It has been 3 ½ years since I have sat down and updated this blog of which I had all these grand plans for. Consider this a welcome back, a hello, and a glimpse into my odd little thoughts and actions. I will try and keep up a little better, and will update folks through Facebook when I do get around to writing on here.

If you have not read my previous postings (all two of them), I figure that this would be a good time to share this lil’ tidbit with you……I like the dirty words. There, I said it. For all of my family and friends that held me up on a pedestal and thought of me as a pristine piece of art that was as pure as the driven snow, I apologize. I blame my siblings for all of the negative aspects of my life. They were most definitely the ones that led me astray. Horrible people, my siblings, avoid them at all costs!

This August is a welcome month. Not only because of the fact that I have decided I am going to give this blog thing another spin around the dance floor, but because my wife and I are going to have another grubber. Baby Reese is now 8 days overdue and is not starting out on a good foot. Our oldest child, wise old sage Hannah, thinks that Reese should be put on a timeout upon birth due to her tardiness. Maybe the purpose of these last 8 days were for us to feel an anticipation for her arrival rather than the dread and eye-rolling that went along with knowing we were going to be having an unexpected shit factory that will prolong our world of diapers, drool, and debt for another 3 years. It must have worked, because now I am anticipating her arrival. I find it hard to think of anything else than the feel of a warm bundle on my chest, the smell of talc and clean baby clothes, and little tiny hands grabbing onto her father’s finger. I am sure I will write more about her after she decides to leave the comfort of her body fluid spa and enter into the mayhem of our family.

Welcoming is not the only thing happening this month. Sadness and goodbyes are looming towards the end of the month as well. Both my sister, Faith, and my best friend, Shawn, are moving away from me this month. I figured I would take the next couple of paragraphs and share with you a description, story, and a little history of both of these people in my life. If you know either of them, it is obvious how much they mean to me and how much they are going to be missed. The following words might seem like a roast of them, yet it is much more than that. It is an homage to what they mean to me.

Faith is old and has been in my life longer, so let’s start with her. I have always been one that takes the hand that I am dealt with and runs with it. Faith, on the other hand, is always looking for another draw. Faith drew another hand a couple of years ago and went back to school to get her Masters in Education. Jobs seem scarce now that she is a teacher and she accepted, obviously with no concern of how I would feel, a teaching position in Waldport. She is moving, along with her family, on the 22^nd of August.

For the first 18 years of my life, I was Faith’s toy. She read to me, taught me how to spell, dressed me up like the sister that she wanted, made me gay for a couple of years, and was the best possible friend a lil’ shit like myself could have. She was my mentor, my confidante, and an inspiration. I will leave out the part where after the first 18 years, she became critical, overbearing, short-statured, slightly crippled, cross-eyed, and a complete pain in my ass. That being said, I will still miss her more than she will ever know and wish her all the best in her new adventure.

Shawn, my best friend since elementary school is leaving me as well. It seems that his wife has taken a job in Austin, Texas and did not ask me how I would feel about her uprooting the friendship tree that Shawn and I have been growing for the past couple of decades. That is pure selfishness, I say. She, my friends, is evil in an adorable little package (Just kidding, Charity….or am I?!?). You know how they say that every girl needs an ugly girl to hang with to make them look better? That is Shawn to me. I don’t mean that Shawn is uglier than I, he just does not come across as very bright and it makes me look like a pure genius when standing aside each other. He is the Gilligan to my Professor. Lack of knowledge is not the reason for Shawn’s idiot appearance; it is the goofy smile that never leaves his face, it is the laugh that echoes through a theater embarrassing all who are in attendance with him, it is the fact that he opens his mouth and words fall out before he has a chance to take a gander at them (He once asked a couple of Chinese guys the correct way to pronounce Hiroshima.). Some may look at him as a goofy, balding, and waist-expanding redhead, but I see him as my best friend that I have shared some really damn fun, dangerous, goofy, and exciting times with. Shawn, I will love you until the umiak flies into darkness, till the stars turn to fish in the sky, and the puffin howls at the moon.

What a weird blog entry to have as my first one in a long time. I swear that I will hone them as I go. I just feel that this can be a great place to share my family stories, my take on cool shit that I find, some self-deprecating humor, and etc. Thanks for looking.

So....I recently have come to the realization that I have some major faults. These major faults came to my awareness when I recently joined a friend on a trip to Napa, California to help him move back to this area. Some of these faults are that I am a sucker, I have no ability to say no, and that I am quite the pushover. At first, these faults may seem endearing and not "major" faults. That being said, let me tell you about the trip.
John, being the frugal fella that he is, decided it would be cheaper to drive a U-haul down and back than pay for the one-way price. When we went to pick up the 26' truck, I thought that we had taken a wrong turn and ended up in a salvage yard where someone had accidentally spray-painted some WWII relics with the U-haul orange and white. This P.O.S. vehicle had no cigarette lighter where I could plug in my Ipod, and the knobs were missing off the stereo. I did not realize that knobs off of a 1977 Philco am/fm were still in high demand. It didn't matter anyways, as the speaker that was hanging loosely from the wall behind me looked like at one time it had doubled as an ashtray, and someone had accidentally spilled a Mcdonald's strawberry shake down the front of it. I cannot even explain how uncomfortable the seat was. It was as if someone had decided that the seat off a buckboard would be a perfect fit for this old International chunk of crap. Fourth gear only worked about 1 our of 4 times that you shifted into it, and when you stepped on the brakes, the headlights dimmed to almost no visibility. I knew that I was in for a wonderful trip.
John had promised me that the trip would take no longer than 8 hours from Junction City to Napa. Once we reached the hills of Southern Oregon, I knew that John had no idea of what he was talking about. It took us almost 5 hours to reach the border. At this rate the southern trip was going to take around 12 hours. I almost used the sharp exposed metal on the broken window handle to slit my wrists and put me out of my misery.
Going over the hills, we slowly decreased from a speed of 50mph to around 20mph. Fully loaded semis flew by us as if we were headed the opposite direction. Around Shasta I looked out the window and we were being passed on the sidewalk by an octogenarian in a Rascal.
When we finally reached Napa around 11pm that night, we met up with John's father-in-law, and a parishioner of his church named Don. My introduction to Don by John's father-in-law went like this, "Don, this is Harold. He is a Christian as well!" I did not know what to say other than "Yup!" I had never been introduced that way. It was surreal. What was going through my mind was, "Don, this is Harold. He is an ultra-conservative, Republican, judgmental, homophobic, opinionated, fable-believing, over-bearing fella, just like us!" (Alright, other than the homophobic part, I might fall into most of those factors.) We then loaded up the truck, and proceeded back to his in-laws house.
To top off that evening, we were forced by the fellow Christians to spend the night at his in-laws. I had visions of a hotel room, a dirty movie, boxer shorts, pizza sauce on my hairy chest, and an empty half-rack of Rolling Rock. Instead I got a lumpy couch, a pillow that resembled a handful of cotton balls stuffed into a sock, and a sleeping bag that wouldn't fit around a 12-year old anorexic midget, let alone my obese frame. By morning, I had the pillow rolled up under my neck, and was wearing the sleeping bag as a loin cloth.
Thursday morning I was told that we had about 15 minutes worth of loading left, and we would be on our way back home. Two hours later, we finally finished loading. Thus, we started our trip back up I-5. For about an hour, I was so tired of sitting on the seat in the truck that I actually got out and walked. Unfortunately, I had to slow my pace rather than get too far ahead of John and all his earthly belongings.
I am not usually the kind of guy that talks bad about his friends, (Ha! I am a dick, and actually do it all the time.) but let me tell you how rough it is not to find things that bother you about someone after you have been smelling their farts, listening to their belches, and hearing them sing along to bands like Culture Club for a dozen or so hours.
John, who is now a public bus driver never seemed to get out of the left lane. Even when we were going 20mph over the mountains, we were in the left lane. We had cars and semi-trucks passing us on the right. I felt like an extra in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. There were birds flying everywhere. After about 3 hours of left lane action, I asked John what he was doing. He said that he was tired of passing all the semis. It was ironic that at that time we were being passed on the right by a fully loaded one.
I wont go into the rest of the details of him and his wife fighting, our political arguments, hours of sports talk that I found hard to tune out, and fast food for every meal that bound me up so tight that I crapped out a duraflame log this morning. I will only end with telling you that I am a changed man. I will no longer volunteer for anything, I will no longer go out of my way to be friendly, and I will no longer say yes to anybody without fully researching whatever they are proposing.
The next time that I move, I am calling in every favor from all the people that I have helped move over the years. If they fail to help me, I will write a blog about the times that I have had with them.

I just feel that I should start out this whole blog with a shit story. There are only a handful of things right now in my life that occupy my time. Not necessarily in order they are; Television, food, Hannah, work, Alison, Polly, and shit. Now when it comes to the topic of shit, I am not just talking about my own shit. I am primarily talking about Polly's shit, and Hannah's shit.
Last night Hannah unknowingly closed Polly in Alison and my bedroom. I did not hear Polly whining, and she proceeded to piss on our bedroom floor (If you don't know about our dog, I will have to fill you in later). After dragging her half-crippled backside through her own drainage, I figured that Polly needed a bath. I rinsed her off in the shower, and then shed the clothes of Hannah and I, and hopped in the shower as well. Since we have no bathtub, and our shower stall has a deep basin, Hannah and I use it sort of like a bathtub. If I sit right, with my right butt cheek on the drain, about 4 inches of water collects into a so-so cramped shallow tub. Hannah and I then proceed to use what available space that there is to play with her boats, and pour containers of water onto each other. Last night with Polly in the tub with us, we were really short of room. I gave Polly a good bathing, and was rinsing her off with margarine containers of water. I scooped up a bucketful of water, and lo and behold there was a turd in the container. It turns out that Polly had crapped in the shower. At first, I was not sure what I should do. I promptly threw the doors open, set Hannah onto the bathroom floor, and then climbed out myself. I left Polly in the shower, and adjusted the water spray to a jet in hopes of breaking up and sending the turds down the drain. No such luck. I had to drain the water, and then scoop the nuggets with wads of toilet paper. It is only about three feet from the shower to the toilet, but I managed to dry heave each time that I deposited soaking handfuls of paper and dung in the crapper. That is about it. I ended up having to get back in the shower later and rinse the poo water off Hannah, Polly, and I.
These are the sort of things that are the highlights of my life lately. Pathetic, isn't it?