Big man in Pampers

From an email my wife sent out about Little Man (now 21 months):

[Little Man] peed in the potty for the first time today (it was a fluke) [and of course we praised him incessantly]; but now he thinks he's ready for fast cars, women and cigars. You should have seen him when it was time to put his jammies on - by himself - . His britches ended up on his head.

Oh, how did I end up with TWO strong willed children?

On losing a close friend

It's been one week and a day since one of my best friends (T.P.) passed away unexpectedly. There is an amazing distance between fact and realization of that fact. I know my friend is dead, but I really have not wrapped my head around his absence. There is a hole somewhere in my conscious understanding of the world that he use to occupy that I have not yet stumbled into.
His passing has been weird to me. Usually when someone close to me dies I tend to examine my own mortality. This time I just feel numb to my own existence. Don't get me wrong, I love life and I love MY life but I just feel numb. I also feel ashamed that I have so much and that my friends wife and parents have lost so much.
The other strange thing is that I can't stop thinking about my friend. My mind wanders back to something or another he said, or some action he made, or just the way he looked. I know of the brevity of life and I know that life's brevity is a large part of what makes it so sweet. But I just can't wrap my head around a world without my friend. Honestly, I never would have thought that I would miss him so much.

Back in the saddle again...

Well I've completed my first year teaching and my kids are obviously much older since my last post. I'll get things ramped up shortly. One of my goals for the summer is to do a lot of writing, so stay tuned!