Stop the Ride, I Want to Get Off

Wow, look at all the blogging I've been doing lately. Yikes.

(The Catch-22 of parent blogging: the more things to blog about, the less time to blog them.)

What's been going down around here? Well, in the last eight weeks we've celebrated four birthdays, two baptisms, one anniversary, we've gone camping, started school, ran a half marathon, attended twenty soccer games, sold a car, gotten a dental crown put in, fixed a washing machine and visited emergency rooms and urgent care centers.

Throw in an uptick in my photography business and the ol' blog here loses out to face planting into my pillow almost every single night.

It's a good kind of busy. Really.

If I can keep my eyelids in the upright position for a few more minutes, I'll post some pictures I've been meaning to upload. In the meantime, some tuneage.

So This Is It

Post #1,000.

I have nothing planned to commemorate the occasion. A music video montage of the last five years? I have five kids, I don't have time to make that. A cool prize giveaway? I have five kids, I don't have the money to buy that. A poetic ode to the legacy of my blog? I have five kids, I don't have the brain power to write that.

You'll have to settle for that picture of me with my creepy beard and single tear.

So this is it. Post #1,000. Yee-haw!

I hope you've enjoyed reading. I hope you're only stalking me and my family in that good sort of stalking way. I hope you'll stick around for the next five years.

Maybe I'll do a giveaway for my 2,000th post. Yeah, that's what I'll do.

Sláinte!

Nine Hundred and Ninety-Eight

This is my 998th blog post on The Fall of James.

Wow.

I asked Julie to guess the total number of posts on The Fall of James. She said, "200."

Julie is bad at math guessing. (And I'm bad at grammar.)

I started this blog on Sunday, July 27, 2007. I'm surprised it has lasted this long. I'm surprised that I've posted nearly a thousand times. I'm glad it's still going. I originally started The Fall of James thinking that it would be a useful digital scrapbook and that it would keep interested friends and family up to date on our increasingly busy lives. Just five short years ago, things were very different in our life. Julie and I had only been married a couple of years. We had one, JUST ONE, kid. We both worked. We lived in a little house in the purgatory between Dayton and Cincinnati otherwise known as Franklin, Ohio. We had dogs. We owned breakable stuff. We slept.

A lot has happened in the last five years.

Which, of course, is why I started this blog. My first blog post:

My wife, Julie, and I found out a couple of months ago that we are (she is) pregnant with twins. God willing, they will be arriving some time this fall, shortly after our first son turns two. Which should be right around the time we're moving out of our current house and moving into the house we just started building. (Well, we're not actually building it ourselves. That's what we're paying other people to do. On top of becoming a parent of multiples and building a house, I've also decided to run my first half-marathon this fall. I'm 20 pounds overweight and haven't done any vigorous exercise for a few years, so I'm sure I can get in race shape in a few weeks.

It was only five years ago, but it feels like decades. Since that original post we built two houses, sold one, lived with my in-laws for a year, found new homes for our dogs, got pregnant four times, had a miscarriage, had twins, had two more singleton kids, we watched Bring It On too many times, I ran a half marathon, I quit my job, I became a stay-at-home parent, we took the kids to Florida, Vegas and Seattle, we took the kids on the Appalachian Trail, various kids started school, gymnastics, soccer, basketball, baseball and tennis, we went to funerals and weddings, we welcomed new relatives into the world, I learned to cook, Julie learned to be a programmer, an accountant and a financial analyst, we stayed up late and got up early, we cried, we laughed...

We laughed a lot. How couldn't we?

Wow. In retrospect, things seem pretty boring these days.

So five years and a thousand posts seems like a milestone of some sort. Who knows if this will last through another thousand posts, but I should probably think of something to mark the occasion. I'll get back to you on that. Maybe this weekend I'll take a trip down memory lane and find some of my favorite posts of the last five years and share them with you -- I always love going back through my blog. That was kinda the point all along...

A Day in Photos

When I look through old posts on this here blog, I'm amazed at all the things I've documented and have already forgotten. It's one of the things that motivates me to keep blogging -- if I wasn't writing things down here I might barely have any recollection of the past few years of my life. I don't keep a journal, scrapbooking sounds torturous and I don't think I've written a single thing down in any of our kids' baby books. This is it.

One of the things I've always wanted to do is document a whole day with photos. I break out the camera all the time for noteworthy events, special days and random moments, but I've never taken the time to try capturing an entire nonspecific, run-of-the-mill day in the life of James. After reading another blogger's day in photos endeavor, I got motivated to tackle this project myself.

Before climbing into bed Thursday night, I set my camera on my nightstand in preparation for taking one photo, every hour, for an entire day. These are the results.

Friday, May 27, 2011

7:44 AM - Jameson obliges me by snapping the first photo of the day. Like most mornings, Amelia has finagled her way into my bed.

8:52 AM - Multiple bowls of Cheerios and bananas are served. I think my kids would eat this for breakfast every day if given the option.

9:45 AM - "Hereyago, Dadda. Hork!" Darwin earns his keep by helping me unload the dishwasher.

10:54 AM - One of the best parts of the day. LEGOs. Peace and civility reign for a solid hour.

11:53 AM - Someone doesn't care for Dad's leftover homemade chicken noodle soup for lunch.

12:48 PM - An hour later, Caillou is on, all chicken noodle soup transgressions are forgiven.

2:01 PM - Craft time! Let's color calaveras!

3:02 PM - Bring out the heavy artillery. We need some oatmeal raisin cookies up in this house.

3:58 PM - New shoes arrive in the mail! Two year old pseudo-Crocs can finally be retired.

4:59 PM - Some final outdoor fun before dinner.

5:58 PM - Sloppy joes for dinner. No protests from anyone.

7:06 PM - Oatmeal cookies mixed hours ago finally get baked. (And maybe one or four get eaten.)

8:09 PM - It's Friday night and Mom and Dad are headed out... maybe this isn't a typical day.

9:10 PM - Dinner part II. Mmmm, meat.

10:02 PM - Jason Bateman in the Horrible Bosses preview. May have to see this just for Charlie Day alone.

11:05 PM - Tonight's feature: The Hangover Part II. Hope the MPAA doesn't find out I was snapping photos...

12:27 AM - Back home and apparently ending my day much like how it began.

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!

Today is National Delurking Day.  I know you're out there - if you're reading this, click on that little comment link and reveal yourself! I promise not to point and laugh. I may grin, but I won't laugh. And if you're a regular commenter, join in anyway to help make the noobs feel comfortable exposing themselves.

Honest Scrap

For maybe the first time in my life I've been given an award. And I didn't even have to do anything to get it. Actually, it's more of a homework assignment. But, whatever, I'll still accept the trophy and check or whatever it is that comes with it. It's called Honest Scrap, and it was bestowed upon me by our good friend Charity, the sorceress behind The Donovan Clan blog. The idea here is that I'm supposed to share on my blog 10 honest things about myself and then assign at least seven other bloggers the same task. I'm game, but we'll see if I can actually think of 10 honest things to say about myself. Usually, everything out of my mouth is an exaggeration, fantasy or boldface lie.

1. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Show the 7 winners’ names and links on your blog, and leave a comment informing them that they have won the Honest Scrap award.

In no particular order, here are the bloggers I'm picking to keep this Ponzi scheme alive. They are each far scrappier and honestier than myself.

Meagan @ Dreams of Bicycle Rides
Cake @ Now Voyager
Hools @ We Don't Choose
Ms. P @ The Projectivist
Jim @ A Very Short Story
Amanda @ Memeopolis
Jay @ Genius Pending


2. List at least 10 honest things about yourself.

1. 98% of the time I'm a laid back, nice guy. The other 2% of the time I'm an asshole. Or something like that. Maybe it's the other way around.

2. I have a weird desire for order. It's somewhat unpredictable and contrary to much of my artistic/creative mentality. I keep the refrigerator organized into product categories. I love for everything to have a "place." If it doesn't have a place, I cannot just put it somewhere temporarily. That leaves any given aspect of my life either completely organized or in complete disarray. My desk at home is a disaster. My desk at work was pristine. Once I get something organized, it's easy to keep it that way. My obsessive compulsive desire to straighten and align things is also somehow related. Julie is incompatible with my organization, though, and that incompatibility is probably the primary catalyst of my 2% asshole side.

3. My organizational tendencies are only limited to "things." I don't need my activities, plans, vacations or what not arranged in advance. For example, on a typical vacation I would have plane tickets, hotel reservations, maps, receipts and phone numbers neatly organized in folders. But I would never, ever have my vacation planned out with an itinerary or even a vague schedule. I go with the flow.

4. I took poor care of my teeth in college. Too many nights ended with tacos and Pepsi and me passing out on my bed. I was lucky to get my shoes off, let alone brush my teeth. This is not the best way to maintain a healthy mouth. I knew some people that could be on the verge of blacking out before bedtime and they'd still brush their teeth. It was like their body was on autopilot or something. I wish I was one of those people. So, now I have fillings and sensitivity. I take care of my teeth now, and they look fine, but they'll never be perfect like they were. Kids, take care of your adult teeth. They're the only ones you get.

5. My parents made me take clarinet lessons one time in elementary school. I hated it. A lot. I was too young to understand that even clarinet players probably pull lots of chicks.

6. In the "Diffusion of Innovations" theory, I enjoy being an innovator or early adopter when it comes to technology. If I miss the boat and the adoption of an innovation reaches critical mass, then I avoid the innovation at all costs, simply out of spite. I'm the same way about television shows. I'll never watch a single episode of Lost simply because it was too wildly popular before I got a chance to watch. Unfortunately, Mad Men looks to be headed that way, too. I will probably make for one crotchety old man.

7. I like taking marketing surveys. I want businesses to cater to my wants and needs as much as possible, so I never miss an opportunity to take a survey. Plus, I know how freakin' hard it is to get people to actually respond to survey requests, so I kinda do it out of sympathy, too.

8. I've had many, many jobs in my short lifetime. At last check, it was over twenty, not counting different jobs within the same company. I started as a paperboy when I was around twelve and worked some kind of job at least every summer after that. Quitting my job to be a stay-at-home-dad was a very strange experience. Jobs I've had (not necessarily in chronological order): paperboy, bagel shop, grocery store, catering, trash picker, trap shoot puller, phone operator, ticket sales, catering again, Chi-Chi's, Chili's (host, server, busser, cook, bartender, dishwasher, manager), marketing, more catering, call center tech support, Structure sales, Gap sales, paper shredder, school cleaning crew, baseball card sorter, concert t-shirt seller, insurance sales and more.

9. I'm a virgin.

10. I really like skull and skeleton themed artwork. It started as an interest in Dia de Los Muertes art, but now it's anything skeletal. I hope to build a collection of it. I'm very picky as to what I think is "good" though. I'm not sure from where this interest comes, but it's probably something like a subconscious way to deal with my own mortality by confronting death and making it into something pedestrian and unremarkable. But, hey, I'm no psychologist.

commissioned sketch by Tara Billinger