Nancy Reagan endorses McCain

(!?!?!)
I am perplexed as to why this is Front Page News on msnbc.com. I mean really. Richardson endorsing Obama was news. It was unexpected, going against his former boss Bill Clinton, and much needed considering how Obama has fared with the Latino community. So it's not that an endorsement can't be valid news...but this? The former Republican First Lady endorsed the Republican candidate for President? Why not "Pot endorses color of Kettle"*?

And yes, I know why these things happen. But it's amazing to watch my 2nd post-political-awareness Presidential campaign and the blatant media manipulation. McCain has an endless list of high-profile Repubs he can call on as needed to get him back in the headlines while we Dems have to endure the neverending saga on our side. If only Clinton would just agree that she's not going to win and step aside then we could all go ice skating in hell, since it will have frozen over at that point.

*These days, wouldn't the pot have to call the kettle "African-American"?

Also...great article from The Onion

First post from home

That title is more profound than it sounds really. Since this blog started just under 1 year ago I have been living in temporary circumstances. At the time my brother was my roommate, after my ex had moved on and out of the apartment we had shared. From there I moved into a one bedroom place down the road from Steph, signing a 7 month lease with the hope that by the time it was up our relationship would have stabilized and grown enough to move in together. 2 months before that lease ran out we were married and I was living with my new family in an apartment that I never quite came to think of as "my" place. It was always Stephanie's apartment and I just felt lucky that she was willing to share it with me.

Now we have a home. We purchased it together, legally and emotionally. Decorating and furniture purchasing decisions have been made together and I've done my fair share of moving/unpacking/organizing chores. This is really the first time in my life that I haven't had some sense that I would eventually move out of a place. My parents' house, of course I was going to move out someday. Since then I've been in a constant rotation of knowingly temporary apartments. It's a very new feeling, unpacking things with the thought that wherever I decide the silverware goes may end up being where it is for the next 40-80 years of my life. No pressure!

I love the house. We did really well for ourselves with this transaction and I'm happy about that. We have a beautiful view of the mountains across Standley Lake on the drive home every day and that's what we all want in Colorado, isn't it?

I love my life. I love my kids. I love my wife.
What I have right now...it's my 42.*



*Because I know there are people reading this who won't get that...in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "42" is the answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything.

Last post from here!

As of Sunday I will be sleeping under the roof of my new home. I had a long mushy post in my head just now, but instead I'll say this:

I hate it when rappers rhyme a word with itself.

Jay-Z:
I don't surf the net
no I never been on Myspace
too busy letting my voice vibrate
carving out my space

Ludacris:
I stroke so good, like Tiger Woods
and I ROWR like a tiger would

I like some of the hippity hop sometimes, but this reminds me why rock is better. A quality rock lyricists would NEVER stoop to rhyming a word with itself.


Today I figured out how to maintain a hot tub. Kind of...I read the instructions and got the colors to match the "OK" range on the UA strip you dip in the tub. I'm sure I have more to learn, but we should be able to get in tomorrow and enjoy it a bit. It'll be a nice escape for Steph for the last 4 cycles of chemo!

Which brings this up: I have no concept of what it will be like to own a home. It's exciting, but it's a strange concept to be living inside of something that you basically put a majority of your investment dollars into. It seems like a weird, exciting challenge/adventure/totally normal thing to do. (If that's the right word.) I've also realized recently that somewhere in this process I haven't ever really thought about what it will be like to live in the house with a healthy Stephanie. All of my thoughts have been about how nice it will be that the kids can play in the basement and mom can still sleep after chemo...and other things about how this will improve the recovery process. Little time has been spent on how wonderful it will be to go forward in my life having a house with my lovely wonderful wife. But that's down the road too!

Onward to HOME!

Object permanence and you!

Somewhere between 6-12 months old, most of us learn about Object Permanence. This is the not-so-earth-shattering concept that an object you can't see still exists. A ball that goes behind a wall is still a ball, just now behind the wall. Mom leaving the room doesn't mean that she has ceased to be, just that you can't see her at the moment.

This is a concept easily forgotten in certain cases. How many times do you check your pocket for the tickets on the way to a concert? How many times is it necessary to make sure that that vital document of attendance still exists? I personally do this all the time, but I didn't realize the bizarre obsessiveness of it until Friday, when I noticed the frequency of my unzipping the zippered pocket of my coat to once again check the existence of the cashier's check contained within. Throughout the day I did this probably at a minimum once every 15-30 min.

Said check led to the closing on our new home and the successful transition of my status from perpetual apartment-dweller to homeowner. Everything went quite smoothly, and we will be moving into our new place in a week. It's been less than a year since we started dating and we've come a long way, eh? We further solidified the officialness of it by going to Home Depot for the first time today to buy our first home improvement materials. (The house doesn't need much, but we thought we'd give K1 a blue bedroom instead of making him sleep in the all-pink girl's haven in the bedroom which is to be his.) It's a vastly different experience from the hypothetical Apartment Depot ("which is just a big warehouse with a whole lot of people standing around saying, 'We don't have to fix shit!'"-Mitch Hedberg)

I am rapidly running out of ways to upgrade my life. It's been an amazing year.

The easy fix

Yesterday my little girl came to me with the words no parent wants to hear. "Anthony, my heart is broken." I asked her how we could fix that and she calmly replied, "A teacher would use glue." Oh, ok. So I got the trusty Elmer's and we glued her Valentine's Day heart project back to the construction paper. All better, all fixed, not a tear was shed. I hope it's always that easy.

Pressure and space

My head hurts. I told Steph this morning when I woke up that it felt like it weighed 10 lbs. I quickly realized this wasn't a very descriptive statement, give that the average human head weighs 8-11 lbs (depending on which hastily googled reference you believe). The point being I have a cold and that sucks. Not as bad as, say, chemo or the flu to pick a couple examples off the top of my head, but it's just enough to be yucky. Not that I have any room to complain, or time to do so, but my head feels like it weighs...oh, let's say 20 lbs., with a midget pushing on the walls trying to get out. Blah.

In other news, everything is officially in place for the home purchase. We close in a week and 2 hours. It's starting to feel like a real thing that's happening! It is going to be very nice to have space, especially when Steph is needing to convalesce and the kids want to scream and go nuts. Hooray for a basement! Moving plans are still somewhat up in the air. We want to be in our house ASAP. There's a good 2 month overlap between the apt and the house, but why stay in a 1000 sq ft apt when we own an almost 3000 sq ft house? I mean really?!

A month?!

Yeesh, time flies when you're busy as poop.

The first thing I must share is a little book called "The Monster at the End of This Book." I would hope that everybody reading this has had the joy of sharing this quintessential tome of childhood with someone they love, but if not the basic idea is this: Grover is afraid of monsters, so he REALLY wants you to stop trying to get to the end of the book because there's a MONSTER there. It's really best told by the pros (though this obviously wasn't *filmed* by a pro...the room isn't built for video capture):


Another fun moment in daddyhood occurred at the mall today. K1 was at a Build-a-Bear party, so Steph and K2 & I were killing time in the food court. K2 had requested an ice cream cone, and like millions of parents before me I kept eying the tilt of the cone vs. the meltiness factor of DQ soft-serve and bracing myself for the moment when the entire works went either on the floor or all over her clothes. I realized my concern was misdirected when Steph knocked over her glass of ice water and made a much more spectacular mess than K2 had been able to manage. It was great.

In other wonderful news, we close on our new home in under 2 weeks now. It's a gorgeous house in Westminster, close to Wads and Hwy 36 so we'll have good access to major highways. We've done the inspection and the appraisal and all that and everything is progressing smoothly towards closing and moving in. It will be my 3rd time to move in 10 months, and my friends have already started telling me they won't be available whenever we get the truck (I think they're serious too...). The upside is that I will be living in an actual HOUSE for the first time since I moved out of my parents' house in Arvada in 1998 to go to college in Illinois. And once this move is over I won't be changing residences again for a very long time. That's a good thing. I'm ecstatic to make this step in adulthood, but I can't quite wrap my brain around the fact that "Homeowner" will soon be a title that applies to me. It's right up there with people calling me "Mr. West."

Cancer continues to suck, but chemo is progressing and seems to be doing the trick. If you don't know where to find those updates and would like to, leave a message or email me.

Things Dora has taught me

This will only make sense to Dora the Explorer fans and parents thereof. The rest of you can deal :-)

1) Stealing is bad, but thieves are remarkably easy to deter. Swiper the Fox is a little klepto, but he will immediately stop trying to take your stuff if you catch him in the act. If only home burglaries could be resolved by the homeowner walking in and saying "Jailbird Joe, NO SWIPING!" Of course the character of Swiper seems to solely be defined by his penchant for stealing stuff, so we're also learning about career criminals. He never gets away with anything though, so the label of Swiper seems harsh. Isn't that like branding someone a "murderer" when they've only attempted murder? I want to see a bio of Swiper to see what he swiped that branded him for the rest of his life. There must have been one caper he got away with...

2) The gap between "vamenos" and "vete tu" is clearly defined in children. K2 loves Dora. She'll sit engrossed and play along with episodes she's seen 5 times. She knows the map, can direct you to the next location, helps fling the poor fallen star back into the sky with her hands...she's there to help! K1 is so totally over it. K2 was watching the Easter episode at one point and K1 lost it when Dora was asking where the eggs were. "Geez! It's right by the bush! You're not a good looker Dora!" "Why can't you EVER find things?! You're a terrible explorer!" I laughed quietly from the other room before asking him to not ruin his sister's viewing pleasure.

3) ANYTHING can fit in a backpack! This is aided by the fact that everything Dora owns is an identical size. The lollipop is the same size as a tennis racket or tape or rope. Wouldn't that be handy?

4) Talking maps will always get you where you want to go! I almost wonder if this is a campaign originated by the makers of TomTom or one of those...if kids grow up with the idea that maps should say things like "Go past the Big Spooky Forest and around the Tall Rocks to get to The Witch's House," they're more likely to require that technology in their car down the road, right?

I think I need to go intervene before my brain gets Dora'd out. Time for a new DVD for the sickie!

Moving (?)!

It's been weeks since I posted about moving in here, so it must be time to think about moving again!

We have been discussing the purchase of a home for quite awhile. Apartment living has advantages, but throwing away money monthly kind of sucks. We would like to have a place to call our own. Not to mention that we currently live a minimum of 20 minutes from any of the significant destinations in our regular schedules (jobs, daycare, and school). After considering Aurora to be closer to jobs, sense was talked into us by several people who pointed out that it is much better to live where you want to be on the weekends and such, rather than purchasing for a job that may or may not change in the time you plan on being in the same house. With this in mind we are now looking over in the North Arvada/Westminster area. After getting approved on a home loan* we toured a few places today. 5 in all, narrowed rapidly down to 2 that are nice houses in our price range. 4 bedrooms are required in any house that we buy, so K1, K2, and the aptly named "Number 3" will all have their own bedrooms down the road. It's fun to look at homes with Stephanie and think about where the next 20-50 years will take us... :-)

*I'm about to say something positive about Bush. Hold your breath and plug your nose...Thanks George W. Bush for so thoroughly trashing the economy that interest rates are ridiculously low and nobody else is buying houses! It really helps this process that the economy is shot to hell, and I appreciate your part in that.

Moving and New Years and skiing

Wow what a week.
I officially live with my wife and kids now! What a concept. I had moved in spirit quite a while ago, and my apartment was pretty much neglected for most of the time I lived there. Once Falkor found a new home my only reason for ever putting in an appearance there disappeared. Now I don't have to pay rent any more and none of my stuff lives there either, and that's the real change. My worldly possessions are mostly in a garage waiting for us to buy a house so we will have a need for it again. The necessities have followed me indoors, but with 3 people already living here in a 2-bedroom apartment there wasn't a ton of room to begin with. Much thanks are in order to Wendy, Payal, and Ritika for the packing assistance, and Jarrod, Kathy, Tim, Erin, and my new family for helping get my stuff out and safely stowed where it needs to be.

New Years Eve was everything I wanted it to be. For dinner we took the kids to La Fondue, where the highlight was definitely the Chocolate Fondue for dessert. K1 enjoyed dipping things and cooking them but wasn't so much into the "eating" part. We had fun though, and then it was 8:30 and time to head over to the 16th Street Mall for fireworks. Denver is very considerate of people with early bedtimes: there are 2 showings of the New Year fireworks display, at 9 and midnight. So we wandered for 30 minutes, bought a light-up sword for K1, a trumpety noisemaker for K2, and waited for explosions over our heads. We seriously misjudged where the fireworks would come from, so we were quite surprised when they started going off RIGHT ABOVE OUR HEADS, and not 2 blocks away like we had thought. It was loud and beautiful and a great moment to share with my new family. When it ended we headed home and were all in bed asleep by 10:30. I haven't failed to stay up until midnight for a long time, but this year we were all exhausted and it seemed quite appropriate!

Yesterday we got to go up skiing. A quick recap...my last time skiing was February 25 last year, when I went up with this girl from work named Stephanie. We barely knew each other, but we got along well and both enjoyed skiing so we spent a whole day alone together. That day was enjoyable enough to lead to more hanging out, hiking, marriage, that type of thing.

So we went yesterday with the kids and the Myers family. They're fun folks- they have 2 kids at daycare the same ages as our 2, and a newborn (who has croup, so mom couldn't come along yesterday.) Skiing had mixed results. K1 did fine on the bunny slope, but panicked when we got to the top of a big green run. I ended up going alone with him due to lift ticket issues and I've never 1) taught anyone how to ski or 2) skied with a child. After falling once he wouldn't try on his own anymore, so we went down most of the way with him between my legs doing the best I could to make it an enjoyable experience. I don't know that I did well at that at all. He fell a couple times, we got run over once (by a jackass skiing straight ahead while looking uphill), and he ended up taking off his skis and wanting to walk the rest of the way down, crying uncontrollably towards the bottom because he was cold and tired.

I think that one ski run is the first time I really felt like I was completely failing as a father. K1 was miserable and I was incapable of making it fun for him or getting him off the hill to warmth and comfort. Some ski patrol folks saw us after awhile and one of the guys picked K1 up and skied him down to the bottom, so we made it off the mountain, but I feel like I ruined skiing for him forever. K1 swears he will never go up a big lift ever again and that's pretty much my fault. It went exactly the way Stephanie told me beforehand that she didn't want it to go.

K2 was a different story and that brightened up the afternoon. She loved skiing, laughed off most falls, and generally kept her no-fear 3-year-old attitude intact throughout the day on the bunny slope. That was definitely a bright point in an otherwise frustrating day. After skiing we went to dinner with the extended Myers family (all friendly folks) and then made the long trek home. Steph and I are plenty sore today, but that's to be expected after any day skiing. I just hope K1 will try the whole thing again sometime.