You can cure autism, eh?

          I’m sure I should probably offer some sort of explanation as to why “a few days while we travel” has somehow turned into almost two months, but there is no reasonable explanation other than the fact that I needed a break.

          When last we spoke (a mostly one-sided conversation, as can often be the case with me) I shared some of my less admirable moments as a husband and father. As much as I am sure we’d all love to go back and relive my greatest failures and short-comings I find it more appropriate that we move on to a little more of the story that made up our journey together as a family. I do need to remind you that the next part of the story is where things start to get slightly more… interesting. We still live in the town where many of these stories occurred and still have occasional contact with some of the major players in them, so I encourage you to do your best to look past what you may deem bad behavior and decisions and realize that all parties involved were struggling to find answers. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about a messy life it’s that it affects everyone.

Playin' the guit-fiddle

As this post goes up we’re driving to St. Louis. I was asked pretty last minute to lead worship for a friend’s weekend discipleship event. Our family currently attends at least 3 different churches every week. I lead worship in different capacities at 2 of those churches. There are 3 or 4 other churches in our area that I serve at about once a month leading worship for their Sunday morning services. I was reflecting with my brother-in-law the other day about how I found myself in this position. I never wanted to be a worship leader. I never set out with that goal in mind.

More of my greatest failures...

There are instances in my life that are such grand, spectacular failures that I wish nothing more than to go back and relive them in order to change my actions and therefore the outcome. Those same failures are the ones that have forced and inspired such personal growth that I cannot help but recognize their crucial role in shaping me into the man I am today. My regret is only that in order for me to grow up those around me must suffer such pain and frustration at my hands. I long for the wisdom that comes from experience and failure without the consequences and I’m reminded of cake, keeping it and eating it too….

My greatest failures.

                I struggle with how to portray what our life was like in Late 2006-early 2007 without sounding whiny or childish. I’ve talked about many of the difficult situations that we faced but we hadn’t seen the worst of it at that point and I think something inside of us knew that. I remember racing each day as if there were this unseen impending doom hanging over my head. I find it interesting how the human mind can swing so quickly from pride to pity. Looking back I know that many of the trials and pain we endured were at my hands, but I’m foolish to assume that I could have saved us from it all. I’d also be foolish if I thought I was blameless in it all. The truth is that I failed regularly and spectacularly, but it wasn’t all my fault. It wasn’t all my fault, but much of it was. The next few days are about that.

Why I'm smarter than my wife.

               Once Hannah and I started doing some real research on what autism is, we really believed that it explained so much of what we were facing with the twins. Our next obstacle was getting them diagnosed so that we weren’t just the crazy parents who assumed that there was something wrong but were so afraid that they’d be wrong and then be out of excuses. Because we’ve lived most of our lives on faith since we were married (which is another way of saying we were too broke to have insurance) the only chance we had of getting a diagnosis was through the ECI program. We brought the suggestion to the ladies who visited our house once a week and were pretty well blown off. I can’t really blame them. All of this occurred before autism had really become the fad diagnosis it is today and awareness was pretty low. I feel the need to explain myself for just a moment: I believe that the reason we have seen autism move from a very rare, virtually unknown disease to the levels we see it out now (The latest numbers say something like 1 in every 80 children) is because of 3 things; 1. It was under-diagnosed for many decades, 2. Some environmental factor is causing its increase (see “Concerning vaccinations for my opinion on the matter) and 3. It is over-diagnosed now.

The first three letters in "Funeral home" spell FUN!

               What happens when you take two young families who really enjoy one another and make them live, work, eat, and minister together? Eventually I ruin it. I’ll explain later. I’m really struggling with how to tell this part of the story because there was so much happening in every avenue of our lives that it seems an impossible task to get it all across in an understandable way, but when have I ever let a little thing like making sense get in my way?

A house is not a home unless it's a funeral home.

In June 2006 we were finally on staff at a church and trying to open a new joyful chapter in our lives. Unfortunately it seemed that circumstances would seek to demand otherwise, but we are stubborn. We lived 50 miles from the church we were serving at, but it was an acceptable sacrifice for the opportunity. Carpentry work was hard to come by since I was still pretty young and an entirely new face on the scene. I worked mostly for family and friends and hoped that the quality of my work would speak for itself and solicit new business for us. Although those were some pretty hefty hurdles for us at the time, they were nothing compared to what we faced at home.

I had a real job once....

In May of 2006 we found ourselves back in my home town actually living with my parents for a time while I did some work on one of their rental properties to prepare it to receive our wild bunch. I started trying to build business in carpentry and remodeling to support our family, and continued to pursue ministry while Hannah devoted her time to the boys. It was only a week or so before we had our first face-to-face scheduled with the pastor of the church we had been visiting with previously so we went to sit down at a local fast food joint.

I'm here...

I am home, but for those of you who are unaware our area suffered very damaging wildfires earlier this week and Hannah and I are currently helping with disaster relief. I will resume blogging as soon as things regain some semblance of normalcy.

Burn baby

I'm headed out to help with a wildfire so I won't be posting until I'm home. Told you my life was weird.

The most important blog you'll read in the next 5 minutes

No I'm not embarrassed that I'm reaching for the garter...
I'm embarrassed  that I thought it was a good idea to
highlight my hair.

Today is just another day for most of the world, but not for me and my family. 9 years ago today I married the luckiest girl in the world, no wait, I said that wrong… 9 years ago today I became the luckiest girl in the world when I married, no, that’s not right either. 9 years ago today I married my best friend and not only can I still tolerate her today, I am so desperately in love with her that it makes my head swim a little bit. We joke back and forth about which one of us married up and which one got the better end of the deal but in truth we both lucked out because our strengths and weaknesses offset each other and allow the whole to be so much more than the sum of its parts. The best thing about being a part of a healthy and Godly marriage is that not only are we strong where the other is weak, that strength coupled with the love we have for one another compels the struggling partner to grow in the areas they fall short. Marrying Hannah Beth has made me a much better man than I could have ever been alone.

Hannah the hot momma

600 miles from the nearest family, without a job and steady income, and two little boys that were obviously exhibiting signs that something was really wrong was where we found ourselves five years ago. Hannah was still working as a server in a local restaurant and had been adopted as the resident mother figure even though she was only 23 years old (not that she ever looked a day over 21). I was building some furniture for a local consignment shop and doing odd jobs for families within our church. Caleb was pooping in his dresser drawer. Andrew and Joel were pooping on everything they could reach and some things they couldn’t.

Dreams and struggles and toy boxes

In early 2006 we were faced with situations that threatened to overwhelm us. We had two little boys almost two years old who were at the developmental age of a 6 month old. We had an unbelievably strong willed little boy almost three years old. I was working full time for a parachurch organization and our support level was less than $1,000 a month. Hannah was at work as a server nearly every moment I wasn’t in the office. Our finances were in the toilet considering all we were up against, including a 21 year old who could eat his weight in Oreos every day. To top it all off the ministry was undergoing a restructuring that completely changed my job description and position within the ministry.

My kids poop in their own hair.

Rarrrrrrrrrrr

At about 16 months Andrew and Joel went through about two weeks where they regressed back to the developmental age of a 6 month old. Hannah and I use the 6 month old age because several months after we moved back to TX they were evaluated at that level, even though they were about 26 months at that point. Everything that we had come to love about our boys began to slip away, or at least that’s what we felt like. We battled things we never imagined possible.

I need to explain that these pictures I'm posting with these blogs are before the dreaded 16 month mark. We actually stopped taking pictures since they were almost always screaming and when they weren't we were too tired to think about a camera. This is just a taste of the happy boys we had before.

From good to bad and bad to worse.

I’m gonna tell this story as I remember it so take that for what it’s worth. Way back in 2005 we were living in eastern Tennessee. I worked at a parachurch organization as their events coordinator and Hannah was working as a server at a local restaurant. On one fine TN afternoon the twins had a clinic visit scheduled for their 15 months vaccinations. Hannah was also scheduled for work that day and since she made all the real money as a server (people are really generous when you give them a sob-story about moving across the country to minister) taxi-duty fell to Dad that day. I loaded all three little boys up and headed across town for what I anticipated would be quite an adventure.

Workin for a Livin

In case you haven’t heard me say it before, raising your own support for ministry is difficult, especially when you’re a goober like me. After almost a year of support raising and several months of stasis, we decided along with the administration at the ministry that it was time to start working at the ministry in hopes that we could A) actually get some ministry done, and 2) show some evidence of ministry to those I was soliciting for support. It was really a trial by fire scenario since the first event we had on the calendar was a music festival hosting 17 bands and expecting attendance in the tens of thousands.

What's wrong with me? So many things.

To be completely honest with you I am having trouble finding any motivation to write this blog today. It just seems incredibly petty in light of the past few days. We’ve been too busy over the past weeks and I had apparently forgotten how much I hate being too busy. Our heater broke during the coldest season in years and UPS decided that my two day delivery should actually take two weeks so I spent $150 on diesel trying to keep our house at a reasonable level and prevent our pipes from freezing. I’ve crawled under other’s houses trying to help them with their pipes. Hannah and I photographed a wedding this past weekend and that was the first income we’ve seen since January 8^th.

out of town...

I'm going to be out of town for a few days. I'll start back up either Wednesday or Thursday. Until then here's a thought....

Why my knees hurt.

When I was in High School the doctors planned on starting in my feet at age 18 and spending the next few years working their way up my body performing surgeries to correct all my injuries and deformed joints. I was told to expect somewhere between 5 and 50 surgeries.

The soap lady.

Andrew, Joel and Caleb are preparing to participate in a pinewood derby race with their Boy Scout troop next month (a special needs Boy Scout troop, yeah, it’s ok, let your imagination run wild; I know I did). Hannah and I were walking through a crafts store today trying to kill time before picking the boys up from school and we looked at the pinewood derby display. You can’t buy a block of wood with wheels in it anymore. Every kit they offer is already precut. You buy a semi-truck racer, an indy racer, or a short track racer, but no plain-jane blocks of pine. I completely understand that not every man out there has a shop full of tools just waiting to create the fastest and prettiest pinewood derby car ever made, but what happened to the days when every garage had, at the least, a coping saw and some sandpaper. How many of you even know what a coping saw is? I know I’m not the first person to make this observation, but sometimes it just really hits home what kind of society we live in.

Nomde-nonde-nomn-demominational-istic

Moving a minimum of 10 hrs from family and friends makes for a pretty difficult situation for a young family. It’s not like we were the first people in history to strike out somewhere new with little more than hopes and dreams, but that doesn’t mean it was any less of a challenge. Another challenge that Hannah and I faced was trying to find a church. We had always assumed that being in ministry would lead us to a church as staff and we would automatically have a church home. Working for a nondenominational para-church organization removed that luxury from us (odd side not, I’m generally a somewhat well-spoken individual, but for years I could not properly pronounce ‘nondenominational’, it always ended up ‘nonde-nonde-non-denational’ and made me feel real intelligent every time).

How I nearly died.

When we moved to TN to work with the parachurch organization I had been hired at, we had no idea what life was going to look like there. We had been as creative as we could manage in trying to buy a house, but given that we had very little credit history and even less verifiable income we could not get a loan. We stumbled upon a USDA grant that helped first time home buyers and had driven down several times to look at houses to no avail. We had the idea of buying an old country church and renovating into a house (a dream we still hold on to for that ‘someday’ when everything works out the way we would like). We found one old church that seemed promising. It still had all the old pews in it and everything, but we could not put together the financing. Fortunately we were eventually put in touch with a friend of the ministry who owned a house in the downtown area who was willing to rent it to us at a discounted rate.

I love you too, just don't hug me.

Yesterday I griped a lot about those who chose not to support us financially in our ministry in TN. I wish I could say that for everyone who chose not to there was one who did, but that isn’t true. What is true is that each person who felt God calling them to partner with us in ministry was a blessing that far outweighed those who didn’t. As much as I was surprised at the creativity exhibited by those who said no, I was blown away by the generosity of those who wanted to share with us. There were some individuals we never considered approaching because we knew their financial situations well enough to know that asking them to absorb another expense in their monthly budget would be too much of a stretch. Those individuals were some of the first to come alongside and support us. We received some incredible blessings at the hands of God’s people.

How much am I worth to you? Let's put a number on it.

Alright, so it’s been really cold and I took a day off. It’s not like anyone reads this thing anyway….

                In the weeks and months after Hannah’s brush with every life threatening disease the world has ever known that turned out to be a simple kidney infection we were smack in the middle of the interview process with a parachurch organization in Eastern Tennessee. It seemed like the position and ministry were tailor made for me and my gifts. The ministry was designed to supplement resources and administration for the local church in order to facilitate more effective and farther reaching ministry within the church as a whole. The position I was interested in was to plan and oversee all of the concerts, conferences and other events that came through the area.  In other words I was going to do a lot of work in order to spend a little time meeting famous people so that the famous people could minister to the local churches. The only catch was that each staff member had to raise their own support. I really had no idea what that meant, so I was in. What could a small thing like money mean?

And now... the rest of the story

                So if you remember from Friday, at some point in our past between 5 and 14 years ago Hannah was in the hospital with a mysterious low grade fever that had lasted over 2 weeks. We had been admitted and were placed in a shared room. The nurse had informed us that I wasn’t allowed to stay in the room with her overnight and she would return when my curfew had arrived. Well, the next thing I knew I woke from the cold hospital floor to Hannah crying and the nurse whispering in harsh tones to the pair of us what horribly disrespectful people we were. How dare I disobey her when she specifically informed me that I could not stay the night in the room? Hannah was exhausted and kept trying to explain that we had simply fallen asleep waiting for her to return and tell me it was time to leave. I was so groggy from lack of sleep that I wasn’t really processing any of it, not to mention my left side was half frozen from sleeping on the floor and half broken from, well, sleeping on the floor. As the nurse ensured we were sufficiently shamed for our ridiculous behavior we heard a quiet, strained voice from the next bed calling the nurse. The nurse gave us a look like, “You see what I mean? Do you realize what you’ve done to that poor woman over there?” (her expressions were wonderfully effective).

Back to the story...

In late 2004ish (your memory goes when you get old you know) Hannah began a mysterious fever that lasted several weeks. It was mysterious because no doctor could figure out what was causing it. I was pretty well occupied trying to work full time and still facilitate several ministries at church as well as raise three little boys and finish remodeling a house that had nearly been eaten apart from the inside with pigeon poop (my life’s not weird enough you say? How about a house where the previous owners drained their sewer into the basement, and had a trash heap in the backyard with 5, yes 5, water heaters in it?). No, Hannah’s fever and illness had nothing to do with the pigeon poo, it was cleaned far before we moved in.

I hate infomercials

Last night I sat down with all three boys and played Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 for a little over an hour on PS3. This was the first time the twins have been allowed to play with the PS3 at all since it was purchased, although Caleb gets some screen time coaching my B–spec driver in GT5 when I’m too lazy to be giving all the commands. It was a challenge for me. Most everything in our house is community property, but there are a few things that are off limits to everyone under the age of 18; guitars, keyboard, PS3, my cell phone, power tools, kitchen appliances, machetes, laptops, and everything else dangerous or fragile.

Happy Birthday to me.

29 years ago today I was born. 13 years ago today I got my driver’s license and had to borrow my granddad’s pickup for the driver’s license celebratory drive since my parents wouldn’t let me borrow one of their vehicles. 9 years ago today I had moved across the country and was less than a month away from marrying a girl I had known only 7 months. 3 years ago today I preached my first funeral. 1 year ago today I missed my dinner plans with friends in order to spend the day breaking a borrowed ATV trying to fix fence posts that had burned while helping my parents' new business get off the ground. Today I get to start leading worship for a local youth group during their Wednesday night services.

Did I mention I didn't go to college?

In late 2003 the youth pastor at Hannah’s home church resigned. I was already a part of the student ministry and was searching for a ministry of my own, but after some prayer I met with the pastor to tell him that if they would have me, I would be happy to serve as the interim until they found a permanent staff member. I also told him that the day they hired someone else, I was sending out resumes again. In late 2004 they hired a new youth pastor and the next day I started sending out resumes again.

Not really about RSV...

I spent this weekend trying to pry some details out of Hannah for our experience with RSV the first winter that we had the twins but she kept avoiding me. She finally told me this evening that it is because she never really tells the story since we caught it so early that there was no need for breathing treatments or hospital visits or anything reasonably dramatic. I suppose when things are so absurd for so long a little thing like a life threatening illness can seem like a pretty small ordeal. Short version: preemies are very susceptible to RSV and we knew it was likely that Andrew and Joel would contract it. Hannah had spoken with the doctor and was informed that if the symptoms of a normal cold lasted for more than 13 days it was RSV. On day 14 she called the doctor and he saw the boys, prescribed some medication and that was the extent of our experience with it.

A whole post about Joel's unmentionables.

               I really do not like being sick. I’ve got a snotty nose, headache, sore throat general bleh kind of thing going on today and It’s made me completely miserable. Andrew and Joel have compromised immune systems because of some of the complications of autism so they catch everything that every other snotty nosed little kid brings to school and then brings it home to us. I’ve done good this year. Everyone else has been sick two or three times here this season but I’ve managed to avoid it all until now. It is interesting to observe the boys when they’re sick because they’re so under-sensitive to everything. They’ll be running around the house at about 111% percent (as compared to the normal pace of 135%) and all of the sudden one will grab his stomach and say, “Oh Mommy my tummy hurts.” We know now to rush them to a toilet because there is going to be something projected out of one end or the other within the minute. That was not a fun lesson to learn.

Coming home

            While the twins were still in the special care nursery our church had their baby dedication Sunday. Our worship pastor’s wife found Hannah crying in the nursery like a crazy person (her words, not mine). She was really struggling because our boys had arrived, but we couldn’t bring them to something as special to us as a church dedication service. That season in our life was tumultuous to say the least. We were pulled in so many different directions and stretched to our absolute limits. There was turmoil at my job because it wasn’t at all what I felt called to do, but we couldn’t survive on wishes and dreams. There was turmoil at the church because of typical church politics and because church is full of broken selfish sinners just like me, so naturally when you get a group of them together the results are, well, exactly what you’d expect.

What happens in the special care nursery...

               

This video is just a few short clips of Andrew and Joel during their 17 day stay in the special care nursery after they were born. I had to sit down this afternoon and have Hannah refresh my memories about those days because although it was only two and a half weeks, it felt like it lasted for months.

How to forget all the important memories.

              The day we went to the hospital for our 20 week ultrasound with our second pregnancy was the day we discovered we were having twins. Hannah and I were both in shock, but I was forced to retire to the waiting room with a rambunctious Caleb while Hannah visited with the doctor. We expected them to tell us all kinds of horror stories about different birth defects because the doctors were convinced that Caleb had Down’s syndrome while he was still in the womb. We didn’t expect the doctor to treat us like sub-par human beings. Both the technician and the doctor observed a few anomalies that raised concern so they were obligated to bring it to our attention. The doctor informed Hannah of her concerns ‘in case we wanted to terminate the pregnancy.’ There are those moments in a marriage when your spouse is faced with a situation and you are powerless to do anything about it. This was one of them. I didn’t even know what was occurring since I wasn’t in the room. There are also those moments when you feel so compelled to be a savior only to be confronted with the reality that you married someone far better than you. Hannah informed the doctor that we didn’t care if everything imaginable was wrong with our children, we were having those babies.

             

The Whole Story Part 1

We took the boys to a birthday party Saturday afternoon and when we arrived there were 14.6 billion little kids running around in the front yard playing hide-and-seek and poke-each-other-in-the-eye-with-a-stick. Naturally Andrew and Joel wanted to join right in the fun, but we needed to make an appearance indoors first, plus I knew they’d want some cake. We went inside and had our cake (actually we ate it too) and the boys were ready to get outside for some much needed rough housing. I went outside with them to the front yard where all the mayhem was in order to set some boundaries since there was no adult supervision out there. I debated with myself a little as to whether or not it was wise to leave them outside alone, but I hoped that with the sheer number of kids they’d just be so caught up in the fray that nothing would cause them to wander. I walked both of them around the perimeter of the yard on the sidewalk and explained to them that they were only allowed to play in the grass. I then asked them to show me where they could play, and they walked to each boundary to show me they knew where to stop. As I was explaining their boundaries some of the other little gentlemen let their curiosities get the better of them and finally asked, “What are you doing?”

The only Tate with a tiny head.

Some days when it seems like things can’t get any better, they do. Several years ago Hannah started to exhibit some really strange symptoms. I’m not going to lie to you, sometimes they were pretty funny. We would be lying in bed together in the evening and she would tell me, “My head feels teeny tiny and my hands feel huge!” She’d reach her hand over in front of my face for me to observe.

“Nope, they look like the some old normal man-hands you’ve always had.”

“Is my head tiny?” She’d ask.

“I’m not really sure how to answer that question.”

“I feel like I’m floating.”

How Thomas the Tank Engine and chicken nuggets ruined my life.

I am thoroughly convinced that autism spectrum disorder is the result of a worldwide conspiracy among the executives and major stockholders in the companies that manage Tyson chicken and Thomas the Tank Engine. Not really, but I do find it odd that nearly every autistic child I’ve ever been around has an obsession with Thomas and only eats chicken nuggets. I’m not really sure what it is about these things that make them a common thread among families with autism, but it obviously exists.

Best of the best of the best sir... with honors.

Tomorrow we have a parent teacher conference scheduled at the boys’ school. I’m not entirely sure what to expect. There are a few things that have come to light recently that are cause for concern for Hannah and I. This isn’t at all the first time we’ve had to stop and reevaluate what we’re doing with and for the boys in order to ensure that we’re providing the best environment for them.

Caleb the hurdling cowboy.

I’ll be honest here. I have been avoiding writing anything about Caleb because I really cannot fathom that there are words to sum up such an incredible little man. The guy is just amazing and I feel so lucky to be his dad.

Thrown to the wolves.

After over a year’s worth of battles and struggles, on October 16^th, 2006 Andrew and Joel were diagnosed with moderate to severe autism. Hannah and I were so grateful to finally have a face for our nemesis. After swinging blindly at an unknown enemy we finally had some answers and the relief was overwhelming, but not as overwhelming as all the new questions that we faced. The doctor who performed the diagnosis visited with us for a few moments after he had seen both boys and handed us a nifty little copied article from TIME magazine about autism and little else. He offered no information on treatments or even what our next steps should be. I don’t blame the doctor for the lack of available information at the time. This was before news of the autism epidemic had reached the media so naturally the coverage and information was sparse. The magazine article covered the difference between the two primary methods of autism therapy which were ‘floor time’ and A.B.A (Applied Behavioral Analysis). In short, floor time is engaging in whatever activities the patient will allow in hopes to draw them out from within themselves and A.B.A. is interrupting the behaviors associated with autistic spectrum disorder and replacing them with typical social and emotional responses.

Concerning vaccinations...

I've had several people mention recently the news that the 1998 study that linked autism to the MMR vaccine has been discredited as fraudulent. I believe them. I absolutely believe that there are medical studies that are performed that are doctored (pun intended… pun definitely intended) in order to produce the results the researchers set out to ‘discover’. I have no idea whether or not the study performed by Dr. Wakefield was one of those.

"First we play little pig, then we play kick our butt, then we play juggling!"

          You want to see what your children really are like? No screen time. Ours started as a necessity, but has become one of my favorite times of day. Since the boys have trouble sleeping, we struggled for a long time finding a routine that would facilitate better sleep than what they usually managed.

Things that go bump in the night.

In our house that’s Andrew. He goes bump in the night as he hits the wall with his head repeatedly through the night. Their bedroom is adjacent to the office where I sit at the computer far more than I’d like to admit and late into the night. Seriously, I don’t know how the kid hasn’t given himself a concussion. Most mornings he has tossed and turned so much during the night that he will be laying on the opposite end of his bed. That dude is mega-weird, but I love him more than my own breath.

My kid may be bad, but yours is ugly...

I’m not real good at remembering a lot of details a lot of the time. That’s my disclaimer for the overall lack of information surrounding this next story. Tonight at church we were informed that some lady we don’t know would like to come observe our family.

I want my MTV.

I’ve worked for several small companies over the years. In many cases, it’s never more than a few days before I start to wonder, “How in the world do these guys make it in the business world?” I worked for one company that the owner couldn’t spell his own name and insisted on hand writing all formal business correspondence with his customers. It wouldn’t have been as bad if his handwriting was legible.

I will not punch my 2 year old. I will not punch my 2 year old. I will not...

Psalm 4:7 – You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.

             Joel is a maniac. That kid never stops. Over the past year he has gained 1 pound. We feed him very well and he eats every bite at every meal whether he wants to or not but he is as skinny as a rail. It’s because he exists at about 130mph. When things were at their worst he was the hardest for me to deal with. I’m not entirely sure why but I did not get along well with him when he was a baby. I think that I was scared because he was so small (3 pounds at birth). I know it was in part due to the fact that I was so selfish. Most of the hospital trips and health issues belonged to Joel for the first 2 years of their lives. It angered me that he was the source of so much turmoil for our family. I knew better than to think that I could place blame on an infant, but I needed an outlet and as much as it shames me to admit it now, I chose to resent him.

My best friend's a chick.

“Do you love me?”

“I think so, why?”

“Will you go to the grocery store for me?”

     I sure am glad we have such a healthy relationship founded on all things good and beautiful.

Introduction

“I wouldn’t over think this is if I were you.”

“Have you met me?”

     That was our conversation concerning a book vs. blog as an outlet for all my nuttiness. I decided that a blog is much more along the lines of my commitment level. See I think blogs are really self-indulgent most of the time. I feel that they feed our voyeuristic society and contribute to our time-wastery (the fine art of spending hours or days at a time engaged in an activity on the internet that does not contribute to society in any measureable amount). So I feel that it is only appropriate that the first thing I address in a new blog is my general distaste with all things blogish.