Forever Missed: Roxy 11/21/98 - 4/2/2013

Yesterday was not a pleasant day, I had a lot going on with new carpet being installed and a few other things but what I had been dreading was a 2 pm vet appointment for Roxy. It turns out that what I had been dreading was the right thing to do and with a river of tears I said goodbye yesterday to the greatest dog I have ever had. She was 14 years old and old age had really gotten the best of her, she had lost a lot of muscle and weight and was unsteady on her feet. I have a great vet who broke it down for me into quality of life issues and made the decision easier to make. I know I made the right decision because I didn’t want her to suffer any longer, but it didn’t help me with saying goodbye.

I got Roxy when I was going through a real rough patch in my life. I was alone a lot, my girlfriend had left me, I was living alone in an apartment while trying to go to college full time and work part time. I figured a dog would do me good. I saw an ad in the paper for free pitbull/American bulldog mix puppies and I jumped at it. I called up and got directions to pick up a pup. I ended driving out into the middle of the sticks to this run down squalid trailer where I was met by one of the most unpleasant women I had met up to that point. She walked outside barefoot, in a nightshirt with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and pointed to a ramshackle dog house with the biggest, meanest, nastiest dog chained to it. The dog was barking ferociously and lunging to the end of its chain while 12 puppies ran around her. The woman pointed and said “Take as many as you want, just don’t get too close to their mama, she’s a bit mean.” I was starting to think this whole thing was a mistake then I saw Roxy, 11 of the puppies were mostly white with small patches of black, but Roxy was smaller and the only Liver/red pup in the bunch. I squatted down and she ran right over to me and that was it, I was in love. That was January 2nd, 1999.

From that day Roxy was there for me and I sacrificed a lot of things that probably would have made my life easier for her. I had her for about 4 months before I was abruptly evicted from my apartment due to a roommate that didn’t pay his share of the rent. My parents were in the process of building a new home and didn’t want all of the trouble of a new puppy in a new house and I can see their point, she did chew a lot of things up and it took a bit to get her house broken. So I could have moved home if I got rid of Roxy, but that just wasn’t going to work for me. Roxy was the first dog that was mine and all mine, not the family dog that I just got to pick out. So I ended up living in a camper on my Aunt’s land with no electricity and no running water, but I could have Roxy. I would go to work and come home at night and walk back up to the camper with my flashlight to find Roxy waiting patiently for me. I would feed her and let her run for a bit, then we would settle in for the night. I would light the oil lamp and read while she laid next to me on the bed and occasionally nudged my hand so I would pet her. Then we would call it a night and she slept next to me on the bed until morning. She continued to sleep on the bed next to me from then on until she could no longer jump up onto the bed this past year.

It took me about 6 months of living in the camper before I found another reliable roommate and an apartment that would accept dogs. It wasn’t the greatest apartment but it was what we could afford and I still got to keep Roxy. But from that point on things turned around for me and got so much better and Roxy was there by my side for all of it. I met L Bird, we dated, broke up, got back together, got married and got pregnant with A Bird. I remember I was so worried about Roxy with a new baby that it made me sick to my stomach, so I bought a CD of “baby sounds” like crying, laughing, gurgling etc and I played them for her over and over and she would just lay on the floor and look at me like I was an idiot. A Bird arrived and Roxy was amazing with her, she would lay next to her and when A Bird started crawling she routinely used Roxy as a step to make her way onto the couch.


Roxy has been the greatest dog anyone could have ever imagine, yeah she had her quirks like being a garbage hound and stealing cookies from your hand if you held it too close to her but she was my ear to cry to when no one else was around. She was my neck to hug when I was alone and wanted to give up. She was a head in my lap when I was sick or sad. She was my dog.

She will forever be missed.

Thank You Budding Readers!

I absolutely love to read and I always have since I was a kid. I love losing myself in a book and following the twist and turns of the story. I have bookshelves full of my favorite books that I have read and will re-read. I held out a long time against e-readers, nooks, and kindles because I am an old school guy. I love the feel of a real book. I love how your favorite books’ pages are yellowing from age or dog-eared from the last time you read it, but because I lack both the funds and the space to build a personal library in my house I succumbed to technology and L Bird bought me a Kindle for Christmas a two years ago. In just two years I have close to 100 books on it.


I think my love of reading came from my Grandma Wicks. She died when I was very young, but I do have a few hazy memories of her and our short time together. I know that she spent a lot of time with me on my ABC’s, counting and reading and I think that really started the spark for reading. Then as I got older, I really have to give credit to my Aunt Georgia and Uncle Mark. I think on a few occasions I was their “test kid” before they had their own children. I went and stayed with them a few times and they took me to Shakespeare in the Park and other art events, but during these visits I think that they really realized who I was. They saw that I was this undersized, nerdy kid with glasses that sort of liked sci-fi, so Georgia introduced me to Piers Anthony a science fiction writer and kind of fanned the flame for my love to read. They got me books instead of toys for birthdays and Christmases and when we got together she would draw me into discussion about what I had read because she had read the same series. It was really great to be able to discuss what I was reading with someone who had also read the book.

Now that I have children of my own I am trying to pass down the old school art of reading books to my girls. A Bird has a book shelf that rivals mine, she has books from when she was a toddler to kindergarten age books. So there are chewed on board books to some of her first chapter books in the Mr. Putter series and the Poppleton The Pig series. The school has a large reading curriculum even for kindergarten, so we read to her 25 days of the month, and she routinely has reading homework books that she has to read to us every night. It’s amazing to see how much she can already read and read with comprehension. So I hope that she will find a genre of books that really excite her so she can really fall in love with books.

I want the same for Nat and this is the real reason for this post. I want to give a huge THANK YOU to the Budding Readers Program. This is a wonderful program that puts books into the hands of parents to start reading to their infants and children to instill a love of reading in them. Reading to your children gives them skills and a leg up on learning that will only help them as they grow older and make their way to adulthood. The other day a woman who works with Budding Readers came into the bank where L Bird works and was asking about Nat, then she gave L Bird a card to fill out for the program. This woman came back with a bag of books for Nat and even a large hard cover Disney Princess book for A Bird. All of the books were free to us, just so we can read to our girls. The program is just awesome. If you want to find out more about them please check them out, http://buddingreaders.org/

Well, that’s enough for now, we’re off to read some of these new books. Enjoy!

What I have learned these past 14 years...

Yesterday, L Bird and I celebrated 9 years of marriage together. This fall we will have been together for 14 years, that’s right 14 years! Almost 40% of my entire life has been spent with L Bird, crazy right? But I digress, so last night my father and stepmother came down to watch the girls so L Bird and I could go out to dinner. We went to our favorite restaurant, stuffed ourselves on fried pickles, schnitzel, and giant mugs of beer and glasses of wine, then came home singing along as loud as we could to any awful song on the radio, yep I’m looking at you Taylor Swift.

(On a Taylor Swift side note, maybe she should take a good long hard look at herself before writing another heartbroken song and realize maybe it really is her that is the problem.) We got home and got both girls to bed and still managed to be in bed by 9:15PM, I know right? How lame are we that being in bed before 10 pm is the greatest gift a person could get? But all in all it was a very good night.

This morning on my way into work I thought about all of the things L Bird and I have learned about each other over these past 14 years. The list is huge and includes things like L Bird will leave me to my certain death if a tree comes crashing down but will take the time to grab a stuffed rabbit as she flees the room. It also includes things like L Bird loves to bake and entertain because it gives her an opportunity to make “snacks”.

But there are bigger things I have learned along the way too. Things that have helped us along the way like making sure to spend time together and time apart too. I love when we are all together or when just L Bird and I are together. It’s time when we can connect and talk, it’s time we can relax and be ourselves completely and that is a liberating feeling. But there are also times when taking the time to do something on your own is very helpful too, even if it is just for a few hours. Having kids is one of life’s greatest gifts, but it is also a struggle because if you are not careful you can lose yourself while caring for everyone but you. So when L Bird wants to run out to the outlet mall or run errands without having the girls underfoot I take over and let her have some time away, then she does the same for me if I want to hit up an auction with Radtke for a few hours. It’s this give and take that has helped us stay sane when we need a little break.

Another thing I have learned and still have to keep working at is making sure that I maintain eye contact while listening and conversing with L Bird. I notice that in this ever evolving technological age more and more people, especially teenagers are constantly focused on texting and IM’ing rather than face to face interaction. But where it falls into play with L Bird and I usually goes like this, I will be sitting on the sofa screwing around on my phone while L Bird is talking to me, then she will get mad at me and accuse me of not listening because I am not making eye contact with her. The same is true when I am trying to talk to her and she sits down to the computer to check facebook and just nods and “uh huhs” through the conversation. It makes both of us feel like what we have to say is not as important as someone else’s useless status update on facebook. So I know that we both try hard to make and maintain eye contact while speaking because we do truly value what each other has to say.

Finally, I have learned that I need to have some sort of physical contact every day from L Bird. I’m not talking anything gross or sexual, but physical contact that conveys the warmth we have for each other. Even if it is as little as a kiss hello or a longer hug, that’s enough but when we don’t touch because we get caught up in making dinner or running baths for the girls or whatever else comes up I realize that I get moody and sulky. I like to think that it is the same for her too, because there have been days we get caught up in the little things until it’s bedtime and then I get “Do you realize that you have not kissed/hugged/touched me all day?”. Its then that I feel awful because I know how that makes me feel so I try to take the time every day for some contact and time together.

I could ramble on and on, but I just wanted to share a few things I have learned so take it for what its worth. Enjoy your time because it is gone all too soon.

Life is so rushed...

When L Bird and I first had A Bird and we were struggling with things like bedtime routine, crankiness and bouts of crying we always heard things like “If you think this is bad, try having 2 kids!” or 3 kids, blah, blah blah from the parents of multiple children. I always blew it off and quit asking people their opinions because I didn’t want to hear how tough it was to have multiple children when I was just asking for advice on raising one. Now that we have Nat, I truly realize that having more than one kid is tougher than you think. With two of them, you now have to fill two kids’ needs rather than solely concentrating on one and in that process there is little to no time for yourself. I mean that is what parenting is, right? Devoting your life to your kids and guiding them through the pitfalls of childhood so they can become successful adults and start the process over with their own children while still managing to spend your limited time together with your spouse. I think that is truly great and I wouldn’t change it, all I am saying is it is HARD.


Everything is so rushed now and it is rushed on both ends. I think L Bird and I make a phenomenal parenting duo because we agree on most things when it comes to parenting, but we do end up doing a lot of stuff separately. I start my day early and leave for work long before the sun is up or anyone else for that matter, so L Bird has the task of getting both girls up, fed, clean, dressed and ready for the day. She really is a super woman because I don’t know how she does it and still manages to make it to daycare for A Bird’s bus and to work on time. Then I catch afternoon duty, I get out of work run home quick to let the dogs outside, while they are outside I bring in firewood and get a fire started so the house is warm when everyone gets home. Once the fire is going pretty good, I head out to pick the girls up from daycare. I make sure to get the run down on when Nat ate last and when her diaper was last changed as I pack her into her snowsuit and into the carrier, then I gather up A Bird and her school bag and we hit the car running. On the way home I quiz A Bird about her day and ask her about homework. Once we get home I get A bird set up with a snack, then unpack Nat from her layers of snowsuit and try to start dinner. While dinner is cooking, I hold Nat and try to keep her happy while helping A Bird with her homework, normally by the time that is finished dinner is done and L Bird is walking through the door. We all eat our dinners then ping pong back and forth between the two girls until its bed time and they are tucked into bed. Luckily for us we have always been schedule Nazis and a routine has been set for A Bird and is starting to be set for Nat. By 8:15 – 8:30pm the girls are tucked in and sleeping, hopefully.

Now for the next hour I get to spend time with my lady. This is the magic hour, the time when we can settle in, relax a little bit and talk about our days or lately watch Duck Dynasty and laugh with each other. It’s easy to get so caught up and stressed out in all of life’s day to day tasks that I forget to give L Bird a hug and a kiss until we go to bed. It’s tough when you get so frazzled that you lose the physical contact with the person you love, and that’s something I am trying to work on, to at least greet her warmly when she gets home even if I’m stressed out.

That is my life right now, it feels tough now that we are going through it but I know that kids just grow so fast and in the big picture you really only have them for a moment in time. So I try to remember that as I can barely keep my eyes open at 8:45 in the evening or when I feel like I am scrambling at such a fast pace that my mind is going to crash. I am trying to take pleasure in the small things to balance how frantic I feel lately. Little things like “talking” with Nat while she practices her voice cooing and vocalizing, sitting next to A Bird and reading to her or just talking to her about her day and her friends, and getting some adult interaction with L Bird before bed. Real simple pleasures like a hot cup of black coffee and a new Grit magazine on Saturday mornings.

I know in a blink of an eye, the girls will be older and we will be trying to figure the next portion of our lives together. It’s just trying to balance it all and still enjoy our time together. Well, I’ve rambled on so long I forgot what my original point was, so on that note it’s once more back into the fray…

Time heals all ... memories???

I have talked to a few people about this and I have read an article on brain function, biology and memory and it seems pretty true that “Time heals all wounds.” I mean I think that it most applies to relationships, you could be in a serious relationship and have some crappy things done to you but years later your mind tends to soften those wounds and you only remember the good stuff. But I think it applies to childbirth and raising children as well.


Now that A Bird is almost six, life is easy. She can pretty much take care of herself, just the other day she got up, got herself dressed, turned on the TV and was getting herself some breakfast when L Bird walked out to see what she was doing. It was a proud moment to see how independent she has become and how her independence has eased our life considerably. That independence was what we had grown accustomed to before we had Nat. So the whole time we were trying to have Nat our minds had only remembered all the sweet times when A Bird was a baby. We remembered all the smiles, coos and her first laughs. We remembered watching her personality develop and her first steps, we remembered worrying about her not speaking then worrying she would never stop talking. Yep, that’s all we remembered and envisioned while L Bird was pregnant with Nat. Sure, we vaguely remembered sleepless nights and crying but time had softened those blows in our memories so they “really weren’t that bad”. From talking to L Bird labor was hard, but she made it through and “it wasn’t so bad”, it was something to be proud of to make it through naturally. Yep, that is what we remembered.

Now Nat is officially here and making her mark on our lives and the realities of raising children have set in and are vividly marked in our minds. Don’t get me wrong, I am so so so thankful to God that he blessed us with Nat and I wouldn’t change a thing. I am truly blessed, but it is tough to go through the screaming, crying, sleepless nights again. All of the things we forgot about during A Bird growing up are right at the forefront of our every waking thought with Nat. All of the bouts of explosive diarrhea, the fun of being peed on as you change a diaper, the inconsolable crying that only L Bird can comfort when I am alone with both girls, and the constant worrying are present. You just get the baby down to sleep, then the random thought of what if she pulled a receiving blanket over her face? Or what if the cat jumped into the Moses basket and is smothering her? creep into your mind, so you sneak into the bedroom as quietly as possible, army crawling if you have to, when you step on a toy or a cat meows and you freeze like you are caught in the spotlight of a prison break movie. You stand stock still and hold your breathe until you’re positive she is still asleep then you sneak to take a peek at her and she is absolutely fine, flat out asleep with her hands above her head like a drunk hobo. All I am saying is you forget about all of these things when you are pregnant and waiting for the baby.

I read an article that said we are biologically programmed this way, to forget the bad and only remember the good. The article said we are programmed this way to ensure the survival of the human race. The point it was trying to make was if we remembered all of the not so good experiences as vividly as we remember the good and great memories not many of us would have brothers and sisters because our parents would have stopped at one child. It makes sense to me, if women could remember with explicit detail the pain of childbirth I’m not so sure they would want to experience it again. I know they remember it and remember it well, but “time heals all wounds” and the memory is softened by the fact that you get a cute ball of joy at the end.

I know that in time all this will pass and I’ll be left with a new set of worries like boyfriends and driving and even those memories will be softened as I grow old, but for now I’ll suffer through the bad because the good stuff far outweighs the bad. We’ll make it through with a lot of help from our friend, COFFEE. On that note, I’m off to pour myself a nice hot cup of black delicious caffeine.

The Best Laid Plans…

Well, you know the quote by Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”. That’s exactly what happened today, L Bird and I had plans and then life happened. Today is L Bird’s last week of maternity leave, she goes back to work on Monday. I had a few things I had to do today, but after those things I had planned on spending the day with L Bird. A Bird was going to school and Nat was going to go to daycare as a trial run, so we pretty much had the day to spend together.

It was going to be a day date, because with a 5 year old and a newborn its tough to try and get a sitter without feeling guilty about leaving both kids  and without feeling guilty for the sitter having to deal with two needy kids. So we figured the only way we can spend some quality time with each other is to take a weekday off from work while both kids are gone. That was the plan for today, we were going to go to the ReStore to scout out a dresser for Nat, then to the jewelry store to have L Bird’s rings repaired, then have some lunch and maybe a little afternoon delight for dessert before we picked up the kids. Yep, sounds like a great date right. That’s what I thought too, but then life hits.

L Bird had put A Bird on the bus and dropped Nat off at daycare, and had just gotten back home. I had already showered, was drinking coffee and ready to go do my thing then start our day date. L Bird was just getting out of the shower and the phone rings and it’s the school nurse. Blammo, plans derailed! A Bird threw up on the bus and needed to be picked up from school.

We picked A Bird up and got the details, from the sounds of things she threw up as the bus pulled into its spot at school and it wasn’t too bad. She didn’t throw up on herself or any other kids so it is as good as it can get for throwing up on the bus.

So now we are home with A Bird and her 103.1 F fever. Luckily, our daycare still has Nat so we can concentrate on getting A Bird settled into her bed and feeling a little better before we throw a screaming baby into the mix too.

So here’s to the joys of parenting…

Late Resolution, New Skills & A Game of Tag

So I knew that I wanted to write a post about new year’s resolutions, but with a new baby somehow time just seems to disappear. Lucky for me I am stealing this few minutes as my three “birds” are occupied. One is asleep, one is watching spongebob and one is cleaning.

I normally don’t make new year’s resolutions just because I typically lack the will power to keep them going. But this I thought I would make a small resolution and take small steps to achieve my goals. My resolution is to learn 10 new skills this year. I figure that is achievable. I want to learn 10 new things and be proficient at them. I am on a self sufficient/survivalist kick so I figured most of my skills would focus on those type of skills. So I am currently learning to tie knots, I know it sounds like I am trying to be a boy scout, but I figured learning 5 basic knots would come in handy for everything from camping to tying down the kayaks. I would say that I am proficient at 3 of the 5 I want to learn now so I still have some work to do. After knots, I think I am going to work on fire starting using a variety of methods, then who knows what else maybe some axemanship for felling trees and splitting my firewood more efficiently. I know, I know its pretty boring stuff, but who knows it may come in handy sometime, right?

The other thing that I wanted to blog about was a game of tag I read about in the news. Apparently this group  of friends have been playing a game of tag for the past 23 years. They started off playing in grade school and with a few tweaks have continued playing throughout life. Apparently one of them is a lawyer or something and they drew up a formal tag contract where they would only play one month of the year, in their case February, and they couldn’t tag the person that just tagged them. So throughout the month of February they have flown across the country, staked each other out and enlisted the help of whoever it took to “tag” someone. It was a really interesting story, in you are interested in the particulars you can find them here. But anyway, after reading that article I thought it was a really fun and interesting way to keep in touch. I sat down and thought about if I could pull that off with a few of my friends. I think it would be possible but it would get way out of hand. I was envisioning suggesting this to the Goof Troop and the Trout Derby Brain Trust. I could see instead of “tagging” someone it would most likely be the old fashioned and crude “tap in the grapes” that usually gets played when they are around. But they are all seriously deranged I could see them hiding under my bed until 2 AM then jumping out and rochambeau (see South Park entry) me. So I am little on the fence about bringing it up, but we will see because it would be epic if we started this game.

So that’s about it. How are you doing with your resolutions? Do you have any interesting ways to keep in touch with your friends?