Pumpkin Homebrew Review

Well, its been a long while since I’ve done a beer review, but I had someone ask me to review their Pumpkin Ale Homebrew, so what the hell. One of L Bird’s co-workers’ husband has gotten pretty deep into homebrewing and presented me with two bottles of gold to review and well, who am I to turn down free beer.So here we go ….

Appearance: From the minute I popped the crown on the bottle until the bottle was empty it foamed over. I actually had to quickly get it into my pint glass before I lost the whole bottle to foaming. So it is plenty carbonated. It was a light tan/brown in color and produced a ton of rocky head. It is pretty cloudy with visible sediment floating throughout, which is not necessarily a bad thing. When brewing with pumpkin it can produce a lot of sediment that stays suspended and is harder to remove. In the future if you wanted to clean it up, you could rack to a secondary carboy for 1-2 weeks for more settling before bottling but it is perfectly drinkable the way it is.

Aroma: It has a bit of hop aroma right up front, it is slightly citrusy which could be from the choice of hops. There is also hints of cinnamon and pumpkin, but overall it is clean and bright.

Taste: The hops continue to shine through at the start, it has that bitter hoppiness up front that gives way to a nice pumpkin flavor before the traditional ale flavors come through. I am not sure if he added any spices during the brewing but I can detect a faint spiciness maybe allspice or clove. There is a very slight lingering aftertaste that is reminiscent of bitter citrus peel/oil.

Overall: This is a good foray into pumpkin beers. It has enough pumpkin to be tasty but not so much as to be over the top. I also like the fact that it wasn’t over-spiced, a lot of commercial pumpkin beers try to be liquid pumpkin pie and they tend to go over the top on spice and I find that makes it cloying and makes for bad beer. It could be cleaned up a little by giving it a longer racking time and the after taste may be from leaving the bittering hops in the boil a little too long, but these are very minor faults. Overall, this is a good beer and I would drink a couple of them if I had the chance.

Good job, keep brewing and keep ‘em tippin’!

3 Chocolate Rewards and a plan …

Raising children is the most rewarding and the most exasperating thing I have ever done in my life. One minute you are so excited and happy with them, you look at their angelic faces and feel truly blessed. The next minute they are running around like a band of drunken midgets and you are trying to control your breathing before you turn into a screaming dictator that hands out martial punishment like its candy. Yeah, it’s been super stressful in my house lately, absolutely no one is sleeping, STILL. A Bird and Nat are both waking up 3 times a night on average.

Nat is cutting molars, I think, so she is pretty miserable while she is up and playing and even worse when she wakes up in the middle of the night. A Bird is having some anxiety issues over being alone. If L Bird or I walk out of the room, its “Dad, where are you going?” or “Can I come with you?” and if I go to the next room for too long she comes in to find me because she “got nervous”. This happens all through the day, at night it multiplies by 10. It seems she is constantly up because she heard a noise, she had a bad dream, her stomach hurt, she needed something, she can’t sleep anymore (even though its 11 PM or my favorite 2 AM) etc. Every night its one of those excuses and its definitely getting old. From talking to other parents at work and a quick Google search of “How can I keep my 6 year old in bed” (which by the way auto-populates itself after the number 6), it appears that this phenomenon is pretty common among all kids. It’s great to know that we are not alone, but it doesn’t help when L Bird or I are trying to keep our cool on trip number 3 back to A Bird’s bedroom at 3 AM.

So back to the ever helpful advice of people, both real and on the internets, they all say “keep calm, stay unemotional and bring the child back to her bed as many times as it takes and be consistent”. While that may be true who the hell is calm and unemotional at 3 AM when they are running on empty, but hey we’ll give it a shot. We are going on night 4 of that nonsense and we are all struggling to stay “unemotional” and not have a screaming/crying match that wakes the neighborhood. Another tactic is to offer a sticker or reward chart to keep them in bed. I’m not above bribing my kid if it means I can get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, so we are trying that as well. We have told A Bird that if she doesn’t get up or even reduces her times of getting up in the night through the week she can pick out a prize at the end of the week. Sounds like a great plan until she gets up the same amount of times and then asks if she can still have a prize. When you tell  her NO, it turns into a super whiny, mega meltdown at 6 AM that wakes up Nat early which turns her into a super clingy whiny little bundle of joy for L Bird. I got to miss that this morning because I was already at work, but L bird wasn’t so lucky. She jumped on that grenade for me and I only got hit with tiny bits of shrapnel from her when she called me to vent.

This is such a hard thing to deal with because I can vividly remember lying in my bed terrified when the wind was blowing the tree branches into my window and making scratching noises. It only got worse when the lightning flashed and I saw the long shadows of the branches that looked just like arms coming to get me. I remember that terrified feeling of not wanting to be alone and running for my Mom. So I completely understand A Bird’s feelings and I do feel so bad for her, but I feel even worse when the whole next day I am irritable and snapping at her and everyone around me because I am tired and cranky. I hate being like this and I hate that she feels so scared, but something has to give.

So all of that brings me to “the plan”, my plan is the reward chart only modified. Like I said I am not against bribing my kid, however a week is like a lifetime to a 6 year old so I thought I would modify the reward for a little instant gratification. A Bird is a junk food hound, we are constantly “making deals”, like “if you have a banana or a yogurt you can have a piece of candy/cheetos/bbq chips (insert junk food here)”. Like all kids, she loves candy, especially Hershey bars, so my plan is to send her to bed with the thought if she stays in bed all night she can have 3 “bricks” of Hershey bar after her breakfast in the morning. Every time she gets up for anything other than the bathroom or emergencies she loses a “brick”. I am hoping that this instant reward strategy pays off, although I do feel slightly awful/guilty that I am treating my child like Pavlov’s dog and may possibly be training her to be a stress eater, but hey man Daddy needs some sleep.

Tonight, my plan goes into action, so hopefully the next time I post things will be so much better. They have to sleep sometime, right? And if not maybe I’ll get in touch with the TLC network about putting us on one of those odd family shows, with the subtitle “Teenagers that still sleep in their parents’ bed….” Wish me luck!

Thankful

It’s Thanksgiving morning and I have been up since 4 AM, what I am I thankful for…… COFFEE. We have hit a rough patch with the girls sleep schedules recently. A Bird isn’t sleeping well, she keeps waking up with bad dreams and won’t go back to bed unless L Bird takes her. I tried last night at midnight to tuck her back in and she cried hysterically until L Bird got up and came in to tuck her in. She stayed in bed for about another 45 minutes before she was up again because the wind was blowing so hard it was rattling her screen in her window and scaring her. So because she won’t sleep in her room she crams in between L Bird and I and settles in to snore and keep both of us awake. Then Nat who had been sleeping through the night is now waking up twice a night and because A Bird’s bedroom is right across the hall we can’t let Nat cry a little to see if she will put herself back to sleep because that wakes A Bird up then everyone is awake in the middle of the night. This has been going on for a few months now and its wearing everybody thin, L Bird is exhausted because she does the bulk of it because A Bird won’t let me do it and everybody knows if Momma ain’t happy nobodys’ happy.

So this morning I laid awake in bed hoping L Bird and Nat would get a good sleep and that A Bird would stop snoring and remove her elbow from my neck but well that just didn’t pan out so I ended getting up at 6. I let the dog out, brought in firewood, got a fire going in the woodstove gave Nat a little bottle to see if she would sleep a little longer and then sat down to type this.

While going through these mundane everyday chores I thought about Thanksgiving and what it is to be thankful and I realized that I am very very blessed. I am thankful that I found L Bird and she is my wife. I looked long and hard trying to find my perfect match and thought I would never find her until I saw L Bird at Wegmans with baked beans on her shirt, then I knew I found her. I am thankful that she loves me through all my faults. I am thankful for my two girls, we tried so hard to have them and went through 11 rounds of fertility treatments to get them here, yes they are definitely trying at times but I am so thankful that they are in my life. I am thankful for my family, my Mom, my Dad, my step-parents and all of my brothers and  my sister, they made me who I am today. I am thankful for the small group of close friends I have, I know I could call on them and they would come running to help and I hope they know the same is true of me if they were to ever call. I am thankful that I have a roof over my head when so many in this world don’t, I am thankful to be working and have a job where I can be creative and productive. I am thankful for so many more things that they are too much to list here but right now at this very moment I am very thankful for this…

Starting to bubble …

This has been one of the most stressful couple of weeks I have had at work in the last 11 years I have been there. It just seems like nothing is going my way, I can’t really go into it because of proprietary issues but I can say that I am struggling with some slow fermenters so its slowing supply on my end. I have been trying everything and nothing has worked until this morning, FINALLY things are starting to turn around.

The three things above are fermentation tubes, NOT bongs or water pipes or whatever the hell else you want to call them. You fill them with a fermenting wine, so the tube is filled with wine. As the wine ferments it produces CO2 which is captured in tube forcing the wine down into the bulb. Then you can measure the amount of CO2 produced to see the rate of fermentation and do a rough calculation on when the wine will be dry. All three of these wines have been sluggish but finally one of them started to ferment. The tube all the way on the right fermented to completion as you can see that the tube is empty of wine and full of CO2.

Anyway, enough of the science, things are starting to break and move forward. I am still stressed because things aren’t rolling yet but some of the pressure is moving off. I hate not being able to figure out why these problems happen. I go through and check everything I can possibly check and it all checks out but I am still not getting the results that I want. I know that it isn’t my fault, but because I am the winemaker it is ultimately my responsibility and hence my fault. I always worry that people will look at that and realize that maybe I’m not as smart as they think I am. I worry that people will see me as a fraud that has just fooled them for the last 11 years. I know that this is an irrational fear, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting just the same. I am so stressed that I can’t even keep my thoughts straight so I know that this is a boring post and that I am rambling but what the hell, right?

So, I hope the fermentation tubes above are a sign of things starting to turn around, but until then I am going to sit by the wood stove and enjoy a warm fire and a cold beer and try to forget about work for awhile.

Wish me luck!

A Nice Surprise

I hate surprises, I really do. I have a very analytical mind and I am a planner. I always like to know what is going on so I can gameplan for the worst, I know I’m weird, right? So for a week L Bird was pestering me with “I am taking you somewhere on Saturday and I’m not telling you where.” which put me in the greatest of moods. Then Saturday morning comes and everyone is up early, we have a house showing mid morning, L Bird has to go to work, and I AM NOT a morning person. So things were a little rough because I was CRANKY, so cranky that L Bird cancelled the whole day. However, as the day progressed I slowly pulled myself back to an even keel, it helped that when L Bird got home from work, Nat was napping and A Bird was playing in her room and I got to lounge on the couch and catch the last 45 minutes of The Four Sons of Katie Elder with John Wayne, I mean c’mon who doesn’t love The Duke.

My Mom came down and watched the girls, and we headed out. After about 15 minutes of driving we pulled into our destination, Climbing Bines Craft Ale Company. This was my surprise, glorious, cold refreshing craft beer tastings. L Bird definitely knows what gets me. So we go in and the place is crowded with people, L Bird and I make our way to the bar where I ran into a friend from school I hadn’t seen in years, Maryanne. We chatted for a few minutes and it was nice to catch up before she had to take off. Now L Bird and I get our spot at the bar and I did a full flight, and L Bird only did their House Line flight.

The tastings were great, they have nice sized tasting glasses that you get to keep after your tasting is finished, the beers were very good which I was pleasantly surprised at and the guys behind the bar were an awesome group of guys to talk with.

A few highlights were they had two hefeweizens and they had a couple of one offs that were wet hopped which were very good. I ended up buying a 32 oz Grenade of the Hoppy Apple Pie Ale. This beer was one of my favorites, and I bought it because it was so different and was a one off, so once the barrels were gone they were gone and they weren’t sure if they would make it again. It was a light ale but it tasted of apple cider, cinnamon, nutmeg and beer mixed perfectly. Definitely an interesting drink, I don’t think I could drink a lot of it but it was very good.

After about an hour or so of drinking and talking we packed it in and stopped for a picture by the sign, then we were off to an early dinner with friends then home. It was a great night and a great surprise, thank you L Bird.

 

 

If you get the chance definitely make the time to stop here and drink some great beer. Enjoy!

So I got a switchblade… A MicroTouch Switchblade

I am going to step out of the norm here and do something I don’t normally do and review a product. I get emails all the time recruiting bloggers to review their products and most of the time I pass because it isn’t my thing and that’s not what this blog is about, but I did see a couple of products that I would actually use and give an honest review so I decided what the hell I can review this, so here is the first of three reviews then its back to the basics of whatever the hell genre of blogging that I fall into. Anyway, here we go.

So I am a pretty hairy guy, my hair used to be thick when I let it grow on my head but now that I shave my head I notice how thick and quickly my hair grows on my goatee, ears and my grandiose caterpillar eyebrows so when I got a chance to review a personal groomer I thought that was right up my alley, so I signed up. A couple of weeks later this showed up.

The MicroTouch Switchblade All-in-One Groomer. Now I have to admit that I was a little put off by the bright orange “As seen on TV” label, it instantly brought images of late night infomercials with guys with bad hair hawking their lousy wares but once I unpacked it I was pleasantly surprised.

It unpacked into the 6 pieces it claims, the groomer/trimmer, 4 guides for eyebrows, mustaches/goatees, hair and of course that tiny little brush for sweeping out the trimmer of all your unwanted clipped hair… gross!

So now was the time to put it to the test. The small trimmer on the right in the picture above has a tiny light on it so it illuminates the hair you are trimming. It worked flawlessly on the hair on my ears and nose hair. I used one of the smaller guides and trimmed my eyebrows to the length I like. So far so good.

I switched the guide to a little longer length and moved to my goatee and nothing. BOOOO! I have a pretty thick and wiry goatee and the guide was just not going through it. After a few unsuccessful attempts I ended up having to switch back to the clippers with a short guide to get my goatee cut. I don’t know if it may work better for guys with thinner hair but using it on my goatee didn’t cut it for me.

Now on to some other “manscaping”, the “machismo” (chest hair) is strong with this one. My chest hair is fierce, bold and strong when unchallenged. It routinely advances its front line over the top of collar and will continue its march to a rocking neck beard if I don’t keep it in check. Here is where the larger trimmer comes into play. The orange section on the lower left of the trimmer picture above slides over to reveal a larger trimmer. The large trimmer worked fantastic at mowing down the unwanted curls that were threatening to overtake my neck.

Overall I think that this is a decent personal groomer, it has the two blades for intricate grooming as well as the larger trimmer for larger jobs like chests and backs. If I saw this in the store I would have no problem paying $15-20 bucks for it. It does what it is supposed to do and does a pretty decent job at it minus goatee grooming.

So what do you think? Would you buy one of these? Do you own one? Tell me your thoughts….

Meet The Ladies!

Well, a couple of times over the past two weeks I have come home to find one or two chickens out of the run. It really isn’t a huge deal because of their flock nature they won’t roam past the garden because they want to stay close to the rest of the girls, but I don’t want them out for stray dogs or cats or the occasional fox to happen upon them and leave me with less chickens. To find out if it is the same chicken that is the escape artist I wanted to band them with leg bands so I could easily identify them. I started to look for spiral leg bands which are safe and effective, but after two trips to Tractor Supply and Country Max I was still empty handed. After a little research on a few backyard chicken  websites I found that a lot of people were using the color velcro cable ties and that they were safe and easily adjustable as the chickens grew, so a quick trip to Walmart and BAM! I had homemade legbands. I just put them on all of my younger chickens as the three old hens are readily distinguishable. On with the introductions:

CHIRPY

She is A Bird’s hen and always has been. When I originally got my first 5 chickens, Chirpy was one of them. She is a Barred Rock and the friendliest of all the chickens, ever since she was a chick she would walk up to A Bird and hop on her legs to sit and  chat.  She is one of my favorites. Right now she is going through her yearly molt so she is looking a little rough with her feathers coming back in.

Betsy

Betsy is a year two hen that I traded our rooster Crazy Mack for since I can’t have a rooster in the village. She is another Barred Rock, she is more stand offish, and a bit bossy with the other girls. She is definitely Chirpy’s right hand girl, she is second in command and will only defer to Chirpy otherwise she is chasing the other hens away from treats.

Gossie

This is Gossie and poor Gossie is going through molt pretty bad. All of her head feathers have fallen out and new clean pin feathers are starting to come in but until all of her new feathers come in she is going to look a little worse for wear. She is a black Australorp and very friendly. She will routinely come up and stare at you to see if you are going to give her a treat. She is a very good layer (when she isn’t molting) and lays big brown eggs just about every day of the year.

Silver – Black Band

Silver is one of this year’s chicks, she was hatched out on June 1st. She is a Silver Laced Wyandotte and she is one mean, miserable big bad hen, just look at the face. For the first few weeks, I thought she might be a rooster because she would charge me and peck me anytime I got close to her. Needless to say she is my least favorite hen. She seems to be pecking her way to 3rd on the hierarchy of top hen. At least she is pretty to look at.

LACE – Blue Band

Lace is Silver’s hatch mate, she is slightly smaller than Silver and much nicer. She is actually a bit skittish, she will come up to you and stand at the back of the flock waiting her turn for a treat but if you move too quickly she takes off running in any direction as long as it is away from you.

Sophia – Purple Band

Sophia is one of four Buckeyes and named after The Golden Girls. I wanted to get a heritage or endangered breed of chicken, so I went with Buckeyes. Sophia and her sisters were hatched on May 30th and she is pretty mellow except if you are pestering her then she can get pretty vocal.

Dorothy – Yellow Band

Dorothy is the biggest of the Golden Girls and she is very mellow. She is friendly but tends to go off on her own and does her own thing.

Blanche – Blue Band

Blanche is the friendliest of the four and the most “treat hungry”. I normally feed all the girls layer crumble but when it gets cold, I feed them scratch grains as a treat. It has cracked corn, and oats so it takes them longer to digest it so it heats up their body temperature and keeps them warmer in the cooler weather. Blanche will follow me around and cluck until I spread some scratch out for them, then she pecks contently until she has had her fill.

Rose – Black Band

Rose is the last of the Golden Girls and the flightiest. She is friendly and a good chicken until anything catches her attention then she is off and running to find out if she can eat it. So she spends the majority of the time running back and forth from this to that, but overall she seems to be a pretty good hen.

So that’s it, those are the girls. Now I just need to wait to see who flies the coop, and then that lucky girl might be the winner of a wing clipping.

Wish me luck!

Sickness has struck…HARD

So everyone in my house is either sick or is just getting over being sick. It started with me, I had a stuffy nose and a cough so I turned to my old stand by:

OJ, Kleenex, and Dayquil

I don’t complain much about being sick because I have a pretty good immune system where I normally feel it coming and start downing OJ and Dayquil like it is going out of style then within a day or two I feel fine. That was the case this time except for this lingering cough I have.

Then Lauren got super “rashy” and “itchy” which turned into some sort of bacterial infection so she is on meds, then it comes down to my A Bird.

The Queen of Strep Throat

So A Bird comes down with a fever for two days, coughing, complaining about everything under the sun. Her throat hurts, her ears hurt, her tooth hurts, her arm hurts and on top of all that she is super whiny. I stayed home with her Tuesday and took her to the doctor. It’s always the same and this time it proved no different, she runs a fever, we make a dr.s appointment, we drive to the dr.s, she pukes in the parking lot (EVERY TIME!!), they swab her throat and BANG! Positive for strep.

This time we ran through all of those symptoms only this time she was NEGATIVE for strep so it appears to be viral. So another day out of school and a long, long, night of sleep and today she appears to be better and acting like her normal goofy self.

I am thinking great, we are in the free and clear then I pick of Nat. She is super rashy around her mouth, she has an epic double nostril snot flow rolling and she has a thick, wet nasty sounding cough. Great!!

So needless to say we are all a little stressed and on each other’s nerves around here, but 3 of th3 4 of us are on the mend, so hopefully a few warm baths, Vick’s Baby Rub (which by the way is awesome for little kids) and some sleep and Nat will be back to herself too.

I guess I am posting this because I have been sitting on a few posts but have not been able to get to them due to being sick, helping sickies, or just pure exhaustion from caring for the sick. I am not a Murse (what? you never heard of a man nurse or murse?).

Well, I got get my combat gear and ear plugs on to wipe Nat’s nose. Wish me luck!

A Bird discovered blogger

ava dad mom I love them . I had a great day.I am ava. I have lots of make up. you might of seen me before .I have blonde hair and I have blue eyes. written by ava s.

Uncle Bryan - Rest in Peace

So I have been sitting on this post for a couple of weeks now because I just can’t seem to find the right words. I have thought about what I want to say over and over in my head, but when I sit down to actually write it, it just never does justice to what I feel. I can’t stall anymore because the clock has run out, so here I go.


My family lost my Uncle Bryan to lung cancer this Monday. It all came as quite a shock, start to finish from diagnosis to his passing was roughly three weeks. He was having some trouble breathing and after some reluctance went to see the doctor who immediately sent him to Strong Memorial for blood clots in one lung and a large mass in the other. After a lot of scares with the blood clots and small strokes, the diagnosis came back and it was as bad as it could get, he had stage 4 lung cancer and there was nothing they could do at that point but make him comfortable. So my Aunt Sue received a crash course in hospice care and my Uncle Bryan came home and passed away with his family around him.

I have never been super close to any of my aunts or uncles, maybe it was because I didn’t see them regularly, I don’t know, but when they were around I made the most of hanging around them. Uncle Bryan was one of my favorites and I never took the time to tell him that which distresses me now more than ever. I don’t want to dwell on the sad, but I would like to tell you a few stories that could only happen to Bryan and what made him great.

Bryan had my family’s blue eyes, the strong majority of us have blue eyes but Bryan’s always seemed to shine the bluest of blues, it’s probably because they were always twinkling because he was full of piss and vinegar and quick with a dirty joke or comment. His voice set him apart too, it was great. He had this gravelly/scraggly voice that could have been a cross between Donald Duck and a muppet only deeper. He had a temper and when he got angry or was really animated telling a story his voice would go slightly higher and you could almost see Donald Duck fighting mad on a cartoon.

He was a great story teller and he had so many stories he could fill a library. Two of my favorites involve fishing, he loved to fish and routinely took his kids (my cousins) fishing. One day as they were fishing he caught a really small sunfish. He took it off the hook and because he was Bryan he stuck the whole fish in his mouth to make the kids laugh or to try and gross them out. Well, while the sunfish was in his mouth, it expanded its fins and the tiny spines in the fin embedded into Bryan’s cheeks and the fish got stuck. No amount of pulling or tugging would get this fish out of his mouth, so as his kids and my Aunt laughed their heads off at this fish stuck in his mouth, he had to go to hospital to have the fish cut out of his mouth. I can still see his face as he told the story of how the doctor began to cut the fish and how awful it tasted.

The other story, shockingly involves fishing and the hospital again. Bryan had the kids fishing and had to bait the one of their lines, so he set his pole down on a rock. He finishes baiting the hook and sits down on the rock where his pole was only to end up sitting straight down on a three pronged hook. He jumps up and starts yelling and cursing because this hook is set deep in his backside. Again, after many attempts of trying to remove the hook themselves, Bryan had to go to the ER to have a doctor pull out the hook prong by prong while Bryan was red faced and steaming on the gurney. It could only happen to him.

He would tell those stories and get so animated, you could practically see it as if you were there. Then he would just start laughing and you had to laugh with him and by the time you were finished laughing you would have tears in your eyes and your sides would hurt.

He was a great man and he will forever be missed. Rest in peace, Uncle Bryan.

The Colors and Feel of Fall…

The other day I went back to a spot I wanted to hike on lunch, the weather was beautiful, it was 70 degrees and sunny an all around perfect fall day. I set off into the woods and let the sounds, sights and smells of the season over take me. There was the smell of dried leaves and warm earth in the air, the colors of the leaves were eye popping and then the rustle of leaves when the wind blew or one of the thousands of chipmunks in the woods ran through them was warming. I am normally a summer type of guy, I love the hot weather and the blazing sun, but this day was amazing. Here are a few shots from my hike. Enjoy!

A place to sit and relax along the path.

A peek of Canandaigua Lake from the overlook

A hot mess of sap and parasite and microbiological awesomeness on a tree.

One hell of a fly catcher.

Color!

Take a hike and enjoy!

Local Hikes…

I am always on the hunt for interesting local hiking spots that I can take the girls to and spots that may be a little more advanced that I can enjoy without the girls. I packed a lunch and my camera today and set out to make the most of my lunch hour. With a quick google search for hiking trails around Canandaigua I found a gem of a spot that is well known to, well, everyone but me apparently. It’s Barnes Creek Trail situated right next to Onanda Park on West Lake Rd. Lucky for me it was a short trip down the road, so I headed out and started my one hour clock. It took me roughly ten minutes to find the park and finish my lunch, but I found it and was pleasantly surprised to find the place deserted. It should figure that no one would be there at 11 AM on a Thursday, normal people work, right?

I followed a path to a set of stairs that led me down to the creek which at this time of year was nothing more than a trickle. The creek was pretty easy hiking and there are “trails”/ledges along the creek bed that allow you to navigate without getting wet. It was beautifully quiet down there, except for the occasional sound of leaves falling from the canopy and the alarm calls and rustling of leaves from mischievous chipmunks as they scurried out of my way. I hiked at a slower pace so I could take pictures, I was upset though because I forgot to pack my new macro filters in the bag so I couldn’t get some more of the up close artistic shots, but I was short on time so it was probably for the best. I didn’t make it to the first waterfall, so I definitely am going to take some time real soon while the weather is nice and go back for an extended hike.

I have noticed a lot lately that people never tend to look up, when you see people walking most of them are focused on the ground in front of them or straight ahead. It never seems like anyone takes the time to stop and look up. I always try to look at my surroundings from all angles, it’s just the paranoia in me I suppose but I always look at the higher ground first to make sure nothing is coming down on me. As I strolled back I was looking up and I saw this platform mushroom growing about 20 feet up, then a bit lower I noticed this:

Yup that’s a rock that the tree has grown around. I have absolutely no idea how this rock got 10 feet off the ground, but it was interesting to see.

I finally made it back to my Jeep when I spotted a sign for another more manicured trail for the “Uplands”. That trail will have to wait for another day as I was out of time, so I packed up and headed back to work.

Overall, it was a pretty cool place for a few short hikes. I am definitely planning to go back soon, hopefully with the girls, but possibly on my own with my camera.

Keep exploring!

Starting Out…

This weekend was pretty crazy as usual, it seems like we have somewhere to go every day of the week and this weekend wasn’t any different, but one of the nice things we got to do was to go over for pizza at my youngest brother’s new place. He is nineteen and he made the decision to move out from my parents and get a place with his girlfriend Megan. They really lucked out and through a family connection ended up with not just an apartment, but a whole house a nice size lot in the country, not bad at all for a first place. In fact, Aaron’s first place is nicer than my first 4 apartments and better furnished lol. I remember how big a step it was to make that first move from my parent’s house and how I nervous I was. I’m sure he is nervous too, but he isn’t showing it yet. I’m proud of him for making that first step to true adulthood and managing his life.

Here he is with the girls, he looks pretty relaxed, right?
I am relieved that he found such a nice place and didn’t have to go through what I went through. I have always been stubborn and always did things my way even if that made my life harder than it needed to be. I have lived in some pretty shady places, scraping by and living on furniture that we found on the curb. Hell, I lived in a camper in the middle of nowhere without electricity or running water for 6 months. I have fed myself dinner by making the rounds at Wegmans and Tops for the free samples, if you ever find yourself in that position they sample givers normally start to get suspicious of you around round 3 lol, then its time to find another fishing spot. But even though my life hasn’t been exactly easy I did learn a lot from those years of living rough and it is that advice that I will pass on to Aaron in person. I don’t want to get into it on here because there are too many things I’ve learned through embarrassing moments that don’t need to be made public.
But one thing I will share is that you can weather the greatest storms in life if you have the love of a good woman. Lean on each other and know that all things seem to work themselves out for the better even if you can’t see it when you are going through hell. I have gone through so much and always made it through because L Bird was by my side and when we had nothing we still had love. Love you L Bird.

New photo toys…

So I have been reading another blog that does a lot of photography and they have a ton of close up shots that I really admire. After a little research I found I could get the effects I admired so much from macro lens. So I bought a cheap pair from Amazon to try them out and I was pretty impressed. Here are some of the shots I took on lunch today, these were just me trying to get a feel for how the lenses work, I definitely need more practice shooting with these.

Teasel at a +4 macro

Golden Rod at a +10 macro

Honeybee at a +10 Macro

+10 Macro

Pretty cool, huh?

New Beginnings…

Well, it’s the start of a new school year and a whole year of new beginnings for our little family. A Bird started 1st grade and so far is loving it, she is also cheerleading for the first year so there are a lot of firsts for her and us this year.

On the first day of school she chose to wear an outfit that she picked out herself while she was school shopping with my father. She has a sense of style that is all her own, she wore a pleated khaki skirt, with a t shirt that was covered with a denim vest, that’s right my little girl is bringing denim back so dust off your White Snake jean jackets, because they will be hip again, maybe…. a big maybe.

She is enjoying cheering but it is our first experience with a “team sport”, so we didn’t realize what a time commitment it really was. She cheers for the flag football team, so before school started she was practicing 3 nights a week for an hour and a half, now that school and the games are starting she practices 2 nights a week with a game on Sunday morning. I guess I didn’t realize that at this age they would be drilling them so much, but she seems to enjoy it. It has causes some stress around here as both L Bird and I are running on practice nights, but it’s a short term deal, the season is over at the end of October, so we just have to muscle through a another few weeks.

This is a big year of firsts for Nat too, she will be 9 months in a couple of weeks. It seems like she is a couple of weeks in front of where A Bird was developmentally at this age. She is spitting, sputtering, jabbering and has turned out to be quite proficient at crawling and squealing. She is pulling herself up onto everything and you can’t get away from her now. If you go to the bathroom, you hear a “thump, thump, thump” of her crawling on the hardwoods after you, then the banging of tiny fists on the bathroom door and squeals and spit flies until you come out. She loves A Bird, she follows her everywhere and routinely laughs at  A Bird’s antics.

Other than that not much is going on, the house is still on the market, things are still stressful, but life goes on right? Life goes on, one day at a time whether we are stressed or not. On that note, I have a crawling baby that is starting to get grouchy and two other ladies that need some help waking up, so grouchy pants, Linus and myself have some work to do. Wish us luck!

Untold Secrets–Part 4

Lo My head is spinning as I listen to what he is saying, even though I hear the words coming from his mouth I can’t force my brain to let them be real. My mind flashes back to all the times I had growing up with Uncle Mack. Family dinners, backyard barbecues and swimming in the pool he was my Uncle Mack, he couldn’t be this man he is telling me about, could he? Then just like you see in the movies, my brain hit zoom on all of the still images of memories in my head. I can see all the scars on his hands as he passes the butter at Sunday dinner, I see the long jagged scar on his shoulder and back while he is throwing me in the pool, I see how one of his eyes is droopy as he winks at me on Christmas. How could I have been so naïve? The revelation that he is who he says he is, is like getting the wind knocked out of me. I am gasping for air and trying to slow my mind down when I hear him ask “From here it gets real dark, so how much do you want to hear Lo?” I manage to compose myself enough to squeak out “All of it.” He simply nods, then pauses to fumble around behind more paint cans to find another bottle of whiskey. There is a chill in the air of the barn and it makes me shiver. He eventually pulls out the bottle he looking for and notices the chill as well it seems because he walks over to the wood stove and throws a couple more logs on the fire. He cracks open the new bottle and pours a finger of whiskey into each of our now empty coffee mugs, then begins again picking up where he left off. I listen to the story as it grows darker and darker. I am jotting down notes and occasionally asking questions. As the story takes on a life of its own I no longer feel a family connection to it and seem comfortable with hearing all of the grotesque details. Hours and a half a bottle of whiskey go by when he comes to the end of the story. Uncle Mack looks defeated and slightly drunk, I am exhausted and conflicted. There is just so much to process, here is a man who I have loved my whole life and yet he has been behind such atrocities that I don’t know how to look at him anymore. On one hand he is my loving uncle as he has always been but on the other he is almost pure evil. He looks at me and its almost as if he can read the thoughts in my head, he shrugs apologetically and gives me a half hearted smile. He stands and puts his hand on my shoulder and says “Look Lo, I understand if this changes things between us, but just know I am still Uncle Mack and I love you. You’ve been a hound dog tracking down people that gave you some of the story so you would’ve found out about me eventually anyway. I appreciate you coming and asking me directly... I mean that. So, now you got one hell of a story, kid. What are you going to do with it?” I glance down at my notebook, I had completely forgotten about it in the last few minutes and I think I have honestly no idea what I am going to with it. Uncle Mack is right, it is one hell of a story and would probably get me a book deal and possibly a best seller. I turn it over in my hands and can almost see myself being interviewed about my inspiration for this novel then as I am about to answer I see my Uncle’s tired weathered face staring at me from behind a glass partition. It’s too much for me to think about so I drop the notebook, hang my head and rub my neck. The barn is completely silent with the exception of the fire roaring away in the woodstove. I turn things over in my head a few more times before I realize what it is I must do. I kneel to pick the notebook back up from the ground, and as I am doing so Uncle Mack catches me glancing around the barn. As if he can read my thoughts again he asks, “You sure, Lo?” I simply nod, straighten myself up, walk to the woodstove and toss the whole notebook in. I watch in the first few seconds, its sits there slowly smoldering and smoking before exploding into a dazzling bright orange fireball. I turn around, smile a sad smile at my uncle and tell him “Some secrets are better left untold.” Some secrets are better left untold…

Untold Secrets–Part 3

Uncle Mack

I was born a fighter. I fought the devil the day I was born. He wrapped the umbilical cord around my neck and tried to strangle me on my way out, but as luck would have it he couldn’t finish the job. I lived but couldn’t breathe on my own for a bit, but I came out mostly ok. Sure my hands and joints are tight and I have a slight shake or twitch whatever you want to call it, but hell I am alive.

I grew up in a normal middle class working family, everyone had enough to eat and had clothes on their backs. Life was good, but the trials of boyhood and the journey to becoming a man is fraught with perils. My tremor as the doctors called it, made me an easy target for the neighborhood punks. They viewed me as weak and displayed their dominance in the social hierarchy by beating me to a pulp on a routine basis. One day when I was about twelve or thirteen I had had enough and when a large bully stepped in to smack me around I surprised him with a kick to the nuts. He went down and went down hard. Once he hit the ground I made sure he wouldn’t get up. I launched myself on top of him and pummeled him in front of everyone until his shocked friends yanked me off of him. He was bloodied and crying and I was too, but he appeared the worse for the wear. I would love to tell you it all got better after that because I fought one bully off, but it didn’t. He got pissed and swore revenge and we fought several more times, sometimes he would beat me badly and other times I got the best of him. But it was through these fights that I learned I had a knack for fighting. This particular bully eventually figured I wasn’t worth it anymore and moved on to fight easier targets, me however I started fighting anyone that said anything about me. If they looked at me funny I would go up and knock them out. I was determined to no longer be abused because people thought I was weak.

By the time I turned eighteen I had been in more fights than I could remember. It had gotten so bad or good depending on who you asked that I had started my own business more or less. Kids from high school would hire me out for fifty bucks to beat up whoever they wanted beat up. Yeah, I had made a real name for myself. Eventually this led to some unwanted attention, I was walking home one day from a local pool hall when I got jumped by three guys. They beat me to within an inch of my life because one of my high school clients had paid me to beat up of one of their younger brothers.

I woke up in a dark alley in a pool of my own piss and blood. The pain I felt was so intense I vomited twice before I could pull myself up to a standing position. I managed my way home and was out of commission for a couple of weeks. I told no one of what happened, they just knew I got beat up. While I laid in my room recovering I called in a few favors from guys I knew. I knew that a beating like the one I took doesn’t just happen in silence, I knew that whoever did it would be crowing about it like a banty rooster. Sure enough, it was just a matter of time before I had my three names.

It took me two weeks to feel well enough to exact my revenge. I found out who the biggest guy was that jumped me and his address. I waited until it was just about dark then I marched up his front steps and knocked on the door. Lucky for me he answered, as soon as the door was open I punched him through the screen. He stumbled backwards and the last thing I remember is the sound of my fists hitting wet flesh and a woman screaming. It turned out that the screaming was his mother and when the cops arrived she was beating me across the back with a broom handle as I lay exhausted on the puddle that was her son. The cops yanked me up and gave me a crack on the head for good measure then hauled me to the back of the police. As they threw me in and started driving for the station they were trying to question me but. all they got out of me was “I’m just going to take a little naps….” before I passed out from exhaustion.

I arrived at the police station, was booked and processed for assault and thrown into a holding pen until they found a cell for me. After a few hours of sitting there a large cop came to the holding cell with a clipboard held firmly in his hands. He started calling out names off the clipboard and a few of the other guys in the cell would stand up and walk through the door to line up. The cop got to the end of his list and starts yelling “Naps… Naps… Mack “NAPS” Schlage you get your low life ass up here in this line before I come in there and have you eating through a straw for the next month!” Apparently, the two cops that picked me up laughed all the way to the station about me passing out and had put down “NAPS” as one of my aliases on my processing paperwork. When you are in the joint, people don’t care what your name is. Your legal name is for judges and lawyers, you get called by your nickname, the name you made your bones with, and thanks to two jackass cops mine was Naps. That was it, the name just stuck and to every inmate in the place I was known only as Naps.

I ended up serving just over two months for that assault charge, I was released for “good behavior” and it helped that word got around that the kid I “assaulted” had jumped me first with his two buddies. After I got out, life went on as usual with a few fights here and there but now that I had a jail record, even as short as it was, I attracted the attention of people in need of my services. Word had got around about how I had my ass kicked but came up with a plan to get revenge.

I eventually drew the attention of a small time outfit that worked a lot in loan sharking, they approached me and offered me a job doing muscle work. I wasn’t working anywhere else and the money they flashed was tempting enough for me to jump at the chance, so I took the job. The first few “jobs” I would just show up with the loan shark and look threatening while he collected the debt. It was an easy job with a big paycheck for me, plus I liked being a tough guy, but like everything else my duties expanded. In just a few weeks, I was making collections and if they couldn’t pay I took my payment in the form of a pound of flesh. Most of the time, guys would pay up after a couple of black eyes, but occasionally you would run into a stubborn son of a bitch that thought he was tough and wasn’t going to pay. These were the guys I made my name with, I came up with a lot of creative ways to see the error in their ways. I broke a lot of bones, I would start with pinkies then make my way up the arm to wrists, forearms and elbows. If they were really stubborn I would take a baseball bat give them a clean shot to the knees making sure they would limp for the rest of their life and serve as a reminder to the other deadbeats to pay up.

I worked away at collections like this for almost two years before I got tapped to move up so to speak. I was given a territory and had to make house calls “selling security plans”. So I would go to the drug dealers and shop owners and basically extort a protection payment to operate and sell in my area. If they didn’t like my terms, I would persuade them to see things my way. If they were dealers, I would beat them to a pulp and take everything they had on them, I would take the drugs and the money and leave them in a pile. The shop owners were a little easier to deal with after you put some of their merchandise or their head through the front windows.

That was just the way of things for awhile, I would work over people and collect so much cash I was rolling in it. It would be the cash that drew me deeper and deeper in crime and violence. Word got around that I was very good at my “job” and was making quite a bit of cash, so a larger outfit rolled and bought me out so to speak. They approached me and told me I was working for them now and ordered me to pay a tribute percentage to the “organization”, but not to worry because they had big plans for me. I started to protest when they pulled out a few polaroids of my former employees with more holes than swiss cheese and the sight of that was enough for me to start down the road with my new employer.

From here it gets real dark, so how much do you want to hear Lo?

Untold Secrets–Part 2

Growing up Uncle Mack would come over to my grandparents’ house to visit and he was a great uncle. He would swim in the pool, toss us kids around and chase us through the back yard. When he was with the adults he would crack jokes but mostly held his opinion about topics that were more serious in nature. When he was around things were great, but then there would be long periods of time where Uncle Mack wasn’t around and didn’t stop by for visits. During these times my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles would talk in hushed tones if Uncle Mack was brought up. It was eavesdropping on these conversations that brought the revelation that maybe there was something more to Uncle Mack. Through these snippets of conversation I learned that he wasn’t as nice as I knew him to be and he did some bad things for bad people.

As I got older I grew more and more interested in Uncle Mack, I began to snoop around about his past. Eventually I found out he got into a lot of fights as a kid and got tossed in and out of juvie a few times before he was formally arrested for assault at the age of eighteen. After that one arrest there was no more evidence of him getting into trouble with the law again. I knew that there had to be more to it than that because he was far older than eighteen when I was growing up and my family still talked about him being a bad guy. I became obsessed with finding out more and more, so I petitioned the local jail for their records under the freedom of information act and was surprised at how easy they just handed me copies of them. Through that initial digging I found the start of the trail that led me to this point. I found out in the records that my uncle had been cellmates with Thomas “T.T” Taglia, a low level thug for a known crime outfit.

I spent weeks on the internet searching for this “T.T.” and eventually found out that he had spent years of hard time in jail then was eventually paroled and was working as a mechanic about an hour drive from where I lived. I tracked him down and he flat out refused to talk to me, but I was persistent and eventually he agreed to tell me a few things. I asked him about Mack Schlage and he had never heard of him. I was deflated but as a last ditch effort, I took out of picture of Uncle Mack when he was younger and showed it to him. Taglia looked at the picture and smiled a gap toothed smile, and said “Sure, I know this guy. But I ain’t never heard of him being called Mack. The man in this picture is Naps.” I was shocked as I stuttered “Naps? Naps who?” and Taglia just chuckled and said “I don’t know. They always just called him Naps, even in the joint it was ‘Naps! Back in line’, ‘Naps, you got a visitor’. It was always Naps.” After that Taglia spoke more freely and told me he had only known my uncle a short time but from what he knew he was some sort of fighter that got called on by local “wiseguys” for “muscle work”. He gave me the names of some other people that my uncle had supposedly worked for and I thanked him and left.

I spent the next year tracking down these people. Some of them would talk to me and some wouldn’t. Some of them had long been dead from “occupational hazards” and most of the rest were permanently incarcerated. From the ones that would speak to me I heard tales of my uncle being a good guy, always with a joke or a kind word for a kid, but I also heard truly terrifying stories about him beating people for debts to torturing people or worse. I was horrified that the man I knew and loved could be the same monster that worked with these criminals. It was just too unbelievable, it was like watching a movie like Scarface or The Godfather. I couldn’t wrap my head around it, it was like reading a great story with double lives, twists and turns, deception and vindication. I just couldn’t believe it would be true it had to be a case of mistaken identity.

I had filled a notebook full of notes from my interviews with criminal element that said they knew my uncle. I sat on that notebook for a full month debating whether or not I wanted to ask my uncle about what they had said and whether or not I really wanted to know the truth or just leave the past in the past. One night as I laid on my bed reading and re-reading my notes they started to sound more and more like a dialogue out of a bad Mafioso movie. I must have been sleep deprived because the more I read the more I started to laugh at the ridiculousness of what I had written down. I figured that these guys had all just put me on to screw with me, they couldn’t have know Uncle Mack. That’s when I had an epiphany. I wanted to be a writer and well, I had a pretty outline for a crime drama right in front of me, even if it was all bullshit. I decided that I would ask Uncle Mack about these things and when he laughed and told me I was crazy, I would laugh with him and tell him about all I had done and how I was going to write a book based on these phony baloney “interviews”.

The next day I called Uncle Mack and asked if I could meet him for breakfast and ask him a few things about when he was young. He agreed to meet me at his favorite diner the following morning.

That’s how I ended up sitting across from him drinking coffee in this crowded diner. The waitress takes our orders and we have some quiet small talk about my mother and father until the food arrives. He orders the short stack of pancakes which when they come do look like the “world’s largest pancakes’ as they are bigger than the plate and hanging off the edges. I order eggs and bacon and lustfully dive into them as soon as they are set down in front of me. In between bites of eggs, I mumble “So Uncle Mack, I ran into someone you knew when you were younger.” He finishes the last bite of his pancakes, pushes the plate to the edge of the table smiling and says “Oh yeah, Lo? Who is that?” I lower my voice to a little over a whisper and say “Thomas Taglia”. I watch a flash of recognition cross his eyes before he looks at me stonefaced and replies “Never heard of him. He must be confused, I don’t know anyone by that name.” I lean forward to whisper again “That’s funny because he said the same thing about you… Naps.”

The look my uncle stares at me with is enough to freeze me in my seat. Without taking his eyes off me he signals the waitress for the check. When she arrives with it the look on my face is enough for her to take the cash for the bill and not return. Uncle Mack looks at me as he stands up and says only “Follow me”. I stand up even though my legs feel like jello and my bacon and eggs are threatening to return. I follow him outside to the side of my car, he opens the door and tells me to meet him at his house. I watch as he climbs into his old ford farm truck, turns the key and leaves the parking lot in a cloud of dust. The whole ride to his house I am trying to control my breathing and the panic I feel rising in my throat.

We make it to his house, he gets out of the truck and motions for me to follow him to the barn. I park next to his truck and by the time I get out of my car he has already disappeared into the dark barn. A moment of panic seizes me, I imagine him doing the horrible things I had heard about to me because I know his secret. I feel like I have to move, I have to run, I just have to get the hell out of there but my legs won’t move. I am utterly frozen in the driveway until the panic finally forces the remains of my breakfast up and out into the driveway. I am bent over retching when I feel his large hand on my back as he shoves a cup of coffee under my nose. I stand up, wipe my mouth on my sleeve and gratefully take the coffee. He winks at me, turns back towards the barn and says over his shoulder “That diner always does make their eggs a little greasy, don’t they?” I take a moment to recollect myself and then follow into the barn to find him sitting at his workbench drinking coffee. He motions to the stool next to him. I sit down and endure what feels like an eternity of uncomfortable silence before he looks at asks “Well, what do you want to know?”

His nonchalant, matter of fact way of asking helped to put me at ease. He was still my uncle and I knew that he loved me but there was a matter of unpleasantness that he would rather not talk about was all conveyed in that simple sentence. I blurted out “Is it true? Is it true what all these people have said about you?”

“I don’t know what they said or who “they” are, but yes I have done many, many terrible things in this life. So let’s start with what you “know”.” He replied.

I went to pull out my notes and realized I had left them in the car. I apologized and ran to get them. He had just poured a second cup of coffee and was topping it off with a small bottle of whisky he had hidden behind a few paint cans when I returned. I sat back down on my stool and fished out my notebook and handed it to him. He flipped through the pages and read some of the notes, but mostly he scanned the names of the people I talked to. Sometimes he would smile as he read a name and at others he would simply scowl and take a long pull off his coffee. Once he reached the end of the notebook, he flipped it shut and handed it back to me. We sat in silence, sipping our coffee until he finally said “Most of those things are true, some are not and most of that is taken out of context even though that’s a poor excuse for those things.”

I was completely dumbfounded, I opened my mouth to protest but nothing would come out. His eyes looked heavy and sad as he stared at me waiting for me to say something, finally he broke the silence with a question, “Well, you’ve gone a long way to find out about Uncle Mack’s secrets, if you still want to know I guess I will tell you. But if I tell you there will be things that won’t be easy for me to say and they won’t be easy for you to hear. It’s up to you, what do you say?”

I mulled it over in my head, I had come so far to learn the truth about him. I really did want to hear his side of what happened for better or worse he was my family and I wanted to know. I nodded to him and pulled out my notebook and flipped to a page I had with questions for him but I couldn’t force myself to ask him one question. He sensed my inner turmoil and said “Well, I guess I will start at the beginning, but by the end I am hoping you won’t need what’s in that notebook and we can keep this between us. But it is ultimately up to you what you want to do, I’ve made my peace with God and I know an eternal punishment is waiting for me.”

I waited for him to refill his coffee and empty the last of his stash of whisky into it, then he began.

Untold Secrets–Part 1

The other day L Bird sent me an email about a short story contest. She thinks I am a good writer and should submit something, me on the other hand am not so sure I am that good of a writer. I tend to switch tenses a lot, and forget dialogue I forgot all the rules when it comes to writing that junk, but curiosity got the best of me so I googled what the technical definition of a short story is.

It turns out that the definition isn’t so simple, but I honed in on it’s normally a narrative that is anywhere from 1000 – 9000 words. After that you start getting into novellas, novels, and such. Well, I figured I might as well give it a shot what’s the worst that could happen, right? They could only tell me that I should never put down a written word again, yeah right! Like I would listen anyway.

So I wrote a short story and I figured I would throw it up here in segments and see what people thought good or bad. It is roughly 5700 words long (approx 8 typed pages) and written as a narrative. I used my nickname for the “bad guy”, well because, well I don’t know why but anyway I kind of feel like a douche for doing it but it’s too late to go through and change it now. So I guess enough stalling, here we go…

Untold Secrets

The clock on my dash says 6:47 AM. It stares at me mockingly, knowing that I am already late as the morning show hosts on the radio banter back and forth about last night’s newest reality television series. I turn that nonsense off and push the gas pedal down even further hoping to reach my destination by 7 AM without attracting the attention of the local sheriff. I am headed to a greasy spoon diner in rural upstate New York to interview someone for a novel I am really hoping to write. I was supposed to be there to meet him at 6:30, but as usual it seems I can’t get out of my own way and am late again.

As the miles click by down the highway I try to go over what I want to ask and how to approach my subject. There will be delicate areas I am sure and but I really want to get his true perspective so I can relay that in my novel. My mind wanders through the dark recesses of my brain to when I realized I first wanted to be a writer. It was my sophmore year in college and I was fast approaching a precipice of flunking out. I had screwed off all through my college career just doing to bare minimum to squeak through to the following semester but it was catching up to me and there was a very good chance that if something drastic didn’t happen I would flunk. Then as luck would have it, life provided me a catalyst. It was a shitty catalyst but a catalyst none the less. The girl I had been dating since high school sat me down and broke my heart. She told me the truth about myself, that I was an overweight, sloppy, lazy bum who wanted nothing less than to coast through life doing the least amount of work possible while expecting that everyone else work hard around him to satisfy his own selfish needs and that she wasn’t going to be a part of that or my life anymore.

After the initial range of emotions of rage, anger, hurt, and eventual sadness I realized she was right even if I didn’t know what to do to change it. I sulked for about a week, missing classes, not leaving my room except to pick up delivery pizza from the entrance of the dorm until my mother called. She told me that she had received a letter from the school saying that I was on the verge of failing out of school. After fifteen minutes of pep talking me she changed her tactic and told me to get my head out of my ass and finish school or I would be in the most serious of situations and then promptly hung up. I wasn’t sure what “the most serious of situations” was but it was enough to get me up and to my next class which happened to be a literature/writing course.

I walked into the class, neither the professor or my classmates seemed to notice or care about my presence or lack thereof in the recent weeks. I sat through the lecture and received the homework assignment of writing a short story about anything but in the style of Victorian authors like Charles Dickens or Emily Bronte. With my heart still dashed and broken I threw myself into this assignment and wrote about love, heartache and redemption. I finished the assignment on time and for the first time in a long time felt I would receive a grade of at least a C. A week later my professor pulled me aside before class and handed me my story which was emblazoned with a bright red B+ across the top. He complimented me on my story and told me I showed a real affinity for writing and offered to work with me on cleaning up some of my faults. That was the spark that started it all for me, from that point on I changed my attitude and started taking all of my classes and writing seriously. I managed to pull up my grade point average and graduate with a solid 3.5 GPA.

I was pulled from my nostalgic reverie by the hand painted sign for the diner emblazoned with “World’s Largest Pancakes Served Here”. I looked at the clock again, 7:07 AM, not good. I hoped he was still there, he wasn’t exactly a man that liked to be kept waiting. I jumped out of the car, grabbed my messenger bag with all of my stuff and ran towards the door. I was almost to the door when I caught my toe on the stoop and went sprawling on the ground. As I got myself up and dusted off I looked up to see every patron staring at me through the plate glass, not exactly the first impression I had wanted to make.

Nevertheless I picked up my bag and walked into the diner feeling embarrassed and wishing I was so small that no one would see me. I scanned the diner until I saw him sitting at a booth in the back corner. He was seated with his back to the wall carefully observing both entrances, he saw me and gave me the slightest of nods to acknowledge he had seen me. I walked over to his table and he gave me another nod to infer that I should sit, then in a gravelly voice he said “How have you been, Lo?” I sat down and replied “I’m good, Uncle. My Mom says to tell you hello.”

The man seated across from me was my uncle, my mother’s older brother. To look at him in his faded wrangler jeans, plain grey v-neck t-shirt and dusty ball cap he looked like the rest of the old farmers that frequented this diner. He was in his sixties and would have had some sparse grey hair if he didn’t keep it trimmed so short. His face was weathered and checked by deep creases and wrinkles but his clear blue eyes still sparkled. His lips twitched as he concentrated on keeping his massive hands steady enough to hold a hot cup of black coffee to his goatee framed mouth. Everything about him was the look of a common working farmhand and that’s the way he liked it. To me and everyone else in the diner he was Mack Schlage but to the eastern seaboard crime outfits he was simply known as Naps.

To Be Continued …

 

Softening of edges...

It has been a while since I have sat down to write a post here. I have had a ton of stuff rolling around in my head that would make great blog fodder but for one reason or another it never made it out of my head. Things have been stressful lately, with trying to sell our house, wondering if A Bird would be accepted for another year of tuition and just the general lack of sleep that comes with having young children. This is just life, I guess and like the ups and downs of life and relationships L Bird and I found ourselves in a “down” moment where we each felt neglected and under-appreciated. It’s tough not to feel that way when our lives are consumed by our children’s needs and work, it doesn’t leave much time for each other. Luckily for us we “talked” about it, well talked is a general statement. It really means that L Bird talked to me and told me how she felt while I sat there silent and brooding unable to say anything because I can’t get the words out without being angry. I tend to take everything very personally and even if it isn’t meant to be I feel like it is an attack on me and my character. I know, stupid right? Eventually after enough brooding and rolling things back and forth in my thick head I see what L Bird is saying and I vow to myself to be better whether it’s being more talkative, more affectionate or just picking up more of the slack around the house. We are slowly pulling ourselves back to an “Up” portion of our relationship and things are getting back to where they should be.

But as I sit here and think about L Bird I realize how much I need her everyday and in every way. She makes me a better person. I know I am no peach to live with, but she softens and rounds off all of my sharp edges. I am not a nice person, I try to be but I know that deep down I’m not. I’m moody, I’m stubborn, I’m sarcastic and I rarely speak about anything let alone feelings. I can be arrogant and a loud mouth. I drink too much, too often. I tend to be apathetic about a lot of things, even at work people try to say things just to get a reaction out of me and I’ll stare at them blankly and say “It’s just water off a duck’s back”. I am suspicious of everything. I’m suspicious of what people say and what people do, I am always looking for the reason behind it. In 90% of cases I am normally right, there is always an angle behind it and I see it and put the wall up before they can get what they want from me. Yup, I am one big ball of happy sunshine feelings!

But I would be a lot worse if I didn’t have L Bird, I would be those things all the time. L Bird makes me realize that sometimes people just do or say things just to be in the moment and be genuinely nice. She is a mouthy, saucy, sarcastic wench most of the time but when she says something genuinely means it and I love that about her. I love that she is saucy and mouthy and I love that she is honest, sometimes brutally honest. She routinely challenges me and makes me realize that I am being stubborn or stupid. She draws me out little by little and pushes me to the light. She looks at all the things I dislike about myself and tells me that’s what she loves about me. She holds my hands that grip too tight and laughs at me when my lips twitch when I’m concentrating or thinking. She gets me to laugh at myself and be genuinely happy even if I have trouble showing it. She loves me for me and God knows I love her.

So thank you, my softener of edges (I know that’s corny, right?)! Thank you for being you and making me a better me.

Too “connected” ???

Yesterday was the only day all week that wasn’t supposed to rain and thankfully it didn’t. It was beautiful outside, sunny, clear and in the mid-70’s, it was great. Because the house is still on the market I took a couple hours off of work to go home and mow the lawn before it turned into a hay field from all this rain. I mowed and raked the lawn and I still had a couple of hours to enjoy the sunshine by myself. So I decided I would pack up Linus and hike the Keuka Lake Outlet Trail. I called L Bird and told her what I was doing and took off for the great outdoors.

On my way down to Penn Yan I decided that I would change my plans and start at the Dresden end of the trail because I had never been on that part of the trail. I was going to call L Bird when I got to the parking area to tell her a few things like where I was starting from, which direction I was hiking, and what I was wearing just in case something horrible happened. You know, something like I fell into quicksand and was transported to another dimension and was never seen from again, then at least the police would know where to put their caution tape so no one else would befall the same fate as me. However when I pulled into the parking lot in Dresden I realized that I had absolutely no cell service, not a single bar. But I figured what the hell, L Bird knew I was hiking and I only planned on being out of touch an hour to an hour and a half tops.

So Linus and I started walking and that’s when it hit me, I am too connected. At first it started whenever I came to an open area I would pull out my cell phone and hold it like I was holding Simba from the Lion King on top of that enormous rock searching for a signal. I would do that for a few minutes while Linus waited impatiently to get moving, then I would finally decide I got crap for reception and put my phone back in my pocket. We would walk along for awhile and I would snap a few pictures but every step we took further down the trail my stomach would sink with such a foreboding that I would almost turn around. I hated being out of touch, I couldn’t even enjoy my alone time. I was petrified that there would be an emergency with L Bird or the girls and because I was out of touch something horrible would happen that could have been prevented if I could be reached. I know, I’m crazy right?

After about a mile and a half of these horrific scenes playing out in my mind, it was too much for me to take so we turned around. We walked back at a normal pace even though I could feel my heart start to thump loud and clear. Eventually we made it back to the jeep and headed back towards civilization and connectivity. It turns out that my thoughts were not totally inaccurate, as soon as I got signal again to my phone it started going off. I had 2 voicemails and a “Call Me” text from L Bird. It turns out that L Bird’s Grandpa called the ambulance and was headed for the hospital. He is 90 or almost 90 and is starting to go through some old age issues. He was admitted to the hospital and is dealing with a few things but overall doing better and that’s the best we can hope for.

So I am really annoyed that I let myself become so connected to this world that I cannot spend any time without my phone. I am old enough to remember the time before cell phones, when you only called when you got somewhere or right before you left someplace. Other than that, you were off the chain and free to roam wherever and you never worried about someone not being able to get in touch with you. Going forward I am going to take some time to become disconnected and out of touch with technology, but it will have to better planned out than my trip yesterday.

Oh yeah, here are a few of the pics I snapped, nothing OMG fantastic but oh well I had other things on my mind, like impending doom lol.

How about you? Do you feel you are too connected to technology? Or do you feel that we need to be “connected” at all times?