, but we’ve also had a handful of slip-ups.

I imagine that’s par for the course.

So far, we’ve succeeded in making him not want to go in his pants. We just haven’t mastered the other side of the equation, which is getting him to want to go on the potty.

Since he doesn’t want to go in his pants, and won’t fully commit to the potty yet, he’s doing a lot of holding. And I suppose that’s useful in its own way, since he’s learning to contain it when he does feel the urge.

That may buy us a little more time so that we don’t have accidents after one of the kids tells us, as they often do, that they have to potty the moment our car leaves the driveway.

What do you think? Are girls easier to potty train? Is there any way to get a boy to sit still long enough to give the potty a try?

This week’s edition of Friday Fives is a reminder to me of why I keep blogging.

Five Cool Things That Have Happened to Me Since I Started My Blog

1. I got my first comment.
Within a week of starting my blog, I had my first comment from a total stranger when Long Island Dad left a nice comment about this post. It doesn’t matter how big or how small your blog is, every comment is a compliment. (Except the ones that aren’t.)

2. I got added to a blogroll.
Again, Long Island Dad (who has retired from blogging) was the first to add me to his blogroll. I’ve popped up on a handful of blogrolls since, and I’m honored to be on every one.

3. I got a shout-out from a big time blogger.
Just four months into running My Best Investments, I got this nice mention from Boomama. A lot of you are here because of that mention, so I owe a huge debt to Sophie for that.

4. I got to write a guest post.
(Edited to add: The link to the post and the comments at Be A Good Dad are broken. BAGD did some nice upgrades to his site recently, but it doesn’t look like my guest post survived. I linked to the guest post at my site.)
Last June, Be A Good Dad invited submissions for a week of guest posts. Here’s what I wrote.

5. Wife and I got reconnected with a college friend.
I very rarely post pictures, particularly of myself. The Internet simply can’t handle that much handsomeness. After our beach trip this spring, I put a handful of pictures up. One reader who happened to randomly click to my blog from Boomama’s blogroll recognized me and Wife. Emily is now a reader and one of my most loyal comment givers.

What good things have happened to you since you started blogging?

I’ve told you in previous posts that I’ve been jogging lately.

And really the only reason I keep telling you about my jogging is not because I think you find it interesting, or because I find it particularly interesting. Rather, if I keep telling you about how I’m jogging, maybe it will create some accountability for me.

Anyhow, I’m coming to you with this post because an incident on last night’s jog raised a dilemma for me.

Just as I was making the transition from huffing and puffing my way down the street to gasping and choking, I realized that a little yippy terrier was in hot pursuit of me.

The pooch ran to the end of his driveway, out into the street with me, and followed me on to the next block.

All the while, the dog’s owner was in hot pursuit of the terrier.

So here’s the question: What’s the proper etiquette when a person’s unleashed dog is chasing you down the street and the owner is frantically chasing after the dog?

Do you stop and let the owner catch up? Do you just keep running and let the dog follow you as long as it wants?

I’ll tell you my answer: I just kept runnin’.

I figured if the lady was concerned about her dog getting away, she would have had him on a leash.

Would it have been gracious and helpful for me to stop? Of course.

But if we as a society have a lesson we need to learn it’s that we all need to take full responsibility for ourselves and our choices.

In other words, the retrieval of your excitable dog is not my issue.

And with that, I’ve made this a much bigger deal than necessary.

Who needs a molehill when you can have a mountain, right?

In a post a few weeks ago, I said that this summer is considerably less hectic than last summer.

I stand by that, but I don’t want to leave the impression that we’re not having our fair share of summer excitement.

It’s just that this summer’s excitement is a different variety than normal. Last summer was all about trips and moving into a new house.

This summer we’re getting a new roof.

Thrilling, isn’t it?

After finding the third separate piece of evidence of leak-related issues in our house, it became clear a few weeks ago that it was time to say goodbye to Ol’ Gray, the existing slate roof.

We figured that it would be much cheaper in the long run to go ahead and give the house a new roof rather than deal with each new leak-related issue (plaster crumbles, mildew, etc.) as it crops up. We just hoped we’d have a little while longer before we had to bite the bullet and do it.

I don’t know if you’ve checked on roofing prices lately, but HOLY MACARONI. The cost is, uh, substantial.

I have to keep reminding myself that we’re not spending this money, we’re investing it in our home.

On the day Wife and I agreed that we needed the new roof, I was trading emails with my college roommate about stocks and the market and such. His perspective is what I’m clinging to:

“The IRR (internal rate of return) on staying dry in your own house during a hard rain is immeasurable.”

He’s right.

And the chances are pretty good that we won’t ever have to put another roof on our house during our lifetime.

After all, we’re the first owners to ever put a new roof in this house. Ol’ Gray was put on when the house was built.

In 1930.

So when you take our cost to re-roof the place and spread it over the next 80 years, it goes from being inconceivable to just being awful. And awful is better than inconceivable any day, right?

Of course, if I had any business sense at all (which is questionable) I’d find a way to make the most of the situation. It seems a terrible waste that a few thousand 80 year-old slate shingles are going to wind up in the dump.

You think if I craigslisted those things I could get any money for them?

You know, as big a stink as I’m making about the cost and hassle of having a new roof put on, I’m truly looking forward to seeing how the house looks with its new ‘do. I think it’ll dress the place up quite a bit.

So there’s our Christmas in July gift to ourselves – a new roof. Any fun home improvement stuff going on at your place this summer?

One of the cool things about living in the heart of the Bible Belt is that people seem more apt to integrate their faith with their business lives.

Case in point, similar to Chick-fil-A, I have a friend who closes his restaurant on Sundays so that he’s not forcing his employees to choose between working and attending church. Granted, his people don’t have to use their day off to go to church, but at least they have the option.

Of course, the intersection of belief and business isn’t always a good thing. I’ve seen plenty of people portray themselves as Christians to gain trust with people for the sole purpose of selling more insurance or manicures or cars.

As a general rule, if someone tells you they’re a good Christian person as part of their sales spiel, get up and walk away. You should be able to tell someone’s a Christian without them having to tell you.

Today at lunch I saw one of the coolest examples of someone merging their faith with their business.

A colleague and I stopped at a local hot dog shop. It was my first visit, so I followed the lead of the guy I was with and ordered their special – two chili dogs, chips and a drink.

As I ordered, he asked if I wanted my hot dogs “loaded up.”

I asked him to elaborate.

“Everything we do here,” he said, “we do with the love of God. Which means we do everything BIG.”

“When we load up a hot dog,” he explained, “you eat it with a fork and a knife. You can’t pick it up.”

As we sat and ate our lunch, I heard him tell the same story to every new customer that came in.

Here’s a man running a little hot dog shop, loving on people by heaping a little extra chili on their meal – and demonstrating that God’s love is BIG.

How cool is that?

And he’s right. God’s love is big.

Big enough to cleanse me of all my stains. Big enough to forgive all the stupid stuff I do.

And, hopefully, big enough to help me survive eating loaded up chili dogs.

Amanda at Oh Amanda tagged me for the 7 Random Things about My Kids meme.

It’s my kind of meme because it’s simple, and because I lose confidence when I have to count beyond seven. So here goes:

1. Daughter was born two days after my birthday. Son was born three days before Wife’s birthday.

2. They’ve introduced new words into the family vocabulary. Daughter gave us the word “crooky” to describe her upset stomach once, and now we all say it. She also told us something was “insusting” while trying to tell us it was “disgusting.”

3. They both have their mother’s pretty blue eyes.

4. Son is going to be the class clown. He’s almost always in a great mood and wants to try silly things to make us laugh.

5. They love each other. Sure, they fight like any tiny siblings would. But almost every day, in some way, they share a moment or two of incredible sweetness which shows how much they really care for each other.

6. For about two weeks, Son carried his two Chicka Chicka Boom Boom books around with him in a little bag. Those books went everywhere with him. They sat next to him at the table. They rode with him in the car. They laid at the end of the bed while he slept.

7. They play “pajama party” almost every day. After they eat lunch, Wife lets them go upstairs and put on their pajamas and play in Daughter’s room. They love it.

There’s my seven things. If you want to participate, leave a note in the Comments and post a list at your place so we can come check it out.

Have a great Monday!

Five things I like about this 4th of July

1. It’s hot.
I wouldn’t know how to act if it weren’t blistering outside on the 4th. The air will be warm and thick with humidity. We’ll all be sweaty and gross. And it will be awesome.

2. The menu is looking good.
Wife bought stuff to grill hamburgers for dinner, and we’ve got our church picnic at lunchtime. There’s nothing better than a paper plate loaded with various cole slaws, beans and potato salads.

3. The office is closed.
I know that work is valuable and character-building. Blah blah blah. Daddy needs a day off.

4. It’s a three-day weekend.
The only thing better than a day off is a block of three straight days off. Hooray for the the 4th falling on a Friday!

5. We live in the USA.
Say what you want about the political landscape, the markets, the economy and gas prices. The freedoms we enjoy and the opportunities available to us uniquely as Americans are simply unbelieveable. This is an incredible nation.

What do you like about this 4th of July?