Thursday Thoughts (by category)

METEOROLOGICAL

It's flipping freezing here in Texas, currently about 34 degrees with an overnight low in the 20s. Meanwhile New York enjoyed a balmy 65 degree day today. Thats just wrong.

FINANCIAL

My heat has been running non-stop since I got home from work. Something tells me my winter electric bills will be a big old dose of reality.

MUSICAL

Downloaded a song called You'll Carry Me by Michelle Margiotta a few days ago. It really struck a chord (pun very much intended) with me. I've always found music to be a great refuge when life gets nuts. I've never actually met Michelle but she's been helping out at Church at The Movies new Mastic campus and I hear she's doing a great job.

INSPIRATIONAL

The best defense against the disappointment of unfulfilled expectations is a plan B.
That's an original. Well actually it's a paraphrase of something my therapist said to me recently but I'm claiming it as mine.

ANGELICAL

The way my sleeping children looked when I checked on them a few minutes ago. I love having them under my roof and treasure the times they're here. Oh and I know it's "angelic" but I'm working on something creative here!

SEASONAL

Talked to my dad and my sister today regarding their visit to Texas at Christmas. I won't completely re-write my Thanksgiving post but the thought of having my family around my table in my house for a holiday is almost too incredible to describe in words. There were times in the last couple of years of my life when I honestly never thought I'd be where I am today. It's amazing and I am ridiculously blessed.

POLITICAL

How can an individual who's been in a job for 1 year be criticized for having a challenging time in cleaning up a mess that took another individual 8 years to make? Give the guy a chance people.

AGRICULTURAL

I bought a hedge trimmer and sculpted the two large bushes at the front of my house. The next step is to adorn them with Christmas lights in honor of the season (white of course, I only do white lights). Simple elegance is what I'm going for. I'll let the people down the street do the gaudy, cluster of inflatables and flashy things. My kids of course LOVE their house but I'm sure they'll be equally as impressed with daddy's simple elegance. Yeah right.

DENTAL

Emily has her first loose tooth. She's experiencing emotions ranging from excitement that a mythical fairy is going to come into her room at night and leave cash under her pillow to shear terror that part of her is going to fall out possible involving pain and blood. I personally think the notion of a fairy coming into my room at night and messing with my pillows sounds much more terrifying. Ben is of course playing the role of supportive big brother as only Ben can and telling her it will "really hurt".

MARSUPIAL

A Kangaroo.

That's about all I've got. Happy Thursday.

Head Health

Tuesday's have become an interesting day. A little over a month ago I decided that my efforts to overcome the raging ocean of thoughts and emotions swirling around my head, weren't working. With that in mind I decided to seek professional help. Since Lobotomies are apparently frowned upon these days I found myself a therapist.

This is a very big step for me as I generally believe that whatever the issue is I can fix it myself. I can't. It's not working. And if God had intended for us to be entirely self sufficient we'd all be living on our own little planet in a very crowded yet very lonely universe.

So Tuesday is my therapy day.

I'd kind of expected to go in there and tell her what's been going on in my life for the past few years and for her to slap a big band-aid on it all and that would be that. It has been however a very different experience and what I've appreciated about the woman is that she doesn't just want to band-aid issues but she wants to get to the root of them and correct the behaviors, habits, hurts, hang-ups and history which can often set us up for disappointments regardless of where life goes.

So Tuesday is my therapy day.

And so the rest of Tuesday often has this weird feeling. It's like when you have 3 days of nausea and you know you're getting sick, then finally the moment comes, you feel it climbing up the back of your throat, you run for the nearest toilet and hurl. You feel better, but for a moment, pre-flush, you're left staring at this pile of mostly mystery, stomach trash, thinking, "Ew...that was inside me?" That's kind of how my post therapy Tuesdays are.

So Tuesday is my therapy day.

And a month in it's probably the best decision I've made in a while. Hurt does not just go away. It rots and festers and eventually consumes the carrier. I'm not there yet but I am determined to get it all out. Even if I have to stick my fingers down my throat.

Thankful

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I like Thanksgiving. I like the idea of a holiday which apart from the massive amount of food which is consumed and apart from the day of retail gluttony which follows it, is set aside in it's purest form for being thankful.

I can't help but remember my Thanksgiving 12 months ago. I was alone in my small one bedroom apartment, I was depressed, I was scared and uncertain of where life was headed. I'd decided to spend the day doing some projects on my computer and anything else I could think of to distract myself. I remember sitting on my apartment balcony and watching happy people below get in their cars and head off to their family gatherings. I honestly just wanted the day to be over.

A year later and life couldn't be more different. I just spent a great evening with the 2 most incredible children on the planet and sit here in a beautiful home looking at the Christmas tree my kids and I decorated this evening (eager to rearrange their ornament placement!)

Tomorrow Ben will wake me up way too early as always. We'll get up and ready and I'll spent quite some time convincing Emily why we should make some modifications to her "outfit". Then we'll hit the road, pick up Haley and head to Fort Worth to spend Thanksgiving with her family.

I've come to believe that if you're having a bad day it can look totally different tomorrow. Sometimes however "tomorrow" can take a year to come!

I am ridiculously blessed. I have so much to be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving.

People Are Actually Reading This?!

I had a couple of conversations with family members today and it turns out that quite a few people are actually reading this thing! (Hello New York)

It was suggested to me that I tone it down a bit or something to that effect. Well sorry. Not going to happen.

I started writing on here from time to time primarily as a means of therapy more than anything else. The last 4 years of my life have for the most part been hell and I don't use that word lightly. I went from 2 years of fighting serious illness right into the last 2 years of what has been the most heartbreaking period of my life.

I had lunch recently with a friend who described the past few years for me as "pushing a boulder up a hill" and to be quite honest I'm looking forward to getting to the top of the hill and watching the darn thing roll of into the distance on the other side!

Truth is next week I'll experience (was going to say "celebrate" but yeah right!) my 36th birthday. One of many of my mother's famous quotes is that we're promised "3 score and 10 years". That 70 for those of you who speak English. So that being said I'm halfway to my eternal rest. And I don't know a darn thing!

So if you're on here reading this, looking to be inspired, click HERE this guy does it probably better than anyone I've ever known. In the meantime if you're still here I'd welcome you to take this journey with me. I'm not perfect, I make TONS of mistakes, in almost 36 years and the single biggest lesson I've learned is that I still have a lot to learn and I have good days and bad days, both of which often find their way onto these pages.

So if you're still with me, welcome aboard. Laugh with me. Cry with me. Learn with me. And for goodness sake if you have any suggestions as to how I can do this thing called life better, let me know!

Weekend's Over

The weekend's over. The kids are gone. The house is quiet.

• Great weekend with the kids and the dog, Samson. I'm not a huge animal person but don't mind having the dog from time to time since from what I can gather his life in his main residence isn't that wonderful.

• Watched Ben play his last Fall Ball baseball game yesterday. In his last at bat of the season he effortlessly hit a monster drive to the outfield. Perhaps the biggest of his young career. It's a great feeling when your kids is the one wowing the other parents.

• Bit the bullet and checked out COC Metro Church
which meets in the school around the corner. I hate the notion of church hopping but I've recently moved to a new town and in many ways need to start living my life where I'm at now.

• Love it when my Emily says the awkward things that need to be said. I do however wish the other adult party could be a little more accepting of the new reality. Also wish the naysayers had actually asked me what the truth was rather than inventing a reality to fit their agendas. Who knows maybe they read this. You know who you are!

• Back to the funny farm tomorrow. Mondays at the office have been weird lately. In fact the office in general has been weird lately. Something is off, hopefully it re-aligns itself soon.

• My son is an incredible human being in his own complex way. Too much to write here he just is.

• I've said this a million times but if I die tomorrow I'll be perfectly content in the contribution I've given to the world in Ben and Emily Blackmore.

• Haley's been sick since Friday. Headed out to check in on her in a few.

Halloween

I spent the first half of my life growing up in a tiny village in the North East of Scotland. The kind of place where you pass gas and the entire place knows about it. The kind of place where if your dad was the village clergy you were held to a standard most kids couldn't live up to. The kind of place where pumpkins didn't grow and on October 31st we carved turnips, yes turnips. The kind of place where it was OK to do the Halloween thing.

I remember one such chilly October evening my sister and I were knocking on doors, trying to do our best to fill our bags and rot our teeth. We decided to knock on the door of an older couple who were members of the church. The door opened and we were immediately lectured about the evils of Halloween, told that their household didn't endorse devil worship and that our bags of candy would be the weights around our necks which would eventually drag us straight to hell. OK so i embellished a little but it did happen something like that. Fortunately we were wearing masks to disguise our sinful faces otherwise i'm sure it would have escalated into an epic village incident culminating in my father being driven from the pulpit.

Later in life, living in New York and having children of my own, we followed the norm there. Halloween was typically frowned on by the church and most churches offered alternatives for kids which still allowed them to get dressed up and get all hopped up on MMs.

Living in Texas we again discovered a different norm. Most of the people here, even the church people do Halloween. So for the past 4 years living in Texas, October 31st rolls around and my kids go trick or treating. I've been incredibly impressed on each of these Halloween evenings, when walking around neighborhoods with the kids, at the incredible sense of community. People are on the streets, people are interacting and last year we even encountered a couple of homes offering free hot dogs.

I like it. I don't like the gruesome macabre side of things. I think some of it is downright sick. I don't endorse devil worship. What I do endorse is kids being kids. My kids love to dress up and they love candy and I don't think for a second and of this will lead them to joining a coven or sacrificing babies in the woods later in life.

As a parent I am ultimately responsible for the upbringing of my kids and my kids alone. If you choose not to do the Halloween thing with your kids thats entirely up to you.

So on Saturday evening, an eight year Snake Eyes from the GI Joe movie, a five year old rock star, their mom and I will touring the neighborhood trying to amass enough candy to rot all of the teeth out of their mouths several times over and more importantly so much candy that they'll never notice me stealing half of it.

We had a dress rehearsal tonight. They look great.

Blissful Solitude

I miss my kids. Simple as that. It's a situation that is not ideal, a situation which never gets easier but you do get used to.

So in the interest of taking my thoughts captive and turning a negative into a positive, here are my...

Top 10 Reasons Why It's Good To Be Alone

10. I can keep the temperature in my house the way I like it.

9. Lower utility bills.

8. My schedule belongs to me (when it's not baseball season, Thursday evenings, dropping the kids at school,  parent teacher conferences, every other weekend or any of the countless hours my schedule belongs to JC Penney etc, etc, etc...)

7. Smaller grocery bills.

6. I can leave the toilet seat up (even though after years of "training" I seldom do).

5. My house never gets particularly dirty.

4. I watch what I want to watch on TV (even though I don't watch much TV and when I do it's usually stuck on ESPN).

3. Peace and quiet.

2. My washer and dryer have it pretty easy.

1. When my kids are here it makes the time that much more special.