The hardest things about being an asshole and teaching your children not to be.

I was raised under the impression to lead by example. I'm not here to put any one person on blast. I'm more here to explain why I become more and more disappointed with the human race. Also why I hope to not pass this on to my son and any other child that we have in the future. My problems here lately aren't with people I don't know but with people that are close to me. I have my people that I am close to and I have the people that I just feel like I grow further away from. It"s a good thing that Adrien isn't old enough to understand this. I just have a lot of hatred building and doesn't seem to be subsiding. As of tomorrow I will have lost the person that I loved more than anything a year ago to the day and instead of thinking about the good times we had together all I can seem to think about is the blatant disregard for family bond that I am beginning to see get worse as time goes on. There is a lot going on in my family right now that I don't have necessarily have much control over. I was actually told by a family member a few days ago, I hope to see Adrien soon. Am I the only person that can drive to see my family? I mean shit, Durham is close to 30 miles away from me. Why am I the only person that I can drive for you to see a child you are supposed to love? This doesn't go for all of my family in Durham or Hillsborough, I know you guys do all you can and I do the same. Other side of the family guys. Also I see a person that didn't do much for me as a child struggling and I feel like I am the only person trying to help them out. I think deep down I do love this person and I can't see them fall flat on their face and I will do whatever I can to see that they make it. I see a person that I don't have a normal relationship with becoming more distant. The worst part of that is the blame seems to be put on me and my wife. Which is completely unfair. The difference is, as Kim calls it, I'm more of a peacemaker. But that trait is traveling more and more away and the true asshole side of me is coming out. I'm fed up. Are we not important enough for you? Does our time schedule just not fit with yours? Do you think you are better than us? These are things we feel. Like I said I'm not here to put anyone on blast. They know who they are. So if I'm feeling this way, how years from now can I not pass this on to my children? How do I teach them to turn the other cheek when I can't even do it anymore? I'm pretty sure times will be a lot more trying for them at that point. I will try to teach them family is the most important thing they can lean on. I've always told myself I will be a better father than mine was and a better husband than he was. So hopefully I can teach my children to let things roll off their shoulders. Maybe with all of this they will learn family should be number 1. You can't always trust your friends, or acquantices to have your back but you can hopefully fall back on your family. At least this family in this household. Friends come and go, another reason I'm becoming numb to some of the people around me. One instance in particular, I asked one good friend a simple request. In return I got a very unwarming reply and have not spoken to that person since. So why should I be the nice one and try anymore? Why can't I just be the asshole and say fuck it, you want to act like that, fuck it. I do however have a lot of friends that I have made over the years that I know will always be here for me and that i appreciate more than anything. I know this is a lot of ranting and raving. But what I'm really getting at is I hope to not pass my flaws off to my son. Hopefully he has confidence in his family and friends and never has to go through the situations I do. But knows he will always have the love and affection he deserves. He is perfect in every way and I can only hope to pass on to him the virtues my mother instilled in me. If this offends anyone, get the fuck over it. Or try to fix whats broken. Although I'm at my wits end so it won't be easy.

Just a quick question...

Who is viewing this from Germany and Russia? Because whoever you are, your are the shit. Comment or send me a message on Facebook. It's pretty awesome I must say. But would be even more awesome if I knew who you were. And to everyone else who follows and reads, thank you also. I'm willing to write about anything really so I would love feedback or if there is something you would like me to blog about. I would super enjoy suggestions. Believe me when I say this, anything you want to heard, I'm willing to write about it. Thanks for all your support.


AJ

Sleeping til 8am is like winning the lottery.... Your chances are slim to none....

You come super close sometimes. But your odds are one in a million. A lot of you may not have this option anyways, so you won't understand what I mean. Some of you do know what I mean. Some of you don't have this problem, but thats because your child actually sleeps past 8 o'clock. Well for the first time in 20 months, I actually got to sleep past 8 last week. It felt good. For once I woke up feeling refreshed. Has it happened since then, no. Not even close. It's a real pain in the ass when you wake up super early. Not to go to work, for a jog, for an early morning workout, a cigarette and coffee or even a nice breakfast. No, I wake up to a 20 month old wild maniac who wakes up with tons of energy. Don't get me wrong. He sleeps for 11 to 12 hours most nights. But what he doesn't understand is I don't get 12 hours a sleep of night. I'm lucky to get 5, maybe 6, hours of sleep a night. While he is snoozing away, I'm off working for the Man. i get home around 10:45. Spend an hour or so winding down and then laying in bed another 30 minutes to an hour waiting to fall asleep. I look forward to naps after he goes down for his, that never seem to work out. I need Harry Potter here to give him a potion to sleep till 8:15 every morning. That would be ideal. But do you think he understands this? No, not one bit. I guess this is something I can add to the list of things I will never understand as a parent. He better believe that when he gets older, the tides will turn, and I will be the one in his room at 6am every morning saying, WAKE UP!!! Then just walk away and giggle to myself and tell him to fix my breakfast and do the laundry and wash dishes and then cook dinner while he is at it. The best advice I got before he was born was, get as much sleep as you can now. But did I listen? No sir I didn't. so my best words of advice are as follows, sleep now, a lot. Be supportive and get up when your wife does to feed said baby. Not because they want you to but because its the right thing to do, no matter how much it may suck. Last but not least, nap whenever you see the baby napping. The first month or so its all they really do anyways....

My vent... Have a looksy!

I fell off the wagon. I made it a little over 4 months without tobacco, and I picked it back up. I know what you're thinking. Why would he do that? I have my reasons. First and foremost I was becoming a fat ass. No, its not the old saying you stop smoking and gain weight. I replaced smoking with eating. A lot. A whole whole lot. The first 2 months I was doing great. Wasn't really thinking about it. Well the next 2 months its all I thought about and to keep myself from going back, I ate like a squirrel who lost his nuts during the winter. Snack here, candy bar there and three sodas to top it all off. In the latter months of my venture I gained 20 pounds on the dot. Can someone say fat ass? Reason number 2, I wasn't quitting for myself. I wasn't at the point where I wanted to quit. I was mostly doing it to prove a point to Kim that I could indeed do it to stop her bickering. Which she was and still is in the right for. I know smoking kills. I know smoking causes cancer. I don't need commercials or doctors to tell me that. My grandfather died of lung cancer if I'm not mistaken. It was before i was born, which is why I'm not 100% on that. Sissy could verify it I'm sure. But the point is, I wasn't ready to quit. I was doing it because of other reasons and I didn't have a plan set in place. Like I told Kim tonight, for some reason I'm the person who jumps into the pond head first without checking the depth first. It's a very bad trait. The past couple weeks have been rough for me. I inadvertently ruined a very good friendship, I realized I am very unhealthy and out of shape, I'm not a very caring person, I have a lot of deep issues with my mother passing away that I keep suppressing, and generally I'm not a very happy person anymore. True smoking again isn't going to fix those problems. But realizing my problems and beginning to put a plan in place will. I say I'm not a caring person because I don't feel much anymore. Almost like I'm numb to emotions. You're dog died, that sucks. Steve Jobs died of cancer, yeah, so did my mom. I don't think my emotions are where they need to be. To talk a little about my mother, I loved her more than anything in this world. She was taken away for something she didn't cause. If I get lung cancer, thats my bad. She did nothing to get breast cancer the first time. She did nothing for it to come back 15 years later and riddle her body and turn her into someone who was so helpless it brought me to tears every time I saw her. I make jokes and I make it seem trivial but deep down, I hurt. If there is a God, why my mom? Why Kim's mom? Because you needed them in heaven? For what? We need them here more than you need them there. Adrien needs them both here. To hold him. To hug and kiss him. What about the others in this world that have died from this stupid disease? So when i say fuck cancer, I mean it. It's so unfair and unbiased. So what I'm saying is I have a lot going on in my head right now. So I think I want to fix all my problems for other people. But what I have to realize is I have to do these things for myself. Not to prove a point or make someone else happy. I just had to unload this. I also had to let everyone know I am smoking again because I don't want anyone to think about me still being on the wagon. I fell off and I plan to walk for a little while. Walking is good for me right now.....

Pros and Cons of being a stay at home dad..... just a few anyways.

Well first and foremost, the best pro is that I get to spend the days with my heck of son Adrien. Which just so you know is awesome. I always hear parents say they miss their kid or that they missed something their kid did. Like the first time they crawl or walk. I had the privilege to see those things. To match that in the con column is I don't get much family time. I get to see my wife all of about 10-30 mins a day usually. That is not enough for me. Spending our saturday's together is awesome, it's just not enough. Pro number dos would have to be that I am not dropping Adrien off at a daycare that who knows what he would do all day. No offense to daycare workers, but i guess i just like to know what my kid is doing. Not to mention the equal of this pro is not paying for daycare. Holy moly. Con number two would have to be I don't get very much "me" time. I wake up when Adrien wakes up and my only breaks are while he naps. Which are usually taken up by housework during the first nap and me getting ready for work during the second nap. Then Kim gets home, I bag up my dinner and I'm out the door. I don't consider driving by myself as "me" time because I'm driving somewhere I don't want to go. I work my 5 hours. Then drive home and usually go to sleep between 11 and 12. Depends on how tired I am. That is monday through friday. Sunday is my 10 hour work day so there isn't much time to squeeze in some time to myself. Saturday is the only day for said "me" time. But it's also the only day for "family" time. So this too is part of the con, having to choose. So most of the time I consider mowing the lawn or cutting down trees in the woods as my "me" time which is kind of shitty time, but works. Sometimes while Adrien is napping Kim let's me go outside and work on the truck or something like that. Not saying that not having time to myself is her fault. I just always choose the family time over the time to myself. The last issue I'm going to touch on is sort of a pro and a con. Which is why it's last. I have turned into what most call Mr. Mom. I cart Adrien around and do the grocery shopping or run the occasional errand. I wash, fold and put away clothes. I wash the dishes. I plan and cook meals. Well unless Kim picks out the recipe, then it's she plans and I create. I don't necessarily do these things every day, except cook. But I actually do a lot around here. I never try to throw it in Kim's face. I never say I do more than you. Because at the end of the day, I do it to let my wife spend a little bit of time with her son before he goes to sleep. I get somewhere around 9 hours a day with Adrien. You figure, she only gets about 3 hours a night with him. That's if she doesn't have a meeting of some sort. So for those 3 or so hours I want her to be able to enjoy her son. Watch him play and act silly. She deserves it. So the con is a lot of hard work. The pro is my wife not having to worry about anything but spending time with our precious son. That my friend's makes all this worth it. I get time with my boy and my wife gets time with her son. To me, it's just a little work in between.

blah...Monday...blah

So as per usual, I haven't posted in a while. It's monday and Adrien is napping. Which means I am making the grocery list.... YAY(totally fake). I don't mind going to the grocery store. It's actually pretty fun. But I always hate making the grocery list. Kim has decided to start eating healthier, which is good for her but bad for me because I like calories and fat and carbs. Also it makes making this list even damn harder! So she finds recipes in magazines or in blogs that she reads and leaves them laying on the table or pulled up on the iPad. But it's usually only like 2 maybe 3 recipes. I always try to tell her I have to buy 6 meals when I go to the grocery store. One of those being something she will actually cook on sunday's while I'm at work. So 2 or 3 recipes don't really help me that much. As a side note here as to not have her smack me the next time she sees me after reading this, thank for the help that you do provide me with for grocery shopping doll face. So here I sit, listening to The Black Keys, making a grocery list and chatting with said doll face on Skype. I hate monday's. I don't know why. For most people monday means back to the work week. Well that was yesterday for me. All 10 glorious hours of being at that dreadful place. It is a job though. Not better than this job, but this job doesn't pay. It is more rewarding. When I don't have to change anymore really horrible crappy diapers, he can learn to pee in a toilet and can say his ABC's backwards then I will know all my hard work has paid off. There are a lot more rewarding things. I just picked the three most awesome in this scenario. After finally getting my copy of the Tao Te Ching back, i started reading that last night. I have to read it aloud because that is the easiest way to understand it. I may have to read it like 4 times just to make sure i understand it all. Anyone who has ever read may understand this. Unless you're smart and didn't smoke a lot and drink a lot when you were younger. To you I say, good for you. Onto baby stuff. Adrien seems to be growing by the day. Understands near about everything you say to him. Just refuses to say words. He can say what sounds like hello, hey and no. But uses them all at times not suitable for the word. However when we go off and he is sitting in the cart he knows to say HEY to get the person's attention shopping next to us. It's actually pretty funny. This time with him I would not trade for the world. He is a sweet little boy. He loves us and loves to pull Kelly's tail. So I'm not a hundred percent on whether he loves her just yet, or just sees her as another play toy. Banana however, he loves that cat to death. This is about all I have for you on this dreadful monday. Wait one last thing, I am almost 4 months tobacco/nicotine free. Which is totally awesome. Even though I miss it and want to smoke every single day and if it weren't for my responsible neighbor JB, i would have already cracked a few times. Now that's really all I have at this point unless it matters that I switched to listening to Stone Temple Pilots. I swear one of these days I am going to write on here 3 times a week. I'm going to leave you all with a chapter from the Tao Te Ching. Just something to think about....

                                                  II. Self-Development
When everyone recognizes beauty to be only a masquerade, then it is simply ugliness. In the same way goodness, if it is not sincere, is not goodness. So existence and non-existence are incompatible. The difficult and easy are mutually opposites. Just as the long and the short, the high and the low, the loud and soft, the before and the behind, are all opposites and reveals the other.

Therefore the wise man is not conspicuous in his affairs or given to much talking. Though troubles arise he is not irritated. He produces but does not own; he acts but claims no merit; he builds but does not dwell therein; and because he does not dwell therein he never departs.

Sorry for the break.....

But when mama is home, it's family time. Not much has happened since the last time i wrote on here. We have purchased two vehicles since the last post. The first being our family car, the Traverse. I also bought a 1977 Ford F100. Pretty much to haul trash and brush to the dump and what not. I say brush because we are in the process of trying to clean out the woods behind our house. It is slow moving and will be even more so now that Kim has gone back to work. But our plan is to clean out all the little trees and as much pine straw as possible. That way Adrien can have his own little nature area. Where he can grow up and do all the things little boys do. I sometimes wonder if back there will be where he gets his first kiss, or smokes his first cigarette or even gets high or drunk for the first time. Which the latter two of those will certainly get his ass beaten. The first will get him a high five, most definitely behind his mother's back. Which she will see here but will never know when it has occurred. Sorry Kim, its something I'm calling Father/Son Confidentiality. Anyways, as for the little munchkin he is literally growing like a weed. He is running, not walking. Which equals a lot of falling which in turn equals lots of scrapes and bruises. They don't slow him down a bit though. I have literally watched him fall and smack his face on the floor and get up running again. How are they so resilient? If I ever fell down like that, first I would lay there for at least 5 minutes to gather myself. Then I would whine about it for a couple hours. But i had a nice summer with my family. We didn't do much other than a trip down to Wilmington for a night to visit Kim's college friend. A couple trips to  "Lake Currin" as Kim calls it to hang out with some great friends. I'm learning it really is tough losing a parent. Someone who you loved and who loves you has to die because of a stupid disease. Shit sucks for sure. Fuck Cancer.... yeah I said it. I am taking applications for a new mom if anyone is interested. Just thought I would put that out there. I'm noticing this blog is really all over the place. I'm trying to clear out everything I have locked up in here. I am now like 2 1/2 months tobacco free. I think I have mentioned that before. FYI, for anyone trying to quit drinking or quit smoking beware of watching the show Mad Men. Super awesome show, but really makes me want a cigarette when I'm watching it. Well I think I hear the munchkin waking so that means I must cut this short. Until next time my friends.....