Deadline Met, Moving On...

Yes, I know its been over a week since I've been on here writing a post despite the fact that I said I was going to try and get on at least twice a week or so, but hey, life happens.  The last week or so has been a whirlwind, not in a dismal or depressing sort of way, just busy and crazy with Christmas and the whole family being home.  I have actually taken a few days off of work over the last week, something which I rarely do, but since my wife and son are home, I figured it would be the perfect time.  In the past week, which almost seems like two with the amount of activity that has transpired, a lot has happened, and almost all of it is good.  In fact, I don't think anything even remotely bad happened.  So going back to last weekend which was crunch time for me to get our son's room finished and ready for him to move in to, I must say that a lot got done on his room in the matter of 3 days.  As of last Saturday, I still had a lot to do in our son's room.  The taping of the sheet rock was essentially done, but some trim still needed to be put up and all the trim needed to be wood puttied and caulked.  So from early Saturday till Monday afternoon, I managed to do the following; finish putting up trim, wood putty all the trim, sand all the sheet rock and trim, prime all the sheet rock and trim, caulk all the trim, and finally finish coat the walls ceiling and trim.  On top of that, I cleaned everything up and got our son's new twin bed into his new room so that we could drastically change his life by not only switching rooms on him but also switching him from a crib to a regular bed.  I must say, the color that we picked for his room, a nice bright yellow, is actually a really nice color.  And the room happens to be my favorite room in the house now.  But getting back to our son and his new room.  Tuesday was the first night he slept in his new bed and remarkably, he had no issues, slept through the night, and didn't fall out of bed.  After being used to seeing him sleeping in his crib, he looks incredibly small in his new bed, especially since he curls up into a little ball to sleep and is surrounded by stuffed animals.  In fact, sometimes when I go in at night now to check on him and make sure he is covered, I can't always find him.  All is good though.  I think what helped with moving our son into his new room was that I let him help me with certain tasks during the construction of his new room and from the get go, we told him that the room we were working on was going to be his new room.  As such, he was excited about the new room long before we actually moved him in there.  So the room is done, he is moved in, and the next project can commence....soon.

 

Christmas was a lot of fun this year.  Our son is now of the age where he can understand more and actually enjoy the Christmas season.  We introduced Santa Claus to him, albeit on a minor scale, and even put out the cookies and milk for Santa, which of course he looked for on his way down the stairs Christmas morning.  When we got to opening presents, of which there were about a handful for each of us, my wife, son, and I; he decided that he needed to play with everything he opened before moving on to the next present.  He didn't get any toys as he already as enough of them, but he did get plenty of puzzles, an ornament for the tree, and a little toy car.  That was the extent of his presents.  He absolutely loved his puzzles and continues to work on mastering them every day, over and over and over again.  The hardest puzzles he got were a set of four, twelve pieces each, with no big picture or pattern to put the puzzle on.  At first, he struggled a little with the puzzles, but as we helped him and with each time he repeated the puzzle, he got better and better to the point now where he can do every one of them without help.  He is either memorizing where the pieces go or recognizing the patterns.  However he is doing it, it is amazing to watch him put them together, to watch the dexterity in his fingers, and to just be with him as he works out the puzzles.  He is now more interested in his puzzles more than almost anything else, except his blocks that he loves to build towers with.   It is amazing what happens when a child turns two year old.  Ever since his second birthday, it seems that everything is "clicking" a little, rapidly growing brain of his.  He is curious about everything and loves to get involved in anything we are doing.  On top being curious and understanding the world more and more, his mastery of the English language is growing by leaps and bounds.  He is moving closer and closer to full sentences and while there are still a good number of words that you almost need an interpreter to understand, he is getting clearer and more precise with his speaking every day.  To watch him grow from a little lump of breathing flesh to the age he is now is amazing.  And as I talk to others who have children and I tell them that this is currently my favorite age, they laugh and say that I will be saying that every year for a while as they did the same thing. 

Last, we went on our first family trip down to a museum in New Haven this past Saturday.  We figured our son is now at the age when we can start exposing more of the world to him and what it has to offer.  Our plan was to head to the Yale Art Museum, but as that didn't open till 11 and we were there at 10, we headed across the street to the Yale British Art Gallery instead.  Only one of the floors was open due to renovation on the other two floors, but that proved to be more than enough for our son handle at a time right now.  The gallery proved to be perfect for our son as they had a lot of animals in the paintings which he could recognize and also sailboats.  Whenever we stepped in front of a new picture I would just our son's eyes roam across the canvas, darting here there and everywhere, taking it all in.  Whenever we would ask him what a specific animal was, he would whisper the answer back to us.  We didn't even tell him he had to whisper, after all its just a museum, but he figured since it was quiet, he should probably whisper.  It was adorable.  We were there for a half hour to forty five minutes before our son began to lose interest.  Not wanting to push him too hard on his first museum visit, we left and decided to walk around the Yale campus.  That was the second highlight of my day after the museum visit.  Once we got off the main streets and into some of the wide open courtyards, we set him down and he was off and running, to no where in particular, just running through the courtyards of Yale.  He was like a little machine, he just kept going and going and going and it was a lot of fun to just be out, getting fresh air, and watching our son run.  To sum all of this up, despite leading a crazy life, I love being a father and wouldn't trade it for anything. 

The First Snow and Other Things

Last week we received our first good snowfall of the season.  It came right around the time I saw a post from another blogger about his love for snow.  Well, winter is one of my favorite seasons, not only because there is a distinct lack of heat and humidity, but also because of the glorious effect of snow blanketing the world around me.   Our first snow storm, while only a few inches, will probably end of being one of our most beautiful.  The snow came a day after we received some sleet and freezing rain that coated the world in a thin veil of ice.  As it turned out, the temperature was just warm enough to give the snow a nice heavy texture, yet cold enough for it to actually stay as snow.  That magical temperature range, right around 32 degrees, is when the snow sticks to everything in sight, every branch, every straggling leaf still holding on to a tree, every bush, every... you get the point.  There is something quite other worldly about driving down a road a day after a snow storm like that and seeing the sun glisten off of the snow covered branches hanging langurously over the road.  Perhaps it just beckons the sentiment of a "New England winter" to rise within me, one in which mounds of snow perpetually cover the ground and perpetuate the notion that everything is pristine and perfect.  Or it could just be that I love the contrast of brilliant white snow glistening in the sun against the dark branches of the trees.  Regardless of the reason, I love snow, I love winter, and I love the cold. 

 

Also last week, as the temperature dropped significantly after our first snow fall, I started an exterior job.  Not painting obviously as that would just be stupid, but rather, putting up cedar shingles on the side of a house.  It is a small job, one that will only take me about a week, but a job in which I need multiple layers in order stay warm in temperatures that on at least one day last week barely rose about 25 degrees.  Unless the temperature was steady at about 50-60 degrees, I will take the cold any day.  The freezing temperatures, tingling fingers, and the shiver that sporadically traveled up and down my body are preferred any day over the sweat that pores out of every single one of my pores on a hot and humid day.  At least when its cold, you can add or subtract layers of clothing as the temperature rises or falls.  When its hot, you can only take off so many clothes before people start to yell at you to put your clothes back on.  (Not that I have ever had that problem, just saying).  So while some people complain about the cold and are wishing for summer to return already, I am embracing winter and its cold and will cherish them as long as they last.  Even our son doesn't seem to mind the cold that much.  We had more snow this past Saturday and he loved nothing more than being outside with me, shoveling the snow, throwing it to our dogs, and getting our noses and cheeks rosy red from the cold.  He never wanted to go inside and it took everything I had to convince him we should go have a snack, or something, anything to come in from the cold so he didn't get frostbite or a worse cold than he already has.  Yes, he does have a cold and yes, we did let him go and play outside in the snow.  After all, its winter, he mostly just has a runny nose, and snow is meant to be played in, not just viewed from the inside through a window. 

 

Lastly, this past Friday was named "pay it forward friday" in honor of the Sandy hook tragedy that occurred a year ago.  The radio station that I listen to, while normally a more comedic show, was taking calls from people about the nice things that were done to them or the nice things they did for others.  It got me to thinking about how often times I don't go out of my way to be nice to others.  I am rarely rude (except while driving), I just don't always go the extra mile when I am able to.  Perhaps it is the perpetual selfishness that resides just below the surface in me.  I don't know, but for me at least, I have to make a conscious effort to go beyond what I normally do and make an effort to, in a sense, "pay it forward".  What does pay it forward really mean?  To me, it means committing random acts of kindness for complete strangers, those people you run into at a grocery store, or in a parking lot, or standing in line at a Dunkin Donuts.  It means having an effect on people to the point where they feel like comitting a random act of kindness for a complete stranger that they run into.  The idea is that if you start paying it forward on a regular basis, others will start doing the same and it will have a snowball (ha, pun partially intended) effect and turn the world around you into a better place to live.  While its nice in theory, does it actually work?  According to the movie with Kevin Spacey from the 90's, it does.  In any case, last Friday, in the midst of thinking about paying it forward and how I should do it more, I came upon an easy way for me to start paying it forward.  So what I did was when I was in the drive through line at Dunkin Donuts, after I placed my order and I was asked if there was anything else, I said, "Actually, yes, can I pay for the person in front of and behind me?"  They had to double check to make sure they heard me correctly, but they said, yes, I could.  The person in front me didn't know what to do, but he waved and said thank you.  I didn't do it for any other reason than I wanted to do something nice.  I figured that what nicer thing to do that was easy, than to surprise people with a free coffee as they pull up to the drive through.  So, I want to know, have you ever paid it forward and if you have, what's your story?

Tis the Season

Its the Christmas season and for the first time in a number of years, the spirit of Christmas has infected me earlier than usual.  During a previous year, life would cruise along until that first Christmas carol came playing over the radio and the hair son my arm would bristle and I would think to myself, "Christmas carols already?  Bah humbug!"  So maybe the sentiments never veered quite as far as a scrooge, but the incessant over commercialization of the Christmas holiday, once reserved for the time after Thanksgiving (years and years ago), has now infiltrated stores as early as September.  My heckles are still raised whenever I see that first decorated Christmas tree in a store, its small lights begging you to come and stare in awe.  Like we haven't seen a Christmas tree before.  Yet, this year, come Thanksgiving time, I was ready for Christmas.  Perhaps the only thing that has changed is that my son is getting older, now a little over 2, and I was curious to see his excitement at the whole change in seasons.  While I know some people who decorate their houses depending on the season at hand, there are a good number of people, ourselves included, who only truly decorate their house for one season, Christmas.  The remainder of the year will hold only the normal decorations around the house, nothing out of the ordinary, no mass of pumpkins adorning every shelf and orifice for Halloween, no plethora of turkeys or cornucopias with autumnal leaves for Thanksgiving.  No, our house remains relatively unadorned except for the normal pictures with their thin layer of dust on the upper edge, my wife's pottery and sculptural work, and our house plants.  Even when we decorate for Christmas, we only have a few boxes of decorations that we bring out.  But I digress as I began talking about my Christmas spirit this year and have become minorly side tracked.  We got our Christmas tree this past weekend and with our son able to walk around with only minor help on stairs sometimes, it was a lot of fun.  We searched and searched for the perfect Christmas tree at a small family run place in Newtown.  It is not an enormous place, but it is cute and not crowded which is the nice part.  The trees aren't perfect, but they are unique.  We ended up picking a tree that was about 14 feet tall of which the top was perfect and the bottom was almost completely void of branches.  It was the perfect tree and we figured rather than take a smaller one, we would help out and cut down a bigger one to make room for the smaller ones to grow.  Our son absolutely loved the experience and loved it even more when we got the tree home and put it up.  The real excitement came the next day however.  After our son went to bed, we brought out the Christmas lights and hung them on the tree with our ancient star at the top.  The next morning when we brought our son down and turned on the Christmas tree, his face went from tired and groggy from just waking up to plastered with a huge smile that could barely express his wonder and excitement.  He proceeded to just stare at the Christmas tree for a while, exploring the lights and the shadows they cast between the branches, the star at the top which somehow has not needed a light replaced in over a dozen years, and on top of that, he just kept on pointing and saying "Christmas tree".  Yes, my Christmas spirit is here and its not about the presents I will give or receive, its about being with family and seeing our son's excitement.  For today, I leave you with that, for whatever it is, it is, and that made no sense so now I stop writing.

Taking a Back Seat

No, I haven't disappeared off the face of the planet due to some government conspiracy that swept me discreetly into some locked cell in a bunker deep in the sand hills of Nebraska.   As much as that would make for more interesting news and a story that could only be told through a censored document, I haven't gone anywhere or been taken by anybody.   Rather, life has veered towards becoming vastly more crazy.   In the craziness, I have decided that for Christmas, I would like nothing more than the gift of more time.  If we could somehow figure out how to make days 26 hours long instead of 24, I could at least get some more sleep.  Its not like I would try to fit more work into a day (although I probably would), the best thing would be for me to take those extra two hours and just sleep a little more.  However, we have not yet figured out how to disrupt the time/space continuum in such a way as to allow us to get a few more hours of sleep each day.  As such, I have not had the wherewithal to actually get my fingers to typing and forming coherent sentences in the early morning hours.  Rather, my mornings have been occupied by reading the news and talking to my wife.  Reading the news has not made me a better person by any means.  It has made me more informed, and as the alternative to writing, it has been easier on my brain.  Over the past few weeks, while I normally pride myself on waking up with my alarm, I have actually turned it off and kept on sleeping a few times.  Perhaps I need to slow down some, but then again, I figure that since I am young, I can push myself a little harder and still recover.  I know, I know, those days will come to an end eventually, but for now, I will take advantage of my relative youth and push on with long days and short nights of sleep.  So why has my life taken a turn towards the crazy and insane.  Well, there are a couple of reasons as to why.  The first being that I now have only two weeks left to finish the room for our son before we have to move him in.  I have my deadline of Christmas to finish the room so that he can be in there for at least a month before the new baby comes into the world.  Needless to say, there is still a bit of work to get done before he can move in.  The floor is down, the walls are sheet rocked and almost fully taped, most of the trim is up, and yet, there is still work to do. 

 

So that is only the first reason my life has turned towards the crazy and insane.  On top of trying to finish his room before Christmas, I have been getting a slew of calls for new bids on work, and I have been having trouble just trying to keep up with those.  Then there is trying to find the balance between satisfying customers by getting the work done, spending enough time with family, and also finishing our son's room.  I have been doing OK at find the balance between family and work on both his room and regular work, however the balance between regular work and his room has been harder to find.  While I know that it is necessary to get our son's room done soon, I am also torn by the fact that I still need to make money to pay the bills.  A conundrum yes, but one that will eventually sort itself out.  Regardless of the balance in my life, which teeters every day, I will be making an effort to taking my writing off the back seat and push it back to the front of my early morning daily routine.  Even if it is just a paragraph, short and sweet, I will do my best to write every morning.  There is much I have to share, especially about our son and his changes, but also, I just need to start writing again so that I don't forget how.  I know I am making it sound like I have taken months or even years off from writing when it has only been a couple of weeks, but since I have started this blog, I haven't taken that much time off from it yet.  I figure if I don't get back to it, I probably never will and then I will have to kick myself in the ass for not keeping up with it.  But anyway, that is quite enough for today as I need to kick the rest of the my crazy Monday into high gear and get my family ready.  Cheers and hopefully I'll be back here tomorrow.

First True Weekend Away

Since our son has been born, there has been very little opportunity to get time away.  Its not that the will hasn't been there, or the desire to get away hasn't been there.  Rather, its been more a matter of finding or making the time to get away.  We have taken the occasional opportunity to get out for a night by ourselves, but that ends way to quickly and then its back to reality as soon as we left it.  This past weekend, however, was our first time actually taking a whole weekend and getting away by ourselves; no child, no dogs, no cat.  Nothing.  We had planned this weekend away for some time and by the time it came around, we were more than ready to get away and do nothing.  So Friday, which my wife and I took off from work, we spent the morning with our son and right around lunch time, headed down to my parents house to drop him off for the weekend.  We had no clue how he would do over the course of the weekend without us as we had never left him for that long before.  But, we didn't worry that much as he is a fairly easy going child, mostly flexible, and loves his grandparents.  So we had lunch as a family at my parents house and after putting him down for a nap there, got in our car and headed out for our weekend.  We got on the road before there was any rush our traffic headed straight for our destination, Narragansett, Rhode Island.  We have what I'll call a family friend who owns a condo in that quaint sea-side town opposite the bay from Newport and who was willing to let us stay there for the weekend free of charge.   It took us maybe an hour and a half to get out there and after making a quick stop at the grocery store to grab food for dinner and breakfasts, we were at our weekend retreat.  We settled in quickly on Friday, relaxed, made our dinner, and before it was even 8 o'clock in the evening, were falling asleep in comfy rocking chairs in front of the TV.  While our activities on Friday were par for the course of any Friday, we had no child to worry about getting down for bed, no dogs to feed and let outside to relieve themselves, and no cat pawing her way all over us looking for her most comfortable spot.  It was just my wife and I, and quiet.  It was a nice break from the normal routine.  As much as we love our son and our animals, it was nice to take some time to ourselves and just focus on ourselves. 

 

Saturday morning we slept in, not late like normal people, but until 7, which is late for us.  On a normal Saturday, we would have been up the latest by 630 with our son, scrambling around the kitchen to make breakfast and trying to entertain our son while all of us got more and more hungry.  This past Saturday, we leisurely made our way downstairs and with no hustle or bustle at all, made our breakfast and ate it in silence, except for the sound of our own voices talking.  It was a slow breakfast, with a slow clean up, and a long discussion about what we actually wanted to do on Saturday.  We ultimately decided to make our way to Newport for a few hours, visit one of the spectacular mansions that was built during the gilded age on the water, and then make our way back for lunch.  My wife had never been to Newport and it had been over a decade since I had last been there.  It's a beautiful town with beautiful houses and our few hours spent there was fun.  Once we finished with our tour of the mansion, The Breakers, we had lunch with my brother and his girlfriend turned fiancee at perhaps the best little burger shack around, the Crazy Burger.  It was good food, good times, and afterwards, they were off the casino, and we were off for a little drive around the area.  We meandered our way down to the Point Judith light house and off a gravel road nearby, an old buried army bunker that 7 years ago I had snuck in with a friend.  Its still there, albeit a little closer to the ocean now due to erosion, and I didn't sneak in this time as my pregnant wife was with me in the car.  So after our little drive, we made our way back to the condo where I proceeded to take a nap for an hour and upon waking up, we had the incredibly hard decision to make about whether to order take out or actually make our way to a restaurant and have dinner out.  Despite our incredible desire to just order take out, we freshened up (meaning put on our shoes) and made our way out to a small restaurant.  It wasn't the best, but it was decent and the food was at least edible.  The young waitress did forget our clam chowders, but since dinner came in its place, we didn't really care too much. 

 

Saturday evening was spent much the same way Friday evening was, a few rounds of cards, and then relaxing in front of the TV till we fell asleep.  Saturday came and went way to quickly, although we did get to relax a lot, and then came Sunday and preparations to go home and pick up our son from my parents house.  We did miss our son, but were also a tad bit lazy about getting ourselves together to go home.  We did make it back in time to pick up our son and ferry him home so he could take his afternoon nap at home.  In the end, the time spent away flew by way too fast and after even just after two days without a child or pets, getting thrown back into the mix was a shock to our systems.  I think it was more that after 2 days of completely quiet and no responsibility outside of feeding ourselves, having a child and pets craving attention pushed us a little overboard.  But here we are, back to Monday morning, and life is returning to normal.  It is almost time to get our son out of bed and get breakfast started before running out of the house.  My wife and I are hoping to make this a yearly tradition for ourselves as this was a much needed break from everything.  We shall see if it happens next year, but we will do our best to make it happen.  The two things I came away with from this weekend are that I love my wife just as much as the day I married her and I definitely love my son, but my wife always comes first. 

The Exotic Appeal

One of my favorite sections in the New York Times is, without a doubt, the travel section.  Sometimes I even wish that I could receive the travel section only and disavow the rest.  Whenever I open up that newspaper on the weekends, which has been occurring even more sporadically of late, I am always curious as to where the travel section will bring me.  This past weekend, at least I think it was this past weekend, brought me to the Karakoram Highway between China and Pakistan.  While most of us, upon reading the word highway, will think of a nicely paved 4 lane road, this "highway" as they call it is probably named more for the dizzying heights it reaches than anything else.  Fraught with landslides and occasional washouts, it is more of a dirt road than anything else.  The picture that drew me instantly in was one of stark beauty and covered the front page of the Travel section.  It was a picture of a pristine lake with a small town on its far shore.  Behind the lake and town, which occupied less than the bottom third of the picture, were a few sand dunes which quickly rose to bleak dark mountains.  The lighting in the picture highlighted the sand dunes and the town with clouds casting dark shadows on the mountains behind.  It was tantalizing, mesmerizing, and begged me to hop on a plane and make the trek to that picture.  I had to read the article, which was good, but the pictures are what drew me in.  In other pictures in the article, you could see that behind the bleak mountains were snow topped peaks.  It is a scene that I rarely get to see, and when I do, I want to go exploring.  Despite the dangers in that part of the world, I would love to travel there, explore the land, the people, the culture, and absorb it all.  But if I ever do get there, it won't be for a while.  But its nice to see those pictures, dream of the journey, and picture myself one day driving that rutted road (or more likely having someone else drive me).  Oh well, for now its back to reality. 

My Little Helper

I have only been a father for a little over two years now, yet every day as a father, while always holding their moments of angst and questioning, shows me more and more how much fun being a father can be.  I don't know how many other father's let their two year olds help install a hardwood floor in their house, but this past weekend, I did.  As I am slaving away to get our son's new room done so his little brother or sister can move into his current room upon birth, this past weekend brought about the installation of his new floor.  It was yet another whole day event, similar to the previous Saturday that was spent sheet rocking, and yet, unlike last weekend, I was able to get the floor mostly done in one day without my wife and son going elsewhere to spend the night.  For a good portion of the day, my wife went out with her mother and our son.  They did some shopping, our son took his nap in the car, and by the time they came home, I was more than half way done with the room.  As nothing seriously dusty or toxic was going on, upon their return they made their way up to the room to check on the progress.  Well, our son being at the inquisitive age that he is, he walked right in and started looking at all the wood and tools lying around.  The first stop he made was at the boxes of flooring that were laid out.  Since that was his first stop, I asked him to bring a piece over to where I was working.  Without a moment's hesitation, he picked one up and brought it over.  With him in the mood to help, I figured that I would show him how to put the floor in.  With his help, we placed the piece where it needed to go.  I then showed him the small piece of wood I used as a hammer block to knock the piece in tight.  He had to help with the hammer, so with his hands on it, we both swung and knocked the piece tight into place.  Then came the flooring nailer which tried to pick up on his own with very little success.  The rubber mallet, lighter obviously than the nailer, he was able to pick up and with my help, we swung it and hit the nailer to drive nail in and secure the floor down.  Every time we swung that mallet and the nailer went off the biggest smile burst on to his face.  He was incredibly excited to be helping put the floor down, especially with the big tools that I was using.  We got one more piece in together, and then I was torn with having him continue to help me or having him go downstairs so I could fly along and finish using the flooring nailer.  I decided ultimately that since I had limited time left, I had to work by myself.  It was a very difficult decision because there was nothing that I wanted more than to have him help me, despite the fact that he is only a little over two and doesn't completely understand the process. 

 

The decision tore at me even more as he was taken out of the room screaming and crying, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy..."  Every time I came downstairs to cut some more pieces of flooring, I opened up the wound and while he got excited at first, he soon burst into tears as he realized that he couldn't come upstairs with me to work on the floor.  It was just one of those times when as much as I wanted him to help, I needed to get things done quickly and he would have hindered that process.  At least I had him help me for a few pieces.  After I was done with the nailer and brought it downstairs, he tried grabbing the mallet and hitting the nailer where we had hit it, just without success as the air hose wasn't attached to it.  His curiosity and desire to help never ceases to amaze me.  Then yesterday, when we went into his new room just to take a look, I decided to have him help me put a few more floor boards down, this time by hand as it was near the end of the room.  I pre-drilled the holes for the nails and had him put the nails into the holes for me so I could hammer them in.  He wanted to use the hammer, but as it is a little more than half his size, I really didn't want him putting too many dents in the floor.  He had the right idea though and knew where he needed to hit the nails.  He also was putting pieces of flooring in by himself and trying to put the hammer block on the edge so he could get the piece nice and tight.   We got a few pieces in together before we went back downstairs.  I love the help that I got.  I know that when he gets a little bit older and bigger, he will be even more help as we work on projects together.  At this age, its still a little tough.  And yet, everything I show him, he can replicate even if he doesn't understand the concepts behind what he is doing.  This age is truly amazing.  The brain of a two year old is like a sponge.  Everything they hear and see gets absorbed and can be replicated with ease.  That is part of why I don't hesitate showing him everything I am doing.  His curiosity is there and I don't want to be the one to diminish it or squash his desire to learn.  I love my little helper, mostly because he is my son, but also because he is just amazing. 

A Half Day Weekend

Well, let me start this off by saying for a Monday, I am already exhausted.  The normal two day weekend was shortened into a half day yesterday for me.  It wasn't that I was working on jobs for money, I was working on our son's new room that needs to somehow get done by Thanksgiving or soon after.  But, I must say, a lot got done this weekend.  It all started Friday afternoon after work when I had a friend come over to help move 22 sheets of sheet rock up to the room.  Normally when I come on a Friday I crash, but there wasn't time for that.  The sheet rock luckily didn't take long to move with 2 of us maneuvering it around the tricky corner to get it up the stairs.  After that, nothing was done till Saturday morning.  Come Saturday morning, I got my wife and son packed up to spend the ensuing day and night at my parents house so I could work non-stop on getting the room sheet rocked, something I can't do continuously if they are home due to our son's nap and early bedtime.  By 8 o'clock in the morning, I was ready to get to work.  The sheet rock started going up, along with the last bit of insulation, and work continued non-stop till dinner time.  At that point, I took a brief break to head to my parents house for dinner, see our son, and put him to bed there.  I was back home by 7:30 in the evening and proceeded to work till almost midnight.  A long day, yes, but I almost finished hanging all the sheet rock on Saturday alone.  So after getting to bed by 12:30 in the morning on Sunday, I woke up 5 hours later and was back to work by 6:30.  It was crunch time, so there weren't any big breaks after breakfast.  I needed everything done and cleaned up by 11 when my wife and son were due back home.  I managed to meet at least that deadline and for now, all the noisy work is done.  All the sheet rock is up and ready to be taped.  Yesterday afternoon was a tired one for me.  All I wanted to do was nap, and yet, I had running around to do while our son napped and then soon after I got home, he woke up and we were off to our afternoon of playing in the house.  And now for encore, I have two long days ahead of me as I need to meet a deadline of installing a hardwood floor by Wednesday morning.  It won't be easy, but I will somehow get it done.  The floor isn't in my house (that will be next weekend in our son's room), but rather at a customer's house.  They are on vacation till Wednesday morning and need their master bedroom back by that time.  Lets keep our fingers crossed that I don't fall asleep while working and make it through this long week.  Now, I must run and get my family going for the day.  Insanity I tell you, insanity!

Success!

Well, nothing is official yet, but we may have figured out the solution to our son stripping himself of clothes and diaper at night and sleeping naked.  It wasn't our idea, so I can't take full credit for the it, but I will give credit where credit is due.   My mother, having already raised 2 children, obviously has more ideas on how to correct little problems.   She also has the distance necessary to look at things objectively and make recommendations based upon her observations.  The simple solution to the desperately tragic problem of sleeping naked in the winter?  Turn our son's pajamas around so that the zipper runs down his back instead of the front.   The first time we tried the new trick, he was completely flummoxed.  He was grabbing at where the zipper should have been and upon not finding it, tried reaching to his back to find where the zipper was.  There was no success and that was about a week ago that we started flipping his PJ's around.  So we have this little triumph to be proud of.  Potting training is moving along slowly, with its ups and downs, Mondays being the worst, and the occasional incident of walking into the living room just to see our son sitting on the bottom step of our stairs peeing on to the floor and watching it.  All in all, he is getting much better at using the potty, as long as he is naked.  It seems as soon as he has a pull up on, he feels he can just pee whenever.  Well, not quite whenever.  Depending on the day and the time, sometimes he notifies us when he has to pee with the pull up on, but not always.  Its a slow process, but we will get there eventually. 

One thing I must say about our son is that he is a complete nutcase (much like his father).  In the afternoons and evenings, he runs around the house like a wild banshee.  He is getting faster and faster and occasionally he gets a little too fast for his own good, especially when he is wearing socks in our house.  There have been a number of times recently where he has been running in our house, going a little too fast, and in the midst of trying to negotiate a turn, has had his feet slide completely out from under him and he either face plants the floor or tumbles and falls in some weird position.  The majority of the time, he simply looks stunned for a second and then gets up and starts running again.  Its the funniest when you hear him running, hear the slide of the socks on the floor without seeing him, and then all of a sudden a 2 year old is sliding on the floor from around a corner.  I sometimes can't help but laugh out loud.  Just yesterday, one of the funniest things occurred.  It could have been bad, but luckily we have a resilient little child and it wasn't.  To set up this latest incident, I must tell you about our son's latest infatuation with jumping.  Let me first say that it is the cutest thing.  If we are sitting on the couch, he will climb up on our leg, count to three while holding a hand, and then jump on to the couch, legs flying out and landing squarely on his but.  He will also place small items on the floor, normally flat puzzles or really thin books, walk on top of them, and jump off of them.  It is the cutest thing to watch.  Well, yesterday evening, as we were playing on the couch before he went to bed, he climbed up on the arm of the couch, seated, and launched himself off a couple of times.  On the other side of the arm of the couch is a bench for playing the organ.  The last time he went to climb on to the arm of the couch, he started slipping backwards and before I had a chance to grab him, he folded in half and disappeared, sliding between the bench and the arm of the couch.  One minute there was a child, the next he was on the floor.  He got a little scared, but didn't get hurt at all.  I am sure he will be back doing it again today.  Our son will undoubtedly start getting hurt one of these days, I just hope it isn't soon and when he does, I hope the bumps and bruises aren't too bad.  For now, we will just watch and laugh as he takes his little tumbles. 

If Money Didn't Matter

I saw an interesting short video yesterday that was posted on FB.  I rarely watch the video's on there, but if it piques my interest, I go ahead and give it a watch.  I forget the title of the video, but it was simply a montage of different cool video clips, strung together, and narrated by some guy.  One of the first questions he asks is, "If money didn't matter, what would you do with your life?"  This notion of being able to completely disregard money and follow your dreams has always appealed to me.  In essence, it means doing what you are passionate about and not worrying about how you will pay the bills.  It means following your inner voice, the one that speaks from your heart, and disregarding the your brains logical messages about living, making money, and creating a "good" life for yourself.   But what is a "good" life?  Is it one filled with money that could allow you to do whatever you want or is it one where you do what you really want to anyway and find a way of making money doing that?  I know when I was younger, part of me thought that I needed money to be happy, that I needed money to buy things to create a "happy" world around me.  That feeling never really sunk in, though, and it remained on the periphery of my brain, always there, yet never melding itself with who I was.  To me, I came to see the "good" life filled with money as what it truly was, a rat race that perpetuates itself, sucking you in, making you work and work and work with seemingly no end in sight.  The video that I watched said about as much.  It spoke about creating a world where we perpetually teach our young kids that we need to get a "good" job to make money to live and that if we do that, it will be a never ending vicious cycle that we would not be able to get ourselves out of.  Those who follow their passions, do what they want regardless of the money involved, will eventually make a living, maybe not with large reserves of cash, but with true happiness because they are following their dreams.  In the video, there is one part that says that if we do what we are passionate about over and over and over again, we will become masters of it and by doing that, will make a living of it.  I couldn't agree more.  If we are interested in learning about what we are passionate about, there is not stopping the human spirit, and eventually we will succeed at it. 

 

I often times look back at the decisions that I made that have brought me to where I am now.  I must honestly say, I don't regret any of them.  While I may have followed my passions a little more, disregarded money a little bit more, I have for the most part created a life that is based upon my passions.  I didn't stay in school to get a "good" job making tons of money sitting in an office.  I quit instead to start my own business painting houses.  I am passionate about writing, and I write almost every morning right here, on my blog, sharing my thoughts and experiences with those who wish to read about them.  When I want to go hiking, I go hiking.  I love camping and Vermont and my wife and I figured out a way of buying land up there almost 5 years ago.  Sure, I live in a small house on a small piece of land, but I have made it my own and I call it my home, because that is what it is.  Do I love traveling?  Absolutely, and I travel when I can.  I can't afford to travel everywhere I want to, but that's OK, my life is good.  I often times wonder how some people can sit in an office all day, punching a keyboard, dealing with information and data that they are not interested in only to get a bigger pay check at the end of the day.  Perhaps that is what some people are passionate about, but I feel that many are not.   Money is a big driving factor that keeps many people from doing what they are passionate about.  For me, more money would always be nice, but I would rather be happy doing what I am doing even if it means making less money.  But I work for myself, shouldn't I be making more money?  I could be, if I hired people and added stress to my life, but that wouldn't make me happy.  I put happiness first in my life and everything else comes second.  Even when I was younger, I did what I wanted to do regardless of the consequences because I knew at the time that it would make me happy and it was what I was passionate about.  What about you?  Do you follow your heart or your brain?  Are you doing what you are passionate about or merely working to try and live?  My biggest desire is to instill in my son the desire to follow his passions, whatever they may be, and teach him that money isn't all its cranked up to be.  I hope that he can follow that inner voice of his with complete abandon and create a life for himself that he is completely proud of and even more, a life that will make him happy.  Only time will tell now how things will go. 

Last Bid Farewell

I mentioned earlier this week, on Monday, that I was writing a piece about Matt Lofaro for the Milford Patch instead of writing my blog.  Well, I wrote it, I emailed it to the editor, and never heard back from him or saw it in the Patch.  So, in light of not getting the piece into the Patch, I will instead post it hear for any who wish to read it.  What I also did, because I had a feeling that something like this might happen, was printed it out and handed it to Matt's dad at the funeral on Monday morning.  I felt like having something about his son in hand might help him out a bit.  I'm sure that there isn't much that anyone can do to lessen the grief he is feeling, but I tried to do my small insignificant part.  In any case, following is what I wrote, maybe a bit lengthy, but here it is, unedited by any newspaper and not even a week old. 

 

Matt Lofaro, Coming Full Circle 

When I think about the perception that many people who never knew Matt Lofaro will have, it saddens me to think that most will only think of him as a criminal.  People will consider only the one incident that propelled him into the news and the one incident that ultimately led to his demise, his alleged robbery of a convenience store.  Yet to look at only one incident to define a whole lifetime, however short it may have been, is folly, for behind every incident is a story that needs to be told.  Perhaps I am not the best one to tell that story now, but being one of Matt Lofaro’s friends, I have been granted that opportunity.  I still, after almost a week, can’t fathom that Matt Lofaro would actually rob a store.  Even after talking to and hearing from dozens of people, none of it makes sense to me.  Looking back at his life, one that was led with an eternal smile plastered to his face, the only explanation that my mind can come up with as reasoning for his actions is that it was a stupid prank gone horribly wrong.  Even if the truth proves otherwise, in my heart I will believe it was Matt’s last devilish joke.  For Matt wasn’t a fighter, wasn’t a criminal, and had no bone in his body that would ever desire to hurt another human being.  For all intensive purposes, Matt was a lover of life and of people, and all who knew him were better off due to their relationship with him.  To think that Matt would ever intentionally harm another is truly beyond my comprehension.  Yet, what done is done, and we can’t undo the past.  Nothing we speculate about now will bring Matt Lofaro back.  No actions we take in hindsight will correct any wrongs.  The only thing we have left now is the memory of who Matt Lofaro was, and that memory for so many people is filled with good times, smiles, laughs, and friendship with a man who had everything going for him. 

 

I first met Matt Lofaro towards the end of my tenure in high school at St. Joseph’s in Trumbull.  We were introduced by a mutual friend, Matt Lanier, and if it weren’t for that introduction, I don’t know if we ever would have connected.  But our interaction back then was brief as he was three years younger than me, but that interaction planted the seed of friendship that would endure the next 13 years of our lives.  I went off to college for a few years before coming home to work on finishing college closer to home.  It was upon that return home that our friendship really took off.  Every time I saw Matt, he welcomed me with open arms and a smile, and of course, the persistent question about how I was doing.  He was always looking out for his friends, would do anything for them, and to me, that spoke volumes about his character and the family that brought him up.  Matt would not have been the person he was without his family, two younger brothers and a mother and father who loved him dearly.  Over time, I came to know them as well and I must affirm that the saying, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” rang true for Matt Lofaro.  His family, much as he did, was always welcoming.  The Matt I knew was always seeking the good times with friends, and success in life.  There were his famous Mojito’s he made, better than any I had tried previously.  There was his desire to be successful in whatever job he held, which he largely was, and towards the end, there was his desire to move forward with his girlfriend in the house he recently bought.   All this speaks to the Matt I knew, the Matt with whom I shared many good times, and the Matt with whom I looked forward to years of future friendship.  The last few years of our relationship as friends saw a little distance, mostly due to the start of my own family with a child, now two years old.  I remember a few weeks after our son was born, Matt and his girlfriend Kat came over to visit, to see our newborn son, and to hang out for a bit in our house.  Yet even with the distance that grew between us, we always re-connected, always stayed in touch, and never forgot about our friendship.  It wasn’t until yesterday, at his wake, that I began to forget all that had happened last Wednesday morning.  To dwell on that one day would be to take away from the memory of who he was.  To see the long line of friends and family waiting to pay their last respects spoke volumes about who he was and the positive impact he had on others.  I cried yesterday, as many did at that wake, but not for Matt himself (he wouldn’t have wanted that), but for the people he left behind and the empty spot in their hearts that once beheld a wonderful person.  But mostly, I cried because Matt and his dad had not spoken in the weeks leading up to Matt’s death, and being a father now myself, it tore at my heart to know that his dad would never have the satisfaction of reconciling with his son, which he truly desired to do.  I was debating going to the prayer service/funeral today for Matt, but in the end, it is something I must do, if for nothing else than to say goodbye one last time, and of course, shed a few more tears. 

I titled this little piece “Coming Full Circle” and I am sure that some of you are wondering why I would title a piece over a friend’s death as such.  Well, it will all be explained now.  You see, about four years ago, for whatever reason, Matt Lanier (our mutual friend who introduced us) and I stopped talking.  For years before that we had been really good friends, and then there was nothing.  He went on to get married and have a daughter.  His daughter is about two weeks older than my son.  I don’t know what caused the split in our relationship, but we just didn’t talk, didn’t hang out, it was as if he and I had moved to different planets.  Yet, that distance disappeared last Thursday in the wake of Matt Lofaro’s death.  It was as if Matt Lofaro, in one of his last acts, brought Matt Lanier and myself back together.  The man who I was introduced to in the end re-introduced me to our friend.  And last Thursday, sitting at a bar, reminiscing about old times, toasting the Matt Lofaro we knew, we vowed to never let that distance get between us again.    To me, for every life lost, a new one is born, and this could not be more true than now.  People will mourn the passing of Matt Lofaro, but in his passing, he will undoubtedly change others for the better.  Whether it is renewing in others a commitment to their friends or family, or whether it is simply planting the inspirational seed to live life to its fullest and never let a moment pass us by, Matt Lofaro will have a lasting impact on many, I am sure.  Now is not the time for anger at what happened, but time to look forward and remember the Matt we all knew so well.  Nothing can change what happened, but in Matt’s passing, perhaps we can change ourselves for the better.  I know I was changed by Matt, and in his passing have renewed my own commitment to life, to friends, to family, and to everything I love and cherish.  We never know when life will turn on a dime for us, we will never know when life will come to an abrupt end, but what we can know is that we did the best we could, loved as much as our hearts could endure, and always put our best foot forward.  Matt Lofaro’s life was not in vain.  He impacted many and will continue to impact many for years to come.  For all those saddened by the loss of Matt, a friend, a son, whatever he was to you; I am sure that wherever he is, he is smiling down on us with love, for that is what he had for everyone. 

A Father's Love

Becoming a father changes a person forever.  From the moment the child enters the world, nothing is ever the same for a father, or for that matter a mother, although becoming a mother changes a person even earlier I am sure.  The way a father views the world is different than the way an ordinary man views the world.  Nothing will ever be the same as it used to and a man finds that he has a larger capacity for love than he ever thought was possible.   Life moves beyond the self to include those around him.  The love of a child is different than any other love one can experience.  Having part of you go into creating a child does not take a way anything of who you are, rather it increases what you have to offer.  You find reserves of energy and patience that were previously hidden.  There is a desire to everything possible to keep that child safe and to help them grow into their own unique adulthood.  Every day that goes by sees a different challenge presented by a child, but every single one is accepted and surmounted.  Yet, through every challenge, every push of a parents' buttons by a child, there is deep well of love that never seems to go dry. 

Last night, I got home late from work and decided to have a bowl of ice cream and watch a little TV before making my way upstairs to go to bed.  With the ice cream done, I decided to watch a few more minutes of TV.  Well, somehow I fell asleep on the couch only to be woken up by our son screaming in his room, "Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, ahhhhhhhhhhh."  I waited a few minutes, hoping it would go away, but the screams got louder and I could tell there would be no going back to sleep for our son.  Something was up and I had to check on him.  When you are a father, you get to know the difference between the types of screams your child has.  I know when I can leave our son in his crib and within five minutes he will be back in bed.  I also know when no matter how long I leave him there, nothing will calm him and I will need to go in there.  Trust me, I have no problem waking up in the middle of the night to take care of our son, even if it means getting less sleep.  Well, I walk in, turn the lights on low, and see our son sitting in the middle of his crib; naked, shivering, wet, and screaming.  In essence, he looked miserable.  He has this new idea that he has to sleep naked in his crib so he somehow manages to take off his sleep and then his diaper, and since he can't control his bladder yet, he usually ends up peeing.  Since it is starting to get cold out, its not so much fun when you pee in your crib, naked, and then have to sleep in it.  So as soon as I walk in, I pick him up and he clings to me for dear life, shivering and shaking.  I just held him tight as I went to get another diaper, get him dressed back up, and get him ready to go back to bed.  I sat with him, rocking him and singing with him for about ten minutes before putting him back down.  As a dad, you don't always consider everything so my wife had to go in almost right after I left because I had forgotten to check his sheets to see if they were wet, which they were.  But that's another story for another day.  The only thing that mattered to me last night was comforting him, loving him, and making sure he got warm and dry. 

This past week, while depressing with the loss of a friend, has also made me realize how important certain things are in life.  Family and friends.  What is more important than that and the love we have for one another.  More than that though, it made me look at our son a little differently.  Not that I had any lack of love for him before, but seeing my friend's dad talk about him during the funeral made me realize just how special the bond is between parent and child.  There is so much that we will never understand about our parent's love for us until we have a child and feel that love ourselves.  We begin to realize that no matter what happens, the love we have for our child will never diminish, never go away, and stay with us until our dying day.  A parent should never have to bury their own child.  It has to be one of the hardest things to do on this earth.  Every time I try to empathize with Matt's dad, it brings such an upwelling of emotions that I almost can't bear it.  While I hope to never lose my son or my future child, I have had a glimpse of what it would be like, and I don't know if I would be able to handle it.  If you don't have a child and are reading this, you will never quite understand the sentiments I am talking about until you have your own child.  So over this past week, I have re-affirmed my love for my family and friends and have vowed to do my best to cherish every moment I can.  Life is too short to live it any other way.  I have always lived by the Latin saying "Carpe Diem" and will continue to do so till I leave this earth.  Carpe Diem, translated, simply means "Seize the Day".

Perceptions

This last week has brought an influx of thoughts and emotions.  I am still trying to sort through all of them and make sense of it all.  I'm sure in this instance, there will be a lot that will get left unsettled.  With the death of a friend, at a young age and unexpected, there are many questions that are going through my mind.  Yet, those questions will most likely go unanswered.  We will never know the why, and perhaps that is the most troubling.  In this instance, there are three stories to be told, yet we will only ever hear two of them.  Part of me doesn't want to know the truth, the answers from the other two stories.  I, for one, would rather live with what I picture as the why, not what others claim is the truth behind the whole event.  But that's me.  Others will crave the truth, seek it out at all costs, and in the end, it will do nothing to change the course of events.  What is done is done and nothing can bring back a friend from the grave.  There are many perceptions of what happened, depending on who you are and whether you knew the deceased or not.  (For those of you still wondering what I am talking about, I am talking about the death of Matt Lofaro last Wednesday).   Those perceptions go beyond the incident itself to the people involved, their decisions, and what led to those decisions that they made.  There are those, as I mentioned over the past week, who will view Matt as a criminal, a doped up person in need of cash, a low life.  And those same people will hail the cop as a hero, as doing his job, as ridding the world of another stupid kid.  Yet, those perceptions are based upon one instance in a lifetime of decisions that were made by those two individuals, the cop and Matt.  My perceptions are completely different.  Knowing Matt, I view the whole incident as a prank gone bad, a stupid decision that led to his death.  And for the cop, I view him as a trigger happy fool.  Yes, my perceptions are based upon my knowledge of Matt leading up to the incident and knowing that he would never do something like that.  Yet, if I was in another person's shoes and Matt was not my friend, would I look at it the same way or would I make assumptions about the people involved.  Having had this happen to a friend of mine, it makes me think that I will reserve assumptions in the future until I know more about an individual, but will I?  Or will I immediately cast judgement based upon my perceptions of a situation and no real knowledge of the people involved. 

 

It sucks that a whole life can be upturned and spun on its head based upon one instance in a person's life.  Many people will look at only one instance without regarding the whole picture and make their assumptions.  People will perceive only what they read and see and anything else leading up that one point will mean nothing.  I know that there have been a number of points in my life when I was younger where if something had happened, people would have drawn assumptions about me that would have been completely incorrect.  Their perceptions about me would be faulty and incomplete, yet the majority of people will never look past the headlines, never dig deeper to know more about the people involved, and simply cast their judgement based upon a sliver of information.  I for one will do my best in the future to never judge a person based upon one instance in their life.  Its not an easy thing to do, to reserve perceptions and assumptions when access to the complete person is not always there.  Often times we never really know the entire person we are making assumptions about.  Whether it is in the news or not, whether it is a crime or just an instance in which we pass by a person, we perceive things about them, create our assumptions, and go on our merry way thinking we are correct.  How often are we wrong though?  How many times do we make assumptions, cast judgement, when our assumptions and judgements couldn't be farther from the truth?  Often times, we never know.  Perhaps we would all do well to take a little more time when regarding others and their situation.  Perhaps we should reserve judgement and not make assumptions.  Yet those things are hard to do when we live in a knee jerk society where everything happens in a split second and then is gone.  We rarely have time to figure out the truth behind a situation or a person.  We don't want to invest our efforts in something that we perceive as the truth yet could be just a fairy tale.  Yet, the damage we can do to others is irreparable sometimes and it speaks to the fact that we should slow down, take a little more time when regarding others, and not be so quick to pass judgement on them.  Yet many will continue on as they were, hurting others with their assumptions and faulty perceptions.  We can get angry at them, or we could move on with our lives.  I for one, as angry as I might want to get, will most times choose to move on and make my own life better.  Especially now, after the death of a friend with many casting judgement upon him, will choose to move forward and pay no mind to any who look down on him.  I know the truth about Matt and that is all that matters.  I don't know if any of this made sense, but I did the best I could to sort it all out.  Oh well, on to another day.

Monday Morning, and Then a Funeral

So today I have but a very short piece.  I spent most of the early morning hours writing my tribute to Matt Lofaro which will make its way into the Milford Patch either today or tomorrow I am thinking.  Its been an emotional roller coaster for me these past two days with a wake yesterday and his funeral today.  I don't have much more to say right now.  Well, I have a lot to say, but not enough time to say it in.  So till tomorrow, this short little bit will have to do.  If you want to read what I wrote this morning, with the occasional tear dripping on to the key board, check out the Milford Patch today and tomorrow.   As soon as I find out when the article will appear, I will let everyone know.  For today, smile at a stranger, forget the past and the future, and live in the present, for that is all we truly have.

Another One Bites the Dust

I wish the story I had today had a happy ending, but sadly, it doesn't.   A good friend of mine going back to high school, died yesterday.  Its a bizarre story, and not all the details are even known yet.  I first found out from the gentleman whose house I am currently painting.  My friend who died had referred me to this current customer of mine as he and his dad (who he worked for at the time) were replacing all the windows on the house.  Their part of the job had largely wrapped up and our mutual customer was texting my friend's dad about something.  The response he received was, "It doesn't matter, Matt's dead."   So right off the bat, something didn't seem right, and it bothered me that nothing was known or shared about how he actually died.   I tried finding out what had happened.  I placed a few calls with no response and finally, out of desperation to simply just know, I posted a question on Facebook to see if anyone had heard what had happened to my friend.  Well, that last option worked because my brother had actually heard what had happened from another one of Matt's friends.  So let's jump back quickly to early yesterday morning.  There was a robbery that occurred around 3:30 at a convenience store at a gas station.  While the robbery was allegedly in progress, a state trooper walked in, saw what was happening, and tried to stop the robbery.  He allegedly told the robber what to do, and upon the robber failing to listen, was "forced to discharge his weapon", killing the robber.  As it turns out, the robber had a mask on and appeared to be threatening the store clerk with a machete type blade.  Well, that robber was my friend, someone who I could never in a million years picture doing something like that.  His name, while not being released by the police, is Matt Lofaro.  Something about this whole situation isn't sitting right with me.  If what the police say is true and Matt was actually robbing the place, I will still be in disbelief that he could have committed such an act.  For anyone who knew Matt Lofaro, I think they would agree with me.  If asked on Tuesday if he could ever do something like that, I would have to say not in a million years.  Whatever got him into that situation, I don't know, but it still bothers me now.

Matt Lofaro was one of the nicest, most genuine people I have known.  Whenever I talked to him, some of the first questions out of his mouth were always how my family and I were doing.  He was down to earth, had just gotten a new job with a company that installs solar panels and had recently tried his hand at stand up comedy.  When last I was in touch with him, about a week and a half to two weeks ago, he seemed to be doing really well.  There was no indication that something like this could ever transpire.  Even the gentleman who I am working for had said on numerous occasions that Matt was one of the nicest people he had ever met.  They even went out for drinks after only meeting a few times.  He was the type of person who always looked out for his friends, helping them when he could and never asking for favors.  Such was the nature of the Matt Lofaro I knew.  I find it very hard to believe that in the course of two weeks, something could have happened which made him stoop to the level of robbery.  Its just not in the realm of the possible for me.  Details are still sketchy about what actually transpired yesterday morning at the gas station on the Post Road in Milford, but all I have to say is that he better have actually posed a threat to the officer who shot him.  At this point, I am mourning the loss of a friend, not a robber as most people will now know him.  The majority of people who read the news will assume that Matt was a criminal, destined to be downed by an officer's bullet at some point or at least destined for a jail cell.  One event will dictate how everyone views the rest of his previous life.  "There must have been some indications."  "He must have just been a bad apple."  He wasn't, and in my mind, however naive it may seem, he will never be a criminal.  Wherever you are now, Matt, know that you were loved by many.  Your life ended way to soon but may you rest in peace now. 

The Foliage Trip

I made my last trip up to Vermont this past weekend for a few different reasons.  The first of which was to re-enforce the roof of the pavilion that I built over the summer to withstand the snow that will inevitably pile up on it over the coming winter months.  The second reason was to return a few items that were too wet to stow in the shed due to rain the last time we were up there.  The last reason, was for a little relaxation and retreat from everyday life.  The most amazing thing to me was the change in fall foliage just during the trip.  Starting in Connecticut, it would appear that we are just approaching peak season for fall foliage, that short span of time in the fall where almost every tree is plastered with beautiful colors running the gamut from dark browns through reds through brilliant oranges and yellows.  While we are just turning that corner here in Connecticut, the scene changes quite rapidly as you head even a few hundred miles north to Vermont.  As I traveled up on Friday, leaving a little later than normal due to a crazy morning, I traveled from almost peak to peak to post peak.  The peak season right now is in most of Massachusetts, ranging from just north of the border with Connecticut to Southern Vermont after which it begins to taper off.   Massachusetts is absolutely beautiful with hills and peaks looking as if they are almost on fire with the changing leaves.  Southern Vermont right now takes the prize mostly due to its peaks and valleys, which when you pass through, give you perhaps the most beautiful scenes that can be found in New England.  Once you get about a half hour into Vermont, though, the colors start to disappear, leaving barren trees and patches of pine trees mingled in between.  While not all the leaves are gone from the trees even where my property is, the majority are.  Sometimes, I find it interesting to see a single tree covered in brilliant orange while all the trees around it are completely bare.  It is a testament to the difference that every tree embodies from those around it.  No two are the same, no two lose their leaves at the same time, and just depending on how the wind blows, one whole hillside could retain its color for a week longer than the opposite side of the hill. 

 

The trip itself was amazing to take, with me struggling to keep my eyes on the road instead of watching the colors pass me by at 80 miles per hour.  Up on my property, there is one small tree left that has retained its leaves up until now.  Its a small one just one edge of our clearing and its colors are astounding.  The range from a reddish brown near the bottom of the tree to a bright reddish orange near the top.  With no leaves on any of the trees, more sun breaks through and casts elegant shadows that dance in the wind.  Barely clearing a hill, the sun struggles to warm up the campsite, but with a warm fire going, you barely notice the difference.  Yet, all that will change over the winter.  The blanket of leaves that crinkle with every step you take with be compacted by the snow.  But for now, I will hold on to the memory of this past weekend in Vermont, the perfect fall weather, and the colors that now lay on the ground around the camp.  There is always next year, where the trees will be a little bit bigger and perhaps a different tree will retain its leaves late into the fall.  I love every season in New England, but for me, the two best are spring and fall, the time of birth and dying.  Two periods where everything pops for a few weeks. . Oh well, time to get back to real life, enjoy the fall foliage here in Connecticut, and keep on trucking through the winter. 

Parental Guilt

I would have to say that for the most part, I don't have much guilt as a parent.  I feel that I give my all to being a parent, to being there for my son, to helping him grow and develop, and to set rules and boundaries.  Yet, as my dream of being able to spend more time at home with him has dissipated, and for the most part, disappeared, I do get pangs of guilt when I don't get to see him every afternoon.   We do eat at least one meal a day together as a family, breakfast, and for the majority of the week, dinner as well, but there is a part of me that would like to be there more.  Yet, it isn't exactly possible all the time.  This fall has been utterly crazy with work, and as I am self employed, I have to do the work to bring the money in.  Its not like a 9-5 where I can get there at a given hour and leave at a given hour.  My days fluctuate with the weather, with the job, and with a thousand other variables that get factored in.  Sometimes the worst guilt I get is when I go away to Vermont or when my wife tells me that our son was asking for me a lot in a given evening.  Those are the times where my heart feels like it gets twisted a little in an iron grip, squeezed just a touch to let me know I care, and wrenched to and fro.  I know I will not be able to be there for every aspect of our son's life, its just not possible, yet there is a part of me that would like to be.  Judging from my upbringing, the early years are the most formative when it comes to raising a child.  Those first five years have an impact that will last a lifetime and will guide a child into adulthood.  More goes into a developing brain during the first five years of life than at almost any other time of a person's life.  It is fundamental and there is large part of me that wants to make sure I have a hand in being a steadfast part of that first five years.  Two are now down and there are three to go.  These next three years will perhaps be the most fun and the most challenging, but I will love every second of them.  This all comes as I am heading to Vermont this weekend to close up the campsite for the winter.  My wife and son will not be coming as it will be too cold, but luckily its only for a weekend.  As for me, I love the cold and will enjoy the fact that I won't be sweating up there at all. 

But enough about my little pangs of guilt that come occasionally.  I'm sure I'm not the only parent to ever feel them, so lets move on to our naked son again.  Tuesday morning I went to get our son from his room as I normally do in the mornings.  Upon opening the door (sounds very similar to another post I had, doesn't it) I see him curled up in a little ball, naked.  As soon as he saw me, he popped up and handed me his PJ's and diaper.  Yup, this time he got everything off, including undoing the little flap that normally covers the top of the zipper.  Then again, the same thing happened yesterday morning, except the diaper didn't come off.  So after two mornings in a row of finding our son naked in bed, we decided that it might be time to get a two piece set of PJ's for him, that way even if he manages to get his pants off, he will have his shirt to keep him half warm.   That's the one thing he can't get off yet, his shirt.   At least it isn't freezing at night yet so he doesn't get too cold.  And not that it would actually get freezing in his room as we do have this modern convenience called a furnace to heat the house, but still, it does get a bit chilly at night.   However this whole naked child thing turns out, I really don't mind as long as he doesn't come running downstairs naked as a teenager.  Oh well, my mind is slow today and while I started this post yesterday and without the necessary time to finish it up and post it, I am finishing it this morning.  It could be my mind is slow due to lack of sleep.  I had a meeting last night from which I didn't get home till after 11.  So 4.5 hours of sleep later with a dog that persistently inched her way up the bed till I had half a bed to sleep on, and here I am struggling to bring words to fruition and get them down in a logical and decipherable manner.  Tonight will be another late night as I have darts so expect no post tomorrow.  Yup, my life has taken a turn from normal/crazy to crazy/insane.  The amount of sleep I have gotten this week is not nearly enough.  It went from 6 hours on Monday night down to 5 on Tuesday night.  Last night as I mentioned was even less and tonight will probably be around the same or less than last night.  Tired, tired, tired with no end in sight.  I'd say I love it but I fear I might be lying.  In any case, I'll just keep on trucking, trying to get these blog posts out as often as possible (another minor cause of a different kind of guilt) which has diminished I know, and most importantly try to to keep from getting sick.  Here is to Halloween, nightmares, and everything Octoberish.  (See, I told you my mind was having trouble this morning.)

Silence

Sometimes silence is a beautiful thing, true silence, without sound.  And yet, true silence is a very hard thing to come by, even during the early morning hours sitting in a house, staring at a computer.  If you sit long enough, without talking, music, or any distractions, the subtle noises that fill a house come to life, become louder, and speak volumes.  Just take the ticking of a clock, that innocent tick tock, tick tock, perpetual as long as the battery lasts that goes completely unnoticed during normal living.   It comes to life and gradually grows in volume the more you sit in silence.  The more I think about it, the more I actually like the ticking of a clock.  You never think to much of it anymore because for the most part, many clocks these days are digital, plastered on stoves, microwaves, computers, phones, etc.  Yet the larger wall clocks, powered by that innocent invention called the battery, are still around and still carry us forward.  If it wasn't for the clock, where would we be?  I would like to think at times that life would be a little simpler.  Things wouldn't be set in a finite world of numbers, time, schedules, and so on and so forth.  We could judge things by the sun, the setting of it, the rising of it, the moon and its phases.  Yet, we probably wouldn't be as productive without the clock.  We would lack definition.  But we would also have a more complete silence without the clock. 

 

I think that in the modern day, it is almost impossible to create a room in a house that is completely void of all sound.  That is, unless we deem it necessary to pad our walls with sound absorbent material, to create thick ceilings and padded floors where even the pitter patter of our feet would go silent.  That is the stuff that horror movies and secretive government facilities are made of, not ordinary houses.  We have our refrigerators with their incessant hum, their little jolt to life that unless everything else is silent, you would never know occurred.  Even the hum of electricity can be heard if all else is turned off and silent.  For many these days, I can imagine that the slight hum of computers, and all our appliances is a welcoming, subtle, background noise.  It takes away the possibility that something is hiding in the corner, waiting to pounce on us, or that there might be a monster behind the curtain just waiting for us to walk close enough to grab us.  These thoughts all come flooding back the moment the power goes off.  Thinking of this true silence now, the only time we really get it is when the power is knocked out by a storm of some other calamity.  Only then do we get a glimpse of true silence, and only if there aren't backup generators running somewhere near us.  Sometimes I enjoy silence, but then again, I never truly get to experience it, so do I really love it, or do I just think I love it.  Even when I am in the woods in Vermont, nothing is ever truly silent.  Even the dark of night, there are sounds to be heard coming from the woods.  To think about silence as a complete absence of sound can be unnerving, mostly because we never really experience it.  Have you ever experience complete and utter silence?  I really can say if I have or not, but I probably haven't. 

He'd Rather Be Naked

Yesterday morning when I went to get my son out of bed brought one of the cutest and funniest moments I have had as a parent.  There have been many moments that I have thought of as funny, but this one definitely nears the top of my list.  Normally, when I go in to get my son to start our day, he is fully clothed and either laying down or curled up in a little ball.  Well, yesterday brought a little different scene.  I had heard him talking for a bit before I went upstairs to grab him so I knew he was already awake.  I opened his door to find him hunched over his knees in a little ball, still half asleep.  As soon as he heard the door open, he popped up, turned around, and handed me his PJ's that he was supposed to be sleeping in.  Instead, all he had on was his diaper which looked as if it was about to come off as well.  It probably doesn't seem nearly as funny reading about it as it did to me in person, but for those parents out there, I'm sure you understand waking up your child to find out that they figured out how to take their clothes off.  The problem with the PJ's he wore the other night was that they didn't have the little flap that covers the top of the zipper after his PJ's are zipped up.  With no flap snapped tight, the zipper was a piece of cake obviously to pull down and somehow wrench his PJ's off his body.  Well, after we got downstairs and took off his wet diaper from the night (yes, potty training has seemingly gone in reverse for a bit), we put his PJ's back on to keep him warm.  Well, that didn't last long as began taking them off almost as soon as they were put back on.  It seems our son just likes traipse around the house naked.  No worries, it provides for amusing times.  Especially since like every boy his age, his little penis provides hours of amusement for him. 

 

On a slightly different note, it is his second birthday this weekend.  What's on the menu for our little family gathering?  Hot dogs for our son and chicken for everyone else.  While his taste for food is slowly expanding, he is definitely no where near his love of food that he used to have.  So it will be interesting to see what else he eats on his birthday.  My guess is it will probably be apple sauce and banana bread with vegetables mixed in.  That is one thing we are struggling with getting him to eat, vegetables.  He just doesn't really care for them and as such, we mix them into his banana bread that he loves to eat.  Yet, he is trying vegetables more and more often just without much success in actually eating and swallowing them.  The other day, however, as my wife was picking vegetables from our garden, she had a surprise.  He took a chili pepper that had starting turning red and began munching on the end of it.  He actually ate about three or four bites of it before he got to the seeds of the chili pepper.  The seeds are always the hottest part of the pepper and as soon as he got a mouthful of them, it was like trying to get a burning coal out of your mouth.  It was cute and hilarious, but at least he was eating a vegetable.  Maybe we are turning a corner in regards to expanding his range of food.  Yesterday morning, he actually ate two pieces of cold, plain pasta, something that had previously not even made it past the lips of his mouth.  He is still funny when trying something new.  At first, he will put it to his lips and immediately take it away shaking his head no.  What is happening more frequently now is that he will actually bring the food back to his mouth and try eating it.  Most of the time with something new the food will come right back out, however, it is staying in there more and more of late.  Maybe our little boy is actually starting to grow up.  Whatever the case, he is joy, a wonder, and I love him to death!

October, Beerfests, Kids?

This past Saturday I went to the third annual Smoke in the Valley Chili and Beerfest, an event that has close to a hundred beers for tasting, a chili cook off, numerous bands on two stages, and close to three thousand people.   Despite the warm weather, which I wish was a little bit cooler, I had a good time.  Luckily, I live right up the hill from where it was held and walked down with a friend to attend.  My wife and son didn't go, because, well, its mostly a beerfest.  The great benefit to this beerfest at least is that all the proceeds go to charity, I believe towards breast cancer or something like that.  In any case, I expected it to be an adult crowd as you need an I.D. to get in and you are handed a little plastic cup for tasting all the beer.  Much to my surprise, there were a number of young parents toting their very young children around with them, while drinking beer, surrounded by what would become a crowd of half drunk adults.  I believe the youngest child I saw was close to a year old and the oldest had to be around 5.   But back to children being at a beerfest in a little bit.  I love the idea of a beerfest, a place where there is plenty of beer to sample, plenty of people to talk to and congregate with, and especially if you have friends there, a place to just kick back, hang out, and enjoy a beautiful afternoon.  It seems that there has been an influx of beerfests over the past few years.  They always occur during the fall, most likely because the notorious Octoberfest from Germany is held in the fall, and they are becoming widely attended events.  The beerfests and the influx of microbreweries and homebrews are making their mark and spreading, and I must say, I love it.  I was never one to latch on to the big, name brand beers like Budweiser, Coors, Miller, or any of those.  I like the unique taste you get with a more local brewery, the small one down the street that you can't find out of state.  Even those that are located in the New England area, I'd take any of those beers over the name brands any day.  I know Budweiser is "America's Beer", but for me its fading.  It never really tasted that good and with a plethora of other, better beers out there, why drink Bud?  In any case, I must move on to my only gripe with this past Saturday, the kids that were at the beerfest.

I just don't understand why you would bring your child to an event that you intend to drink at.  I know that parents are supposed to be responsible, but with that many beers and nearly everyone drinking, its fairly easy to have one too many.  And that's not even the half of it.  It goes beyond bringing your child to an event that you will be drinking at, potentially heavily.  Its also about that atmosphere and those others around you who will not keep their drinking under control and make themselves look like complete idiots.  For instance, I was standing with my friends, drinking, as a young girl in her twenties stumbled up to a bin for donating clothes, and vomited down the side of it.  If your child saw that and asked why that woman threw up, what would you say?  Maybe, "Well, you see son, when someone has too much to drink, they sometimes get sick to their stomach and it all comes back out."  The child's response, "So will I catch their stomach bug then?"  "No, honey, your too young to catch it."  "What about you?  Your drinking.  Will you catch their stomach bug?"  "Well, I shouldn't because I haven't had too much to drink?"  "How do you know?"  It goes on and on and on the conversations that could take place about drinking between a parent and their child at an event like this.  Its just not a conversation that I feel should be had between a parent and their child under the age of say 13.  Maybe I'm being a little ridiculous and parents should start introducing their children to alcohol at the earliest age possible, but I don't think so.  I think its being a responsible parent when you don't bring your child to an event such as a beerfest.  Find a babysitter or just don't go.  As much as you might love drinking beer, is it really worth it to expose your child to that lifestyle at such an early age?  And lets not forget about the cigar tent and the plethora of men walking around with cigars blowing smoke everywhere.  I personally don't mind, but we all know what second hand smoke can do.  Bringing your child to an event like that is like asking them to consider entering that lifestyle themselves.  But enough of all that.  My son wasn't there, I had a great time, and I look forward to the one next year.  I do want to make it to Octoberfest in Germany one time during my life, but for now, I will enjoy the local beerfests in Connecticut. 

Another Long Start

So this week is off to a long start again.  I had a case of the Mondays yesterday and yet still managed to work a 12 hour day.  Today and tomorrow will be 13 hour work days for me followed by a shorter work day and darts on Thursday and a crash on Friday.  Yup, it just might be time to find someone to help me out with work.  In any case, short blog today as I need to leave the house early and don't have time to write longer than this.  Showa time!

Time for Time Outs

This past weekend proved to be a test of patience for me.  I mentioned a while ago that I am finding out, through the process of being a father, just how much patience I have.   I feel that for the most part, I do have a lot of patience compared to what I used to have.  Yet, I am currently having my patience tested by our son who is now in the mode of throwing temper tantrums.  We are starting to set the rules in our house as he is getting the age where he thinks he can do whatever he wants without consequence.  Well, that is quickly being changed.  I must say, for the most part our son is awesome, well behaved, and a joy to have around.  There comes a time, however, usually after his nap in the afternoon and before dinner, what I like to call the two hour witching period.  This is when his ego takes hold, he tries pushing boundaries, and when those boundaries come crashing down, his temper flares and all hell breaks loose.  So a little hyperbole there with all hell breaking loose, however, I can envision how bad it could get if we just let him continue on his little rampage.  I hate to burst everyone's bubble image of my son being wonderful with this news of temper tantrums, but I think that most parents would expect that from a two year old, especially since they have probably gone through it themselves.  These temper tantrums usually start over something innocent and stupid that he is doing, that either endangers himself, others, or objects in our house.  There is the occasion where he goes a little beyond what we allow him to do, but for now it is usually because something could get broken or he could seriously hurt himself.  I forget what it was on Saturday that sparked his little temper tantrum, but it was probably us taking something away from him or telling him he couldn't do something.  As soon as we told him that, he got this really ticked off look on his face, walked up to my wife who was sitting, stood in front of her, looked up, and took both hands and hit her on the legs.  The odd part is, I was the one who took something away from him or stopped him from doing something.  Regardless, I wasn't about to let him get the idea that he could just walk up to my wife and hit her or anything else for that matter.  So I grabbed him gently, sat him in my lap, and wrapped my arms around him.  He then proceeded to scream his head off, wriggle, shake, and attempt every way possible to get out of my grip.  He started kicking since he couldn't move his arms and at one point, I held him under his arm pits, suspended off the ground, while he turned beet red screaming his head off.  After about five minutes of that and me calmly telling him how we don't lash out when we get frustrated or angry, he tired himself out, actually looked at me while I was talking to him, and calmed down.  As soon as I let go of him it was like the temper tantrum didn't even happen. 

 

I thought I would be all set for the weekend with temper tantrums.  Lo and behold, I was not.  Instead, I had the pleasure of dealing with another one yesterday, although not nearly as severe as the one on Saturday.  So a little back story to this tantrum yesterday.  Our son loves to pretend to cook on our stove and as such, we let him use real utensils, real pans, and everything.  One of the things he loves is the small measuring spoons.  Yesterday afternoon, as we were in the kitchen getting dinner ready, our son slides his stool over to the cabinets, climbs up, and grabs a small measuring spoon from the counter.  He runs off with it into the living room.  I normally wouldn't have a problem with him playing with the spoon except he had it in his mouth and was running from one couch to the other with it hanging out of his mouth.  I asked him three times to take it out of his mouth because he could get seriously hurt by doing it.  After three times of him not listening, I went over and took the spoon from him.  Well, that was the last straw for him.  I saw the look in his eye, the drastic change in his demeanor, and he went to grab a pillow and throw it.  I told him before I left the room that if he threw the pillow, he would be going into time out.  I will give you a wild guess now as to what happened.  Yep, he threw the pillow, probably thinking that I was joking about the whole time out thing.  So I went over, picked him up, brought him into the kitchen where we sat down, him in my lap, and wrapped my arms around him in time out.  I explained that we were now setting time limits as a measure of the time out, explained what the time out was (as we really didn't have to do that before), and why he can't just lash out when he can't do what he wants.  He freaked out for a few minutes, but calmed down much quicker than he did the day before.  There was one point where he freaked out and added two minutes to his time out, but during those last two minutes he calmed down and relaxed on my lap.  By the time the two minutes were up, he was totally calm and back to normal.  Maybe the time outs are working their magic quicker than we expected, but then again, maybe not.  I have a horrible feeling that the worst is yet to come.  Judging from the tempers that my wife and I used to have when we were younger, our son is going to be a challenge in the years to come and I am going to have to grow some patience on a tree for harvesting when necessary.  Oh well, he is still a joy to have around and I love him completely.  Now it will just be a matter of setting rules and enforcing them judiciously and fairly.  I hate rules so this should be interesting!