I Promise

I promise to ....

"Promise" is a big word. It's like the word "love". You don't throw it around lightly. You should only say it when you mean it and when you know you can and will hold to it.

A promise to a child is something special. And I as anticipate the birth of my daughter, I think of what her life will be like. I think of what I will be like as a father.

I think about what our relationship will be like.

As with any father-daughter relationship, I know it will have its joys. And it will have its tears. We will have moments when we want to strangle each other - but I hope we will have moments when we absolutely want to hug each other, hear the other say "I love you," or just play with her Barbies. I hope those moments outnumber the others by far.

So as I think about those moments and look forward to meeting her, hearing her laugh, seeing her smile, and her mother and I raising her, I make these promises to my baby girl:

• I promise to nurture you
• I promise to make time for you
• I promise to hug you 
• I promise to show you Star Wars every chance I get
• I promise to God that I will raise you in a good Christian manner to follow his word
• I promise to let you be yourself
• I promise to tell you about your family who isn't here
• I promise to listen to you -- about your thoughts, opinions, dreams and any questions you may have
• I promise to tell you I love you every chance I get, and more
• I promise to give you space when you want it - but I won't be far away
• I promise to be skeptical of every guy that you ever like
• I promise to be your safe place 
• I promise to never make fun of you (although we can find a healthy medium for picking on each other)
• I promise to encourage you to follow your dreams
• I promise to make decisions that you may not like, but will be in your best interest
• I promise to protect you and your mommy
• I promise to never dress you in garnet
• I promise to spend daddy-daughter time with you
• I promise to never break your heart
• I promise that I will be the best daddy I can possibly be
• I promise to be there for you - to support you, to  teach you, and to laugh with you, not at you
• I promise to do things that will embarrass you as a teenager
• I promise not to have a problem with the man of your dreams loving you - but I don't think I will ever be able to give you entirely away because you have stolen my heart and you haven't even been born yet
• I promise to be there as you walk down the aisle
• And above all, I promise to love you forever and with all my heart

         Love, Daddy

The Smile I Will Never Forget (And Why)

About 16 weeks ago I heard a scream coming from our master bathroom.... Usually when my wife screams, it's because she's seen a bug.

Well, this wasn't a bug. It was something a lot better. Much better. Miraculously better.

I ran to the master bedroom expecting to have to kill some arachnid. But my wife walked out of the bathroom with the biggest smile --- one that I will never forget. I knew right then and there.

Watch this video and you'll find out what the smile was about.... (If you're one of my Facebook friends, you may have seen this already)

Now I have no reason to be at a lack of topic for blogging about here on MM. I imagine a lot of what I write about from this point on in my life will be centered around the reason for that smile on my wife's face.

(And you can thank our friend Katie for giving me the kick in the butt I needed to get back on MM and finally post this video)

Cricket Watch - Day 3

He's followed me to work. It may be one of his friends. Regardless there's now one in the bushes behind my office that is just as loud. 

Why do crickets have to be so annoying?

I think the one that was keeping me up at night moved into our garage yesterday. I was washing dishes last night and heard one just chirping away in there. Better in there than outside my bedroom window.

Thankfully, I have not been woken up by a cricket in two nights now. I don't know if the one that had been keeping me up has moved on or decided to be nice and be quiet. 

Either way, I think cricket watch is over. Now on to more important things....

Cricket Watch

I seem to have gotten in a pattern of posting something to my blog about every three months or so. Excuses aside, I'm just going to jump right back in and hope that I don't go another three months without a post. (Honestly, I don't think I will -- in fact I know I won't, given the fact I have a major topic that is going to take a LONG time to write about of a LONG series of posts - the topic I promise is not about crickets)

Anyway, "Cricket watch?" you ask?

There's this cricket that has been my nemesis for about a week now. He lives outside the window closest to me in the bedroom and starts chirping about 11pm each night.

He's annoying.

He'll start up randomly throughout the night -- and just as randomly will stop. He always seems to know when I'm trying to figure out where he is.

He knows exactly what he's doing.

He's waking me up - at 1:30 am, 3 am, 5 am. At times when I really don't want to be woken up.

I'm one of these people that really enjoys my sleep. I've been knowing to turn sleeping into an art form. I slept through Hurricane Hugo. There's not much that can wake me up.

Except this stupid little cricket.

The first couple nights, I really thought he was in the room he was so loud. I checked one corner where I thought the sound was coming from. Then it would stop for a moment -- and start back up from what sounded like the other corner of the wall with the window. Chirp, search, repeat.

I eventually realized he was living right outside the window. He is just one really loud little bugger.

Last night during a lull in the rain we had had most of the evening, he started chirping again around 11:30. So I went outside and unloaded the household Ortho pump spray I have all over the ground, foundation, wall and window. I was hoping he would get the message and leave.

No such luck.

About an hour later he started up again. And woke me up at least twice that I can recall throughout the night. Once I was up, he just continued to chirp for the rest of morning while my wife and I got ready for church.

My wife says she can't hear him. But for some reason I can't tune him out.

So tonight, right around 11:30, he was at it again.

But I had an extra special present for him tonight. I bought one of those bottles of exterior pest Ortho that attaches to the hose and proceeded to saturate the ground outside the bedroom, the entire exterior wall, the bushes, the eaves, and the window frames with it.

It's 1:15 am right now. He's been quiet so far tonight since I sprayed his hangout down. That's a good sign that maybe he got the message and has decided to hop down the road permanently and annoy someone else.

In the meantime, I'm strategizing my next step in case he is just hiding or playing dead. If Cricket Watch goes into a third night, I am going to be really perturbed.

Either way, game on pal.

WOCKA WOCKA WOCKA WOCKA

"Follow the dots, eat the dots. Follow the dots, eat the dots."

"Ooops, turn around, Clyde's on my tail. Here comes Inky...... gotta get ahead, gotta get ahead."

"C'mon dude, move it, move it....."

"Yes, a power pellet! HA HA! Time to eat me some ghosts"

How many times have I said any of the above, I wonder.

How many miles of arcade screen did I drive that little yellow dude, I wonder.

Alot. Many quarters worth. But it has always been fun, whether in it's original form, the super-sized version, or even the Ms. version.

I had Pac Man fever for many years of my youth.

When I was in college, I had an HP-48SX graphic calculator on which I installed Pac Man (along with Joust, Tetris, and a few others).

No matter what computer I have had, I have always had a version of Pac Man on it.

My wife and I were recently in Myrtle Beach for a few days - and the morning we were checking out, as I was on my way to get a luggage cart, I noticed a Pac Man machine in the game room. I just happened to have a couple quarters in my pocket.

So I used them.

The joystick felt the same - like it and my mind instantly connected and became one for the nth time.. Like some sort of arcade Jedi. Use the force Brian, let it guide your Pac Man.

I felt like I was six again. I burned through about a dollars worth of quarters and then wandered on to get the luggage cart, disappointed I was out of change.

I grew up on Pac Man. We used to line up to play it in the arcade at the YMCA where I spent many afternoons of my youth. I listened to the song. I watched the Saturday morning cartoon.

And I celebrated his 30th birthday today. Happy birthday little yellow dude!

I'm Not Happy, And I'm Drawing A Line in the Sand

Upon pulling up to the gas pump this evening to our vendor of choice I noticed the dreaded sticker.

"This product may contain up to 10% ethanol" ... or something along those lines.

If there was anybody nearby, they probably didn't hear anything rosy come out of my mouth. I didn't notice. I was too mad.

Ingles has gone Ethanol.

They are now off my list of approved gasoline retailers.

And they will be getting a nice letter in the mail from me this week explaining my disgust in their decision - outlining why I believe they have succumbed to corporate peer pressure, perpetuated by big-oil and the almighty dollar and calling them out on their lack of concern for their customer.

The question I really have to ask is "Why do companies feel the need to take advantage of consumer ignorance in order to make money?"

That's what this is about.

Ethanol-blend costs less for the refineries, the oil companies, and therefore the resellers, i.e. in this case Ingles. Therefore said retailer, i.e. in this case Ingles, is able to sell it at a lower price than regular gasoline.

Customers flock to the place with the lowest price gas. The retailers get an influx of money coming in from those customers who want to save money.

And then they will end up taking that money they saved and spending it on even more gas to fuel their vehicle because their gas mileage sucks because they're running ethanol blend fuel. Their engine and fuel system pays the price in wear and tear also.

Most consumer don't know this. They're ignorant of the fact because that's not something the oil companies or gasoline vendors want people to know, and the media tend to not report on because those same companies spend advertising dollars with that media.

But if I have to go out of my way and be inconvenienced by the distance to the three regular gas vendors in my area, I will.

Ingles, you will no longer receive my money for gasoline. You may have lower prices on food. Hey, that's good. I'll buy your food. But I will not buy your gasoline.

Not until you switch back to tried and true regular, non-ethanol, gasoline.

You had me at regular unleaded. Now you lost me at ethanol. You suck.

I've ranted about the whole ethanol-blend vs. regular unleaded issue before. Read this

It's not like it really got me anywhere. Or will get me anywhere. That's one reason I'm so mad.

I guess if I have to go out of my way to avoid giving you money for your lousy product, I will. That's another reason why I'm really ticked off.

But I will go the extra physical miles down the road and give that same money to your competitor.

So, Ingles, here's my line in the sand (or red clay, as you find in this neck of the woods) - which I refuse to cross. You're going to have to cross it on your own by mending your ways and dumping your corn-blend gas.

As you can tell, I am not a happy camper right now.

I'm Back

3 months. Almost to the day.

A tri-mester for human gestation.

A quarter of a year.

2064 hours, give or take.

Enough time for some of the worst legislation in U.S. history to be passed.

It's not that I haven't wanted to get back on here. I have a few times. I do this, or rather, I've done this a few times. Although I don't think that ever it has gone this long.

Call it a creativity funk. Call it laziness. Call it preoccupied with life and other things.

But I've had some ideas ramping up over the last few days so I finally decided to put them to the keyboard.

So here goes....

Late Night At Bloom, Or, In Other Words "The Coupon Cougar"

It started off as your run of the mill grocery shopping trip for me, although that really depends on what your definition of “grocery shopping” is.

This was a late-night run to Bloom.

My wife sent me to get a few things, too much for the 10 items or less line… but at 11:30 pm, that didn’t really matter as by that time at night most stores have that lined closed anyway.

I had a handful of coupons with me that I was fumbling through as I was making my way through the store.

I know, you’re probably thinking: “A guy with coupons? His wife must have sent them with him.”

That she did.

I wouldn’t describe my wife as a “coupon-aholic” but she keeps a very watchful eye on the sales flyers. We get the Sunday newspaper specifically for the coupons. We generally have more coupons than will comfortably fit in her coupon case. And cutting them all and going through all the sales flyers each week is not an hour you want to spend in our house.

We do this because we’re very cost conscious of groceries, and, as any family, we would like to keep our expenses down.

So getting back to the story….

It was a short grocery list. I didn’t have my wife’s coupon book with me. Ordinarily she would try her best to get me to take it and if I knew I was getting a lot of stuff, I would. But I intended to make this a quick trip with minimal purchases.

I’m walking down one of the aisles as another shopper and I come upon each other.

She looks up and down the shelves, scanning. Her glance turns my way, and she smiles.

“You have coupons!,” she exclaims.

“Ummm… yeah, that’s what these things are alright. Ding ding ding. You win the genius of the night award,” I think.

In reality, I responded something like “…well a few anyway. Just enough to cover some of the items on the list my wife sent me to the store with.”

To which she responds, “Well, you mind if I take a look at them to see if I can give you anything better. And you can look at mine too to see if there’s anything you want?”

Admittedly, the first thought out of my mind was “What is this? Some sort of really bizarre ‘show me yours, I’ll show you mine’ game?”

Not to pass up an opportunity to save a buck, I agreed. She took a quick look through mine and found one she replaced with one of hers that gave me an added 15-cents off that item.

I was kind of in a hurry because for some reason I was feeling really awkward about the situation, so I flipped through her binder real quick, didn’t see anything that struck my fancy, and thanked her.

The woman had two 6-inch binders of coupons. And I thought my wife was a little overboard on couponing.

We said our goodbyes, she smiled again, and we pushed our respective buggies our separate ways.

It was creepy. For some reason, I felt like I was cheating on my coupons with another set of coupons.

I shook it off, saying to myself “that was really, really weird.”

It was one of those things that went back in forth in my mind as I drove home thinking “how exactly do I describe this to my wife when I get home without it sounding wrong in some way?”

So I described to her the weird experience – and we both laughed about it. We ended up calling the lady The Coupon Cougar.

She’s out there somewhere. Waiting to make some other guy feel really awkward, I’m sure. If you’re ever in the Bloom in Greer, SC at 11:30 at night, you just may run into her.