Becoming a father and being a father has changed my life considerably. Now I look back at the way I used to be and think ‘what an idiot’. Reality hit me hard, like a closed fist to the side of the head when a nurse handed me a new baby boy and said, “Here you go daddy.” I remember thinking,” Daddy? I’m not a daddy, I’m a dumb punk kid with a shit job and no money, how can I be a daddy?” Then I realized I didn’t have a choice in the matter, I had to deal with what I had in my arms and do the best I could for it. Looking back at the situation now I think of the three effects it had on my life. Responsibility being the first, it may have been fun making this baby but now its life depends on mine. Maturity, how could I be a good father if I was a bad kid? And third, would be improvement. I needed to give this little guy everything in my power to make his life better.
At the age of eighteen I didn’t have a care in the world, but at that age a lot of people don’t. About the only thing I was concerned with was getting f***ed up and having a good time doing it. Responsibility was something I didn’t take seriously at all. I barely made it through high school, partying all the way through and drinking my way right out of college the first time around. Right around that time my girlfriend told me that she was pregnant. This life changing, unexpected surprise gave me a wakeup call but it didn’t really sink in. As I mentioned previously, it didn’t hit me until the first time I held him. That’s when I realized things needed to change and I had to do the changing. My partying stopped first which saved money to pay for medical bills. Once the bills were paid I started saving the extra money but still was not making much extra. Then an old friend of mine that I used to work with gave me a phone call. He had gotten a job in a local machine shop with nothing more than a high school diploma and was making a substantial amount of money and wanted to know if I was interested. Of course I was, so I went down and filled out a job application. They called me back less than a week later and set up an interview at which I was hired on the spot. This was a step in the right direction toward my goal of getting out of town and moving back to the country to raise a family. That was the first responsibility I had taken in years.
When reality finally hit me, it hurt. I was constantly getting myself into trouble at eighteen, to the point that every cop in town knew me, and not in a good way. The idea of becoming a father terrified me only because I knew that on my current path I would make a bad one. So I changed course, I stopped associating with my ‘friends’ that only seemed to get me into more trouble. In fact I even moved in with my girlfriend twenty-five miles away, partly to get away from them and stay out of trouble. Even after the baby was born though I still was just a kid with a kid, not a father. It took us months to adjust to the idea of being responsible parents. After a year or so of living in town we moved again, back to where I was from out in the country. I think it was the best move we ever made, and my old ‘friends’ never came around because we were just another couple that had kids. My girlfriend and I became Husband and Wife not to long after, another move I won’t soon regret. We did it, we were finally adults, living in our own home, working to pay the bills and raising a happy family. My parents always told me I needed to act my age.
Improvement, a lot lies within that one word. More than just growing up and learning from past mistakes. It consists of constantly finding better ways to do things, and making things better for all of us. I now have been doing that ‘new’ job for over five years and was able to work my way up a little. That job has been able to provide us with several things that would not have been possible on my old jobs salary. As of today I make more than double I did when my first son was born, the only down side is that the bills have doubled too. Fortunately we were able to move into my grandparent’s old house which was left to me when my grandmother past away, not having that mortgage payment has given us a little extra to work with. Every penny I’ve saved though has gone into improving the house, my wife and I have put a lot of time into it by renovating every room except for one and that’s on the to-do list. However, all the work hasn’t been for us, it is for a better place to raise a family. I also started going back to school part time to earn a degree and with that hopefully provide even more to our cause. More than that though, I have improved as a person. The person I once was scares the crap right out of me and I hope to instill the values that I’ve learned into my children before they go down the wrong path.
In closure, I wouldn’t change a thing. My wife and I are now on working on boy number three and above all, we are happy. The boys are happy too and they know they have a mom and dad that love them and would do anything for them. I hope they make the right decisions in life and lead good ones, all I can do is teach them what I know and hope for the best. After all, once they are older and grown up, their lives are in their own hands.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Effect Essay
Becoming a father and being a father has changed my life considerably. Now I look back at the way I used to be and think ‘what an idiot’. Reality hit me hard, like a closed fist to the side of the head when a nurse handed me a new baby boy and said, “Here you go daddy.” I remember thinking,” Daddy? I’m not a daddy, I’m a dumb punk kid with a shit job and no money, how can I be a daddy?” Then I realized I didn’t have a choice in the matter, I had to deal with what I had in my arms and do the best I could for it. Looking back at the situation now I think of the three effects it had on my life. Responsibility being the first, it may have been fun making this baby but now its life depends on mine. Maturity, how could I be a good father if I was a bad kid? And third, would be improvement. I needed to give this little guy everything in my power to make his life better.
At the age of eighteen I didn’t have a care in the world, but at that age a lot of people don’t. About the only thing I was concerned with was getting f***ed up and having a good time doing it. Responsibility was something I didn’t take seriously at all. I barely made it through high school, partying all the way through and drinking my way right out of college the first time around. Right around that time my girlfriend told me that she was pregnant. This life changing, unexpected surprise gave me a wakeup call but it didn’t really sink in. As I mentioned previously, it didn’t hit me until the first time I held him. We decided that we needed to take charge of our actions and do the best we could with them. That was the first responsibility I had taken in years.
When reality finally hit me, it hurt. I was constantly getting myself into trouble at eighteen, to the point that every cop in town knew me, and not in a good way. The idea of becoming a father terrified me only because I knew that on my current path I would make a bad one. So I changed course, I stopped associating with my ‘friends’ that only seemed to get me into more trouble. In fact I even moved in with my girlfriend twenty-five miles away, partly to get away from them and stay out of trouble. Even after the baby was born though I still was just a kid with a kid, not a father. It took us months to adjust to the idea of being responsible parents. After a year or so of living in town we moved again, back to where I was from out in the country. I think it was the best move we ever made, and my old ‘friends’ never came around because we were just another couple that had kids. My girlfriend and I became Husband and Wife not to long after, another move I won’t soon regret. We did it, we were finally adults, living in our own home, working to pay the bills and raising a happy family. My parents always told me I needed to act my age.
Improvement, a lot lies within that one word. More than just growing up and learning from past mistakes. It consists of constantly finding better ways to do things, and making things better for all of us. For starters I got a better job making double what I did when my first son was born. That job has been able to provide us with several things that would not have been possible on my old jobs salary. My wife and I have put a lot of time and money into the house in which we live, but it’s not for us, it is for a better place to raise a family. I also started going back to school part time to earn a degree and with that hopefully provide even more to our cause. More than that though, I have improved as a person. The person I once was scares the crap right out of me and I hope to instill the values that I’ve learned into my children before they go down the wrong path.
In closure, I wouldn’t change a thing. My wife and I are now on working on boy number three and above all, we are happy. The boys are happy too and they know they have a mom and dad that love them and would do anything for them. I hope they make the right decisions in life and lead good ones, all I can do is teach them what I know and hope for the best. After all, once they are older and grown up, their lives are in their own hands.
At the age of eighteen I didn’t have a care in the world, but at that age a lot of people don’t. About the only thing I was concerned with was getting f***ed up and having a good time doing it. Responsibility was something I didn’t take seriously at all. I barely made it through high school, partying all the way through and drinking my way right out of college the first time around. Right around that time my girlfriend told me that she was pregnant. This life changing, unexpected surprise gave me a wakeup call but it didn’t really sink in. As I mentioned previously, it didn’t hit me until the first time I held him. We decided that we needed to take charge of our actions and do the best we could with them. That was the first responsibility I had taken in years.
When reality finally hit me, it hurt. I was constantly getting myself into trouble at eighteen, to the point that every cop in town knew me, and not in a good way. The idea of becoming a father terrified me only because I knew that on my current path I would make a bad one. So I changed course, I stopped associating with my ‘friends’ that only seemed to get me into more trouble. In fact I even moved in with my girlfriend twenty-five miles away, partly to get away from them and stay out of trouble. Even after the baby was born though I still was just a kid with a kid, not a father. It took us months to adjust to the idea of being responsible parents. After a year or so of living in town we moved again, back to where I was from out in the country. I think it was the best move we ever made, and my old ‘friends’ never came around because we were just another couple that had kids. My girlfriend and I became Husband and Wife not to long after, another move I won’t soon regret. We did it, we were finally adults, living in our own home, working to pay the bills and raising a happy family. My parents always told me I needed to act my age.
Improvement, a lot lies within that one word. More than just growing up and learning from past mistakes. It consists of constantly finding better ways to do things, and making things better for all of us. For starters I got a better job making double what I did when my first son was born. That job has been able to provide us with several things that would not have been possible on my old jobs salary. My wife and I have put a lot of time and money into the house in which we live, but it’s not for us, it is for a better place to raise a family. I also started going back to school part time to earn a degree and with that hopefully provide even more to our cause. More than that though, I have improved as a person. The person I once was scares the crap right out of me and I hope to instill the values that I’ve learned into my children before they go down the wrong path.
In closure, I wouldn’t change a thing. My wife and I are now on working on boy number three and above all, we are happy. The boys are happy too and they know they have a mom and dad that love them and would do anything for them. I hope they make the right decisions in life and lead good ones, all I can do is teach them what I know and hope for the best. After all, once they are older and grown up, their lives are in their own hands.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Division Essay
I’ve seen a few of them already, tiny little specks floating down from somewhere high above. Examining one up close shows how intricate, and individual Mother Nature can be but, when you get buried in a foot or more of these little specks overnight their unique qualities fade away. They turn into more of an annoyance, robbed of their individual beauty which is replaced by frustration, and a sore back and shoulders. I take those first few natural marvels as a warning, a warning that reads “YOU HAVE A LOT TO DO OUT THERE BEFORE MORE OF US ARRIVE”. Winterization can be broken down into three major categories starting with extra insulation around the house, stopping all the little heat loss areas before they start losing heat. Next is cleaning out the garage, eight months of stuff piled up into one giant booby trap that may all come crashing down after moving the wrong thing first. And finally, giving the car and the jeep a good cleaning before it gets too cold to wash them and the doors freeze shut over night.
I remember as a kid right around this time of year my dad would be walking around in the house with a lit cigarette and a tube of window caulk. He would slowly move from window to window tracing the outside edge with the cigarette, eyes focused on the plumes of smoke that drifted upward. A sudden stop indicated that he saw what he was looking for. He would stare it down for a second then without shifting his eyes the lit smoke would go to his mouth and the caulking gun to the window. “Gotcha”, he’d say as he smoothed out the bead with his finger tip and systematically moved on to the next air leak. Nowadays I use the same method but instead of a lit cigarette I use an incent stick, but that is the only difference. Window caulk, weather stripping, and foam-in-a-can insulation are the main weapons of choice in my winterization arsenal. Every fall the three exterior doors in the house get a new strip of half inch weather strip, that stuff is great. I have to double it up on my front door because it doesn’t fit squarely in the frame but once that is done there is no draft around that door. It’s also cheap and very easy to use, if you can use tape then you can use weather stripping. Foam in a can may be the single greatest invention for winterizing, it may be messy to use but it works awesome. I put a solid bead of it around the sill of the house last year and it actually kept my un-heated basement warm. Well, not warm but tolerable hovering around fifty degrees. This year will be a test for it, in the past years the hot water pipes from my forced hot water baseboard threw off enough heat to keep it above freezing. Now I’ll be heating the house with a pellet stove and hopefully the heat upstairs will radiate down, all the more reason to keep as much heat inside as possible.
In the winter I keep my car in the garage only driving it on the days when the roads are clear and none of those pesky white specks are in the forecast. Once the snow is gone in the spring and the car is being driven daily my garage transforms from a car bay into a shrine to the junk gods. The summer yard toys get pulled out their winter storage spots one after another and after they have been played with never make it back to where they were. Instead they end up slowly being piled on top of one another until finally in the fall they stand like some un-conquerable mountain of bikes, golf clubs, and pool toys. When the day comes and it’s time to conquer the mountain it takes just that, a day. This year I had an added twist, four tons of wood pellets sitting right where my car goes. At forty pounds per bag it took nearly half a day to move them into the basement but once they were moved it made the garage cleaning look a lot less intimidating. With just a few more finishing touches and a good sweeping it will be transformed back into a garage fit to house a vehicle.
The third and final task at hand is to clean the car and the jeep out. A few years ago when the car was new, I washed it at least once a week. Now I look at it and there are still bug guts splattered across the front end, almost like some memorial to all the insects that perished on those late night rides home from work. No worries though, the pressure washer will strip them off with little effort. I look at the jeep and it still looks clean. During the summer months the only time it moves is when it is loaded with trash and headed for the town dump. But none the less, both vehicles need to be cleaned soon to avoid doing it in the freezing cold like I’ve done in past years. I start with the interior, vigorously sucking up dirt and debris with my shop vac. Once that’s done I’ll wash down the dash board and other surfaces with warm soapy water then wash the windows. All the interiors will need after that is a new air freshener. The exteriors then get a thin coating of Simple Green, they sit for an hour or so, and then get blasted with the pressure washer. This strips all the grit and grime off for good. I go over the surfaces with a sponge and get all the stuck on nasty stuff that the pressure washer can’t get. After they dry I put a good thick coat of wax on and buff them until they shine like the sun. The wax really helps protect the paint from salt and the liquid brine that is sprayed on the road before a big storm. As we all know, living in Maine and driving in our winters can ruin a good car in just a few years.
Once all these tasks are completed I can confidently look toward the sky and say, “Come on winter, bring it on, I’m ready”. As little as I like the sound of that it’s true, I am now ready to get buried in little white specks and shovel my way out of them. After all winter isn’t all bad, I love playing in the snow with my oldest boy, maybe someday I’ll spring for a snowmobile and have some high speed fun. Plus I get to go back to work on the ‘new’ wishing well I’ve been building in the basement for the last two winters. Depending on how much snow we get this time around, I might actually have it finished by the time all the snow is melted.
I remember as a kid right around this time of year my dad would be walking around in the house with a lit cigarette and a tube of window caulk. He would slowly move from window to window tracing the outside edge with the cigarette, eyes focused on the plumes of smoke that drifted upward. A sudden stop indicated that he saw what he was looking for. He would stare it down for a second then without shifting his eyes the lit smoke would go to his mouth and the caulking gun to the window. “Gotcha”, he’d say as he smoothed out the bead with his finger tip and systematically moved on to the next air leak. Nowadays I use the same method but instead of a lit cigarette I use an incent stick, but that is the only difference. Window caulk, weather stripping, and foam-in-a-can insulation are the main weapons of choice in my winterization arsenal. Every fall the three exterior doors in the house get a new strip of half inch weather strip, that stuff is great. I have to double it up on my front door because it doesn’t fit squarely in the frame but once that is done there is no draft around that door. It’s also cheap and very easy to use, if you can use tape then you can use weather stripping. Foam in a can may be the single greatest invention for winterizing, it may be messy to use but it works awesome. I put a solid bead of it around the sill of the house last year and it actually kept my un-heated basement warm. Well, not warm but tolerable hovering around fifty degrees. This year will be a test for it, in the past years the hot water pipes from my forced hot water baseboard threw off enough heat to keep it above freezing. Now I’ll be heating the house with a pellet stove and hopefully the heat upstairs will radiate down, all the more reason to keep as much heat inside as possible.
In the winter I keep my car in the garage only driving it on the days when the roads are clear and none of those pesky white specks are in the forecast. Once the snow is gone in the spring and the car is being driven daily my garage transforms from a car bay into a shrine to the junk gods. The summer yard toys get pulled out their winter storage spots one after another and after they have been played with never make it back to where they were. Instead they end up slowly being piled on top of one another until finally in the fall they stand like some un-conquerable mountain of bikes, golf clubs, and pool toys. When the day comes and it’s time to conquer the mountain it takes just that, a day. This year I had an added twist, four tons of wood pellets sitting right where my car goes. At forty pounds per bag it took nearly half a day to move them into the basement but once they were moved it made the garage cleaning look a lot less intimidating. With just a few more finishing touches and a good sweeping it will be transformed back into a garage fit to house a vehicle.
The third and final task at hand is to clean the car and the jeep out. A few years ago when the car was new, I washed it at least once a week. Now I look at it and there are still bug guts splattered across the front end, almost like some memorial to all the insects that perished on those late night rides home from work. No worries though, the pressure washer will strip them off with little effort. I look at the jeep and it still looks clean. During the summer months the only time it moves is when it is loaded with trash and headed for the town dump. But none the less, both vehicles need to be cleaned soon to avoid doing it in the freezing cold like I’ve done in past years. I start with the interior, vigorously sucking up dirt and debris with my shop vac. Once that’s done I’ll wash down the dash board and other surfaces with warm soapy water then wash the windows. All the interiors will need after that is a new air freshener. The exteriors then get a thin coating of Simple Green, they sit for an hour or so, and then get blasted with the pressure washer. This strips all the grit and grime off for good. I go over the surfaces with a sponge and get all the stuck on nasty stuff that the pressure washer can’t get. After they dry I put a good thick coat of wax on and buff them until they shine like the sun. The wax really helps protect the paint from salt and the liquid brine that is sprayed on the road before a big storm. As we all know, living in Maine and driving in our winters can ruin a good car in just a few years.
Once all these tasks are completed I can confidently look toward the sky and say, “Come on winter, bring it on, I’m ready”. As little as I like the sound of that it’s true, I am now ready to get buried in little white specks and shovel my way out of them. After all winter isn’t all bad, I love playing in the snow with my oldest boy, maybe someday I’ll spring for a snowmobile and have some high speed fun. Plus I get to go back to work on the ‘new’ wishing well I’ve been building in the basement for the last two winters. Depending on how much snow we get this time around, I might actually have it finished by the time all the snow is melted.
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