Gardener's Delight

It's been 2 months since my last post. I apologize. I don't know if there is a specific prayer of forgiveness for not blogging for a prolonged period.. I should check into that..

Anyway, a lot has changed on the home front. The Mrs. no longer has a full time job, which is good and bad. She is much happier and doing a lot better at her part-time job, the bad is we need someone to work full-time to support the fam.

Which brings me to the title of this post. Gardening has started to take off, all be it a little slow, but it is progressing! I have gotten my first paying gig, and have the beds built and am starting the construction of a fence to keep the deer and other critters out. Hopefully I will have it built and be ready to plant by this weekend.

This past weekend was the launch of the community garden that I have been working on for 2 months. It has been a really interesting journey to get from dream to reality. A lot of work has gone into the project. It is going to be 48 raised beds, 4 feet wide by 10 feet long and 12 inches deep. They look amazing. I will see if I can find a pic to link to so everyone can see it.. http://mypict.me/upload/0/0/479/479038.jpg

We are only about halfway finished with the project though. We have 28 beds constructed and need an additional 20. I imagine I will be working on that one night this week, maybe a few nights..

That about catches you up on my life.. enough for now anyway.. I need to go say a few of those blogger's prayers now.. see ya!

Breaking the sounds of silence..

Tomorrow will be exactly 4 months since my last blog entry. A lot has changed in that time. Lots of ideas have been percolating in the old noggin, and it’s about time they start to come out to breathe, gain new life, and see where they take me.

I am still doing the stay at home dad thing. It is a blast and I love my kids and the time I share with them dearly. I learn new things from them on a daily basis, whether it is Jack’s running dialogue on how something works (according to his 3 ½ yr old brain anyway), or if it is Lucy’s dialogue espousing something great and profound or using words I had no idea she even knew. It is great and I love every minute of it, even when I am complaining that I don’t; I really do.

Last week, Lucy was on spring break; so, I loaded up the kids in the van and headed home to my parents for a while before traveling on up to Michigan to spend some time with the wife’s family and to reconnect with some college friends. I had a great time whether it was playing computer games with my friend Dave, having lunch with Mike, a drink with Stutes, or meeting Kelly at the mall and watching the kids play on the ship or carousel. Not to mention the good times I had with family.

However, I did notice a couple of things. 1. I have changed. A LOT. 2. Some things never change. EVER. 3. I can’t expect my viewpoint to be understood nor accepted no matter how hard I try.

Let me explain.

First of all, I AM A STAY AT HOME DAD. Some people, mostly women, find this to be great. Most men however, especially from more conservative circles find this to be some sort of abomination. The question is, “Why would any self-respecting man do a woman’s work?” You may be reading this and find this appalling, which I hope is the case, but it is true. I was asked on several occasions what my plan was for the future. The intent being that I couldn’t be a stay at home dad because it wasn’t a viable option.

Exactly 3 thoughts went off in my head at that moment. 1. I know that Jack hasn’t pooped yet today, so that means that I have to wipe his butt yet today. 2. Your wife hasn’t worked a job since the day she had kids; so, obviously you place a high regard to having a parent stay home with the kids to raise them. 3. You don’t respect what your wife does as a job and therefore can’t respect me because I am doing a woman’s work. However, I didn’t mention any of those, but went into what I have been thinking a lot about lately.

I am trying to get my own business started. I want to use some of the gifts that God has given me to help other people. I want to be an Urban Farmer. My business would help people build in ground and above ground gardening beds, learn the planting and harvesting cycles, start compost piles/barrels, and maybe learn how to can or store food for the winter months.

I want to help people become less dependent upon corporations to supply their food and less dependent upon the government to regulate the nutritional value and the potential for disease or irregularities of food. Honestly, in the last 6 months, would you trust either a corporation or the government to have your best interests at heart?

The espousing of these ideas caused one particular person to call me, “Green,” in a pejorative sense. Not like it was a good thing, but that my ideas are “too tree huggie or too left,” for them. Talking about how lawns and green grass is a sign of the excess in America and how other countries use every last square foot of ground they have for food production didn’t do any good. Their thoughts are something like this, “Why would any person that is well to do, want to raise their own food? My parents and their parents worked hard in their lives so that I wouldn’t have to do physical labor in mine. I am not going to raise my own food, when I can just drive up to the local grocery store and buy it. Plus, my yard is a sign of my prosperity. If I have a good manicured yard, I must be a good person, right? I have everything together. People judge me by how good of a yard I keep, and subsequently but not readily admitted, I do the same.”

These are the same people that if I were to ask them how much would an hour a week of quiet alone time is worth to them would say that it is priceless. That is exactly what gardening provides, 1 hour a week of quiet alone time; just you, your plants, dirt, and God (if you allow Him).

There is something about being in the dirt that is rejuvenating. It gets your creative juices flowing. Just because Adam and Eve got themselves kicked out of the Garden, doesn’t mean that the mandate or care for the earth is void. It is still a requirement. We have let this slide for too long. Take responsibility for your food, and get in the garden. Be creative. Care for the earth. Grow something, anything. You might just grow closer in your relationship with God too.

I have changed a lot. It was great to go back and interact with people and explore my old college campus, but now I know just how much God has led me on this life changing journey and I don’t know if I would choose some people to be friends with now that I did when I was younger, or even if I would choose to attend the same college I did when I was 18.

A lot has changed in 4 months. Hopefully it won’t be another 4 before I blog again. Keep on me to make entries more often.

This Magic Moment

Last night was one of the best times of my life. Lucy had her Christmas program at school. It was a crazy night, Bethany was late getting home from work, we had house church meeting at our home, and I was responsible for making dinner. We would be leaving shortly after everyone arrived, and returning hopefully sometime before it was scheduled to end.

I got both kids dressed and out the door. We were walking into the school’s play ground when the Wife called out to us and we were able to walk in together. Bethany and Jack found their way to the auditorium and I got Lucy situated in her classroom. Then, I joined the others in the auditorium.

This was Jack’s first time sitting in “bouncy seats.” You know the seats that are spring loaded like in movie theaters? He was having a blast making them bounce. He would raise his legs and let the seat come up, then grunt and push his legs down to make the seat go back down. It was endless entertainment.

Finally, students started to appear on stage, the principal made an announcement and then the curtains opened. It took only a few seconds for us to spot Lucy, but it took her minutes to locate us, despite our best efforts to waive and move so she could spot us. I guess we weren’t the only parents trying to employ this strategy. Eventually she spotted us, made a waive of her own, and promptly got lost in the singing/performing experience.

They sang several songs, some of which I had only heard previously by Lucy singing them at home to “practice.” Lucy was sitting on the upper level of the risers to the left of the stage (as we were looking at it). She was fidgety. She would play with her hair, bounce it into her face, or not so discretely pick her nose. Bethany and I were laughing really hard. We laughed the hardest when they started the 12 days of Christmas. It wasn’t your typical gifts, but they hung different things in the tree and when they said them, the students would hold up cutouts of the items. The first gift was a bird feeder, the 2nd day was 2 teddy bears, and the 3rd was 3 penguins. Lucy was a penguin. Well, she tried to be anyway.

She got a little distracted at times and missed her cue, or was early, but was rarely Johnny on the spot. Sometimes she would thrust up the penguin with such exuberance that it would flip over her hand and we would end up being mooned by the penguin. All of this is happening despite there being a teacher off to the side of the stage trying to coach the 2 girls and prompt them to act on time.

It wasn’t until after the program while I was relaxing at home that I remembered a story that Jared had told me once. He had gone back to his high school to compete in the annual alumni soccer match against the current players. While he was out there running around, he bends over, plucks a dandelion from the ground, races over to the stands and gives it to his father, who tears up remembering his son not caring about the soccer ball at all, but sitting on the field and plucking dandelions for minutes at a time.

I can only hope, that in the years to come, I will be able to experience more “penguin” moments with Lucy, and that in turn, she will remember them and return them to me in a moment of fondness at a later date.

A Walk to Remember

I am battling this stupid cold or something and it has pretty much wiped me out. Bethany has again been a super wife/mom and stepped up and gotten a lot done and handled everything around the house beautifully. I would rise out of my sick/sleep state and give breaks where I could throughout the weekend. It was during one of the breaks that I realized that the kids have a certain tone or pitch to their voice that just makes you go from zero to angry in the snap of a finger. Bethany agreed that she felt the same, and we tried to make the best out of a bad situation, and get the kids to play quietly or watch shows or whatever, nothing seemed to work. It wasn’t a good time.

At this point, I was reminded of a childhood memory. Well, it wasn’t really childhood, as much as teenaged. My family was on our way home from Winamac, and we were traveling in our minivan. We three kids were being.. we three kids. We were arguing, bickering, poking, pushing, yelling, you remember those days, right?

After about 15 minutes of this non-stop fun, my parents snapped. Dad pulled off to the side of the road and told all of us kids to get out and walk home. They had had enough and needed a break. We were about 3 miles from home. Growing up in the country, we knew everyone that lived in the houses that we passed, and mom and dad felt safe with this decision. I don’t know if they would in today’s environment though.

Anyway, Rose and I were somewhat devastated. We couldn’t believe Mom and Dad would treat us like this. It was John that was the trouble maker, not us. When we watched them drive off, we knew that we had to walk. It wasn’t going to be a good afternoon.

We were walking west on the Francesville Pulaski blacktop (that’s the actual name of the road), and we come to a bridge. Being who we were, we had to explore: we grabbed rocks and dropped them off, we climbed down the bank and scared the pigeons out from under the bridge, and we tried to hit fish with rocks. It was a good 30 minutes before we got bored, and decided to walk again.

We walked past Lowry’s, both Hansen’s homes, Bush Farm service, and made it to the corner of our road. Smith’s live at the intersection. They have really nice flowers that grow along the road. Again, being who we were, we decided that the best thing we could do to make this better between us and our parents was to pick some of these flowers and take them home to Mom. We each grabbed a handful.

We walked the remainder of the way, maybe 1.5 miles and somewhere along the way, the number of flowers we had picked had dropped, and we each had 2-3 flowers to give to Mom; a paltry offering.

When we got home and walked into the house, mom and dad were upset with us. Even after giving them the flowers. They expected us to be home a lot sooner than we had made it. We were punished again for not being more prompt and listening to them and coming straight home. Oh well.

The thing that made the biggest impression on me about this particular punishment, wasn’t that we didn’t argue as much in the van, or not simmer down a little when Mom and Dad threatened to make us walk home, but that we later learned that 4 neighbors had called to make sure everything was ok because they recognized us and saw us walking without our parents.

Looking back on this memory, now that I too am a parent, I actually admire my parents and their decision. I don’t know if I could do the same thing they did. It took a lot of courage, but it also took a lot of faith in our community. They knew that we would be safe, and that nothing would happen to us. I miss that community, the genuine compassion and concern.

It has taken me years to find anything similar, but I believe that my family now lives in a similar community, in a city nonetheless. But that story is for a different day.

Every Little Thing She Does...

This weekend was a rough one. On Thursday night/Friday morning, Lucy got the flu. She vomited 6 times during the night. Things have progressed on this front though. When she was little, she wanted to be held while she vomited, which meant that I ended up with it all over my front side. Not a pretty looking or smelling picture. Now, she is able to use a large bowl, or even better, make it to the restroom and aim for the toilet.

The other thing that happened that night was that I too became ill. I developed a fever around 101 that night and it rose to a high of 102 over the next day or so. Luckily, Doc prescribed me some antibiotics and I am feeling much better.

With Lucy being sick, and me way down for the count the wife, a.k.a. Bethany, stayed home from work on Friday to nurture all of us back to health. She was amazing; everything that you would want in a wife and or mother of your children. Thursday night, she came down stairs to wake me from my fitful slumber on the sofa (I have been falling asleep watching TV lately) to inform me that Lucy was sick. She saw that I was sick too and quickly became SUPER MOM.

She charted Lucy back and forth between the bed and bathroom, cleaned-up a miss in the hallway, and somehow managed to keep Jack asleep in his own bed the whole night!

Friday was much the same; she was a work horse. Fortunately, Lucy was so wiped out that she slept most of the day, and I was still very wiped out, so I slept too, which left Bethany to handle Jack for the day. It was good to rouse out of my sick state of sleep and listen to the two of them playing or talking.

Saturday, was a little better. Lucy was up, not running, but she was up and about. She was beginning to eat a little, which is more than can be said for me. The cold I had wiped out my sense of smell and with it, my love of taste; so I was not hungry at all. Jack was still very much Jack and running wild and doing great with individual play. Bethany made lunch, played with the kids, and I pretty much tried to recover. She ran the show.

Saturday night, Jack got sick. One bathroom floor clean-up and some new P.J.’s later; he was sleeping with me on the couch. That didn’t last too long and we moved to the big bed. That lasted an even shorter amount of time, as Jack had to vomit again. After that, I had no clue what happened the rest of the night because the Nyquil kicked in and I was done.

Sunday morning, Bethany informed me that Jack had made the journey 3 more times. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t heard a thing, and I was sleeping in the kids’ room right next to the bathroom. I ended up staying home from church and taking care of the sick little guy while Bethany and Lucy went to the Speckled Bird (this was part of Lucy’s plan) and to church.

I don’t know how she did it, but Bethany managed to stay healthy (mostly, a stuffy nose is small compared to the rest of the potential ills), prepare meals, do dishes, clean the entire upstairs’ bed rooms, and leave the house looking better than when it started the weekend. I couldn’t believe it. She is amazing and the love of my life.

I just hope that this little blog of her weekends’ miracle work won’t jinx her or me because I don’t know if I could do nearly as good of a job as she did under similar circumstances. Thank you, wifey.

The Proverbial Apple

The other day, I was sitting in our red chair in the living room, Jack comes be-bopping along and plops down in the brown chair that sits in the corner of the room. He’s sitting there mumbling to himself mostly or talking to himself while he plays. At this point, I have become pretty accustomed to tuning him out. When he started to call my name over and over again, I reluctantly pulled myself away from the television to engage my son.

He was sitting with his head lying on the arm of the chair. One eye covered up. Saying, “Daddy, I am a Cyclops. Did you know Cyclops only have one eye?”

I laughed really hard and told him that I did know that but appreciated him refreshing my memory. He later grabbed the DVD case for Monsters Inc. and pointed out that, “The little green guy is a Cyclops too; ‘cause he only has one eye too; but the big blue guy has two eyes, so he isn’t a Cyclops.”

After this, I realized that the saying of “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” is more accurate than I first believed. It was several years ago when Bethany and I were engaged that we traveled to Columbus to visit Christiana a great friend and college roommate of Bethany while she attended Cedarville. We stayed at Christiana’s apartment and slept on the living room floor. It was getting late at night and quickly approaching the hour that my old college roommate accurately described as, “Getting sleep drunk.” We were giddy and just talking silliness.

Bethany started to speak in a monotone voice saying, “I’m a robot. I am talking like a robot. I am a robot.” Over and over again she would say this. In retaliation, I started to say, “I am a Cyclops,” because I, just like my son, had one eye covered.

Both memories will be special for many years to come and now are inevitably linked in my brain. I hope that through the next several years, I will have more, “Aha,” moments with my kids and realize that indeed, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

A Family Circus Kind of Day

The past couple of weeks have eerily reminded of the comic strip Family Circus. I know we all remember it. It was the comic that followed a family, (I am always one to point out the obvious) a dad, mom, 2 boys and a girl, through their day to day lives. It was filled with funny little thoughts or things that were said.

It also had 2 recurring characters that I didn’t understand at the time, but now have seen come to life in my own realm. It’s been a little weird. Do you remember, “Not me,” and “Ida Know?” They were the ghosts that would do all the wrong things. Inevitably the mom or dad would ask the kids how something happened, who broke what, or whatever, and the kids would respond, “Ida Know,” or “Not me.”

This was personified in my son and you probably have read my entry about the Pee Bandit. I am glad that the culprit wasn’t a ghost, and thankfully, Jack has been doing better about not peeing on the floor too. Other examples of these friendly ghosts pop up all the time too whether it’s: Mysterious crayon on the walls/doors/carpeting/furniture, cushions thrown off of the furniture and onto the floor, milk spilled on the kitchen table, a handprint of purple paint on the wall heading up the stairs, all of the drawers on both dressers being wide open and every bit of clothing on the floor, or finally “Who tooted?”

Other examples of Family Circus have popped up too. Take for instance this illustration. Does it look familiar?


That is Jack, he may go by Jeffery or Billy in the comic, but that is definitely my son.

I spent about 20 minutes perusing the internet looking up different Family Circus comics that were posted online and found that almost all of them made a lot more sense now that I am a parent. I only hope that one day; I will be able to make sense of my children.