The Story Teller

I often never finish or follow through on my creative plans.  Even the art projects, written projects, etc. I do complete seem to take inordinate amount of time. Nothing comes easy for me, but then again, I am a lazy man.  Hence, the whole title of this blog, I think I wrote this all before....this brings me to my latest endeavor, storytelling.

I’ve always been a story teller for my kids, stories in the car, stories when we're stuck in public somewhere boring, you get the picture.  But my specialty are bedtime stories.  Since we brought our son home in September, I've had nary a night off (if I did have the night off for the girls, the story was told before their Mom tucked them in). In fact, I am working on basically the same world and characters since September. We’ve had all sorts of adventures; being taken prisoner by trolls (who wanted the main character's toenails, of course), hiding from witches, being caught in a goblin's snot net and generally adventuring in a fantasy world - think of it as Lord of the Rings-lite for ages 5-9.

Soon after starting these stories, I found myself on a Sunday afternoon, drawing a map of the entire world we had explored including areas we had yet to "visit".  It struck me just how much fun I was having creating this little world, even without the kids.  After a few more weeks of storytelling, I ran out of room on the map. At Christmas, my oldest daughter bought me a poster board and map pencils so I could draw the whole map out.   

Cute story, eh?

I was happy to start but then I realized what I was up against.  It took me well over a month to complete,  including coloring the map in map pencils. I usually worked at least a 1-2 hours a day and at times closer to 4 hours in one day. It basically became my life outside of parental duties and work. Every morning the girls would ask to see what I had worked on the night before.  

The finished map

 

Now, the wonderful aspect about the map was that it helps write the stories themselves.  Once you have the geography and culture decided on, then it’s just letting your characters interact within the framework of your world.  I estimate it took me a tad over 48 hours to finish  the map. The night I finished I took it in to get laminated and hang it on the girl's wall. 

All this is to say, I have been harboring dark, conceited little thoughts about publishing these stories in some capacity.  If it took me over a month just to complete the map how long would it take me to finish one page, let alone one chapter of a book I would be actually happy with? I don't even read children's literature, at least not this type.... I can't even write a blog post without finding numerous grammatical errors or unclear wording. Do I want to devote all my free time to working on something that holds no promise of success?  If I do finish, I would have to search for a publisher and likely be rejected countless times, maybe even face rejection for years?  Do I want to risk the fact that the likely outcome is, well, nothing tangible....

I’m not looking to get rich. I don’t care about that stuff, but I’ve always harbored the fantasy of getting paid to come up with silly ideas. I suppose this whole idea is silly (but it’s not as cool because I didn’t get paid for it).  

Sometimes I feel like God has pulled me in five different directions. Each direction offers completely different risks, outcomes, advantages and disadvantages.  Eventually, I will have to pick a path and hope for the best.  For now, I’ll just keep being the story teller before bedtime.

Fragmentaional Re-start

This could have been just another abandoned blog.

 A quick Google search tells me 95% of blogs eventually get abandoned but ya know we're all going to become "abandoned" someday. I was talking about someone's health issues at church awhile back and some old man said, "You know, I don't think any of us are  getting out of here alive!" I re-use that line all the time now Love it. 

After all the readership is pretty much zero and I am pretty busy with life in general. 

However, there is a part of me that enjoys writing for the sake of writing and then preserving it. It's an ego thing and at the same time a hobby. It has allowed me to explore topics somewhat privately with a public benefit.  No, not in the way of comments or discussions, as I think I've had three actual comments from folks I don't know (btw - thanks very much kind people!).... However, several times in my own conversations with people or in the classroom, I have found myself repeating something I wrote on the blog. That's something I have found useful. 

So, for whatever the reason, I am back and hope to be back on a regular schedule. There is much to update on, and much to tell, but for now, just the fragments:

 Anyway, we got back in September from Ethiopia with our son.

H is wonderful. When he came home he was a little over six months home and he is the sweetest little guy around. He has a pleasant disposition and more prone to smile than fuss. He is interested in just about everything but especially people.   As for his adjustment, although he came to our transition home in Ethiopia malnourished and gained weight there for two months, he was still severely underweight for his age when he got home.  However, he has grown by leaps and bounds and is at or above his peer group for development in speech and physical development. He is one smart booger.

Here is the list of things he loves:

Music and dancing, hitting toys onto everything, shoes, remote controls, phones, anything with buttons,  blocks, sticking leaves and small things he finds on the ground in his mouth, being picked up by Daddy and squacking like a bird when he sees something he wants (usually shoes or phones).

We had a wonderful honeymoon period that lasted almost a whole month before things started getting difficult.  Not soul crushing difficult, but your normal family-transitionally stuff. It was (and is) a challenge that is a daily struggle.  The lack of sleep caught up with us, the stress of being “on” with three kids,  our other kids (especially our new “middle child”) to having a baby brother. We'll make it though.

Upcoming blog posts: Jesus as Spider-Man, Spider-Man as Christ

Hopeful Fragment  Blog Presents:One More Pointless List: 

Things I like about the Winter 

(Important Note: we live in South Texas)

Beautiful, cool and crisp mornings (but not cold)

Rainy, Freezing, Really COLD Days (I mainly like these because they make feel like “Whoa – it’s winter out there” and the fact that I know it will last at the MOST for four days in a row and then we’ll be topping out in the low 60’s again soon)

Bundling up in Bed

The sun is up early in the mornings. I like that.

I like having hearty chili on a cool/cold night.

Hot coffee in the morning on the way to work to help warm up my hands

That’s it fair readers I hope to write sooner rather than later. Take heed of the north wind and know spring is on its way (at least at some point).

I'm Back

So I will write a proper blog soon (maybe tonight)

In the meantime, I will never watch this scene from Indiana Jones the same way. You see I feel this way every time I put the baby down in the middle of the night. The slightest movement, the misecule movement of my arm and EYES WIDE OPEN (or a hearty little scream). Then you have to hold him for another 10-20 minutes, hoping you didn't wake him up for one of those nightmare marathon rocking sessions. 

Does it make it more fun to put the baby down at night thinking I am on an exotic adventure at a dangerous locale?  

Not really, I am usually just worried, stressed and usually really, really tired. 

So, until later tonight or tomorrow or the next night, etc. I bid thee adieu. 

Oh yeah, our new little boy is awesome, in case no one was wondering as no one reads this! 

newsy fragments

We finally got our phone call to pick up our son a few weeks back. This is amazing news for our family not so good for the blog.

Our trip was outstanding no major troubles and I had chance to have a few miniadventures of my own as well. Of course I will blog about it at some point. I typically use our bedroom PC to blog but our little guy will be sleeping in our bedroom for the foreseeable future so...I'm on my kindle fire. Holy crape this ducks writing on this (not making this up....thats actually the way i typed it out).

I know there are people who type on this type of thing all day...but this ain't happening often.

We have three kids now. It's hard.....but ya know not too terrible ....yet. So....I won't be posting for awhile....until then keep your face clean, roll your windows down when driving and have that extra cookie....you deserve it. Fare thee well..

My Kid's Camera

Our oldest child loves taking pictures. It might have something to do with the fact that we taken about 2.1 million pictures of her since birth. Her grandfather bought her a kid's camera (Hello Kitty) awhile back. It takes crappy pictures, but she loves it.


Like most children's art, my daughter's photos are brimming with boldness, purity and innocence. Children take risks with their art - they create it not for art to one-up another artist or for art's sake but because it's fun. 

They don't have much to compare their own art to, so they are free to do what they want without over-thinking. Children can teach us to trust our inner guide and to remind us the joy of creation.
Or maybe she just takes lots of pictures and some are bound to look halfway interesting to her father.

Full Disclosure: I am not posting these photos believing they are some kind of artistic revelation. However, I never undervalue children's art. There's a painting my youngest did a few years ago that I need to get framed - it's more evocative and beautiful than a lot of modern art I've seen.

This is her great grandmother on her mother's side.  Ok, so there are lots of blurry photos in her batch...part of it is she's a kid, the other part is the crappy camera.  The red shirt brought something out in this one that I liked.  It looked more Monet-like than the other blurry shots.  You still see grandma's smile and the woman on the right makes for an interesting contrast.

This is our cat. She sits here for much of the day. C took a ton of photos of the cat....mainly with the cat looking irritated but this one is nicely framed...and...it's not blurry! That's a minor miracle.

Never a dull moment when you're a kid with a camera.

             It's wonderful to see the kid's prospective on life. I also liked the garage reflected back into the car.

This was a nice one of our youngest.

Self Portrait. She did a few of these, so she knew what she was doing.

These last two are taken in our church. You forget how big the world was when you were a kid. I loved this shot as it brought back memories of being small.  



Paba Free Fragments

So one of my best friends and I had a falling out several years ago. It is sad, but it is what it is. When we were in college we applied for a 2-hour  radio show on our college radio station and created The Paba Free Show. It was fun. Here are the fragments:


It took us a long time to think of a name for our show. Nothing seemed to come naturally to us or maybe we were trying to hard to be clever. I came up with the name based off a comment from George on Seinfeld who was looking for a "Paba Free" suntan lotion. I was a massive Seinfeld show fan, so it felt right. Here is the whole exchange and inspiration for the name.

Jerry: Are these seats unbelievable or what?
George: Where’s the sunblock?
Jerry: Here.
George: 25? You don’t have anything higher?
Jerry: What, are you on Mercury?
George: I need higher. This has paba in it, I need paba-free.
Jerry: You got a problem with paba?
George: Yes, I have a problem with paba.
Jerry: You don’t even know what paba is.
George: I know enough to stay away from it.

Our college radio station's range was tiny. When I mean tiny, I mean if you were on the far side of campus, you couldn't pick up the AM frequency. We also had "FM-Cable" but you would have to plug in a cable, for the television into the back of your stereo, to hear it, if your stereo even had this slot, which was unlikely. No one could ever figure out if that was working or not because no body had this slot on the back of their stereo.

I found this googling the old station. This was never a door I used, it seems the station has moved once (or has been renovated) and maybe even twice. We had it old school with turntables, old school mics, and tons of old LP's. All of this was cramped in a tiny little space, in the back of a building where no one could find you if they tried. All the photos made me sad we never took a picture and sad because it means I am getting OLD.

Our first shows were awful as we learned the ropes of the technology. Eventually, I think we had some nice DJ moments, but the tapes of the early shows were pretty embarrassing.

It was such a cool thing to tell people at parties or where-ever, "yeah, we have a radio show on Fridays". You felt like such a bad-ass just saying it.  Honestly, I haven't had too many humble brags this good in my life. I still get reactions from people when I tell them I had a radio show in college, and they say something like, "That's awesome!"...and I'm like....(sounding like I don't think so)..."yeah.....I guess".

My friend and I were  power-pop fiends. Bands in our common rotation: Weezer, Fountains of Wayne, Spoon, Sloan, Superdrag, The Apples in Stereo, Nirvana, Sixteen Deluxe, Beck, Crumb, Frank Black and Tripping Daisy (yes, I am aware some of those artists are not "Power Pop"). I always told my friend to never play the singles from "big bands" like Nirvana or Weezer and to NEVER play R.E.M. but he would sneak them in when I went to the bathroom. Bastard.

 

Cool Power Pop image. I mean, this is cool right? Or maybe not. 

Our first semester we had the show on Saturday mornings (that was my friend's stupid idea) from 10:00-12:00, then we went to Sunday afternoon from 2:00-4:00 and finally found a good place on Friday afternoon's from 4:00-6:00. That was my favorite time slot. We would do our show, grab a bite to eat on Northgate (where all the best bars in College Station were), go home and hang out, get ready and go out for the night later. It was a nice routine that I always looked forward to. One week my friend was feeling frisky and decided to have a few beers during our show (obviously, a big school "no-no").  I was freaking out the whole time and generally was a big douche about it.

Our audience was miniscule. The few listeners we had, were, of course, our friends. Frankly, they only listened once we were in the Friday time slot anyway. Two of our friends could miraculously  tune into the station and we would often have them call-in for over-the-air conversations. This made it feel like an actual show.  Another friend would listen as he drove a school bus on campus and he would tune in as he shuttled students around. Once he drove on the other side of campus, he couldn't pick it up. I'm sure the bus-riding students were confused as to what they had the radio tuned to.  I think one of the other DJ's said they tuned in once and it so happened she was a girl and kinda cute so this made us doubly excited.

We would beg people to call in with requests. The truth was sad....but outside a few friends, NO ONE was listening. Then one day-- it happened. An actual request. From someone we didn't know!  He requested Echo and the Bunnymen (who I had only heard of)...we were nervous that we didn't have an album to play...but we eventually found an old LP. You know this is a big deal because I remember what the guy requested to this day.  We were so proud. One time we had a "stand off" with our non-existent listeners, telling them we wouldn't play music until someone called in. They never called and we chatted for the last hour of the show. We were a little "in on the joke"...but we both would have been thrilled to have actual, occasional listeners.


The great thing about having no listeners was that we could pretty much do what we wanted. We ended up rapping one day over a music-only track of "All About the Benjamins"  (of course I made up most of my rap).  I also sang over a non-vocal track from a indie band, about Huevos Rancheros a few times. Both of these experiments were pretty terrible, but darkly funny in an awkward-white guy kinda way.

I made a pathetic little website for the show (I mean it was 1998-1999 so most websites were pathetic to begin with). We never got any email requests and I was sad about that.  When I look back on it, it's kinda cute that I was trying to be cutting-edge.

We taped most of our shows but I would tape over them all the time with new shows.  We stopped doing the show after two years, for whatever reason we felt like we would be "too busy" but I always regret not giving it a final semester.  I had only taped about 3.5 shows even though I am certain I lost a tape along the way in a move or lost underneath my car seat.   About 10 years ago,  I transferred much of our banter (editing out boring stuff) into single MP3 digital copies. I collected many of the songs we played on the show and and mailed them to my friend on a CD before our falling out.  I love having these in my MP3 collection as they are a part of my personal history that is recorded. Sure, it doesn't mean a lot to anyone else....but it does to me (ya know, like this blog).

Recently, I created two huge MP3 files (mimicking an audio tape), I wanted to create the feeling of it not being easy to "skip" tracks. You would have to "fast-forward" if you didn't like the song. I edited our banter to ensure the bands we said were "coming up next" really were coming up next and created a "new" show out of old stuff.  I found old tid-bits of dialogue that I hadn't recorded years ago. It took a lot of time but at the same time it was a lot of fun too. I sent it to my friend as a peace offering about a week ago.....we'll see what happens.

Since my friend has kinda ignored me the last few years it makes memories of the show a little bitter sweet. He was a like a brother to me, we fought about life, politics, religion, you name it. But we had a shared past, loved the same type of music, loved going to concerts, hanging out, being stupid and having fun.  Maybe we debated a lot, but we also liked pushing each other's buttons...it was part of what made us friends. We could disagree but still hang out. Maybe we grew up and maybe we're too different now....time changes things. I don't know. I don't expect our friendship to be the same, but it would be nice to be facebook friends. I miss my friend but at least I'll always have the Paba Free Show.

Update 1/31/13:  I sent the package, he never responded. Oh well.

Lonely Fragments

My wife and kids have been gone for 10 days now and return tomorrow I thought I would have all this time to write and accomplish so much on the blog. oh well.

Late in the spring I tried to name as many players as I could that have played with Tim Duncan. I got up to 53. I was very disappointed with my self, I was expected at least to name 70+.   My wife found the sheet and wrote in #54 "you're weird but I love you". That made me smile.

I have been watching the LOTR trilogy (Extended Edition with all the special features). It's been cool. Can't wait for The Hobbit. I think I'm going to try for the midnight showing.

I think I ate more unhealthy with no one around.

I was a lot more busy than I thought I would be. I thought I would be lounging around, taking multiple naps a day, writing, reflecting, etc. Instead I was teaching, grading, getting certified to get folks to register to vote, watering lawns (I was looking after two other lawns other than our own while different people were out of town), prepping for a hunger banquet at church, going to my parents house twice, getting ready for the fall and more. I wouldn't really describe as "busy" but there wasn't a ton of downtime either.

Hard to believe school is starting again soon. Our six-year old will be going into the 1st grade and turning 7 in March. It feels more and more like she's not a little girl any more and that bums me out a little. All the same, I am proud of the little lady she is becoming. 

Doing some van shopping as well. I don't like car shopping, car dealerships, car salesmen, test driving, worrying if you're getting ripped off, thinking about how much money you are sinking into this hunk of machinery, even thinking about it makes me ill. bah, humbug.

I had an idea for a movie the other day but I am too lazy and not talented enough to pull it off.

Hang loose, daddy-o's.