Too Much Emotion!

Yesterday, I received two texts within a minute of each other.

One was from my sister, Keshia, and the other from my wife.  Keshia was texting me about a dream she had while my wife was asking if I'd read the text from my sister.

"Not yet, I'm in a meeting," I texted back to my wife.  Then read the text from my sibling.

"Last night I had a dream that mom [who died over ten years ago] was rocking a baby boy in a rocking chair, and I asked her whose baby that was. She said, 'It's Jeffrey and Jennifer's boy..."

I was thought that was a weird dream, and texted my wife my thoughts. She replied, "Well, the first thing I thought of was the baby we lost [in 2012]."

I didn't know what to say to that. I just put my hand down, slipping my phone back into my pocket and pretending to listen to my manager drone on about Black Friday or something.

My phone buzzed again.

Text from my wife.

"At least your mom has one grandchild with her in Heaven now."

I replied, "OMG STOP! I DON'T WANT TO START CRYING AT WORK!"

"Sorry," she sent back.

I mean, how are you supposed to react to something like that?

A Short Story Lengthened

So in a previous blog I mentioned that we moved across the country, a lot of stuff happened, and I thought I'd take a few minutes to flesh this out a little.

I left my job as a probation officer in Indianapolis on November 14th, 2014. My wife stayed behind to work and make a few extra dollars while my (then) only kid and I drove up to North Dakota.  My daughter stayed with my wife's family in one town, while I worked halfway across the state and her mom worked halfway across the country.  We were all divided up in the name of making money and getting ahead.

My wife ended up staying with her family about 4 weeks later when she moved all of our stuff into storage (with the help of her brother and mom).  So she was with our daughter while I stayed in a really, really crappy hotel. I'm talking, "I'm shocked there's not that many dead hookers in this place" bad.

I had to pass a test to keep my job. No, I had to pass a few tests to keep my job that I moved halfway across the country to work at.

And I passed them. All of them.

While I was studying and passing tests, my wife was finding us a place to live in Bismarck.  Rent here is ridiculous and nobody wanted us to bring our idiot dog. I don't blame them, I wish my wife would have "forgotten" him in Indiana.  Or maybe forgot she tied him to the bumper of the moving truck like they did in that Chevy Chase movie...

Anyway, we got all moved in and then there was talk of lay offs, or as they liked to call them, "furloughs." So I chased work.

I had to go to another city, live out of my car (only for a couple of days, thankfully), and work some more, only to ultimately be laid off after about another month, and having passed more tests that enabled me to do more work for a company that no longer needed me or about 300 other guys they'd promised "so much work and money" to that "we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves."

I roomed with my friend Justin for that month, was away from my family except when I'd got a day or two off and could drive home.

I wasn't a dad for those months I was away. I wasn't a husband. I was a constant paycheck and part-time face in the house.

At least that's how I felt.

Then I was laid off and the company that had promised so much cared just enough to remind me that Union dues would still be coming out of my last paycheck, and that my insurance would last only a few more months (which was fortunate, since we now had a baby on the way).

I was out of work for a couple of months before I could find something else that would at least offer full-time pay and benefits.  My wife found a job, despite being pregnant, working for the state.

We're far behind on bills, we're struggling to find a daycare, but at least we're all together now as a family.

We're moving forward and soon, I hope, we'll be able to look back at this year as the year we moved to North Dakota and though it began rough, it turned out great.

So there you have it. That's the basics of my last year. Sure, there's more to the story, like the names of friends I made along the way, the time I almost got ran over by a train because a coworker wasn't paying attention, and how my wife hit a deer and totaled our car... but you probably don't want to read about that stuff.

Habitually Trying To Get Back Into Blogging

I constantly tell myself I need to get back to my blog.

I need to sit down and write and move on with my life and put the past behind me and finally let go. This one blog post, probably the last I really threw my heart into, was re-read today. By me. It's been a while now, and I think I'm ready to start writing again. We have made so many happy memories since then with the child we do have, I have to get over the one that we don't.

Also, when re-reading that, I realized there are several spelling and grammar errors so if you read it and want to carve your eyes out with a fork - I understand.

So what to say? What to talk about? Hmmmm...

My daughter.

This kid is a joy. In fact, I am almost convinced she is pure joy personified. That, or she is sneaking candy when we aren't looking, but for now we'll just say she's a happy kid.

She's 3 and a half now, and starting to really show her personality. She looks like her mom, and often shows her mom's attitude, but there is so much of my geekiness in her it is so hard not to be proud. In fact, if you look at the pictures I posted before I sat down to write this, you may notice we had a lightsaber fight. This is actually the third time in the past few weeks we've been able to get outside and work on her Jedi/Sith skills. I'm actually quite proud of the fact that she wants to play with the toy light swords.

Sometimes, unexpectedly, my heart will melt when I pick her up from daycare and hear, "Daddy, I wanna watch Star Wars" from the back seat.

But then, then there are scenes like this.

I feel like a parent who does a pretty good job, but when you sit down to pray before a meal with your family, and your daughter offers to pray, or she starts to actually ask questions like, "Where is God?" and "Where is Jesus" it makes me pretty happy. It helps that I feel like I'm prepared to answer those questions, or at least break them down to a level she can understand.

Recently, at the dinner table, she prayed the whole "God is great, God is good, thank you God for this food" prayer, and when I prayed differently, she tried correcting me and told me that's not how you're supposed to pray. Imagine me, this 31 year old bearded sasquatch sitting down with this tiny 3 year old and explaining the intricacies of prayer, and why it's okay to pray your own way, because God hears the prayers of his children. What's crazy is that she understood it. The way I explained it must have clicked perfectly because she hasn't tried correcting anyone on how they pray, and has even expanded a little on her own prayers. Okay, they all still begin with "God is great, God is good, thank you God for this food" even when it's night time prayers and she's about to go to sleep, but hey, progress is progress.

Today, after we had our lightsaber fight, we went to Taco Bell and had lunch. I realized it's the first time we've been able to sit down one-on-one in a while. The lunches we used to have every Friday have dissolved since I transferred to my new job and new schedule. It really reminded me of why I loved them.

I got to sit there and talk to my daughter about anything. Mostly, the conversation was about the cinnamon twists and why Daddy wouldn't share ALL of his Doritos (she got half the bag, by the way). But it was nice just hearing the little girl across the table from me talk about anything she wanted.

Long story short, I'm going to try and blog more often. Again.