I’ve been waiting for parts to fix my motorcycle for three weeks. I bought a used airbox from a seller on Ebay. He forgot to ship it for a week, so it took a total of two weeks to get it. Meanwhile, my buddy at work has been riding his bike to work and asking me every… single… morning… if I rode in. And each day, I had to tell him that I was STILL waiting for parts.

I finally received the airbox. Unfortunately for me, the seller didn’t include the airbox covers. There were three of them, and they were all missing. So, instead of an airbox, I had more of an… I don’t know… air NOT-box. I contacted the seller and very tactfully (really, I was very polite) told him that I assumed that the airbox would include the covers that would make it an actual box. I asked if he had them available and, if so, could he please ship them to me, because my motorcycle simply won’t run without all of the parts.

The reply email read: “Sorry, as is.”

What could I do? I left him negative feedback and called it a day. The following day, I called the local motorcycle shop. The lady that answered the phone seemed completely put out that somebody would call a parts department and ask if they had three parts. So, no business for them. My last try was a cycle shop that was equal distance away, but simply in the opposite direction. This guy was extremely nice and courteous. He didn’t have the parts but would order them and have them in four days.

Four days apparently means three weeks.

Nonetheless, I received an email from them, telling me that my parts had arrived.

Two days ago, Sarah and Audrey hit the road to go to some walk to end women’s abuse, or something. I’d just as soon tell people to stop hitting women, but if they want to walk for it, that’s their prerogative. After we got dressed, I told Tyler to put his kicks on so we could go get some parts for the motorcycle.

As we began our 20 minute drive, he asked approximately 437 questions. “What’s that? Why is the road gray? How do you make water shoot on your window? How many days until you have to go back to work?” On and on and on. And I answered each question with nothing but patience. “That looks like a squashed bug. Roads are made of asphalt, and asphalt is gray and black. I push a button to shoot cleaner on my window, see, like this. Two days, buddy.”

I love these conversations. He asks great questions, and it’s one of the rare times that I feel like a genius.

“Daddy, what’s that big giant thing?”

“What thing?” I replied. All I saw were buildings, and I was fairly certain he knew what a building was.

“That big huge thing with a grape on it. Way up there.”

I ducked down so I could look up higher out of the car’s window. Behind a building was the town’s water tower. I’d explained what a water tower was to Tyler before, but he must have forgotten. To his benefit, he was only two months old at the time.

“Oh, That’s a water tower. It’s full full full of water. When somebody turns the water on in their house, water is pushed from that giant tower into their house.”

He sat silent for a moment then followed with, “All the way under the ground and dirt and into a house?”

“Yes, Tyler. That’s exactly right. That’s how all the people in all the houses around here get their water; from that big giant water tower.”

“Oh, that’s cool daddy.”

I smiled. “Yes. That is pretty cool.”

“Daddy, do you want to know what’s cooler than a water tower?”

“Yes, buddy. What’s cooler than a water tower?”

“Ninjas.”

Yes, Tyler. I think that’s about right.

I recently started wearing glasses again. I have a fairly weak prescription; actually, it’s a very weak prescription, which is why I haven’t worn glasses in about two years.

Well, shoot, that’s not entirely true either. I initially STOPPED wearing glasses because Tyler broke both my regular glasses and my prescription sun glasses. I spent around $300 on the two pair of them, and in the simple act of walking, my two year old son (at the time) destroyed them. It’s quite possible that he sat on the sunglasses and walked on the regular glasses, but that’s just semantics, right?

It began bothering me recently. We own an HDTV, and I had to watch everything with a slightly blurred hue. The catalyst to my finally going to the optometrist was nighttime driving. Although my eyesight was well enough for driving without “corrective lenses”, I just felt uncomfortable when it was dark.

Dark AND rainy? Now, that sucked!

With two kids, I had absolutely no intentions of buying two more pair of expensive frames. I had no intentions of buying one pair of expensive frames. After paying my $10 copay at RX Optical, it was off to the internet to search for “cheap prescription glasses”. Seriously, that’s precisely what I searched for. I ended up at Zenni Optical (and am quite pleased with the glasses I purchased from them, in case you’re in the market) and picked out a pair. $35 dollars later, and a few days wait, here I am with spectacles.

Tyler asked me about my glasses yesterday, and even tried them on. Remind me, by the way, to take a picture, because he is one handsome DEVIL in glasses. And by devil, I literally mean devil. He’s been an absolute turd over the recent past. I’ll try to blog some of this, because I really shouldn’t concentrate this entire site to the good and the funny aspects of my life as a father.

I explained to Tyler that I used to wear glasses when he was younger. I told him what happened to them. He had a look of concern on his face, and I feared that he may feel guilty for ruining my glasses.

“It’s okay though Tyler. I’m not mad about it (anymore). It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident and was a long time ago.”

“I know daddy. It was your fault.”

I’ve warned Sarah that his mouth is going to get him into a LOT of trouble when he gets older. She laughs… as do I… But mark my words, many visits to the principal’s office will be in our future.

How are the announcements supposed to start? “We are excited to announce…”, “Three’s company…”, or “Sarah and I want you to be the first to know…”?

I can’t say that, because I’d be lying to you. I have two beautiful children. A toddler son that is a ball of nuclear energy, and a daughter that is just receiving her first tooth and just taking her first steps. The simple truth is, I’m happy with two kids. Happy is actually an understatement of epic proportions. I can’t imagine how I could possibly be happier with the state of my life.

Two kids are enough. Sarah and I are two humans. We have created two humans to replace us on this rock as it hurtles through space. Two in, two out.

For me, having two kids is exactly perfect.

And Audrey is ruining everything!

Audrey… precious little beautiful little Audrey. My little cupcake. The tiny little darling that crawls around the house and drools. on. EVERYTHING. Her babbles are the most adorable noises. And it’s her babbles that have me terrified.

8 months ago

“Isn’t she the cutest ****ing baby on the planet?” Sarah asked. It was, of course, a statement disguised as a question.

“She really is,” I replied.

What proceeded was a discussion about how happy we were to have both a son and a daughter. There was a time where we both wanted two sons. During Sarah’s pregnancy, she jumped over the fence and began wishing for a daughter. I kept my strength, however, and kept hoping for another boy. Needless to say, when I first saw Audrey’s beautiful face, my heart melted. She held out her tiny little hand, extended her tiny little finger, and I became firmly wrapped around it.

“If she says ‘dada’ first, we are having another baby.”

So, as I said, it’s Audrey’s babbling that has me terrified. I tried, I swear. Over and over again, I’d say to her “Audrey, can you say ‘mama’? ‘Mmmmmmaaammmmmaaaa’. Can you say… ‘mama’? See her? That’s ‘MAMA’ over there. Me? I am not ‘MAMA’. But her, she is your ‘MMMMMAAAAAAMMMMMAAAAAA’.” Then I’d whisper to her, “Don’t you screw this up, little girl.”

Even Tyler tried helping me. “Audwee, don’t say ‘dada’, okay? You haffa say ‘mamma’ first.”

I really don’t understand why she keeps crawling around babbling, “dadadadadadadadadadada” over and over and over again. I find myself wondering if Sarah is running around the house shouting “DA DA DA DA DA” eight hours a day, five days a week. And when I come home from work, she gives me the “remember, ‘dada’ equals baby in my belly” look.

“AUDWEE!! You HAFFA say ‘mama’, not ‘dada’. You’re so silly!”

So Audrey, please, knock it off. Our house cannot fit another full-time child. You can have a bunch of girl friends, and Tyler can have a lot of guy friends. They’re all welcome over here any time. They can even stay the night sometimes, but then they can go back to their own home.

For the love of everything that is still peaceful in this house… MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMama.

I sat down on the couch. It had been a long day at work, and I wanted nothing more than to relax for a bit and enjoy some silence. I have two kids that appear to love me very much, so “relax” and “silence” is virtually unknown in this house. I’m sure that my wife is having trouble reading these very words during her extremely exaggerated eye-roll as she silently shouts “YOU HAVE NO IDEA!!!! Try being home all day, EVERY day with these lovable monsters!”

So, it was absolutely no surprise that Tyler was running laps through the rooms while shouting “Hi daddy… bye daddy.” Sarah came to sit on the couch with me “Hi daddy… bye daddy.” to snuggle and make a little small talk. Audrey was in her room “Hi daddy… bye daddy.” taking a nap. I have no idea how she can sleep “Hi daddy… bye daddy.” through all the noise that her big brother makes during “Hi daddy… bye daddy.” every waking moment of the day.

There we were, enjoying one another’s company while my 9 month old daughter slept, and my three year old son charged through the house like a spider monkey hopped up on speed. I asked Sarah how her day had been, and was listening to her recap a day of fun, drama, crying, laughter and every other emotion that my strong-willed (to put it lightly) family can express. Mid-sentence, Tyler ran up to us and dropped a bomb. A bomb that I swear I’ve never even hinted at before.

“Mommy? Why aren’t you doing your job?”

“What job?” Sarah inquired, genuinely intrigued on where Tyler was heading.

“Cleaning the kitchen.”

I’m not the world’s smartest man, and I’ll never pretend to be, but I KNEW that my safest course of action would be to keep my word-hole shut and simply stare at the floor. So, imagine my surprise at myself when I burst out in laughter.

Not my smartest move.

Also, LOTS of new pictures in the September, October, November, and December photos over on Our SmugMug Site.

We had pipe dreams that our house would have sold before my start-date in Michigan of March 1. Sadly, this didn’t happen, leaving it necessary to spend months with this lifestyle. I spend 5 days a week away from my almost three year old son and my newborn daughter, while Sarah spends 5 days trying to raise these same two children as a married-but-single mother. Oh, and she also had to keep the house SPOTLESS for any house showings.

After numerous heartbreaks, we were all reaching the end of our ropes. Sarah was stressed to the point of nearly breaking, Tyler was beginning to act out, I began falling into a state of depression, and Audrey… well, she’s just happy to exist, so she seemed just fine.

Then we finally got the offer we were waiting for.

We spent the next six weeks dealing with more hurdles and heartbreaks. The prospective buyers had to have their hands held during every step of the process, and required numerous phone calls before they’d take care of the next step. Meanwhile, we’d put an offer on a house in Michigan, and were steamrolling towards closing… contingent on the sale of our house, which was not going well at all.

“I’m not built to be a single dad, Sarah,” I told her during a phone call. “I just don’t think I can continue this lifestyle much longer.”

And then things would start moving again. And then they’d stall again. Move and stall, move and stall. It was like a teenager learning to drive a stick shift. With lots of crying.

Finally, we had a scheduled closing date for both houses. We quickly put together the logistics. We’d pack everything, load it into the moving truck, sign the papers to sell our current house, drive all of our worldly belongings to Michigan, sign to purchase a house, and move in. We were nervous during every second leading to the sell of our house. We didn’t dare speak too excitedly of the fact that things were finally happening. We just cautiously moved ahead. We packed, we organized, we cleaned, and we kept our fingers crossed. We loaded up the moving truck until the only things remaining in the house was a blow-up mattress for us, a mattress for my step-dad, and a couple random items needed to eat breakfast the next morning.

Closing day arrived! We got things around, packed up some last minute stuff and drove to the closing. Anxious and slightly excited, we parked and walked into the office… and the buyers didn’t show up.

THE BUYERS DID NOT SHOW UP!

“Listen,” I said to the closing officer, “we must have a very specific piece of paper signed today, or we can’t buy a house this evening.”

The agent went on to explain that the wife got “called in to work.” There’s a lot of things I don’t know, but I’m fairly certain an employer would understand that you couldn’t come in right away if YOU. ARE. BUYING. A. HOUSE! Where are your priorities at when you make the decision to email the office mere moments before closing and say “oh, by the way, I won’t be there TO. BUY. A. HOUSE! this morning because my boss called and asked me to come in. I said yes even though I’m supposed to be BUYING. A. HOUSE!”

“Is the husband coming? Is their Realtor coming?”

The answer was no. There aren’t words in my vocabulary to explain the feelings I was having at the time. “Devastated” comes to mind. I explained again the fact that we quite literally had all of our belongings on a truck and were scheduled to buy a house in just a matter of hours in Michigan. The closing officer, bless her soul, was determined to help. She explained that we would sign all our papers and that she would then drive to the buyer’s employer to get her to sign the papers. With no other option, we signed the papers and went back to the house, deflated. At a time we should have been celebrating, we were in yet another state of limbo. We contemplated all the nasty things we wanted to do to the house, to punish the buyers for being such royal pains in the butt. The best idea was to leave an upper decker for them. There were two problems with this plan however. One, we weren’t even sure they were going to sign the papers, which would have meant that we just did something very nasty to a house we were stuck with. Two, deep down, below the cynicism and sarcasm, we’re both good people. But that didn’t mean that we all didn’t laugh maniacally when Audrey spit-up all over the living room floor!

My phone rang about twenty minutes later. “Hi Joe, this is Jen.” Jen was the closing officer.

“Please tell me good news, Jen.”

“The papers are signed. I’m faxing over the information now. You’re homeless.”

I mouthed the word to Sarah “signed” as Jen continued singing sweet, sweet music into my ear about us no longer owning a house in Indiana. And finally, we could hug each other for overcoming such a huge mountain of an obstacle.

The closing in Michigan went smooth as silk. We were homeless (and 100% debt free and off the grid) for approximately seven hours. Then, this:

And I now get to come home to my family after work every single day. Life is good.