Scrappy

Madeline is a heck of a ballplayer. She watches every move the ball makes and chases it down. Most of the girls on her team are typical tee ballers, their minds are somewhere else and they'd rather play in the dirt. Not Madeline, she's serious. She told me her coach called her "scrappy".

Peace-
Matt

School's Out

Tomorrow is the last day of school. My grocery bill will now double.

Beach

I joined thirty-five five year olds at the beach today. The weather was perfect, the kids were all well behaved and very fun. It was nice to be five for a day. I wish I had their energy and care free attitude every day.

Field Trip

First, here is an important article for you to read. Why is the truth so elusive?

Lettuce, spinach, and peas shown above. The lettuce is ready to eat. We've planted our peppers, tomatoes, cukes, and pumpkins. We tried some sweet corn this year too. The weeds are growing twice as fast as anything else. I always forget how much weeding there is to do.

Our new priest (came to us July 07) has been reassigned already. He'll be leaving in July. We were just getting use to each other too. We don't know who we'll get to replace him.

Our parish is working on a new directory. It'll have photos of most of the parish families, and names, etc. I've been shooting a bunch of odds & ends photos for it, like parish councils, events, and activities. I've included our priest in a bunch of the photos. He'll be gone before it's even published.

I'm taking the day off tomorrow to go with Madeline and her class on a field trip to Big Creek park. We're going to play in the sand I guess. Beats the hell out of working.

Peace-
Matt

Broken

Soldering copper water piping is a crappy job. It takes a long time, especially when you don’t do it very often like me. Sure, it’s kind of fun for a little while, but then it becomes work; too much work. When I put the new bathroom in the house, I changed all of our existing galvanized water pipes to copper. It was a lot of soldering.

Recently, I picked up a water softener from a friend. Our water is hard I guess. I never noticed it until we got that stupid dishwasher. It just doesn’t do a good job, and still bugs the hell out of me. I decided to try something different for piping the softener. There is a product called Propress, and it is a dream. It’s copper pipe & fittings, just like the regular stuff, but these fittings have o-rings in them. You slide them on the pipe, use a special tool (which I borrowed from work), and clamp the fittings to the pipe. It takes a minute. No cleaning, fluxing, heating, soldering; none of that shit. It can even have water running through it when you do it. No way you could solder with water running; that’s impossible. What would have taken me at least 12 hours to do with the solder method, took less than 3 hours with the Propress stuff, and that’s because I took my sweet time. Good stuff.

When I was working on the water lines, I pulled something in my shoulder. A serious pop and then pain. This morning while shaving, I pulled something in my lower back again; just like I did while brushing my teeth a few months ago. Between this stuff and my knee problems, I think there’s something wrong with me. It can’t be just age. I have a serious problem. I’m broken.

Peace-
Matt

Sprouts

My peas are looking good. I'm ready to plant the rest of the stuff. Is it too early?

Dust

A few shots from about 10 minutes in the garage. Haven't had much time to photograph lately. Spring sports have us running 6 days a week.

We got our passports in the mail yesterday. When we get our stimulus money from uncle sam, we'll be ready to go for our England trip in August.

Matt

Black Dirt

I tilled the rest of the garden today with my dad's old tiller. It's a beast and does the job in no time. It started right up after 11.9 months of sitting idle in a corner. Sweet.

After tilling, Madeline and I walked through the fresh cool dirt with our shoes off. She told me she could feel spring in her heart. I could too. It's here.

We went to the Story County Courthouse today and filed for our passports. We should have them in about 6 weeks.

Peace-
Matt

Futboll

Alex had her first home soccer game tonight. I have to say that I was impressed. She did very well. She was aggressive & fast. It was fun to watch her & her team. They won 3-2. Good job Alex!

Peace-
Matt

Green Thumb

Angie and I have never really been gardeners. In our first year of marriage, we planted a huge garden. We planted way too much and didn't tend it well. It was a mess. A couple of years ago we started gardening again. Angie has the natural gardening skill in our household, not me. Last year I kind of took it over. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Yesterday I planted sugar snap peas and lettuce. I'll do peppers, tomatoes, cukes, and pumpkins too; but they'll have to wait until it gets a bit warmer.

Have a great week,

Peace-
Matt

Taxed

Back in early March, I really screwed my knee up trying to run too hard. I took about 3 weeks off to let it heal properly. I just recently started back running. So far so good. You'd laugh at how slow I'm running. It feels so good to get back to it though. I'm at 113.5 miles for the year.

Today is tax day. This year we got a ridiculously high refund. I mean stupid high. It paid for our England tickets though. I just changed my withholding at work, trying to get closer to zero. My paycheck should be quite a bit higher now. I hope I don't regret it this time next year.

If you see my daughter, Alex, tell her hi for me. We never see her anymore.

Peace-
Matt

On Return

I'm back from Taneycomo. It was a great time as usual. We didn't catch a whole lot of fish, but did get enough for our fish fry the last night. It's nice to come home to a short work week.

Angie bought airline tickets to England last night. We are going over on August 13, and coming back on August 25. No turning back now. We are going. I'm going to have to sell one of the kids to pay for it though.

Alex's first three soccer games have been cancelled due to rain. She's supposed to have another tomorrow, but it will be raining or snowing again. Seems like this happens every year with the spring sports. Abby has started softball practice. Madeline will be playing tee ball. It will be a busy spring.

Gotta get to bed. Fishing all week wore me out.

Peace-
Matt

Adios

I was out screwing around in the back yard with a bb gun tonight. I drew aim on a bird up in a tree about 70 feet away. I didn't think I'd actually hit him, and if I did, I thought it would just scare him off. Well, I killed him. One shot and he fell to the ground. After I shot him, I looked down and was standing in a pile of dogshit. Karma.

Why are teenagers so hard to talk to?

I'm outta here. Talk to you soon.

Peace-
Matt

Sweet Relief

In 2-1/2 looong days, I'll be off to Taneycomo for five days of rest and recharging. Lots of fishing, laughing, sleeping, a bit of drinking, a few cigars, and no estrogen.

Peace-
Matt

Risen

Happy Easter!

My Godson and his family came for Easter. It was a great weekend and we're all tired. We were able to take a few photos of the kids together.

Nine more work days til Taneycomo.

Have a great week.

Peace-

Matt

Recollection

Tomorrow will be 13 years since Robby died. I went to a funeral at Christ the King church last week. It's the first time I've been to a funeral at that church since Robby's 13 years ago. I can't really remember his funeral. I don't remember seeing anyone at the church. All the faces in my memories of that event are blank. Angie tells me about it, but I don't remember it. I wish I could. I do remember sitting in the limo outside the church, waiting to go to the cemetery. Angie and I were in the back seat. They put Robby's small casket on the seat in front of us. We had to have one of the pallbearers ride on the seat next to it so it wouldn't tip over at a stop sign. Weird.

I do remember the visitation though. Angie and I arrived at the funeral home early, so that we could spend some time with him before visitors arrived. I think the regular staff were on spring break or something, because the people taking care of us seemed to be very incompetent. We asked if we could go visit him now, and they told us that we could. As we walked up to his casket, and got close enough to see him, we could see that the top of his head had been stitched on, and was in plain sight. It was horrible to see. Angie screamed and cried and we immediately turned around and left the room. I guess we probably knew that he had an autopsy, but never really thought about what they actually did. We were surprised that they didn't try to hide it. After Angie's dad chewed every ass he could find, they finally wrapped a blanket around him in such a way that the stitches were hidden. When we finally got to see him, I remember touching his hand. Angie told me not to, but I did. It was stiff and cold. Not real. I can still feel it in my fingers.

There were lots of people at the visitation. It was strange to me, the number of people that came and knelt by his body that had never seen him alive. I'm thankful that they were there. I remember wanting to leave the whole time. I haven't been back to that funeral home since (Hamilton's on 9th), and don't really want to go back.

Peace-
Matt

Erin Go Bragh

Some daffodils and photoshop on a rainy afternoon.

Thirteen years ago today, our car was stolen out of the grocery store parking lot. The kid that took it was 15 (which just so happens is Alex's current age). He took it for a joy ride, put his cigarettes out on the seat, threw out a nice car seat, got chased by the cops, drove it through a fence at a local park, and ran it into a tree, totaling it. Because he was just 15, he pretty much got away with it. He paid us about $200 of the $1200 we were out due to deductible and other stuff.

It's because this car was totaled, that we were standing out in a car lot in the cold and sleet, looking at a 94 Escort wagon when Robby died.

If you're out there somewhere, Jamie Cooper, I forgive you.

Peace-
Matt