danielredbeard’s weblog

From the window in my home office I have the view of lots of trees, particularly the mid-section of them. The closest tree to me is a magnolia tree, and for the past month it has been producing blooms periodically. Magnolias are strange trees. I hadn’t paid much attention to them until we bought this house. They keep their leaves (most of them, anyway) year-round. They bloom randomly, and when the pedals fall they are almost leathery to touch. They are incredibly strong, too. Two winters ago we had a bad ice storm, and I watched our magnolia bend in all sorts of directions with the weight of a lot of ice, only to lose 3 mid-sized branches. One branch even rested on our main power feed without cracking. Amazing trees, really.

The last week has been one instance after of another of grace and humility. My esoteric ramblings from my last post were just the beginning. I won’t go into details, but I am seeing that my sense that right now is the beginning of a new season of life is in fact coming to fruition.

I’ve been keeping up with my nightly brisk walk with Jake. We’re discovering all kinds of new parts to Wyoming (ohio) that I didn’t know were here. Because Jake and I are on an innocent walkabout, we are able to go back into the nooks and crannies of Wyoming where the über-rich live. I had no idea such homes existed less than a mile from ours. I jokingly told Garrett a few weeks ago that we live in a part of Wyoming where the help used to live, and now I’m thinking that it was actually spot-on. That’s ok, though. It’s a nice place to live.

The events of the past week (or couple of weeks) sort of came to a head today. Both Andrea and I have had a very emotional day, all of which came from great things – things that if I knew how to put it in a blog, I’m not sure that I would believe what I wrote. Figuratively speaking. So I will just say that today has been a day of crushing (in a good way) humility, coupled with word-eating awe.

I’ve sensed a quickening over the last month. Starting with our trip to Illinois, I sensed that it was the first step upward toward a new season of life. Each day, week, etc. has brought another step, each with its unique and riveting realizations.

For instance, the better part of the last week has seen me going to sleep no earlier than 3am. Various reasons for that, but the common thread is that I’ve been hammering out, praying through, and extracting truth for this next season of life.

In the last few days I came to several points-of-purpose for D&A Design – a quasi-dream sheet of what I see D&A Design being, beyond a design/branding firm. I will not write those out for public display, though, because doing (rather than talking) is a huge part of my plans.

The quickening I have sensed seems to have reached a threshold of sorts today. Maybe not. Might be another step or so. All I know is that something big and internal happened today. I just don’t know what the implications are yet.

Another thing that hit me hard – really hard – today is that Andrea and I are loved by friends. The sentence I am typing now has been written and erased 3 times. I’ve been trying to write the words to describe what it’s like to have the friends we do – both locally, and spread out. I suppose I’m left to just say “thanks,” and that I love each of my friends for many different reasons.

First, the fruit of my labors for the past few days/nights is complete: D&A Design got a site update tonight. Go there to see the subtle and other changes. You’ll see that I have a new blog that is just for the biz. As a result of that, I moved a few posts from here to there, and updated the content.

Tonight we marked a new milestone for Garrett: The first lowering of the crib bed. We’re now at Level 2 (of 3) in terms of depth. We were surprised to see him pulling himself up with the edge of the crib railing, much to our horror. He’s also escaping his Bumbo and doing an occasional face-plant. But, as a good human, he’s picked up the usefulness of hands to catch his fall when daddy can’t do it for him.

He’s also all about the “B” and “M” and “G” sounds lately. Still no “D” sound yet. Hard to believe there’s more to this little man. It would be totally satisfying if God had designed certain kinds of humans and one kind didn’t develop farther than this. Soon he’ll be talking and communicating with me! He knows his name. It’s amazing. All of it.

I’ve been a deep depression going on 3 weeks. The thing about blogs is that I can only go so far in terms of honesty. I don’t see this as a diary. It’s for general thoughts and happenings that I get a kick out of reading months and years later. I still read my old blog over at Blogger now and then. Anyway, the depression stems from several very challenging things happening right now. It’s tough stuff, but what can I do but press through it? I don’t think I’m at a point of going back to Effexor, but if this goes on for more than a few months I just might.

On thing sustaining me lately is our house church. It’s the first time I’ve experienced what Jesus had in mind when this Church stuff was started. I literally can’t help but ache inside when I see certain buildings and structures being built – when I hear of “big” entertainment events in the name of “ministry.” But as I’ve wrote before here, God will not be mocked, so it’s yet another chance to swallow my will on this topic and live/think surrendered.

I’m half-way through “Odd Thomas” by Koontz, and it’s great. Looking forward to reading the other Odd books.

Jake and I have been walking a lot the past few evenings. Each night we go a little farther. Tonight I bet we walked 2 miles, briskly. People always stop us when we walk to tell him how beautiful he looks. The fellow border collie owners spot him a block away, and with each gaining step their grin gets wider. Border collies are just one of those niche breeds of dogs that people care about. Jake isn’t a trick border collie – he’s what Jon Katz would call a “Barbie Collie” as he’s mostly looks and play. No tricks, and only tries to herd small woodland creatures. But the walks have been good. I like book-ending my day with physical activity. Feels good when I rest my head.

When I am part of something I really believe in or is of great importance, my quality of loyal-to-a-fault really shines. Not that loyalty is always taken out to something of fault, but my loyalty to something or someone really does trump shame in a lot of scenarios.

Such was earlier this week.

Two nights ago we had a poop crisis. Garrett had been plugged up for four days, and was doing a lot of pushing and grunting. It was the making of his first “real” BM. After several rounds of periodic Gripe Water (our savior), I took him up to my office where a man can be alone to do business.

Sure enough, he started grunting and smelled the fruit of his labor. After a pat on the back and congratulatory accolades, I took him downstairs for a change of diaper. To my surprise only the turtle-head (or marker tip…whatever) had come out!

At this point he began to grunt again, screaming and crying, as though a hot coal was coming through. With only the front part of the diaper detached (thankfully), I saw it.

A 6″ long turd was produced right in front of my eyes. Garrett was screaming, I was in awe, Andrea was… actually, where the heck was she?!?… anyway, it was mildly chaotic. By the time the whole thing had exited, Garrett was a sweaty, crying, screaming mess. The only thing that concerned us was a single drop of blood in the loaf. But a call to Mother Melissa assured us that all was normal. The first real BM was over, and now we looked forward to stinky stuff.

In other news…

Last night I got my first ticket in a long time. Didn’t see the “no right turn on red” sign. Turned right in front of a parked po-po, and got the $75. I tried to drop that I am the brother of a cop, but to no avail. We even had all the windows rolled down with Garrett crying to try and get a sympathy pass. No good. I’ll be paying my $75 like everyone else.

Today I broke up with myspace. It was almost a 4 year relationship. We had split up periodically during some prior rough patches, but always made amends. This time, though, I believe to be for realz.

I find it really interesting when an idea or technology comes along, and then something pops up to rival it, yet the innovator does little to improve. I think this is what’s happening with myspace. The other social net sites just have a friendlier and quicker interface and experience, it’s hard to see myspace without thinking of something that used-to-be. At least for me.

Moving on… yesterday morning Garrett was standing and rock’n out on my lap when he flailed one of his hands in my face, putting a micro-scratch on my right eyeball. It sucks.

If anyone wants to catch baby fever, stop on by our place on a Sunday late afternoon. We have a 9 and 7 month old, boy and girl, hanging out on the floor, discovering what it means to be human. I’m not prone to words like “awww” or “cute” but our Sundays have sure inspired such words as of late.

I woke up pissed off today. Not totally sure why. Well – I’m lying – I know at least one reason why. When we lost power Wednesday night through Thursday night, and then had our A/C crap out on us, I was really stressed. When I’m really stressed the first thing to go, as far as disciplines, is eating. I eat like garbage, and a lot of it, then regret it a day or so later. Today was the first day of regret. Back on the horse.

Brandi Carlile’s “The Story” sure is climbing fast on my personal list of “projects I can listen to for many hours.” I love to sing along and harmonize with music, and Brandi’s music is a treat. Tomorrow I’ll take in a morning of raspy-voiced females while I work: Brandi, Fiona, Jennifer Knapp, K’s Choice, and Over the Rhine.

I am a #3. Put me with another person and I’m ok with that 40% of the time. I really have to click with a person for there to be no awkward silences. It’s rare. But as a third-wheel, I’m enjoying life. I started to notice this a few years ago when I noticed that it was not weird at all hanging out with my married friends (when I was single). I almost preferred it. But lately I’ve noticed the same dynamic when I’m on a sales or account meeting. Three is the magic number. How bizarre is that?

I love the font Goudy Old Style. I used to be a fan of Stone and Stone Sans, but Goudy Old Style is such a timeless font. I think it’s the perfect font for just about anything.

There was this story on 20/20 a few weeks ago about a medical condition where people cannot feel pain. It was sparked by a character on Grey’s Anatomy, so Jon Stossel and gang found 2 females – one very young, one in her 30s – that had this condition. It’s a curse. Because they can’t feel pain, they are prone to literally disfiguring themselves: Knocking out teeth and eyeballs, having gaping wounds without noticing and getting infection, and more disturbing things.

So the moral of the 20/20 piece was that pain is good. It’s not only good, but essential.

I kept telling myself this as the week went on. It wasn’t a horrible week, not in the ways horrible can be really bad. But it was just one of those weeks where lots of smallish things happened that made plans adjust in one way or another.

There was Jasper’s teeth woes. I wrote about that earlier. He seems to be doing great now, though he was already a “special needs” dog to begin with – partially crippled and wears a diaper in the house; has since he was a pup. Still, it was a trip and bill to the vet. Never a welcome experience.

Tuesday night I literally wrapped up the only active billable project. I have several things in the hands of clients, but nothing new. It would have been very disturbing had I not lined up a seminar about marketing to go to. The business people there were on hand to learn about marketing, and I “just so happened” to be there to hand out my card. Exchanged around 10 cards. Crossed my fingers. I then had a meeting with a new prospect. Good stuff.

Wednesday started off good enough, but late in the day we had the worst t-storm I’ve experienced since moving here. It took down a HUGE tree across the street, and also took out our power for 28 hours. Yesterday we awoke to no power, so we went wi-fi hopping. Started off at a Panera, then to a mall, and finally landed at my in-laws. Thankfully Garrett was agreeable most of the day.

But then last night our A/C crapped out on us. This became apparent when Garrett woke up around 3am screaming b/c he was hot and sweaty. He’s like his daddy: He runs warm, all the time. A little oven. I looked at the t-stat and it was 84 inside. So when 9am rolled around we called our home warranty folks to get someone out here. Someone came at 3pm, fixed it and drove away. Ten minutes later it started squealing and I checked it out, and saw that the fan on the A/C unit outside was about to come off. I called the A/C guy back, and the motor had to be replaced. God bless home warranties! We just had a few hundred dollars of work done for $55.

Yesterday I was also rejected by 3 prospects. That’s always fun.

So I’m ready for a good weekend. Ready for a clearing of the palette to start off next week on a high note.

The dog fight I blogged about the other day finally came to a resolution today. Jasper spent the day (from 8am-7pm) at the vet having teeth removed, and teeth cleaned!

In total, our little dog has 6 fewer teeth than this time last week…poor fella.

He even refused a banana tonight, with a whimper to boot. Bananas to him are at the top of his list. Probably higher than walks, barking at commercials (he knows when the program is on…only barks at commercials), or dog treats.

But all is well again. For now.

Our dog, Jasper, sure has had a rough week. For a little silky terrier, he’s endured a lot. Started a week ago when he found the bag of full-sized Hershey’s chocolate bars, and ate 3 of them. He was starting on the 4th when Andrea found him in his cage and put a stop to it. He didn’t get sick right away, but later in the week he found some morsels in his bedding and chowed down some more. Only this time he didn’t stop with the morsels – he ate part of his actual bed, foam and all.

That induced a liquid poo unlike anything I’ve seen before. Good thing we have hardwood floors, though when he dished out the stuff for a second time, it was partly on the rug. Good times.

(more…)